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hellfire--cult · 3 months

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Omega!Eddie Munson x Alpha!Fem!Reader

wc: 9.1k

+18 mdni omegaverse, enemies to lovers, fated mates, knotting, mentions of heatand rut, submissive behaviour, explicit, oral (69), p in v (no protection), fluff, biting, late presentation, omegan virginity

Plot: Eddie was a regular at your music store, and his scent, even for a Beta, was delicious to you. Someone who never enjoyed the scent of other people, not even Omegas. The difference is that Eddie repulsed your scent... or so you thought.

a/n: welcome to roe's omega boys series. Billy is next. Enjoy.

If you liked it, reblog, it's literally just one button, thank u.

FATED

Most days you didn’t care who was coming into the store and who didn’t.

Recently, the introduction of portable CD players changed the record store into a ‘Music Store’ because now you sold those shiny holographic albums. The business boomed, and as the store owner you were always there, standing proudly at how much clientele your little shop in Starcourt Mall brought in.

You were the first shop to bring in these new devices and the albums and recordings for them to be played. It was a tight money investment, but it honestly brought you more income than ever, and people loved this new technology, and thanks to that, you were now gaining profit.

But it also brought in the worst customer you ever had.

“Robin, please help him. I’m not dealing with his shit today.” You said groggily to your best friend and coworker.

“Honestly, I know there are other shops with the albums he always buys, I don’t know why he is adamant about coming here.” Robin only commented while walking over to that customer who made you crack your neck more than once during his visit.

You looked at how Robin confidently talked to him because she had told you she had known him since high school. You came to Hawkins after you had presented as an Alpha two years ago. You just needed to be independent, and Atlanta was not doing it for you in any way. The smell and scents were disgusting there, and you never once missed it except for your mother.

Now, in 1997, and at 25 years old you had a very successful store, and you had met amazing friends. Steve Harrington, an Omega who is mated with Alpha Billy Hargrove. Robin a Beta who is happily dating another Beta, Chrissy. Billy Hargrove had a rough exterior, but whenever Steve sat on his lap the Alpha would just snuggle him, scenting him with a big dopey smile on his face and you wondered how that felt.

Were you ever going to meet that person?

You believed you had a condition because it couldn’t be possible that you didn’t like any Omega scent that wasn’t mated yet. You were never attracted to the scent, so the only people you have been sleeping with have been Betas. Doctors said that you didn’t have any medical issues going on.

So maybe you were just… different. You have heard of Alphas being attracted to Alphas only, or Betas, but… it’s not like you weren’t attracted to Omegas, it was just their scent. It made your nose scrunch up continuously.

You were ticking off the items on the merchandise list, doing inventory to see what albums need another order. Maybe fifteen CDs will suffice? You wrote that for Nirvana and you cannot believe that you were out of Backstreet Boys already. You ordered a new batch last week, but you could only smile at the teenagers screaming on the counter whenever they could purchase that disc.

You were startled when a loud thump on the counter made you snap back up, looking at the cause of the noise. One disc, just the new Aerosmith album. You sighed already knowing who was purchasing this item and your gaze slowly went up to see that dopey stupid grin on his face while Robin said ‘Sorry’ from behind him.

“Do I get a discount for being a regular client?”

Fuck him. Fuck Eddie Munson.

“Fuck no. If I could, I would raise the price for you only.” You gritted out of your lips, scanning the CDs in the register. You heard him hum in thought but you just kept punching the numbers in the machine to then look up at him. “18 bucks Munson.”

“Shit princess, your prices kill people, you know that?” He commented while shaking his head but he was still taking his wallet out. He put the bill on the counter and you rolled your eyes, putting the 20 bill into the register and handing him the change placing it on the counter for him to take.

“If you don’t like my prices, you can always go to the shops downtown.” You spat at him, anger filling your entire body, only to hear him chuckle.

“If I do that, I won’t be able to make your good day turn into a bad one.” You wanted to hiss at this fucker. You are an Alpha and he was a Beta. Who the fuck does he think he is disrespecting you like that? You never cared for designations but with Eddie? Oh, you fucking did.

“Don’t make me kick you the fuck out of my store.” He raised his hands in defeat, taking the album from the counter and taking a step away, the chains around his hips clinking.

“Don’t miss me too much.” He grinned at you and walked out of the doors and you shot a pissed-off look towards Robin. She finished helping a client and then walked over to you, letting a sigh out.

“He slipped from my fingers in a second. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.” You growled in a low tone at the situation, making Robin back away slightly from you and you sighed, shaking your head.

“Sorry Robs… It’s just, it fucking irks me.” You said as you scratched the patch over your scent gland. It was itchy but ever since he fucking said that to you, you couldn’t help but feel conscious about yourself.

“Cover that up, your scent is repulsing.”

That’s what he had said when he first entered the store two months ago. You bared your teeth at him and he had taken a step backwards. A cocky little Beta. But a Beta that…

“I know… Yeah, I don’t smell it, but maybe it’s because you’re an Alpha.” Robin replied to you, trying to sound confident about it, but you could only shake your head, a sigh escaping your lips.

“I have to be condemned or something. I never once liked a scent before in my life, and the first one I find delightful is from a goddamn cocky Beta that hates my scent.”

And you remembered how your heart had stopped when he first approached you, his sweet scent filling your nostrils in a way that you couldn’t help but take a deep breath in of it. You were ecstatic, shaking with excitement, needing to know about him… Only for his nose to scrunch up and tell you that your scent was disgusting to him.

“Hey, I mean, maybe you can get him back by taking your patch off? Like, fuck him for saying that to you, it’s your store and he will have to deal with it.” You didn’t want to make him feel disgusted by you, because the first time was already hurtful to you, and you didn’t need to see it again.

But maybe Robin was right. You needed to do something in order for him to stop coming to the store so you wouldn’t have to see him anymore. So you wouldn’t be able to smell him anymore.

So the next week, you decided to discard the scent patch on your gland. You have been doing trial and error for the first three days, seeing how the customers would react, only for them to not say anything at all. Even an Alpha complimented you for the strong wooden smell you emanated and even Robin wanted to take a whiff out of your neck but held back.

And the last test was already coming closer to the glass doors, his grin spread on his lips, and when he opened the door his smile faded completely. You squinted at him as you defied his entrance, almost baring your fangs at him, letting him know you didn’t want to be messed with any longer.

But you saw how his eyes teared up, his eyebrows folding in the center of his forehead, and you swore you saw him shake slightly, all over, and you could see how he took a step backwards from you, making your intense stare turn into a worried one. You suddenly felt a whiff of not only a sweet scent but also– something flowery?

Before you could pinpoint what it was, the smell was gone in a flash. You saw how Eddie rushed out of the store, desperately, almost falling over as he did so. Worry hit your chest and mind as you saw the action, catching other customers' attention. Robin looked at you worriedly and you couldn’t help but feel guilty.

What did you do to him? Was your scent so repulsing he had to leave?

You felt rejected by a person who has been making your life a little harder every day, yet you never really hated. You always glanced at him whenever he laughed with Robin, wholeheartedly, and he was the most beautiful Beta you’ve ever seen.

But it would never happen because you were disgusting to him

“Robs?”

“Yeah?”

“I might have to leave Hawkins.”

The decision was not easy, but your Alpha couldn’t handle the rejection any longer. It’s been a week and there was no sign of Eddie at all. You had put on the scent patch on your gland to cover it up again, in hopes that he gets the news from Robin or someone that you already put it on again.

But there was still no sign of your lovely Beta. Of that Beta that made you scent drunk for the very first time, and that made you feel that electricity you have been taught about, just a wave of shocks going all over your body.

You would be leaving in two weeks, leaving the store to Robin to take care of while you tried to open a franchise somewhere else. Robin complained, of course, telling you that you should pay no mind to Eddie suddenly vanishing, that you two never liked each other even.

But it didn’t hurt less.

You punched in the last few numbers in the register, looking up towards the clock on the wall. There were no more customers because you were about to close the shop, already 8 PM.

You heard the glass doors open, a strong sweet scent filling the entire room. The strongest scent you’ve ever smelled in your entire life. Stronger than the Beta that always invaded the store. You turned your head and on the other side of the counter was a panting, flushed, Eddie Munson with sweat all over his forehead.

You felt as if you were suddenly punched in the face, in the gut, just everywhere by how intense his scent was, how you could see how his mating gland was bright red, pulsing and a shockwave ran all over your body, and– Shit, you could smell slick.

The sweet smell was slick.

“What– What the fuck did Robin mean when she said you were leaving!?”

A whine. There was a whine in the back of his throat and you found yourself in a situation you never experienced in your life. You felt your tip already leaking, wanting to come out from your cavity so it could spring up, and also the need to console him, seeing the tears that wanted to simply slip out of his waterline.

You were in front of a distressed Omega.

You rounded the corner as he looked at you, panting, whines coming out of his throat and chest and you swore you never heard a more delightful yet painful sound in your life. You needed to take care of him. You needed your Omega to be happy.

“Shh, shh… you’re okay Omega… You’re okay…” You slowly spoke in a low tone, and Eddie immediately calmed down, his breathing slowly becoming regular once more. He took a step towards you, desperation all over his face.

“You’re not leaving, are you? Please tell me you’re not… I won’t– I don’t–” He was mumbling but even in your bliss you needed answers. You needed them before you touched him for the first time.

“You’re… Why are you an Omega? You– You were a Beta–” And he shook his head really quickly, making his sweaty curls move from side to side. You could still smell the slick in between his legs. Fuck, your mind was hazing all over. Shit.

“I presented… Your– Your scent triggered my presentation.”

Your jaw dropped. You triggered it? He wasn’t a Beta? You assumed he was because of the small sweet scent he had because even Betas have a faint scent to them. But– how could you have triggered it?

“What? How? You said– You said you hated my scent!” A whine was heard from his chest and you felt your knees weaken at the sound of distress as he shook his head again, his eyes burning from how hard he was trying to hold back his tears.

“No! No! I– I never hated it! I– It was too strong and it immediately made me feel drunk when I first met you, and I got scared of how intense your smell was and how good it was making me feel–” He was rambling, the smell getting thicker and thicker and your nostrils started flaring up at each intake of it you took.

“Wait– So–” You were trying to make sense of the situation despite how feral you were starting to feel. You are no knothead, you really aren’t… But fuck if you didn’t want to knot this beautiful Omega right in front of you. You never felt this need before, never in your life, but you felt like jumping on him, taking what you need.

Take. Take. Take.

Mate.

“Please, don’t leave– Please, your scent drives me insane…” His eyes landed on your scent gland that was covered in the scent blocker and he whined in distress and you couldn’t deny him. You couldn’t bear to see him shake for you like this.

You ripped the patch off, and as soon as you did it, his eyes lit up in joy and he dove in. His nose hit your neck as his arms wrapped tightly around you, pulling you closer than ever and your heart started beating in a loud and deep pace. The blood flow was in your ears, and your mind was filled with his smell, with that sweet enchanting smell that emanated from him.

You wrapped your arms around his shoulders as your nose went deep into his scent gland, your eyes widened when your pants started straining you, and your cock needed to be free so it could get out of your cavity for relief. You winced in pain when he rubbed his hips against yours, but you weren’t going to break the moment. Not now.

You were becoming primal. His nose rubbed all over the skin of your neck, his lips kissing over your mating gland, making an electric shock run all the way down from the top of your head to your toes.

And that’s when you remembered a particular health class.

You needed to be the rational one here. You needed the Omega in your arms to listen to you so he would be conscious of what was happening. Despite your growl of not wanting to pull away, you held onto his shoulders in order to pull him off you. He whined, trying to dive in again, but you stopped him with a stern look on your face, at least, the best one you could wear right now.

“Listen to me, Eddie.” You saw him take a deep breath in and nod at you, but you knew he was holding himself back by the shaking of his arms underneath your hands. You wanted to comfort him, but you were afraid that he was talking due to his presentation, from the last remnant of his heat.

“Wha–”

“I think we are Scent mates.”

And his eyes locked with yours and everything made sense. You were fated mates. This was the reason you couldn’t stand the smell of other people, not even Omegas. Eddie had the same experience, but he believed that it was because he might be a Beta.

And then you happened. The first time he came into the music store he was almost knocked down on his ass from the intense wooden, yet most delightful thing he ever smelled. He scanned the room with widened eyes and they finally landed on you as you chatted happily with Robin Buckley, an old friend from school.

Of course, you were an Alpha. He wouldn’t have a fucking chance, but at least he needed you to cover up the scent a little bit. You were going to live in Hawkins more likely, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to handle it.

So he said what he said when it was the complete opposite.

But even when his goal was to see you as little as possible, his feet always went back into the store, and he realized the smell was way less intense thanks to your scent blockers, making him yearn for it again. He had to be careful, afraid of getting attached to an Alpha that wouldn’t be able to hold onto his Beta self if you ever met a more appealing Omega.

And now, the words coming out of your mouth made sense. He was always meant to be an Omega, but it seemed like his body was waiting to get triggered. It waited and waited, and last week you decided to take the patch off, and he knew something shifted inside of him the moment he crossed those doors.

The pain of his insides rearranging was the most excruciating feeling in the world, the lack of pleasure from touching himself in his new slit, not doing anything for him. The only thing he needed and wanted was you. You and your pleasure. You and your knot. Shit, he needed your knot because if he didn’t, he felt like he was going to die.

“Fated…” It was the only thing he managed to get out with a smile on his lips, and your own matched his, and you did what you have been wanting to do ever since you saw him since you smelled him. You held onto his face with both of your hands, and the fire was too intense, you could feel it all over your body.

So this is what fated mates looked like, felt like.

And you were exhilarated that it happened to you since it was not known for it to be something that happened in everyday life. It is said that there is only a 5% chance per year of fated mates. Scent mates. The idea of it felt like a fantasy, but you would be with that person who would understand you the best for the rest of your life.

And now, you have that person. You pulled his face towards yours, the sweetness invading all your veins while the burnt wood filled Eddie’s. Your lips grazed his, softly, a soft moan escaping your lips as a whimper came out of his, and before you knew it your lips were devouring his in such a need that neither of you had felt before.

You treated him coldly since you met him, yes, but it was because of the rejection you felt in your body. It was so bad that you even decided to leave Hawkins before you went into rejection ruts which, from what you’ve heard, were the most painful ruts to ever go through, and sometimes, the pain of rejection never stopped.

He was moaning into your mouth as his hands pressed all over your back while your arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling you closer to him, desperation and hunger coming off from the both of you. Your hands gripped onto his scalp tightly, heavy breaths escaping your nose as your belly started twisting and you knew your insides were screaming for release.

You felt his tongue lick onto your bottom lip and you groaned at the gesture, and you wanted to comply to your Omega, give him what he needed. You opened your mouth to invite him in and you could hear a happy chirp coming from his chest and you swore you’d never heard a more beautiful sound in your life.

He appreciated the access and both of your tongues were fighting in between lips, inside mouths, and his taste was so delectable, like ambrosia, like a life source. You felt his hips rubbing against yours, a low purring coming from deep within his chest and the smell of his slick became more potent and your self-control was failing.

You had to get your head together, you needed to take him to a safe place, you two can’t mate here, it’s not safe for him. Someone could smell him and come in, try to snatch him away. You can’t let that happen.

Protect. Protect. Protect.

You pulled away from him and he tried to follow your lips again, but you pulled on his scalp as a growl vibrated in your throat, making him whimper in your hold.

“We need to go to a safe place baby, do you have a nest?” And he was teary-eyed, shaking his head.

“Not enough. You’re not there. No clothes. No scent. Not enough.” He was losing his ability to speak properly, his mind clouding in need of you, his slick making his inner thighs feel itchy and he knew his sweatpants needed to be burnt after this. Your eyes softened and you gave him a soft nod.

“You want to go to my home? Want to make a nest there?” He instantly nodded, desperately, clinging to you like a koala, his face flushed as his nose dipped into the crook of your neck.

“Thank you! Thank you, Alpha! Thank you!” You shivered at the word. At how he just called you. It was the first time he called you Alpha, and he was even thanking you for taking care of him. You felt happiness like you’ve never felt before, and you were going to make it last.

“Okay baby, let’s go to the car, and then we’ll go to my house. You can make a nest there and be safe.” You softly replied to him in order to try to calm him down and he only nodded against you, needing your scent to keep his head in a sort of conscious state.

You closed the store as quickly as you could, and you let Eddie hold your hand, wrist to his nose as you took him to your car. He whined when you made him get into the passenger’s seat. You gave him a soft kiss on his forehead and then you rubbed your scent gland against his as you leaned down and another purr came out from him in appreciation.

You rushed to the driver's seat and it was the most tortuous drive ever. He had your wrist in his mouth and he kept licking on it, making you extra sensitive. The pain in between your legs was unbearable, your cock already out and constricted inside the fabric. You needed to get home quickly. Quick. Quick.

You for sure went by many red lights, but you couldn’t care less about that. You arrived at your lovely little one-story home in a wide suburban area where an old trailer park was years ago. It looked like a small cabin, and it was so cozy, perfect for your Omega. Yours. Yours.

You parked as quickly as you could, reaching for Eddie over the console to devour his lips once more, your tongue going into his mouth for your saliva to coat him all over and he was so grateful for it. He was being doted on by you, and he wanted more. He was greedy, he knew that, but he was going to fall apart if he didn’t get your knot right this second.

You walked out of the car and rushed over to the passenger’s seat so that you could help Eddie out. He immediately clung to you from behind, his nose deep into your neck, your shoulder, everywhere he could take a deep inhale in. You walked like that towards your door, and you felt a sharp pain in between your legs and in your belly. You were going into a small rut. You needed to be inside him right this second, or at least let your cock free from your pants.

You opened the door and Eddie pulled away with widened eyes as he inhaled the smell from your home and it was you. Everywhere was you. You. He felt so safe like he just found a forever home, like a stray kitten that had just been picked up. You quickly grabbed his hand and rushed towards your room where your bed remained undone since this morning, your laundry had piled up, and some clothes were scattered on the floor.

And that was perfect for Eddie.

He immediately rushed into action and you felt yourself trembling as you saw him start to gather your laundry of dirty clothes and then dump them on your bed. You took this time to rush to the kitchen so that you could prepare some water bottles and some snacks. You didn’t know for how long Eddie had been going without eating something. Shit, fuck, your dick was hurting you, but you needed to be patient for your Omega.

Your belly turned in pain, the testicles inside of you complaining about how much you were holding yourself back. You held onto the counter as you took sharp breaths in. Growls started rumbling in your throat as the heat and lust became greater and worse with each second that passed.

You heard a whine coming from the room and that was enough to make you snap out and not care about your pain any longer. You grabbed the bottles and snacks as quickly as you could and rushed back, worry filling your body only to see Eddie already naked in the middle of your bed, sweat all over his body and… fuck you almost dropped everything on the floor.

His slick was already coating your sheets as he sat kneeled with his legs open so it would drip down.

He had made a quick nest with your clothes and his, all around him, fabric tucked underneath another, your boxers and panties all over and you knew he was waiting for you. You dropped everything all over your vanity and you knew he wanted something else from you. You took your shirt off, handing it over to him and he tucked it away on the side. While he did that, you took your bra off as well and finally, finally, you felt relief when you pulled your pants down, followed by your large panties.

You weren’t always wearing boxers because what are the chances you would get a hard-on in the middle of work?

His eyes widened when he turned to finally see your cock, red tip, precum already leaking from it, and Eddie’s eyes sparkled with need. His mouth salivated and more slick fell from his legs and onto the mattress and you handed him your dirty pants and panties. He quickly put your underwear at the very top, where his head would be, and then tucked your pants underneath some shirts of yours.

He looked at you expectantly, a needy frown on his eyebrows as his eyes teared up with lust. You were so beautiful, and he needed to have you, to taste you, to have you inside of him. He whined when you weren’t getting into his nest, was it not to your taste? Did he do a bad job with it? Was it messy?

“No Omega, nothing like that.” He realized he talked out loud without him being conscious of it. “You need to invite me in…”

“Yes, yes, you can come in, please!” He whined and his hands were reaching out for you desperately and that was all that was left to do. You crawled over the nest in order to not mess anything up with the marvelous job he did with it. It smelled of you and him combined and it was the most wonderful mix you could ever feel.

His arms wrapped around you and he moaned when you pressed your body against his belly, your cock in between the two of you. Your arms were wrapped around his waist as your nails scratched his back, digging into the skin. His mouth found yours desperately as his cocklette rubbed against you, making a blissful friction, just the right amount but not enough.

You moved your hips in a small rutting motion and a moan of his escaped into your lips. Eddie was intoxicated, and all he wanted was more. He purred as your tongue entered his mouth, tasting him once more and he shivered at the strong taste of sandalwood. You were delicious, so fucking delicious.

And he wondered–

He pulled away from the kiss, panting heavily, and you immediately dove to kiss his jaw, moving down towards his neck, gently nipping at the skin, causing him to whimper as he held onto you. You were licking against his scent gland, making his body almost climax because of how good it felt. His words were getting stuck in his throat as you kept kissing all over his skin.

“I– I want to taste you, Alpha– Please, I need to know how you taste.” And you felt your body burn, instantly, at those words. You will let him taste you, of course, how can you deny him, but–

“I will let you Omega, only if you let me taste you as well. If you smell like that, I can’t even begin to imagine how good you taste down there.” Your words were slurred, almost as if drunk, and maybe you were. You were drunk, completely, but off him. Eddie’s eyes clouded with lust at your proposal, his face flushed with lust and redness, lips plump from all the kissing and his scent gland was a scarlet red and pulsing.

“Yes- Yes!” He nodded and you smirked, giving him a soft peck on the lips, and you shifted you both so you could lay down on the bed, his eyes scanning your position, but his eyes focused on the standing erection that was in front of him, slick falling onto the mattress and you growled at him.

“Don’t waste that. Give me your pretty pussy over here Eddie.” You patted your chest, ordering him to move on top of you. You couldn’t go on top because if you did and he sucked your dick from below, you would start thrusting due to your semi-rut and you don’t want to hurt your lovely Omega.

“Y– You sure?” You smiled reassuringly at him and that was enough for Eddie to sprint into action, throwing one leg to your side, both knees pressing on your waist and your eyes widened as you inhaled deeply.

There was something definitely more delicious than the scent from his gland.

Oh, the smell of his slick. You can’t even begin to describe it. Nothing compares to it, nothing at all. You felt high as if you had inhaled three consecutive bongs, so high that you felt like passing out. But you were brought out of your trance when a drop of his slick fell onto your lip. You licked it, and– you became feral.

Your hands immediately grabbed onto the sides of his hips in order to pull him down, bending towards you so you two would be leveled appropriately in front of each other’s sexes. His inner thighs were soaked, probably getting onto your hair and face, but the more of him that sticks to you the better.

Eddie let out a surprised gasp as he came close to the tip of your dick. He inspected it as his mouth salivated, tongue almost dropping out as if he were panting. He leaned down so he could finally take his tongue out, and give the tip a kitten lick, taking a bead of your precum into his mouth, and he trembled at the taste.

And he went in.

He couldn’t wait, needing to taste you more, so he licked a long stripe from the base to the tip and you groaned, throwing your head back in pleasure as you felt him moaning against your cock. Your insides screamed for more, and you could already feel the fire building at the base of your dick, letting you know that you were ready to knot him.

But you cannot hurt him, and this cavity was new to him. So as he opened his mouth to take the tip into his mouth, purring against it, making you growl in appreciation and pleasure thanks to the vibrations he was sending to you. You focused on the slit above you where his balls were a week ago. You leaned up slightly so you could reach him and you took your tongue out and finally, to Eddie’s relief, you licked a long stripe, from his cocklette, and through his folds.

He squirmed on top of you, moaning against your cock at the new sensation. He felt himself light on fire by your tongue. He needed to focus on giving you pleasure as well since you tasted so good, but you were making him lose his mind already as you kept licking him, savoring him, and cleaning his slick away only for more to gush out of him after two seconds.

“Fuck, you taste so good.” You cannot help but mention it to him, not only for pleasure but because he needs to know just how beautiful he is. How delectable he is to you. He needs to know how he is ruining you.

He hummed in approval, as his head bobs up and down on your cock, your precum still oozing out from the tip, and he swallowed greedily, needing more. His hips started moving against your tongue, wanting a little bit more friction of some sort.

Your tongue wanted more of his nectar, so you pressed your lips against him, tongue entering him and he had to pull away from your cock in order to moan out loud, feeling his belly turn and burn up. He was already getting close to the edge, but he knew he would fall off from it many times tonight.

He whimpered against your greedy tongue as his hand started jerking you off, going up and down with a mix of your precum and his saliva. You growled in pleasure making him shiver and smile excitedly, knowing he was pleasuring you accordingly as well.

One of your hands left his hip and you pulled away from his cunt, earning a whine from him, his hips moving on top of you so you would get your tongue on him again. You chuckled at the eagerness and then you ran your fingers against his folds, gathering slick on them so you could prepare them to finally enter him so you could stretch him out.

He tried giving your cock some attention, but you didn’t care about your pleasure anymore. You wanted him to fall apart on top of you. You slowly entered your middle finger, and Eddie stilled, pulling away from your cock with a ‘pop’, his mouth in the shape of an ‘O’ as his throat was left with no sound. Silent moans were the only thing he could manage and it was just one pump. Just one.

And his belly tensed up, his legs started shaking and a tear fell from his right eye as the first climax hit him, out of nowhere. Your eyes widened and you raised your head desperately, giving him even more pleasure as your tongue now joined your finger.

“Yes! A-A–” He wanted to call out to you as he shivered on top of you and your chest rumbled with ecstasy as his slick filled your mouth, sweeter than before even. His walls were clenching tightly against your finger and tongue, and once you felt him stop shaking you pulled your mouth away from him, slurping onto your lips, gulping it all down.

You didn’t let him relax, and you entered the second finger in, and he trembled as he tried moving away from you, but you held him in place with your other hand, growling at him. He moaned at the dominance, loving it more than anything even if he were still trying to come down from his high.

“So good for me Eddie, you can give me one more, right?” And he whined at that, knowing he could definitely give you one more and his eyes widened, his upper body falling on top of your legs as his moans were louder than ever. You had curled your fingers downwards so you could rub onto his new G-Spot. You smirked when his hips started moving against your fingers. Your Omega was very compliant. “Take what you need baby.”

“Fuck!” He cried out as the pleasure became overwhelming, not being able to give you more pleasure with his mouth. He couldn’t even formulate coherent words. This was a pleasure he never thought was possible, and now he was sure he wouldn’t be able to live without it. Without you.

You felt him clenching again, and you nodded wildly, wanting to taste his climax again. You licked your lips in anticipation as you started gaining momentum and you started scissoring your fingers inside of him. He was a babbling mess and you could only guess his eyes were rolling to the back of his head, and you decided to prep him a little more.

You entered another finger inside of him, and Eddie screamed at the stretch, a little painful, but it was so delicious. His whole body was flushed, and the tattoos on his body looked more beautiful than ever.

“C’mon Omega, give me another, and then I will give you what you need. Your Alpha will give you what you need.” And your words, calling yourself his Alpha was enough for him to clench down tightly against your fingers, his nails digging into your legs as he trembled all over, his climax washing all over him.

His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he clenched his eyelids, his belly feeling too tight and you kept pumping your fingers in and out of him, the squelching being so obscene yet so great.

You slowed your pace so he could relax again, and take a breather, and you were breathing heavily as you took your fingers out of him. He whimpered at the feeling of emptiness, and you raised your head to lap at all the slick he just gushed out, sucking onto his cocklette to also taste the small squirts of slick that also came out of there.

He felt his eyes burn with tears that were created due to extreme pleasure, but he needed more. He won’t be satisfied until he finally has what he has been yearning for since he presented a week ago. You were still licking him up and he finally lifted himself back up, his arms shaking as his hands pressed onto the mattress for support.

You growled when he pulled himself off you. You weren’t done tasting him, and he moved away from you, but the sight that followed after was enough for that small anger to go away. He positioned himself right next to you, his ass up while he slid his upper body back down, pressing it against the mattress. He turned his face so he could look at you as you sat up to take him in.

He was presenting himself to you.

“Please– I need your knot Alpha. Waited so long–” He was crying almost, and you licked your lips, his taste still lingering and his slick was all over your face. You kneeled on the bed and scooted to position yourself behind him. You made him spread his legs even more so his bottom would lower a little bit more.

You were finally going to connect with an Omega. With your Omega. With your fated Omega. What will you feel once you go inside of him? What will happen to the two of you? You didn’t want to hurt him, what if you went feral? Primal? You were already in a semi-rut, triggered by the last stage of his heat.

He moved his hips towards you, enticing you to take him and your hand shot up to grab a handful of one of his ass cheeks, squeezing tightly to then spank it. He moaned against the mattress, loving the pain of it. You took a deep breath in as you got hold of your aching cock and gave it a few strokes, feeling extremely sensitive, like never before.

You rubbed the tip all over his folds, rubbing his slick on it, and whenever the tip touched his cocklette, a soft moan escaped him. You were trembling, trying to keep a rational head, trying not to let the lust take over you completely. This was Eddie’s first time as an Omega, so you had to be careful with him.

You have to take care of your Omega, make him feel safe and trust you.

“I need you to relax for me baby, and you have to tell me if it hurts, okay?” You only heard a whimper against the mattress and you squeezed his ass again as you groaned at him in warning. “I need you to say you will tell me if it hurts Omega.”

“Okay! Okay! I will tell you, please– Just please sweetheart, do something–” And his eyes widened as his mouth fell into a wide ‘O’.

Your tip slowly went in, his folds engulfing you in an intense heat, in something so warm and it was only the tip. It was only the beginning of it all, and you were already feeling like you were going to pop a knot.

You pushed in slowly, your hand reaching below him so you could rub onto his cocklette to give him more stimulation, and he was still trying to wrap his head around how good it felt. He was gone, already cockdrunk as he tried moving his hips towards you for more. You held him in place as you groaned in pleasure, not wanting him to hurt himself.

“Stay still Eddie–” You were almost choking on your words as you kept pushing yourself into him, more and more, feeling his tight pussy all around you, and fuck was he perfect. This was the most perfect moment in your life and you can’t wait to have many more like this one. You can’t wait.

“More… More…” He was sputtering those words as his drool fell on the mattress and his slick gushed and gushed, falling all over his legs, dripping down into the sheets. You groaned as you looked at the mating gland, a bright red, trying to entice you in. You shut your eyes tightly, and you couldn’t hold yourself any longer. You prepped him well.

And so you thrust in, bottoming out in one pump.

He cried in pleasure, a slight burning happening as he tried to adjust to the new feeling, to the new stretch inside of him. He already felt the pain in his belly start to calm down, but it was still there, lingering. He was already trembling underneath you and you were breathing heavily as you put both your hands on his hips again, and one of them gave his lower back soft circles, caressing him.

“You alright Eddie? Are you okay? Does it hurt?” You asked, your Omega’s comfort first and foremost than your pleasure. You saw him nod against the mattress, and his hips moved just one inch, making you groan. He was so warm inside, he felt so good.

“Yes– Please move, I’m fine, just go slow first Alpha…” And your Omega was so good, voicing out what he needed instead of telling you things that might hurt him in the end. You pulled your hips back, slowly, and he winced just barely as you let out a sigh of relief, pushing back in.

You were fighting with so many deities right now, trying to hold back, trying to not let your Alpha take control all over your body and mind. It wanted to go deep, ruin the man below you, the Omega that you wanted to spend your entire life with, and you weren’t going to let it. Not now. You needed Eddie to adjust around your cock before you did any of that.

And then it happened, his moans suddenly appeared, turning louder as you thrusted in and out, and you knew he was feeling the pleasure, this time entirely. You took a deep breath in, your whole body sweating and you braced yourself as you started moving quicker, harder.

And then, it was a blur. Suddenly you were going slow, neutral, and the next thing you know, your hips were slapping against his ass as you buried yourself inside of him, taking him, destroying him for everyone else, marking him in a way that no one else did before and no one else would be able to.

You were going to make sure of that.

You were growling, the rumbles of pleasure vibrating inside your chest, as you moved in and out of him. He was whimpering, tears rolling down his face, his hands digging into the sheets. He didn’t know what he would feel from this, but it was never this. He knew it would feel good, most likely, but never this excellent, this perfect.

He looked so beautiful as the squelching of his slick bounced all over your bedroom’s walls. You felt your fangs wanting to come out as your eyes gazed over the mating gland once more. You growled again, reaching around him once again to rub onto his cocklette, sending him in a spur of blabbering, of praising, of begging.

“So good Alpha-! Making me feel so good–!” He didn’t even know what he was saying, and he was probably, most likely, going to be embarrassed about it later on. Right now? He couldn’t care less. You weren’t going to remind him what he said either. You don’t want to fluster your Omega, not in a way that would make him feel bad.

You felt his walls clenching around you, making you start to breathe heavily, feeling your insides turn in need. The base of your cock was burning, and you knew your knot wouldn’t take long to start swelling, but you had to keep going, stretch him even more, and gladly he was going to cum again.

“You can do it Omega, cum on your Alpha’s cock.”

And Eddie cursed loudly as he cried out your name, his walls clenching all around you, making a strangled moan get caught in your mouth at the overwhelming sensation. You kept your pace as he trembled with his climax, moaning with tears springing out of his eyes. He was gushing out, spraying you with his juices all over your pelvis and legs, his cocklette had covered your hand with its squirts, and you felt your belly start to scream out in pain.

You started to slow down your pace when you felt him relax again, and he was breathing heavily against the mattress as he rode out the last remnants of his orgasm. You groaned as he gave you one final clench and it gave you the strength to pull out and grab onto his ass to turn him over with such force you never thought was possible for you.

He was surprised at the new position, his legs opened wide for you to slot in just perfectly, his eyes widening when he looked at your naked body, your breasts moving up and down and your eyes… your pupils were completely dilated and he could see your fangs beginning to bare, and he smiled with happiness at it.

“Mate me… Mate me, sweetheart… Knot me.” And you trembled and almost whimpered at his request. You grabbed onto the back of his knees, spreading his legs apart and for you to have leverage as you seethed yourself back in with one deep thrust. Eddie threw his head back as a surprised moan escaped him. He was sensitive, so overstimulated but there was one last thing his body craved for. That one thing he desired more than anything in the world.

“I’m going to knot you Eddie, you’re going to take my knot, aren’t you? My sweet Omega… Mine.”

That last word came out with the most possessive growl you ever did in your life. Maybe the first ever. A chirp mixed with a whimper was heard inside Eddie’s throat and chest. A delectable sound for your ears as you continued to rail him, angling your cock so you could hit that spongy part of his repeatedly.

Eddie couldn’t even process any words right now. He just kept nodding at everything you said, and your eyes were fixated on the mating gland, the Alpha inside of you telling you to bite him. To lock him in. To make him yours forever.

And Eddie’s rationality came back for a second when a new pain started happening below. He felt a new stretch, a wider one, popping in and out. Your knot was starting to swell and you heard him whine in pain and you almost stopped but it was just a bit more.

“A-Alpha–” He called out to you, his arms stretched out to try to hold you. You immediately dropped his legs as you bent forward, his arms wrapping around you and you were holding yourself up on your hands as you continued to thrust into him and you saw how his face contorted in pain and pleasure mixed together.

“A bit more. A bit more baby–” You were breathless, your mind turning into mush as the possessiveness was taking over your body. Eddie was looking up at you, a small smile on his lips as his walls started clenching again.

“Bite me… Make me yours– Please, mate me.”

Your eyes widened at that. He wanted to be yours completely. Of course he would, you two are scent mates, fated to be together. He wants it, he is begging for it… So why not? Why not? Why the fuck not?

And in one thrust you sat inside of him, deep, and your knot completely swelled up in its full size, locking yourself into him. You came inside of him in thick white ropes, and you growled loudly when he also came around you, milking your knot dry as he cried out in pleasure and you looked down at his gland.

Why the fuck not?

And you bit down, making Eddie yell in pleasure and pain, knowing your teeth had pierced his skin and he felt you cumming again inside of him and finally, finally, his belly stopped hurting. His belly was thankful, filled with his Alpha’s cum.

You two were breathing heavily, you were still on top of him, mouth still wrapped around his skin, sweaty bodies clinging together, and the smell of both your scents filled the air. It felt like home, warm, and cozy, even with all the mess that was underneath the two of you.

Only when Eddie’s head became conscious again, he realized that you bit his shoulder… not his mating gland. You didn’t mate him. He became self-conscious about it, instantly, the distressed Omega in him becoming erratic and you could feel it, pulling yourself up to look at him.

“Was it not good? Why didn’t you mate me, sweetheart?” He was almost whining, wanting answers and you shook your head at him with a small smile on your face, leaning towards his face so you could kiss him on the cheek.

“It was perfect Eddie… I just didn’t want to mate you because we had to…” You explained to him and he was confused at that, raising an eyebrow up in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“I want to court you Eds.” And he felt his heart flutter at your words. You cared about him, not caring about the fate aspect of it all. You wanted to be with him by your own accord, getting to know him, and for the both of you to learn to love one another. He smiled at you, holding you even closer.

And his eyes filled with tears at your gesture. You wanted to do the whole courting ritual, something that was not needed nowadays or it wasn’t something people used to do anymore, and he assumed that if you were fated mates, so… what is the reason for it?

“Wait… so– Does this mean you won’t leave then?” You heard the small whimper behind his voice, the need for you to confirm that fact or not, hoping that it was a negative answer.

“I was only planning to leave because I felt rejected by you. Don’t worry my Omega, I am not going anywhere…” You smiled down at him and he returned it with a bright one, leaning up to give you a small peck on the lips, and then pulling away with a teasing grin on his lips.

“You really do care about me in the end, huh?” He chuckled and you growled slightly at that, giving him a soft kiss on the lips which he hummed with contentment. He wanted to mess with you a little more, a smirk appearing on his lips. “I mean, we both know how it’s going to end, might as well just bite me and get it over with, right?”

Your eye twitched, your heart becoming ablaze again as you once more raised yourself up with both your hands and you pressed your hips against him again, your knot still firmly wrapped inside of him, making him whimper slightly.

“You know what I feel like doing Eds?” He could sense the threat in your voice, but he was excited for it, because he finally had you, and whatever you give him he is going to take.

“What is that Princess?” He said the nickname he often used to make you mad at work whenever he came to visit, but instead of a frown, he gulped when you only smirked at him.

“I feel like getting you back for all the times you were a cocky little brat in my shop.”

And Eddie was scared of that but chirped with excitement either way.

Yes, you were fated alright.

End.

a/n: if you reached all the way here, remember to reblog your artists. It helps with engagement with their work.

Taglist: @the-unforgivenn @munson-blurbs @nailbatanddungeon @xxhellfirebunnyxx @littlesubbyflower

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morgana-ren · 9 months

Note

Has your opinion/understanding on Astarion's character changed much as you play through the full game?

Actually, yes! Big spoilers again btw.

So, I will admit, my perception of characters is always slightly biased. It's always tilted in favor of my own predilections and desires, so I tend to see things in a skewed way. The less information I am presented, the more my brain will fill in the gaps thusly.

In the early access, Astarion is presented as a selfish vampire spawn clawing for his own survival from the vicious vampire lord that spawned him and has held him captive for centuries. It should be noted that he is one of the only companions open to the idea of abusing the tadpoles rather than removing them and only seeks to cure them if they cannot be controlled. It becomes apparent that he craves power above all else. He dislikes altruistic speech options, tends to veer directly towards ones that bolster said power, especially at the expense of other people. He seems the closest to a stereotypical 'chaotic' follower that you really get.

However, he isn't evil. He's a very rounded character despite his inherent selfishness. He is manipulative and vicious, but he is also desperate and afraid and slow to trust. Most of what he does, he does for his own survival and comfort rather than active malevolence-- though that isn't always the case.

You get an alright idea of him in the early access, as in enough to know if you're going to want to keep him around and invest time into him as opposed to just dropping him at camp perpetually. You catch glimpses of the man he is behind it all, but mostly he appears flamboyant, resourceful, flirtatious, and of extremely dubious morality. Fun, right?

Very, very wrong, actually.

As you progress through the game, you come to understand him better, and it's... tragic.

The first thing to slip is his explosive temper. He is confused, bitter, and frightened. He expects Cazador around every corner, stalking in every shadow, watching and waiting to sling the collar around his neck and yank once more. Paranoid. He has mystery scars painstakingly carved into his flesh that he cannot see because of his condition, in a language he cannot read, with horrible memories he doesn't want to recall. He is angry, and he isn't in the company of people he trusts even remotely at first and literally cannot remember the last time he was in centuries. He bottles up all those emotions to avoid the devastating vulnerability of showing emotion and shoves them down beneath his posh and nonchalant facade, and eventually, it finds a way out.

Occasionally, he snaps. He becomes enraged and has these moments of intense anger.

And then, there is what you might think to be a moment of connection.

Astarion, once he decides that he approves of you, will make a move to seduce you. Should you accept, you might find that he says something along the lines of "Isn't that why you came? To lose yourself in me?"

It seems like typical seduction dialogue at first, but this is very deliberate. The wording is very deliberate as is everything he does. Like a choreographed waltz that he has danced again and again and again--

Until it comes as natural as breathing.

After your night together, he evades a conversation that would take anything any further. No relationship, no nothing. Just a one off that turns you into the equivalent of ye olde fuckbuddies. He stays by your side, of course, but nothing changes between you other than him acknowledging what happened.

So, you progress a little more.

Eventually, both through necessity and happenstance, he does end up opening up little by little. And you find out bits and pieces about him. But there's one that stands out to me:

The crazy blood bitch in Moonrise dehumanizes him, speaks down to him, and refuses to even acknowledge his personhood. She only speaks to you, and makes you an offer regarding your 'property.' An invaluable potion for a moment with 'your pet vampire spawn.'

And he has a visceral reaction to this.

If you have a fucking heart and you don't make him do this, he comes to speak to you later and confides in you. Cazador had used him essentially as a honeypot, forcing him to use his body to lure unsuspecting citizens back to the vampire's den-- against his will. He was so degraded, so dehumanized, and so looked down on for so many years that he has genuinely come to believe that it's the truth. He thanks you genuinely for considering him and viewing him as a real person with emotions and feelings, but is also... confused. He doesn't understand, because that rotten, stagnant belief is still a truth to him: That he is nothing but a tool and a means to an end; that he doesn't matter. That he is a filthy thing to be used and cast aside when convenient. He doesn't understand why you didn't make him do it when it was only his comfort on the line.

And if you ask him to drink from her, he will. He stiffens his upper lip and drinks despite the fact that something is wrong and he knows it. He does it because you command him to. Because that's what he has done for so long that you don't have to have the lord's control over him anymore for him to follow orders.

There is a moment of stark, dreadful realization that sex and seduction have an entirely different meaning to him but he has still been doing it. That the love and connection that he truly needs might be support and a friend and not a bedfellow. That his agency and personhood have been stripped away for so long that he doesn't even recognize them anymore. He is bitter and mean but vulnerable and confused and terrified and he doesn't know how to seek comfort, so he resorts to what he knows while simultaneously distancing and degrading himself.

He does not believe that he is worth loving or caring for, or anything but being an object to be molded. Used. Discarded. He suffered for so long that this is a fundamental truth to him. He is a monster. A filthy vermin barely a step above the rats he's been fed.

You do what you should do: You give him the power. You try to build him back up. Try to help him understand that he isn't a monster or a tool. He is a man; he is a person, and he deserves a say in his own fate. His wants and desires matter. What he wants matters.

If you've done things right, he will take a gigantic leap of faith. He will be with you-- truly be with you. It's slow and he doesn't understand, but he knows he wants it, and you take it as slow as he needs-- but he's still hurt. He is still scarred.

In the Sharess Caress, there are a pair of Drow twins that will attempt to seduce you into what is essentially a foursome. If Astarion is there and he is a love interest and you attempt this, he will say "I'm really not ready for this." while looking extraordinarily uncomfortable, and almost panicked. The scars are still there, and they're barely healing over, and still so, so tender. Easy to tear right back open. Easy to push back into his shell to never come out again, because he tried vulnerability and it burned him.

He does not think he is worthy of love or happiness. He doesn't get to have a loving partner who adores him. Even slipped free of Cazador's yoke, his claws are still stuck steadfast in his soul. He is taking it slow and barely learning to trust another being again, leave alone put his neck out and care for one. He wears his misery as a shield because it cannot hurt him that way. He is a monster who has done horrible things and deserves to be alone forever. And even if that isn't the truth, then Cazador is still lurking out there, waiting to strike-- to rip away that newfound happiness.

Astarion is, above all things, a truly tragic character, and one that I empathize with. It makes my adoration for him slightly guilty. I'm not all the way through the game quite yet, but what I have seen hurts my heart something dreadful. With my character, he is slowly learning to trust and love again, but it's painfully apparent that he thinks he doesn't deserve this, and he is simply waiting for something to fall apart and send him back into the spiraling black chasm that is his life. He still believes all these miserable things about himself. He was forced into immortality, and he believes he's going to spend it alone, reviled, and wretched - not to mention enslaved.

As fun as it is to have a sexy, dark, controlling Astarion, I don't think it's necessarily true to his character as he is presented if you choose to do things right. He isn't evil - he is a complex, tragic man who desperately needs to be able to see his own reflection in a way that isn't horrifically warped by everyone else's eyes.

Vampire. Monster. Killer. Slave. Pet.

It's been so long he's lost track of himself. Of Astarion the man.

He needs to find himself and find peace. He asks to view himself through your eyes, maybe because he's looking for something-- anything-- within himself to hold onto.

If you ask me again in a few days, I'll probably have a fully fleshed out idea of his character, since I'll probably have completed the game or at the very least gotten a bit further, but this is what I have at the moment. Doesn't mean I'll stop writing Astarion as I adore, but I've always openly admitted that my writings on characters are skewed despite their actual content lmao.

#morgana and friends #astarion #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 spoilers

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txttletale · 1 year

Note

what does it mean when people say stuff like individual morality or action is incompatible with class analysis or class struggle?

alright so like one of the key ideas about class analysis is the idea that classes (as a whole) have economic interests that affect all their members but don't extrapolate out to an individual analysis.

for example, let's say that you can't find a job, and somebody offers to pay you below the table for below minimum wage. it's in your individual interest to do this--it beats having no job! but as a member of the working class, once this practice becomes normalized, suddenly the standards of pay for everyone are lower because people know that they can just pay less than minimum wage under the table. competition between workers for jobs drives wages down for everyone, leaving them all in a worse situation overall even if each individual choice to scab, to accept lower pay, to resist unionization, etc, leaves the person who makes it better off. cf. karl marx on what happens when wages and working conditions deteriorate:

The labourer seeks to maintain the total of his wages for a given time by performing more labour, either by working a great number of hours, or by accomplishing more in the same number of hours. Thus, urged on by want, he himself multiplies the disastrous effects of division of labour. The result is: the more he works, the less wages he receives. And for this simple reason: the more he works, the more he competes against his fellow workmen, the more he compels them to compete against him, and to offer themselves on the same wretched conditions as he does; so that, in the last analysis, he competes against himself as a member of the working class.

— Karl Marx, Wage Labour & Capital

similarly, any individual member of the working class is completely dispensable and replaceable by capital. if one person refuses to work unless they're paid a higher wage, they'll be fired and replaced with somebody who doesn't. the individual worker has no economic leverage whatsoever. but the working class has incredible economic leverage! and so does the intermediate stage between the working class and the individual--organized segments of the working class (e.g. trade unions) have economic leverage. if one person strikes, the capitalist can fire them. if 40,000 people strike, your industry is going to shut down.

so the reason why class analysis is compatible with individual action is that your incentives measurably change when you start organizing--it's in the interests of the individual to compete, but in the interests of the class to cooperate. and obviously you cannot just expect everyone to spontaneously coordinate! you, the individual, are disposable to capital! if you, personally, refuse to take the under-the-table offer, either on moral grounds or because you recognize your class interest, your neighbour's going to take it--unless you and her get together and agree that neither of you will take it. that's the only way that the guy making the offer is going to have to give in and offer the job for a living wage.

and this is what organization is--trade unions (although they have severe limitations!), communist parties, and other worker's organizations allow the working class to pursue their collective interest--which can only be pursued by collective action, because engaging in the strategies of collective action as an individual, without the cooperation of your peers, is high risk for no reward.

#ask #marxism #the effects of electoral politics are far far more limited in scope than trade union activity but the same holds for voting #which is what the original post i was responding to was about #if you 'vote blue no matter who' then the bourgeois party you're showing loyalty to--#--will have no reason whatsoever to even marginally offer to improve your life #and if you as a solitary individual tell joe biden 'well im not voting for you unless you promise so and so social democratic reforms'#he is gonna be like lol lmao dont care #while if you and your several thousand friends all get together and say that #he will at least be obligated to pretend to care before immediately reneging on it bc he ultimately serves capital

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atinylittlepain · 5 months

Text

joel miller x f!oc

story playlist

monsters are made of myths. in this story, two myths become one. two myths are in love. they are in wretched love.

warnings | 18+ this is a work of contemporary horror | literally cannibalism, and the trappings of it - love as consumption, non-graphic death, murder, grotesque depictions of food (normal food) and eating (normal eating), non-graphic references to unhealthy parental relationship (abuse and neglect), descriptions of dissociation, smut, strange neurotic processes in general

word count | 17K (yes, really)

a/n | this fic is partially inspired by the movie Bones and All, and it is my attempt to get Bones and All right (read: better) - i cannot stress enough that this is a work of horror, and as such, deals with unsettling imagery, subject matter, and emotions. read with care. special thanks must be given to @pr0ximamidnight and @wannab-urs who loved these two characters enough to keep me writing them, thank you, my darling friends, i hope i've done them justice. and thank you, dear reader, for coming along on something of an odyssey.

Monsters, she thinks, are hewn from guilt and shame. She is trying very hard not to feel either of those things about what she must do. But some slippery part of her still supposes that she has been a monster for a very long time, maybe even from the beginning. When did it change? When are monsters made? Like everyone else, she drank from her mother’s breast. Some time after that then.

What she does remember is not regretting it, any of it, until her mother taught her it was something to regret. Shame in the whites of her eyes, the dark ring of her open mouth, stricken in a scream. She has only ever met one other person like her in all her time skipping from town to town, a few years younger than her, but older in her confidence, her certainty in who she was. And like her, the first time, a babysitter, blood in the bathtub. She took her ear clean off, and the girl’s father found the scene when he got home from work, babysitter having fled, baby still in the tub, gumming on something pink and soft in her mouth. He had been afraid, she told her, that she could have drowned. Never mind the ear. Monsters are loved too, after all, a wretched thing of love.

For her it had been a finger. At least that’s what her mother told her, easy to wrap her small mouth around. She believed her, vaguely remembering the flicker of red nail polish, bitter amidst the rest of sense and sate. What she does remember, the feeling of fullness. What she does remember, her mother making a myth out of her, conjuring up some way to explain this condition of hers. Condition, what she decided to call it. An affliction of appetites, something to be controlled, to be smothered under the thick swaths of what her mother taught her. How to be normal is really just another way of saying how to hide. And she hid for a very long time, weak and wan and wanting things she knew she shouldn’t be wanting. Until, eighteen, and their tenth packed car and dark house and her mother telling her that she was no longer interested in this myth, this unmaking of a monster. You are what you are and I have tried, I have tried, I have tried, but you are what you are.

Not just guilt and shame, monsters are made in the breadth of a back turning, in eyes settling somewhere up and away. Monsters are made in a leaving. Everyone has already left. So what else is there to do but eat?

She likes the song that’s playing in the convenience store, the light haze of it, staticking from somewhere overhead. Hazy in the afternoon slump, everyone making minced conversation about setting the clocks back last weekend. Her watch still reads an hour ahead.

I feel the earth move– she needs toothpaste.

I feel the sky tumbling down– and soap.

I feel my heart start to tremble– but there’s an empty promise left in her wallet.

Whenever you’re around– soon, she will have to stay.

I just got to have you– soon, she will have to pretend.

Baby– make-believing normal.

I just lose control– make a little more money.

I get hot and cold, all over, all over– before another leaving.

Tumbling down, tumbling down– before another fullness.

“Excuse me.” A man, somewhere in her periphery, and the quick realization that she’s been standing in front of bars of soap, considering what it would feel like to slip one or two into the pocket of her coat, standing there for a bit too long. Shrug and shuffle to the side, a quiet sorry, keeping her eyes down, but in a quick flicker, she sees his face. Fang recognizes fang, always.

He looks tired, like if not for whatever weight is pulling at his shoulders, he would be much bigger, much badder. Worn thin at the edges, wings darkening beneath his eyes, he spares her a single glance, disinterested, picking up two bars of soap, the kind that smells clean and young and kind. As he leans down, she sees the glint and flirt of gold dangling from his neck, a cross. But she knows, she thinks she knows. When you are rare like this, it isn’t difficult to know another myth when you see one.

She watches the heels of his boots clip down the aisle toward the checkout, there and gone, and she does not follow. This is not something that should be followed. She knows, she knows. She tried once, with that girl. That girl who had different ideas about what their myth meant, their mouths, who decided that cruelty felt good, who decided to play the part of the monster with a terrible flair. No, this is something best done alone, and worst when it is shared.

A single bar of soap sits heavy in her pocket while she pays for a tube of toothpaste, the man already gone, mercy. And the evening unfolds like it usually does during these times of motion. Still enough gas in her car that she can crawl a few miles down the interstate and find a quiet place to pull off for the night, somewhere green, somewhere with trees. Summer, the heat turning cool and sticky as it starts to darken, and a routine that is familiar to her by now. Windows cracked just enough to let a thin stream of fresh air in without threatening danger. And she folds the fact of her body in the backseat, tucking all her angles beneath a worn blanket that she keeps folded in the trunk during the day. Always memory before sleep, though her mind has made motheaten, misshapen murmuring out of the most of it. The fullness is always what remains. And that thick curl of shame.

Here is how her mother made her. She broke skin and pulled out a rib of her own, made flesh of her flesh, tended to the wound until it was something else. There was no father, and there was certainly no god. At least that’s how her mother told it. You came from me, mine, this is mine, me and you and your mouth that must stay closed because I love you even though you are like this, awful, you are like this and I love you. But that love stretched thin, snapped, bleeding gums and broken teeth and never again. A goodbye that she is still saying, that she curls herself around in the backseat of her car in the summer when it’s warm enough for leaving.

…

Maybe a foolish thing to spend what’s left of her money on. The waitress is very pretty though, a flush of red curls piled on her head, red lipstick too, crackling with her smile and bleeding into the lines around her mouth. Pours her a dark cup of coffee and leaves the steaming pot of it at her table. She pours three plastic thimbles of cream into it, two packets of sugar that she doesn’t stir in, lets it settle, biting down on the grit when she tips the last of her cup back into her mouth, and repeats. And the pretty waitress brings her two plates, so hot that they leave red welts on her forearms when she sets them down on her table, pinkened pain. Scrambled eggs, grease and sweat pooling beneath their lingering heat, bleeding over into two pieces of bacon, blistered crisp. A stack of pancakes, the sheen of butter seeping down, she pours enough syrup over them to pool thin and flooded on the plate. Collects a little of everything on her fork, the soft give of protein and matter, everything sagging in the sweet stick. Hand to mouth, but she stops, stuck, seeing him sitting alone at a booth across the diner. And he sees her too. A meal much like her own, enough to give someone a stomach ache. His eyes fall away from hers just as soon, and she watches him pass a knife through a piece of meat, flesh on his fork that he pockets into his cheek, jawing it down. She works her mouth around her own bite, teeth hurting with the snap down onto metal, the scrape of the fork. The food turns to sweet, soft mush, rolling around on her tongue, swallowed hard.

He’s watching her again, working his jaw in a slow shift, and this time, his eyes don’t leave hers. She plucks a piece of bacon off her plate, pinched between thumb and forefinger, bites down again and sucks the salt from the dried flesh. He finishes a piece of toast in two bites, mouth screwing to the side, the dip and bob of his throat when he swallows, muscle moving muscle. Sweat is starting to prickle her scalp, the soft stretch of her stomach with her meal, warm and sick and sloshing. She doesn’t chew her eggs, swallows them, slipping down her throat with the rest of the salt and sate. His eyes fall to her hands, the smooth procession of fork and knife making mince out of her pancakes. She sucks the syrup out of each bite, works the sugar down first before swallowing the rest. His meal, almost completely gone, dragging a finger through a smear of ketchup he had been steeping his hashbrowns in, sucks the remnant red into his mouth. She can almost hear the hum that bobs in his throat, even through the murmurings of the diner. And he is very beautiful, beneath it all. The crooked strength of his nose, his brow, the drop of his lashes over the tops of his cheeks when he takes a pull of coffee. Unabashed, she stares, and he stares back, a darkened dare, watching the movements of each other’s mouths.

And just like that, she’s still chewing when he gets up to leave, not sparing another glance her way as he shoulders out the door. Her chin tilts, neck stretched to see him get into a blue pickup truck with a slam of the car door. He’s gone like a thin flame of lightning. She feels like she’s going to throw up. But she doesn’t, pays her check and stumbles out into the starkness of the morning. It’s a Saturday, and families are congregating for breakfast. She watches, slumped in the driver’s seat of her car, a sliver of a little girl and a little boy crossing her rearview mirror, holding onto hands attached to bodies that are cut off from view. She sighs, sits up straight and turns the key in the ignition.

…

It’s a half-hour worth of driving later when she sees that blue pick-up truck again. Midwest, middle of nowhere, fields of ruin, and that truck, still and silent next to an abandoned barn made of rot. Middle of the day, the sun a flirting threat high in the middle of blue shock, but there are very few people out here, no one around to see her pull off the side of the road, get out of her car, and start swaying through the tall grass toward that truck and the barn.

He is beautiful like this too. Slinking out from behind the barn, his eyes flickered low like he knew, he knew. His shirt is ruined, dark, damp. White t-shirt bled red, and the strange starkness of that gold cross glinting around his neck. He drags the back of his hand across his mouth and makes the mess worse, smears it up to the height of his cheeks, across his forearm. And his eyes, his eyes, swimming, darkness starting to drip down his face, starting to meld and mix with the rest. Beautiful, and so very sad.

“There’s nothing for you here.” Low, the shivering thrum of it murmuring from somewhere between his ribs. Some kind of twang that sharps in her ears. She can’t find words of her own, still where she stands, beneath his hunkered gaze. When nothing comes, he sighs, shakes his head, walks right past her to his truck, keeping a wide breadth of distance between them as he does.

“How did you know?” The question tries up her throat once, twice, before it finally jerks out into sound, stopping him before he opens the door to his truck, squinting at her over his shoulder.

“It’s not hard to tell.” And in the space that follows, something is understood, confirmed. It’s starting to dry on his skin, in the scruff along his jaw, dark. The strangest hunger, the sharpest, an awful ache just looking at him. But he’s already leaving, not another word when he gets into his car, and the silence is a command in and of itself. I am and you are, and it will be a blessing if we never cross paths again. Again, gone, parting the sea of withering grass with the slow trundling beast of his truck.

She does not look, does not see for herself what lies behind the barn. She already knows.

…

Like a child, her cheeks flamed with tears, scrubbing at the salt as soon as it falls. To put it simply, her car stopped, a few last wheezing rolls, and it will not start again. And there is no one to call, not out here, between states, between time itself. Eventually, the panic gives way to a dull surrender. She leans against the side of her car, tips her head back to let her face flush in the last slip of light, the sun fretting at the edge of the horizon. Memory is never far when she lets her eyes close. Something normal, driving down the street outside of house number five, her mother letting her, teaching her. She had laughed, giddy, running her palms along the wheel. Back then, flight had felt more like option, and less like routine. Those last few years, and the quick succession of escapes.

She was out of control, her mother’s words, and she felt it too. Felt like a fine thread of hunger had been stitched through her spine and was pulling painful, the sharp tug toward destruction. And when the thread snapped, it was all she could do to find something to close her mouth around. Those last few years, they moved more than they ever had, every couple of months when she would inevitably mess up, making a mess of everything. Much easier now to always be leaving, because staying was never really an option.

It’s heard before it’s seen, the crackling of gravel, of tires and brakes slowing down. She lets one eye slip open in a thin slit, squinting in the final slip of sun. That blue pick-up truck, sidling up behind her car along the shoulder of the road. He makes no move to get out, but he does roll his window down, and that’s enough for her to walk over to the side of his car, smalling beneath his steady eyes. He’s clean now, she thinks she can even smell the soap on him, that same soap that she stole a bar of and has been holding under her nose in the nights, something of comfort before she sleeps.

“You’re like me.” The words come from somewhere unnamed inside her, what might be called courage in someone else, and it seems to surprise him too, his brow jumping before furrowing back down.

“I am.”

“Where are you from?” A stupid question to ask someone like her. She doesn’t blame him for remaining silent, lips pressed in a thin line. So, she tries again.

“Where are you going?”

“West.”

“Where west?”

“Just west.” Silence again, a single car hums by them. He clears his throat.

“Is your car broke down?”

“I think it’s dead.”

“Is it worth fixing?”

“No, probably not. And I don’t have any money left.”

“Do you want a ride?” Myths are made in the fine split of choice. She is walking into a new one.

“Okay.”

There is very little of herself to collect. A bag in the trunk of her car with a few spare clothes, her blanket, a bar of soap. The rest can be left behind.

“I’m Joel.” All that he offers her when she slides into the passenger seat, a glance that falls on the curl of her hands in her lap.

“I’m Maeve.”

It has been a very long time since she has been a passenger in someone else’s car. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, leaving always looming, but she had been doing well for her mother. Well enough to get a date with a shy boy who sat behind her in seventh period math. He took her out in his car, fall and dark and dim and something light threatening in her chest, stealing glances at each other as he drove them out to that spot that everyone parked at. Lovers, lovers, lovers, young limbs tangling in the backseats of cars, damp windows and fog twirling up skirts in the wash of headlights. And they had parked, and shy boy had stuck his shy tongue in her mouth, and she had liked it, she had liked it. And of course, it went wrong, blood and body and blood and she ran home with salt stinging down her cheeks. She didn’t mean to hurt him. She never meant to hurt anyone. This isn’t a hurting thing, at least she didn’t want it to be. Her mother had slapped her, hard, sending her neck turning to one side before collecting her up in her arms and making it all better, making a leaving for both of them.

Now, with her temple pressed against the window of the passenger side door, silence save for the thin voices on the radio, she thinks of that boy, and how carefully he had cupped her cheek in his palm. She wanted to kiss him, she wanted to love him. But she didn’t know how to without biting down.

For as long as she can remember, alone has meant monstrous. Evidence of defect, deformity, the delineation between others, normal, the world, and her, somewhere on the periphery, always. But she wasn’t always alone, and for a while, that was enough to convince her that normal was possible, that, no, not a monster. She had her mother, not alone, not a monster. Clinging to not alone so hard, and in turn clinging to her mother so hard, that often her fear, or love, or the product of the two, would get her hurt.

She was hungry for touch as a child, and her mother was unwilling to give it to her in the amounts she wanted for. Her mother, her mother, locking her bedroom door from the inside so she couldn’t turn the handle and slip inside and ask for a palm on her back to calm her nightmares. She would curl up on the pilled carpet of whatever house they were in at the time, back pressed to the door like maybe she could feel her mother’s respiration through the wood, something to soothe down her spine, thumb tucked into her mouth. And in the mornings, bleary, jostled awake by the slow fall backward when her mother would inevitably open the door to her room. Lying on her back in the doorway, blinking up at her mother, grave and grim, who was always frowning, always sighing. Not again, not this again, not you, doing this again. Her mother would step right over her, the hem of her dressing robe brushing against her body as she did, and even that was a relief to her, touch of some kind.

And her mother did love her, in some way. Loved her the way one loves a monster. At arm’s length. That doesn’t mean much to monsters, though. They want, they hunger, just the same. She has wondered, from time to time, if it was the way her mother loved her that made her worse. To go hungry like that for so long, no great working of the imagination to consider how a body might solve that problem in another way. But no, she knows, this is something essential, something curled close inside her. This hunger has been there from the beginning. After all, the finger, the red nail polish, she was just a baby then. She likes to imagine how her mother loved her before that happened. There was a whole year of life before she became a monster. What is love like when people will actually look you in the eye, when every touch does not come tentative as if through the bars of a cage? Sometimes at night, she will wrap her arms around herself and trace her palm along the span of her back that she can reach. Something like that, she imagines, it would feel something like that.

Something like what she is seeing now, sitting in the pew ahead of her. Husband and wife, and they are very old, the fine threads of age mottled on the back of husband’s hand, spread between his wife’s slight shoulder blades, her pale blue sweater, gold band glinting. His thumb moving back and forth, a smoothing thing, smoothing and steadying thing. The sermon, the prayers, the withering coughs of the staggered crowd all fall away. Small salvation in the steady rhythm of touch, it mesmerizes her. Things like these are always over before she’d like them to be, the husband’s hand falling away as he and his wife both rise from their seats, the sudden shuffle making her blink back into place and space. Plenty of people are getting up, sliding out of the pews to line up down the aisle. Joel, one of them, a gasp of cool air in the empty space he leaves beside her.

She doesn't know what they are doing in a place like this. She doesn’t think, up until recently, that she had ever been in a place like this, if she’s being honest. Her mother wasn’t religious, and it always seemed to her like churches were somewhere good people went. So no, she had never been in a church before. Not until she started traveling with Joel.

He tries to find one every Sunday if he can, in between towns and states and strips of road. Usually, he will manage to, he doesn’t seem to care what kind. Last week, Presbyterian, and the week before that, Baptist. This week, Catholic. They all seem the same to her. But then again, she doesn’t listen closely to the sermons, focuses instead on the movement, and making her own like theirs. Here is what she has learned, when you talk to God, look up, and look sad. What else she has learned, at the end, there is always an eating. Bread and wine placed on soft, trying tongues, and some kind of prayer draped over the entire thing. She watches Joel, every week, take communion until she doesn’t even have to watch. Keeps her eyes closed and pictures the drop of his jaw, the slow pull of his throat. She knows it, she knows it. What she doesn’t know is why. Not much room for a God like this one in their particular myth. Though Joel seems intent on it, and she is in no position to challenge this routine. A month traveling together, and still such strange silence between them. But on church days, he is always more likely to speak.

There’s only a few other people who don’t get in line to receive communion, and all them, herself included, are met with the heavy sweep of eyes, soft shakes of heads that tells them no, should not be here, no, not for you. A childish thought that she keeps to herself, not for Joel either, no matter how he plays pretend at it, gold cross glinting like a rotten tooth rendered good at his neck. A thin flare of jealousy, maybe, that he can believe in good so easily.

But maybe Joel is good, she thinks, in spite of what they both do. He certainly seems good walking down the aisle, polite words soft in his throat and a nod for her to follow on his heels and out to the parking lot. These people, church people, will never see them again, and that is a mercy.

“Where are we?”

“We’ll be in Kansas soon.” He always answers that question with the future rather than where they are in the present, always forward motion. All that he offers her, folding his worn map back up before he pulls the truck onto the road.

Joel has some money saved from a past staying. And she told him that wherever he decided to stay next, she would stay too, paying him back for what he has already spent on her. He seemed neither moved nor impressed by her affirmation, eyes slipping down somewhere to the side, a sigh. At the very least, it’s a comfort to her, the promise of somewhere for her, for a little while.

“Should we try to today?”

“We don’t have to do it together. If you want to, today, that’s fine. I don’t mind.” The words feel stupid in her mouth, and the sharp look Joel gives her before his eyes return to the road tells her as much.

“It’s safer if we do it together. Less of a mess.” It doesn’t feel that way to her. She knows what he means, but still. Not to her. Shameful to her, that someone else sees her like that. Shameful back when she had been traveling with that girl, that girl who would grin through it, teeth stained and tarred and making her sick up in her throat with shame, with cruel terror turned inside herself. But Joel isn’t like that. No, there is something different to how Joel tends to this.

Now, alone means go, green light, good for taking. They watch for alone, parked in rest stops, gas station parking lots, all the in between places, places where the loneliest people tend to linger. They’ll spend whole afternoons in some various slump in or against his truck, squinting down in the sun at bodies moving around them, moving through. Today, they pull off at one of those long haul trucker stops, a gravel lot full of slumbering beasts of cars, cargo, men mincing around, stretching length back into their tired bodies. And they watch. And they wait. Teeth aching.

Joel distracts her, sometimes. Her watching him watching the world. It seems like he moves and something pressed beneath the thin crust of the ground moves too. Big man, silent as a fist man. But he is nice and gentle and kind. Small words for a big man. A kind of manners she has never seen before. She watches him now, the soft squint of his eyes under the sun’s cool heat, leaning against the side of his truck with his hands tucked into his pockets, ankles crossed. He looks so casual, but she knows that there’s a wire strung taut in his spine, quick flickers of want, of hunger. She feels it too.

“Joel?”

“Hmm.”

“Can I ask you something?” He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either, ducking his head down in a way that shows her he’s listening.

“How many others have you met?” Like us, the implicit understanding of like us. Something strange passes across his face, quick pinch, smoothing itself out.

“A few.”

“How many is a few?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how many do you think there are in the country?”

“I think that’s a useless question.” He doesn’t say it mean, more matter of fact than anything, though it still feels like a swift loss of breath in her lungs. She pinches her mouth shut, a flume of embarrassment warming beneath her skin. But Joel pays her no mind, his gaze has settled on someone.

They’ve only done this together two other times, but it’s been enough to know there’s a particular way Joel goes about this. Always alone, always men, trying for the bad ones. And how they decide who is bad is, at best, a childish logic. Alone, for one thing, both of them understanding how that can translate into bad. The loud ones, the brassy, blundering ones, ones that bodies move like they know violence intimately. It is all a game of chance, though Joel seems so methodical. Regardless, it makes her feel messy, smeared and stupid for the way she used to go about this, which is to say, with little thought for anything save the ache in her gut. Yes, she had rules of her own. Never children. Rarely women. As alone as she could find them. It was in the mechanics of it that she always failed, and this failure curdled into something close to cruelty, something she had a hard time stomaching.

But not Joel. Joel is painfully careful in how this is done. The first step is always the waiting, seeing if a body will stick around in this in-between place. And in that waiting their hunger grows teeth of its own, hunkering their shoulders, making them as small as the curl of their guts. And when a body stays in that in-between place, a trucker who seems to be resting for the night, wandering idly around the lot with a cigarette held loose like a prayer between his lips, that’s when Joel moves. This part is not difficult for Joel, because he is kind and gentle and nice. Quiet, he smalls himself, makes himself anyone that could be anyone else.

And when he does it, he does it in the night, pale slants of the moon’s watchful gaze washing down on him. And when he does it, he does it with his hands. Not a word, not a whimper or whine, just a final puff of breath when he is done, something absent floating up in his eyes. In the close brush of trees a few yards away from the rest stop, there will be nothing left to find when they are done. Down to the ankles, and then some.

She hates doing this with him, to have him see her in it, and in the after of it. The sate feels good, but the shame fans a perfect flame up her neck. And she cries, she always cries, and he refuses to look at her when she does. They stumble into the rest stop bathrooms and wipe away what they can from their skin. This is no clean thing. She will feel the stick of it on her for days afterward, she always does. But she will feel good too, full too, and it will only make the shame worse.

“Why do you cry like that?” It startles her, stops another sniff from hiccuping up her throat. He doesn’t look at her, keeps his eyes focused out on the flare of their headlights eating away at the road, driving back into the night. It’s difficult to look at him, the pearling stains of it that he missed down the line of his throat, the darkening of the front of his shirt, pink-tinged skin, hard to scrub off. Not difficult in that she wants to look away, but difficult in knowing that she should want to look away, though she doesn’t. Beautiful, eyes blown into a sad melt from beneath his brow, his jaw working at some phantom feeling. No, she shouldn’t, but she does.

“It feels like I should.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” A little sharp, still quiet, but enough to make her heart twist. The rest of their drive is silent, eventually, pulling into the vacant yawn of a motel parking lot.

Joel goes into the motel office after hastily changing into a new shirt, her eyes slipping somewhere else, but not without a glimpse of bare skin. He’s better with people than she is, and she is still inconsolable, shaking in the passenger seat and trying not to look at her hands, the thin curl of red under her fingernails. She lets her gaze unfocus on the blinking neon sign, vacancy becoming less of a word and more of a throb in her skull.

“Come on.” He opens her door for her, snapping her back into awareness, and he’s not mean about it, but he is exasperated, dragging his palm down his jaw, already rounding the car to pull their bags out of the bed of the truck. She wishes she could be like him about this, so matter of fact, so mundane. Where did he learn that from? Who taught him to be like that? Who loved him like that? He is far more free than she is, she thinks. She wishes he would show her how.

This is part of the routine too. They stand, hip to hip, at the cracked sink in the bathroom of their room and they brush their teeth. Their work is meticulous, rounding every canine, making gums bleed with too much pressure. She flosses twice, then brushes again, spitting pink into the porcelain. Joel prefers mouthwash, swallows two stinging gulps of it, trying to kill something from the inside out. It makes her stomach hurt to watch the dip and bob of his throat.

He lets her take a shower first, the faint sound of late night news filtering in through the cracked bathroom door. She scrapes at her skin with her fingernails, scrubbing down until it stings, until she’s certain that a layer has been sloughed off. She uses the soap that he uses. She smells like him. Clean and good when she looks in the bathroom mirror again.

Cheaper to get one room with two beds, she never sleeps under the covers. If she thinks too hard about what other lives have breathed on this bed, what cellular remains cling to these sheets, she will make herself sick. So she curls close to one edge of the bed, letting the light from the television blur into meaningless shapes. Joel comes out of the bathroom clean as well, the soft ruff of his hair, the stretch of muscle in his back beneath the thinness of his t-shirt. She watches him sit down on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on his knees, the glinting dare of his cross hanging from his neck.

“Can I ask you something else?” She regrets the words instantly with the sigh that slumps down through his shoulders. Not supposed to speak, not after. Though he still turns his face over his shoulder to look at her, eyebrows jumped in something like assent.

“Why do you wear that?” Nod of her head that she hopes he understands, and he seems to, pinching the teardrop of gold between thumb and forefinger.

“Because I believe in it.”

“Why do you believe in it?”

“I’d like to think there’s something that will forgive me when I say that I’m sorry.” And she can understand that, though she gave up on sorry a long time ago. Her mother used to be the one to receive her sorry. Her sorry, met with scorn, with a scoff, the whites of her mother’s eyes rolling with her sorry, the flat of her mother’s palm making contact with her sorry. Much easier, she thinks, to offer sorry to something that will never actually answer. You can believe anything you want that way.

“I wish I wasn’t like this.” She’s never said that out loud, sighed out loud, her chin propped in her palm where she’s laying on her side. But it is the crux of all her wanting, and there is a sorry threaded through it. Wanting for something else, to be anything else other than this.

“It’s not your fault, being like this.”

“I should be able to control it.”

“You can’t, Maeve, you can’t.” She knows that, nods her knowing to him before sitting up and curling her chest over her knees. There’s comfort, at least, in sharing this understanding, in finding control in other ways.

“Why did you let me come with you?”

“That’s another question.” His words curl with the smallest smile, a rare thing as he turns to fully look at her, something softening, something slipping.

“Did you follow me, Joel?” She ruined it with that, she knows, his face falling into something darker, shadows dipping and bending around his eyes, something dark swimming in his lashes. But some part of her already knew. There are no coincidences in a myth like this, everything must be chosen.

“I did, I’m sorry.”

“Why did you follow me?”

“I was confused by you.” He speaks so quietly that she keeps her body perfectly still so she can collect what little sound there is, the low thrum of it, something cracking in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

“I knew you were like me, but I didn’t understand how that could be possible.” She knows that he doesn’t mean the possibility of others, he has met others before her. Her confusion must be evident on her face, because he offers her a weak smile, his hands in an anxious clasp in his lap, working a steady rhythm into his knuckles.

“I didn’t think people like us could be good like you are.” These words, what finally shocks her, a surprised yelp of a laugh frightening up her throat, though he is serious, unwavering, and she finds herself becoming angry. How dare he tell her what she is. How dare he hope like that, amidst all this rot. The most they have spoken in their month together, and this is what he says? How dare he say good with so much certainty, and lay it at her feet like it is hers for the taking. A sick joke, more cruel than anything else.

“I’m not good, Joel.”

“You are, I see it.” She feels tears starting to ache behind her eyes again, and she is too tired for another flood. All she offers in response to him, a quiet I don’t think so, leaving no room for argument when she lays back down and turns out the lamp on her nightstand. With her eyes closed, she can hear his quiet sigh, the slow shuffle of his body laying down, the softening of his breath.

She hates that she liked the way good sounded coming from his mouth.

“Alright?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Are you getting that?”

“No, no.”

“It’s nice.”

“It’s not practical.”

“You can get it, if you want.” She considers it, letting the fabric fall between her fingers, a brief wanting that she lets dissolve with a shake of her head, the small pang of it settling in her stomach. There’s no point in getting something nice like this dress, light blue with buttons down the front. It’ll just get ruined anyways. No, instead she sticks to the sensible stack of t-shirts and jeans, some sort of dollar deal at the Salvation store on denim today. Joel takes the bundle of clothes from her, his palm cupping her elbow for a moment, and she thinks he might ask her again if she wants the dress. She’s grateful that he doesn’t, that he takes his hand away, because if not, she might have said yes, might have given into that want, and that would be something she simply could not do.

They move strangely around each other. Days bleeding weeks bleeding months. Very little progress made in the push west, following a coiled snake of a path, zagging from state to state. Pieces of each other, collected slowly, carefully. Joel is from Texas, and, like her, Joel tried at normal for a very long time. He got further in normal than she ever did. Had a daughter, had a family. Held on long enough to see her into adulthood. He writes letters to her now, though Maeve tries not to watch him working. The shake of his hand, his shoulders, not for her to see. Sometimes the letters get sent, if they are in the right place at the right time to make that happen. Sometimes the letters are left behind in their wake, a prayer to something much larger.

She tells him a clean version of her own myth, leaving out what she can, leaving out the mother when she can. She is learning the power of deciding for herself where she comes from. She is learning the power of looking someone in the eye, and of them looking back.

Joel pays for their new clothes, and she sulks, lingering amongst the racks like a despondent ghost. In part, his money comes from the wallets of the people they find in the in-between. It had upset her when she discovered this, and while he had been apologetic, always quick to soften when she prickles, he was still firm about it. She couldn’t exactly argue with his logic, doing far worse things, after all, but she still tends toward steel when money leaves or enters his hands. It makes her nervous, and it makes her sad. Because she knows with no uncertainty that Joel is good, she knows that now. A shame, that all his goodness must get confused in what they must do.

“How much longer do you think?”

“Maybe twenty minutes, we’re close now.” Something that she knows he is doing for her, and only for her, which makes it lovely, and dangerous, and a little dizzying. It had been an idle, errant thing on a morning a few weeks ago, looking at the creased map over the dash of the truck and trying to make sense of what should come next. Arizona had seemed like a tenable answer, and a memory had floated up, something she had seen on the television as a child, something she couldn’t quite believe on a hazy afternoon, turned upside down on a couch they’d be leaving behind soon. A chasm in the earth, somewhere split open, somewhere to look inside of and see whether all wounded things bleed the same way. Sheepish, she had mentioned it to Joel between the cracks of her fingers held over her mouth, hiding the want that was curling at the corners of her lips. And he had said okay, as if it were as easy as that, as if want could ever be as easy as that, asking and receiving. A silly thought, she wondered if he wouldn’t say the same thing if she had pointed up to the moon instead. She thinks that he would.

The truth, she likes Joel, in a way that makes her nervous. Likes the quiet hum in his throat while he drives, likes his palm between her shoulder blades, an absent-minded touch that she tries hard not to lean into, likes the steadiness of his breath in the middle of the night. Above all, she likes him looking at her, and she likes giving that back to him, looking right back at him with only kindness, a foreign mercy.

“Have you been before?”

“No, never even been in Arizona before.”

“Thank you, Joel, for doing this. I know it’s silly.” His hands flex along the wheel, a light jump in the tendons of his fingers, a glance her way in the passenger seat before his eyes settle back on the road.

“It’s not silly. We needed somewhere to go.” Always needing somewhere to go, the in-between of the in-betweens. But here in the cab of his truck, it seems like time might forgive them, might let them slip by. She’s worked up something that kicks like courage over the months, enough that now, she will often reach across to him and take one of his hands in both of hers. And he will let her. Always that first tensing, touch still tentative, though the lines of his palms will smooth out eventually, pressed close and tight with hers. She likes to hold the pads of her fingers over the soft inside of his wrist, let the beat there lull her into line with the murmuring engine. And he lets her.

It’s a perfectly normal scene when they get there. Tourists, teeming, tired parents and kids tugging at pants, at hands, at each other. And Joel, clearing his throat a few times, a shake in his hand that she knows well as they walk out to the edge. She hooks her arms over the railing, leans over until her stomach starts to lurch, eyes dizzy from the vast swaths of red and orange grit, crags and peaks and dry brush all around, down into the canyon.

Because she is so good at leaving, she can do it without even having to move muscle. A little leaving, she watches herself from somewhere suspended, and in her leaving eyes, she watches the small mechanics of her body climb over the rail and leap out into the sinking blankness. But a hand on her shoulder draws her back. She finds Joel looking at her with a cloudy focus, a soft frown that she watches pinch and pull into a thin line. He clears his throat again.

“Is it what you imagined?”

“It’s in color.”

“What?”

“When I saw it on the TV it was in black and white. This is better.” Relief, she thinks, something that smooths his brow and the wings of his shoulders. Maybe even a smile. She offers him one of her own, slight slippage when her gaze wanders over his shoulder. Hand in hand, a halo of golden hair like corn silk, a daughter at her mother’s hip, both of them walking away from the edge. Probably back to their car, probably back to their home, to dinner, to bedtime, to mother brushing her daughters corn silk hair with hands that could not even imagine violence. Saying I love you with mouths that could not even imagine violence.

And Joel turns around to see what she is staring at, and she sees in the planes of his back the same tensing she feels, the same tensing that comes with knowing that something has been lost, and that it can never be retrieved, returned to. When he turns back around to her, steel has resettled in his jaw, but something is swimming hazy in his eyes.

“We should go.”

“Okay.” She takes one more look at the open wound, one more imagining of slipping into it, letting it swallow her whole. And then, well, they do what they always do. They leave. Somewhere inside of her, she is telling her mother that she finally got to see the Grand Canyon.

…

She thinks she might be hurting Joel. Not directly, not intentionally. She’s been trying to wait out her hunger, staving it off, and he in turn has been doing the same. Testing and trying the boundaries of how long she can hold onto normal, and it hurts, and she can see that it hurts Joel too. Waiting like this, going without like this, strings him by a livewire of his want, makes him jumpy, slow to soothe, to sleep. She can hear him shifting around in the night in the close quiet of their motel rooms, restless, wanting. Sometimes, he will sigh, get up, moving quiet in the dark, the thin slice of sound when he opens the door and steps outside. He goes and sits in the truck. She knows, she has stepped into the corner of the motel room window and seen him with his temple propped in his palm, made small in the cab of the truck. This waiting is tiring. This waiting has teeth and claws and growls. This waiting, this hunger, is enough to make an animal stupid, shivering like static.

And he has done this nice thing for her, taken her to see the black and white wound in color, and so, she decides that the waiting is done, for now. So they do the thing that they do. They find a place that is in-between, and they begin a different kind of waiting.

“I want to see this time.”

“No, Maeve, it’s not something you should be seeing.”

“It’s nothing new to me, Joel.” She needs to see, she thinks, needs an accounting of every part of him. In the past, it has always been an unspoken routine. She would catch glimpses of it, of him, of his hands closing around something fragile, but he wanted her to have nothing to do with it. It’s not like she hasn’t done it herself. The whites of the eyes, and the collapse of the lungs one final time, wretched things she understands.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” His voice borders on the edge of pain, the tendons in his neck playing a hurt tune, and for a moment, she thinks about backing down, letting this go. But she can’t. To do what she wants to do, she must know every part of him, this too.

“Please.” And he’s not going to say no, she knows that. He has turned her into a terrible king in some ways with how little he says no to her. She grows greedy with it. A child growing up with so much no will hoard whatever yes they can find.

He doesn’t say anything else, returns to his waiting in the gas station parking lot, with perhaps an edge less patience, shifting in his boots and squinting into the dry shock of the afternoon. She presses her lips together to keep any more from coming out, turns back to the strange landscape surrounding them, the desert, the resilient death of it. And as always, if you wait long enough, someone else will come staggering into the in between.

It begins like it always begins. They wait until the bruising pall of night washes the cracked earth purple, all the other nighttime creatures starting to yip and titter, working themselves up into their usual routine. But this time, she is there when Joel approaches the man, there to watch something else slide into the place where he is kind and gentle and nice, there to watch him, with the calm strength of a storm, take the man out into the quiet judgment of the desert.

She stands and she watches a scared animal whimper and wriggle in a merciless trap. Joel’s hands are around the man’s neck, hunched over the strange slump of his body, a thin frown on his face and the slightest pinch between his brows. She can’t look away, her eyes stinging, unblinking, wide and receiving this part of him. And Joel is looking right back at her with the same intensity, eyes lit up in a slash of moonlight. And the man refuses to die. Still struggling, clutching at air and hoping for a savior. And the errant realization that she is someone people need saving from, a quick flash of lightning in her mind. Her stomach starts to churn.

“Please, please.” It isn’t the man that’s saying it, she realizes. It’s Joel. Quiet and broken murmurings, pleas, prayers, for this to be over. This time is different. Joel, usually so clean and quick and quiet, is struggling. And it isn’t because the man is big or battering, actually quite slight, actually still slumped, but wheezing lost breaths, heart still beating blood and body. Broken cries like an animal caught in a trap. She covers her ears with her hands, but the sounds echo, and the sounds will echo for a long time. But she can’t look away, not even when thin beads of silver start to fall down Joel’s face, crying, and still pleading for the man to die. And when nothing else works, Joel does turn violent, a quick shock of it in the way he makes simple work of the man’s neck in his hands. She lets out a shriek that she cannot hold back, hot shame following close on its heels.

Joel is pale, face flushed wan and weary. He swallows hard a few times as he straightens his spine, letting the body curl limp on the ground. Hot salt starts to skate down her face, both of them crying now, shivering with it.

“I can’t, not this one.” His face crumples at her words, something close to agony that makes her stomach swoop and curdle. She has seen every part of him now. There will be no returning from this.

“Maeve, please, I–”

“I’m going to wait in the truck.” Already turning her back to him and stumbling toward the faint, fluorescent pulse of the gas station in the distance. He does not stop her, and she is grateful for it.

The worst part, she is still very hungry. Her shame growing wings that batter against her ribs, because beneath the horror and the guilt, there is still that hunger, made worse now by how close she came to sating it. Like a petulant child, frustrated, and on the brink of going full-tilt. She sits in the passenger seat of the truck and presses her forehead against the window, cool glass providing the smallest comfort.

And when Joel eventually returns to the truck, he is not covered in it. She knows he is still hungry like her. She does not want to know what was done with the curled body, and he does not tell her.

They are silent, small, slow moves. She keeps her temple pressed to the passenger-side window, shoulders shaking with the smallest sobs. And she isn’t sure if it’s the hunger, or the shame that is making her cry, and not knowing only makes her cry harder.

She doesn’t know how long they drive for, but eventually there is a motel, and eventually she is standing in the bathroom of a motel room, and he is standing next to her, and they are moving like they had not failed. She brushes her teeth twice, until it hurts, and like always, he lets her have the shower first. She wants it to burn, and so it burns, coming out from under the water with skin welted and washed thin. And when they pass each other in the doorway to the bathroom, their eyes still don’t quite meet, nothing is said.

Something strange is settling inside her. She doesn’t lay down, runs her palm across the static fuzz of the television, over the pixel-pocked face of the person delivering the evening news. And when that isn’t enough, she presses her cheek to the low-humming screen, curls her arms around the back of the television, and holds herself there. And for a moment, it’s as easy and as simple as how good that warmth feels, the mumbling drone of sound in her ear. She pulls herself away from it when she hears the water shut off, and there is a moment of reckoning, recognizing, when he comes to stand in the doorway to the bathroom. Hair dark and dripping darker onto his t-shirt. He looks at her, and she looks back, her hands fisted in the fabric of her sweatshirt. He looks small, he looks sad, he looks like he’s about to ask her for something. She would give him anything he could ask for, she would try, the realization as clear and clean as the blade of a knife.

“I’m sorry, Maeve.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I couldn’t. Not with you there like that.”

“It’s okay.”

“I wanted to keep good for you.”

“You are good, Joel.”

“Please, don’t.” A monster, broken, a monster, bending, a monster, brought to the ground. A monster in tears. Something seems to split inside him, the fragile threads of his strength flailing and failing. And she surprises herself when she goes to him before the first shaking crack of a sob can rack his chest, curls arm around shoulders like she knows what to do. He’s saying something that sounds like sorry and she’s saying something that sounds like forgiveness, managing enough movement to get them to the edge of one of the beds, to sit down still holding him.

That cross hangs from his neck like a wretched joke, the small shiver of it. He cries, big man, big strong man. And she holds him, lets him shake with sorry and promises him that he doesn’t have to, that he is okay, that he is good, and in turn, it feels good to give these things to him.

Eventually, the shake starts to smooth, and when she takes his face in both her hands, he leans into it, eyes heavy and worn weary, but something bright still when he looks at her.

The thing is, Maeve knows very little about what care looks like. Most of what she learned came from the same black and white fuzz of a television. Beautiful women and beautiful men and their beautiful lives. In the movies, care is a delicate hand at the cheek. In the movies, care is a complete embrace, arms in arms and faces tucked into necks. In the movies, care is having someone to come home to, someone to love. When her hunger was at its worst as a child, she would sit as close to the television as she could get, unblinking, should she miss the moment that the beautiful woman and the beautiful man would kiss.

And when she got older, she learned a little more about what care is, and more importantly, what it isn’t. There were boys whose violence shocked her, and in turn were shocked by her own violence. There were men that made her feel foolish for expecting care, and there were others who were just plainly mean. One comes to mind, a man whom she got on her knees for. Strange, how women are made gods on their knees, fleeting, foolish gods. And she felt wanted, looking up at him and him looking down at her. And she was wanting too, the thick curl of it in her stomach that was different from any other want. But that had changed very quickly. She didn’t like the way his hand gripped the back of her skull and she didn’t like the crude words he dribbled over her and she didn’t like that it didn’t feel like care, knew that it wasn’t care, it was a cage, and it was too much, and it was all she could think to do because she was afraid, she was afraid, and wanting, and afraid of her wanting, and she was young. So she let a different kind of wanting, different kind of hunger take over. And instead of a god on her knees she became a monster all over again.

She has not tried for care since then, not for a very long time. But she thinks that she would like to now, with Joel. And so she does, tentative at first, the soft presence of her mouth at his temple, the round of his cheek, the drop of his lashes brushing against her skin, something shy about it. She lays another at the corner of his mouth, and it is an asking, it is a choice, it is a new myth made possible, one in which they can both be good, one that is constructed out of care. An answer in the tilt of his head, in the aligning of mouths, in his palm spanning her jaw, holding her now, holding her still in a kiss that teaches her a new kind of hunger.

They move like they have both been wanting for a very long time, and they have, after all. The act of give and take, and she wants to take so much, give so much, perfect, pooling pangs of want when she lets his tongue into her mouth, a sharp sigh in her nose. Both turn pliant for the other, his hands at her hips, coaxing and curling her into his lap, and her hands in his hair, tilting his head back how she would like it so she can taste the sharp of his jaw and the soft hollow of his neck. For a moment she pauses, mouth pressed to the jump of his pulse, and she breathes because he smells like him, like that soap he buys wherever they go, like something else human and pleasant and real. And he lets her, runs his palms up the track of her spine, a soothing, steadying thing, only stilling when she lifts her face from the crook of his neck. Breath and beat stop briefly when she looks at him, the dark awe rounding his eyes, cheeks flushed down devastating and lips parted. She has never been looked at like this before. She likes being looked at like this.

“I think that you’re beautiful, Joel.” It makes him shy, and awful, it makes her smile. She keeps him from dropping his gaze in denial with her hand at his jaw, holding him there and pressing a small thing of a kiss to his lips. And what unfolds afterward happens slowly, something on the verge of timid in how they move, like at any moment, flight, fleeting and fled and gone. But that does not happen, but they both stay, and they both grow more confident every time touch is answered with more touch until they are both bare, and they are curled around each other on the bed, the closest to holy she thinks she could ever get in the sense and sate of skin pressed to skin, a warmth that is so new it stings salt behind her eyes in overwhelm. His brow pinches at the sight of her first tears, showing her how gentle he can be for her with the fragile presence of his thumb gathering the salt before it can fall.

“I’ve never met someone good like you.” Awful, she believes him when he tells her this, hope unfurling in her chest and flushing up under her skin, a terrible heat that flickers and flumes when he begins to shift down her body, moving muscle how he would like it to move until she is splayed for him, her knees falling to the sides to allow the breadth of his shoulders to settle between them. He rests his open mouth over the soft inside of her thigh, his eyes flaring up to hers beneath the dark fan of his lashes. And this is care, she thinks, soft jaw and soft teeth where they could turn so violent. Soft only for her. He holds her in the soft bleed of his mouth, dragging heat to her cunt. He takes from her, eats at her pleasure, pulling muscle and bone into a taut line of want, her whole body strung in a snarl as he takes and takes and takes, his mouth, and his fingers, and yes, she thinks, anything else she could ask him for. He would give it to her. Gives and gives and gives until it’s his name in the back of her throat, something that borders on pain with the way he continues to mouth at her through it. She tugs at his hair, begging mercy that he finally allows, up and up and up until she’s tasting herself on his mouth and the solid weight of him is smoothing the kick of her pulse, her chest.

The roll film starts to melt and pop at that point. Not like the movies, some myth of their own, making myth out of their want. She opens for him, a high, animal keening in her chest when his hips settle against hers. And it is not grace, it is not beautiful or merciful. It’s want distilled, and it makes them move ugly, animal, accepting and open to each other, a little bit frantic, frenetic and fizzing. Skin slicks with salt, turning everything hazy, everything close and cloistering and she likes it, the feeling of overwhelm, blatant and battering and him, all she can think about is him saying her name, saying his want and calling his want by her name. And in the aftermath, they barely move, remain pressed close like stained glass starting to melt into syrup.

He holds her in a way she didn’t think she’d ever be able to ask for, tucked close to the steadiness of his heart, a sound that soothes and reassures her that yes, this is real, yes, this is shared.

“This is a good thing.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Want is whispered on broken exhales, and accepted into willing mouths. Monsters that are no longer monsters in each other’s company.

Some things make the hunger easier to stomach. This is one of those things. This is care. She is learning how to receive it, and she is learning how to give it. She is learning that she might like giving it more than she could’ve ever imagined. She didn’t know how to for such a long time, after all, that it is something entirely new, something that feels good.

And in that care there has been a staying. Small, but still, she can’t remember the last time she spent a week, let alone two, in a single place. They get a motel room with a kitchenette, and she knows that money is starting to become more of a question than an expectation, because neither of them are doing the thing that makes them monsters. Playing chicken with each other’s hunger, but filling in the ache with other things.

Joel buys her that dress, light blue with buttons down the front, watches her put it on for the first time in the peeling mirror next to the bed, sheepish and smiling, rubbing his palms down his thighs. She flushes, and any hunger is smothered beneath a fine flume of want, and of something else. Something like power, being seen like this, and seeing him like this, his eyes heavy and lingering. And how easy want like this becomes, him reaching out and her responding with two steps into his arms. He drops to his knees before her, sweet in his supplication, bunches the fabric up at her hips, and gives a little more to her from the soft hinge of his mouth. A fine fissure splits and snarls in the mirror that day from the way her skull makes contact with it, perfect arc of pleasure and she doesn’t even mind the pain.

They go to the grocery store that’s ten minutes away and pretend at normal. They buy white bread that’s so soft, she watches the easy give of it with the press of her thumb, how it reforms itself around the indent through the crinkling plastic. Tomatoes, and mayonnaise, and salt, and they sit in the back of his truck, and she watches him slice into the perfect, red skin, juice dribbling from the clean break. The end of summer, sun flirting and flaring on their curled backs in the motel parking lot. He makes them sandwiches, and she sighs at the taste, golden and the grit of salt, and the soft stick of bread to the roof of her mouth. A hum in her throat when the sense of it all slips down. She watches his jaw work.

How nice, to let days go by in something close to stillness. She learns his body, lays him out on the coarse sheets and puts her mouth wherever she would like to. Because she gets to have him, however she would like to have him. And so she does. Lips to the center of his chest where she can feel the kick of his heart, to the soft catch of his stomach where he holds his breath, watching her beneath the shy fan of his lashes, light and shadow flickering with the trying twirl of the fan. And she’s so soft for him, only for him, soft jaw and teeth and tongue, taking him into her mouth and humming at the salt and sense of it. That gold cross glints above her with the rise and fall of his chest. And she could, and he could. As easy as exhaling, as easy as the hinge of the jaw. Though they don’t, though they don’t. They sate each other in different ways.

He coaxes her up and up and up, squeezing at the soft of her hips, a preening laugh getting stuck in her chest when he pulls her down onto the open heat of his mouth. Sweat beads and bends in all the soft places in the close swelter of the afternoon and she exults in it, watches her hips move in the sliver of mirror caught in the corner of her eye. His hands splayed against her ass, making flesh give, animal mouthings that make her shiver. She feels beautiful. Looks back at the woman in the mirror and the woman looks back at her and she feels beautiful.

And when they settle down around each other, when his hips press close to hers and she’s looking at him and he’s looking at her, she can begin to believe that they aren’t monsters at all. Monsters couldn’t love like this, at least she doesn’t think so.

“Can I have one of those?”

“Mmm.” This is the way most afternoons go. Bare, they don’t leave bed again, making a game out of reaching whatever they could possibly need. She stretches one leg out, toeing at a carton of cigarettes strewn on the floor until it’s within arm’s reach, Joel’s hand held steady on her hip to keep her from slipping. Smoking, she has found, is an excellent way to press the hunger down and away, tendriled tempering. She curls back into his side, plucks the lighter from where it was tucked in the carton and settles a cigarette between his lips. The pull he takes once it’s lit jumps and jags the tendons of his throat. She lays her mouth there, feels the thrum it drags from him, and like divine machinery, it makes a smile start to curl and round her cheeks.

He offers her a drag, and she takes one that is a little too much, makes her eyes water while he rubs his palm up and down the bare breadth of her back, soothing, all easy, easy, Maeve. Sheepish, she tucks her face down along the line of his clavicle, a small sound of protest in the back of her throat before she can stop it when his palm stills, though he’s quick to pick up the smooth circuit. She flushes, because he has made her greedy with all this touch, all this give and take, ask and receive. A different kind of monstrous, what he has made her with want made real.

“Maeve?” She already knows that tilt to his words because he has tried this a few times now, that little edge of pain that comes with hunger. She sighs, but she does lift her head so she can look at him, the slight pull of his frown, waiting for the question that’s coming.

“Will you eat?”

“I don’t need to.”

“Maeve.”

“I don’t, Joel.”

“I know you do.” And the unsaid of it, because I do too, because I am in pain too, because we are the same, and we must not forget that. Yes, she can set the hunger down, but there is always the picking it up, always the remembering. It turns her quiet, turns her stomach too, making her sit up, Joel’s hand falling from her spine. He sits up with her, ducking his head to catch the slant of her gaze, eyes rounding and wet.

“Baby, all you gotta do is eat. I’ll take care of the rest.” She sighs, letting her cheek fall into the cup of his palm, fighting a question that is threatening in her throat, and that has been for a while now. She wants to know how long, just how. He held onto normal for a very long time, and if he could, maybe she could as well. Maybe this could be enough, her cheek in his palm. But, at least for now, she will not ask that, will not try that, because she can see that she is hurting him again, dark wings beneath his eyes, jolting with unanswered want. She knows that hurt, and was fine with hurting herself for a very long time, so long as it meant a gentle hand from her mother, a promise of staying. But this is different, because even when she isn’t hurting, even when she isn’t hungry, Joel doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t leave, doesn’t punish or preach. Relief, she thinks, is all he feels when she’s full. And that’s a kind of care that is new to her as well.

She lays her hand over his, turns her face into his palm to the fated lines there.

“Okay, we’ll eat.”

Eating means leaving, and they both know that, but just the promise that this hurting will soon be over is enough to ward off any worry with skittering fingers. They slink out of bed, get dressed in the wavering light of the single lamp in their room. By now, night, dark and close when they step outside, that late summer cooling that comes when the sun slips down beyond the horizon.

They haven’t, not since she refused to, not since Joel wept. And she feels a fine thread of worry tugging in her stomach, trying not to look at him too hard as they drive through the night toward some in-between place. But there is nothing to worry about, because Joel takes care of it. And so they are full again, and so they aren’t hurting any more, stumbling through the desert brush beneath the merciful glow of the moon, dark, dark, dark.

It is amazing how little time something so monstrous takes when it is done so carefully like this. In the passenger seat, she presses her palm over her mouth, feeling the dried stick there. And in turn she reaches over to him, lays her hand over his mouth in the same place, feels the same tack there. Like her, like her, like her. He kisses the cup of her palm without ever taking his eyes off the road, the jump of muscle in his forearms, in his knuckles curled around the steering wheel.

They are quiet when they get back to the motel, curling around themselves to conceal the truth of the stain, of the darkening damp smeared down their fronts. And this routine starts the same. At the sink, the toothpaste and the floss and the mouthwash. But there is no separation when the steam of the shower starts to seep. They both strip down and step in together. Before he can, she is already pressing her palms against his chest, holding him in the stream of the shower. She cleans what remains from his skin, water pinkening in the drain. And when she’s satisfied with that, she takes his skull in her hands and tips his head back so she can thread her fingers through his hair. He hums, eyes slipping shut in pleasure made pure. And she is so gentle for him that even now, so dizzyingly full, she has a hard time convincing herself of her own monstrosity.

He surprises her when he takes over, beginning his ministrations with his hand holding her chin, fingers tucked at the hinge of her jaw to hold her steady, hold her mouth open so he can run the pad of his thumb over her teeth, pressing at the sharp of her canines, something dark laying heavy over his eyes. She tries for a grin, though it is only a crook of the corners of her lips with the way he is holding her face. And when she bites, just a little, holding his thumb in the merciful pressure of her teeth, he laughs, a quiet murmuring sound as he watches her from beneath his lashes.

“Be good, please.” And she is good for him. Good means not biting down. Love means not biting down, at least not too hard. Instead, taking his thumb into her mouth and curling her tongue around it. She sucks, and he groans, and it sends a new want stuttering up her spine. Close to frightening to want and be wanted so regularly like this. The cool tile is holy against her spine, shivering down a perfect prayer. He holds her there, and she lets him, and they do something about the hunger that remains.

When the water runs cold and clean, they get out, continue a routine that looks normal, settle down around each other in bed. Joel puts on the evening news and she keeps her ear pressed over his heart, lets the flooding beat of it drown at that slick slither of shame, still there, always there. But then, but then.

There is a woman on the news. A woman who is crying. A woman who is surrounded by the small flicker of candles held in hands, held in vigil. And the woman is crying because her husband never came home. Three weeks ago, and her husband didn’t come home, and her husband isn’t, wasn’t, the type of man who would just leave because they had children. They had children, and their father never came home. And Maeve sits up because when they show a photo of the husband, the father, she recognizes him. That night when she refused and Joel wept. She recognizes him, and her stomach starts to curdle. And Joel recognizes him too, sits up too, a careful, quiet call of her name, low, so as to not scare her into flight. But she is already shaking her head no, no, no, no, shirking and shrinking away from his touch, curling up on the end of the bed, all her angles tucked up close as panic turns into sickening white noise in her mind.

They had been careful, hadn’t they? Always careful, always the in-between, always people that couldn’t possibly have someone waiting at home for them. After all, it isn’t hard for like to recognize like. And they were careful, and they were kind, and they always tried very hard to be gentle when they had to do what they always have to do. Not enough though, none of it, enough, and it was never going to be.

Joel turns off the television, his movement fragmented in the melt of her tears, catching stained-glass glimpses of him kneeling in front of her, pleading, or praying, or something in between the two. Please, baby, please will you look at me? It’s not your fault, it’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine. You’re good, you’re so good, please, I’m sorry, please. And it’s please over and over again, and she’s shaking her head no over and over again, trying to wrench away from his hands holding her face steady.

In the perfect cradle of a pain like this, there is a regression, something childlike in the logic of making it better. Something young in the way he unclasps his cross from around his neck and tries to give it to her, tries to lay it against her sternum. And something young in her too, throwing a perfect fit when he tries to make this right the only way he knows how. She shows him her snarl, thrashes and tears the chain away from her skin, throws it across the room. Terrible, she regrets it immediately, regrets the way his face falls, the way he sinks back into himself. She has hurt him, and this time, on purpose.

He gets up with a sigh that sounds very tired, doesn’t say another word as he crosses toward the bathroom. She can’t look at his face right now because it will make her cry even harder, so instead she lets her vision blur and unfocus around his form, a silhouette with his forehead resting against the bathroom door frame.

“I’m sorry, Maeve.” All that he offers, slipping away, slipping out of sight and into the bathroom, and that young part of her panics. No, needs him to be where she can see him, where he can see her, needs to fix this. She gets down on her hands and knees in a blind stutter, runs her fingers along the grimey baseboard trying to find where she threw that wretched chain. And it’s no use because when she does find it she sees that the clasp is broken clean off, golden bones in pieces, glinting in the faded carpet. She picks up what she can find of it, feeling small, shivering small when she pads into the bathroom.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub, big man made small just like her, curled over himself with his head in his hands. And now would be a good time for her to leave, she thinks. Leave the cracked pieces of his faith on the counter and start walking in any direction away from here. She is familiar with this kind of leaving. All those years ago, and her mother in a similar posture of prostration, of surrender to this thing that she could not fix for her daughter. Her mother, asking her to leave. And Maeve, finally given an opportunity to succeed in what her mother asked of her. Yes, she is very good at leaving when people get tired of her, or frightened of her, or tired of being frightened of her. She has done it many times now.

“I’m sorry, Joel.” And the rest is said too, in a sodden slur when she holds out her cupped palms to him and shows him the broken pieces, something about her fixing it, with money that doesn’t exist, and in a place she doesn’t know, and with hands that seem to only be good for greed. But he accepts her sorry, curls his palms around hers to close her fingers over the wreckage, a prayer that she is relieved to partake in.

They are ruinous. But they are in love.

A strange, slow slump over the lip of the tub, and he pulls her with him. The porcelain, or whatever it is, is still pearled damp from their shower earlier and the bare skin of her shins sticks and slips as she settles in his lap. She holds his face in her hands, thumbs stroking at the soft skin beneath his eyes. And he’s beautiful, and she’s already forgiven him, and she never wants to hear him say sorry again because she would continue to forgive him for any and all of it. She wants a world for them in which they never have to say sorry.

“Joel?” He is listening, though he doesn’t say anything, and she allows something like hope to lurch hot and hazed in her chest.

“Do you think we could be normal together?”

Silence, for a long time. The sink faucet drips.

“We could try.”

Two years pass.

It is the longest she has ever managed normal.

The truth is there was money, because her mother did love her in her own strange way. She had never touched it before though, there never seemed a good enough reason for it. But this seemed good, like the best possible reason, really.

They get an apartment in a town in New Mexico with a name that doesn’t mean anything to either of them. Something they could both agree on, the hard bake of the sun and the dry air.

They both get jobs in the first months. She works at a grocery store, smiles bright at the mothers that bring their daughters along on their weekly errands. He works with his hands, and comes home in the slow slump of the afternoon smelling like cedar and salt. She licks it off his skin and runs her fingers through his damp, darkened hair most nights.

Those first few months, there is a mattress, and not much else. It is enough. They put it in the middle of the apartment. They eat and they sleep and they talk and they laugh and they fuck and they watch the sun rise and fall in the harsh way it does from that mattress. They are very happy.

And then they get some more furniture, and then they start saying hello to their neighbors when they pass them in the hall, and their neighbors start saying hello back. Normal slips into the corners of their lives like the most gracious guest.

At the end of that first year, when it seems like normal is going to stick, Joel sends a letter to his daughter with a phone number scribbled in hope at the bottom of the page. He waits by the phone the whole week after it’s sent like an anxious ghost, makes himself sick with waiting. And when she does call, Maeve catches glimpses of him from the end of the hall, a smile, and quiet wonder in his voice. He’s not interested in going to church any more because now his daughter calls every Sunday. He sits down on the floor with his chin tilted to the side to accommodate the stretch of the coiled phone cord and he talks all morning with her.

In the second year, Maeve finds that she likes to paint. There’s an art supply store in town, so she quits her job at the grocery store and goes to work there, gets enough of an employee discount that she can buy paints and brushes and canvases and an easel over the span of a few months. She likes the desert, likes its colors and its quiet assertion of life, so that is what she often paints. And Joel likes to watch her in the evenings, she sets up her work in front of the crooked palm of windows in the living room, an errant hum in the back of her throat to whatever song is playing on the radio. Eventually, every night, when she is doing more swaying than painting and her eyes are starting to squint shut, he gets up off the couch and pads over to sway with her, her head falling back to rest against his shoulder as he coaxes her tired body into his arms. And from the faint glow of the windows stacked and ordered alongside a few dozen other glowing windows of the apartment complex, it looks like love, because it is.

She finds that she likes routine, likes being bored and boring. She likes that the things she worries about now are small things, like what they're going to have for dinner, or whether they’ll go to the weekly tenant meeting on Thursday nights. She likes waking up in the same bed every morning, and she likes that he sleeps on his stomach when he’s actually comfortable in a space, splayed and cheek rumpled on his pillow, an arm always extended toward her, draped over her. She likes the weight, the reassurance of it. And in the mornings he is slow to wake, all soft murmurings and soft eyes, still shut even when she presses her lips to his temple, though a smile will usually start to curl smug when she does. Good morning, good morning. It is good, all of it, so good that it makes the dormant hunger hurt a little bit less.

They eat breakfast together, leaning against the kitchen counter. Eggs and their golden tears splitting and spilling on their plates, strong coffee that he takes black and she takes with cream. Their mouths work hard around normal. She packs lunches for them both, late summer again, tomatoes again, sandwiches again, the way that he made them. And on her break at work she does her best to get it down, pinching the crust off first before eating the rest. But no, that other hunger doesn’t go away. It makes sounds a little sharper, and lights achingly brighter, it makes the steady beat of the sun fierce. But she thinks she can manage it, because she wants all this normal so much more, hunger for hunger, and want for want, a careful game of tipping the scales.

Joel’s birthday is in a few weeks. She’s been working on a painting for him, difficult to keep it a secret with the way he is always over or under her shoulder, a hum in his throat because that’s beautiful, baby, you work so beautiful. But somehow she’s managed to keep it hidden. And today she picks up two fresh tubes of paint, pigments that she needs to finish her work. She’s painting a sunset for him, a landscape that they both know, a wound in the earth, that canyon that they visited once. She hopes he’ll like it. She thinks he will.

She always gets home later than he does these days because he got a promotion, baby, big man, good man who got a promotion, baby, who’s a boss now, baby, working with his hands, baby, good, honest work, baby. He's already showered, hair damp and dripping dark down the back of his t-shirt, the small slide of muscle as he stands over the stove and stirs something that smells good. That same hum in his throat when she twines her arms around his stomach and presses her face into the back of his neck, deep inhale because he smells like that good, clean soap he always uses.

And it’s all the quiet, normal things, greetings, and how was your day, and it was good, baby, how was yours, and mmhmm, good, this looks good, you look good, good, good. He turns in her arms and smacks a kiss to her mouth that makes her laugh, makes her hungry.

“I got some new paints.”

“Oh yeah?” Somehow, squirreling around each other, he tucks her into his side, arm easy and slung around her shoulders while he continues to stir pasta and sauce in simmering pots, steam and savor washing over their faces and turning skin tacky and flushed.

“Mmhmm.”

“Gonna paint something beautiful, baby?” Baby, baby, baby, his cheeks round with the word every time. She especially likes it, usually late at night, or early in the morning, when he slurs and stumbles over Maevey baby, Maevey, Maevey, Maevey. Heavy and sweet like thick syrup in his throat and it nearly brings her to tears it’s so nice coming from his mouth.

“I’m gonna try.”

“Always beautiful, always make things so beautiful.” It’s almost absent-minded the way he says it, intent on getting food on plates with only one free hand, but it still makes her stomach swoop and buoy something awful.

They eat dinner, and they sit on the couch, and he watches her work on a different painting until the sun slips under and washes everything down dark. And they get ready for bed, moving around each other in a routine they don’t even have to think about, settle down around each other and turn out the lights, quiet whisperings of love, touch that expects more of itself for a very long time, easy, patient, soft. When she feels and hears his breath slip into that slow resonance of sleep, she moves as quietly as she can in getting out of bed. She’s been hiding his painting in the hall closet where they keep their winter coats tucked. They have winter coats now.

She works in the quiet clutch of the night, eyes squinting in the dim light she allows for herself, working partly from memory, and partly from mythology of a place in their shared past. The painting will be finished soon. She thinks she’ll have to give it to him early if that’s the case, giddy with the idea of finally sharing it with him.

When she’s satisfied with her progress, still night, still close and dark and quiet, she tucks the painting back into the closet, careful not to let anything brush against it while it dries. And when she returns to bed, Joel is still asleep, on his stomach now with his arm outstretched toward her side of the bed. Nothing is easy like it is to slip back under with him.

She’s going to finish the painting tonight. The thought makes her rush a bit in closing the store. It takes her three tries to finally get the key to click into the lock. If she does finish it, she thinks she might have to wake him up right then and there to show it to him. And she floats home on the prospect of that, smiling, easy greetings to the people she passes on her way up to the apartment.

“Joel?” A fine whisper of worry when she doesn’t find him in the kitchen making dinner. He must have had a longer day at work, she figures, just now getting home and getting cleaned up because she can see the light slipping down the hall from the bathroom.

And the rest happens in a strange, slow unraveling.

Later, much later, he will tell her that she screamed when she opened the bathroom door. She will not remember that. What she will remember, the awful resignation, that understanding like a small death, that she was never going to be able to walk out of her own myth. And the blood on clean, white tile that had never seen blood before. And blood on him, on his hands and on his face and down his shirt and all over and all over and all over.

Later, much later, he will tell her that he thought he was going to die when she told him not to touch her, when she skittered back so hard she tripped and fell in the hallway when he reached for her. What she will never tell him, she sometimes wishes she died then and there.

From the glimpse she caught, there is very little left of what he has done, only remnant viscera in the bathtub. But she doesn’t see any more than that, because she is on the ground and she is pressing her back up close against the wall as far from him as she can get and she is sobbing and yes, she is screaming. Ruinous, wretched ribbons of sound ripping through her chest. It is a mourning sound. And he drops down to his knees, reaches in the space between them, but thinks better of it with the way she shrinks away from him. Pink streaks of tears down his face, he pulls at his hair in something that looks like agony. He cries with her, and he prays to her. Like a chant, like an invocation, like one last plea for salvation, I’m sorry, I’m so tired, I’m sorry, I was so tired, I’m sorry, I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I love you, please, I’m sorry, please. And she cries harder at the broken sound of his wails, fingernails clawing at her chest like she might be able to plunge through skin and muscle and find the sick, stuttered beat of her heart that is in such perfect pain. The horrible truth is she had already forgiven him the moment she opened the bathroom door. The horrible truth, they are in this myth together.

Eventually, when there is little left for her to mourn, the cries stop, everything swollen and slumped and sodden. She doesn’t wince or recoil when he reaches for her now, crawling to her on his knees, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing the crown of his head into her stomach, still shivering in his sobs. And because she has already forgiven him, it is hardly difficult for her palms to find the shake in his spine. She doesn’t even have to think about it, holding him a little tighter when his hands grasp at the fabric of her shirt.

Still, pain. Later, much later, she does not let herself think of that day too often. Of the painting that was never finished. That was left in the hall closet to dry with a sunset that wasn’t yet complete. Because if she does think of it for too long, that pain will tear open inside her all over again, and it will turn her hateful, and she doesn’t want that, not for him, not when he tries to show her how sorry he is every day. Sorry that normal ended like that. Sorry that there was always going to be another leaving.

They leave, together, the next morning, silent as a grave. And in all the years of wandering that follow, they never return to New Mexico, a space sealed off like a tomb of the past, of a promise that could never have been kept.

…

“Are you cold?”

“A little, but it feels nice.” Still, he doesn’t think twice about offering his shirt to her from where it had stayed dry and folded at the edge of the lake, warmed by the sun and clinging to the pearling damp on her skin. It’s summer again, and they are in some in-between like they always are, and he is trying to find what joy he can for her like he always is. And it is a good day, one of their better ones, so she tries for what she can of a smile from behind the tuck of her knees up against her chest, squinting in the bright halo around him. He smiles too, a shy, small thing that looks like relief, and when he curls his arm around her shoulders, she lets him, tucks into his side, and they sit at the edge of a lake in the in-between, soft grass and mud and the mild kippering of insects all around them, baking in the sun. When he holds her like this, when normal starts to creep in, so do the tears, but she tamps them down with a hum in her throat, some song that he sighs at, tucks his face into the hollow of her neck so he can feel the thrum of it from the source. He holds her like he is waiting for her to shatter, something desperate, but something fragile. And she drags her fingers through his hair, now drying in fine waves beneath the sun, and it is a moment that will have to be enough. She is learning what to hold onto, and what to let go.

“Joel?” He hums his listening, though he keeps his face ducked down to let her continue her ministrations.

“We should probably leave soon.”

“Yeah, we should.” And it is this string of words over and over again, the finely stitched pattern of their lives held in the cradle of these few words. She thinks that she has accepted this, settled around this, grown around the rot until it has become something else. Sometimes, she wonders if they are real, if she is real. Watch two myths walk away from the edge of a lake. It is summer, and two myths are holding each other in their arms. It’s only real if you watch. The rest of the time, they define real for themselves. Real in touch, in sun on skin, in mouths and hands on skin. They make each other real within their own myth. All of the time, they are in love. Some of the time, they are happy.

But before this, before now, before all the miles they have crawled in the time following that staying that turned into a leaving, she refused to eat for another two years, despite his coaxing and cajoling. And it weakened her, made her mean and sharp, and eventually withdrawn, curled like a corpse in the coarse sheets of motel beds, letting her eyes glaze and glass in the glow of the television. Lover turned patient, any care and keeping was done by his hands, moving her in a pleading pattern of preservation. Please, baby, I need you to eat, I love you I know you love me so eat, all you have to do for me is eat. All she offered in response when he would start to pray to her like that, her palm lifting in the air, and dropping back down as if judgment had been passed. In the night, he curled his body around hers, and it was the strongest she got to feel, him weeping against her spine. And in the waking day, death seemed inevitable, seemed like grace, and one day, she told him in what voice she had left that she would like him to, to her, of her, if the time came soon. And she hoped the time would come soon. And he got very angry, it shocked her how angry he got. Voice like thunder and lightning in his hands, shattering whatever would break against the walls of their motel room. The vision of a man who did not know what else to do. The vision of a man losing. And that broken, beating thing inside of her lurched because she loves him. Loves him, loves him, loves him. And so she eats with him. And so she lives with him. And so they walk through this myth together. Her in the passenger seat and she takes one of his hands in both of hers and keeps it for herself in her lap and he lets her. How could they be monsters? How can this be called monstrous? They are in love. They are in wretched love.

And before this, before now, when a new couple moved into that apartment in New Mexico, clean, white tile clean and white again, ready to fill the rooms with their own kind of love, full and good, they found a near-finished painting in the hall closet. A painting of a wound in the earth, and the flame of a sunset. They thought that it was beautiful.

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller #tlou #tlou fanfiction #joel miller angst #joel miller fluff #joel miller story #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfic #joel miller fic #joel miller au #joel miller imagine #down to the ankles

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cepheustarot · 7 months

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Will you achieve your goal? What needs to be done to achieve it?

Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur. You build your own life and destiny.

Pick a pile. Choose one or more pictures. Trust your intuition.

Pile 1: you will achieve the goal, and here I see people who have a common goal with someone, or are connected with people, with a certain person. People can also help you achieve your goal. As I see it, here some may have lost their way, find themselves in a dead end situation and the actions you are taking to resolve this situation do not help. You are in search of a solution, come up with new strategies, new plans, try to look at everything from different angles, objectively assess your situation. The cards say that in order to move on, you need to abandon the old strategy, actions that you already do out of habit or automatically and try something new for yourself. Here i am talking about the fact that you need to try something that at first glance you would consider unsuitable for yourself, like: "this is strange, not in my style, I would think about this last turn", in general, try something new, unusual for you, to go beyond the usual, that's what I mean. And just people can help you take the first steps towards discovering something new and unusual. I thought it necessary to pull card with advice for you, it says: give yourself a second chance. Perhaps you have already tried something before, but it didn't work out, so it's worth going back to it again and trying again. I understand that my explanations may sound very vague, but the tarot readings are common to everyone and I try to describe it in such a way that it fits at least most of the options. In any case, I believe in you and that you will cope and achieve success!

Pile 2: you will achieve the goal, I see that you are determined to achieve your goal. you yourself possess such qualities as intelligence, insight, accept any challengs, you are one of those whom competition and rivalry motivates, sets up to reach heights, to be better than others, than everyone else. And you need to continue to maintain this attitude in order to achieve what you want. But be careful, do not be arrogant, because competitors can get ahead of you and because of this you will fall into complete despondency, the desire to do something will disappear, you give up. It is also possible that you are a workaholic who work day and night, you do not know what rest is and therefore often burn out, which then results in apathy. But if you have already lost your attitude and are in a pessimistic state, then you should remember why you did not give up earlier, which helped you move on. remember what you have already achieved and remember that your condition is not eternal, it will pass. You will definitely achieve what you want, believe in yourself.

Pile 3: You will not reach the goal, there is a chance that the goal that you have now seems no longer relevant and you will change it to something that suits you more at this time. I took out the cards to clarify why you will not achieve the goal, and here I see that many people have this goal associated with close people with whom you have made plans. Maybe you are now going through a breakup, divorce, loss of a person, or you are disappointed in a person and do not want to have anything to do with him anymore, because you saw his other side, saw that he lied to you, did not keep promises or something like that. You could also have a misunderstanding that is difficult to resolve, because you and your interlocutor are very stubborn and cannot find a compromise. Also, someone may have a division of things, money, property, etc. by inheritance, and perhaps you did not get what you expected or did not get anything at all, although you were promised a lot. Here we can also talk about business, for example, an unsuccessful transaction took place or your investments in something did not pay off and competitors pushed you out, ahead of you. In fact, all these failures will end and what you have lost will return to you many times better, more, so try not to hang up your nose. I am sure that everything will get better in your life and you will cope with everything, you are stronger than you think.

Thank you for reading! I will be glad of any feedback <3

#pick a card #pick a card reading #tarot #tarot cards #tarot reading #pick a pile

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hypostatic-oath · 7 months

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OVERSEER BRAINROT

(This is like. Me rambling. This is poorly explained and my grasp on the canon lore is iffy but this is just how I imagine/will write the Overseer - aka the player - in SAGAU. This perspective will likely change as I understand more of the lore, but for now, here's some crumbs.)

Overseer whose role is, more than simply observing, to keep the canon going.

Experiencing the story, and that includes collecting characters and learning of their lore, exploring the world, building our teapot, etc is our reward for playing our role - and our role is to push the story forward. It doesn't progress without us. We're not Teyvat's creator, but we are the one making each of our worlds move (we're the mover we're the shaker we're the headline maker). If we did not take action, the twins never would've been separated - they would've stayed forever in that choosing screen, held permanently in that moment. If we had not chosen to walk forward and touch the statue, the Traveler would never have gotten the Anemo elemental powers. Would've never helped Dvalin. Signora would've never taken Venti's gnosis. Rex Lapis would never have "died". Every single other major event wouldn't happen.

The player is the being that makes the Canon Events happen - not directly, but through making sure that the story progresses. (Miguel O'Hara theme plays in the background.) And this can happen at whichever speed we decide.

Now, while the fact that we are the ones making the story go by could be used to argue that the Overseer would be the one to make the passage of time, that is not quite true. The days in Teyvat do not depend on the story progression. Months can pass before those two Fatui in Mondstadt (I love them) have any new gossip to share about current events, or they can pass through five new topics in a span of days, depending on how fast the player runs through the quests. Time is not the deciding factor in these characters' fates. It doesn't matter how long it's been since Signora died - Viktor (the Fatui guy at the Cathedral) will not be stationed at his new post unless the player finishes his comission. Teppei's condition won't worsen with time, either. If we don't continue the quest, we can stand next to him for weeks in game before he passes. Thus, I propose that the Overseer is more of a god of Fate (not to mention, the god of time position is taken). To add to this, the things we use to pull for characters are called Fates. Intertwined Fates, Acquaint Fates, both circle back to the same idea. Hangouts can be seen as a sort of exploration of this power - with the ability to choose one of five or six fates for that character (if only Character Quests had that too). It is, however, one of the few times we have control over which version of the story is told. Otherwise, we are mostly the energy that moves it along.

It's not just that it's a canon event and we cannot interfere - it's that it is literally our purpose to make sure it happens, even if we don't like it. We're here to witness and progress the story - and bad things can happen in stories, regardless of what the characters in it want. So right now I am having some Villain Overseer brainrot, not because they want to be evil on purpose, but because some character decides to pull a Miles Morales and say "I'mma do my own thing" and mess up the story's flow. For someone trying to change the course of the story, the force that pushes events forward is obviously Not Good. I can see Fontaine characters seeing the Traveler's arrival as an ill omen, a sign that the prophecy will come true. They're divided, because on one hand, the Traveler has a good reputation, someone helpful, kind, a hero. But the Overseer's attention signifies that events will inevitably unfold. So Lyney invites them to be part of a show. Furina threatens to arrest the Traveler. Navia asks them out for tea. As long as they can keep the Overseer's attention on other matters, the event they dread won't happen. (I won't talk much abt Neuvillette rn becayse spoilers)

Enter eventual Arlechinno boss fight (it hasn't happened yet, but I do hope we get one) - she's the one who tries to fight the Traveler head on, to personally put a stop to it once and for all. Perhaps the Overseer has no ill will, but that doesn't matter. Not when their presence means that the clock is ticking faster and faster every day.

Now for a more lighthearted thought, Isekai'd Overseer who doesn't really have a concept of urgency. No important event will occur without them present, so they have no qualms in arriving on the day after the scheduled date, confident that as long as it is between 18:00 - 23:00 the reservation will still be placed and people will be at their seats as if it was always meant to be that way.

So the Overseer walks into a bar, with a face too fresh for someone who hasn't slept in what the people of Teyvat percieve to have been months, just coming in from the Spiral Abyss, and asks the bartender where their friends are.

"I don't know? Master Kaeya usually shows up at this hour, but the rest of your usual group is probably tending to their affairs."

"Odd. They were supposed to be here by now. We had a big dinner planned." The person in front of him, who Charles is more and more sure definitely looks somewhat off in a way he can't quite pinpoint, seems confused. "There was a reservation and everything. In Kaeya's name, I believe."

"Well, I'm sorry, but the last reservation Master Kaeya placed here was a month ago."

"Again, weird. He said he was going to place one. Oh, well. When the others get here, just let them know I'll be on one of the big tables upstairs, alright? And you can put everything on my tab."

#i would very much like to know whether the traveler/paimon/player has ties to celestia #but judging by the fact that neuvillette is chill with us I'd say that if we do then the dragon sovereigns dont know #Speaking of the sovereigns I ABSOLUTELY ADORE THEM #sagau #genshin sagau #self aware genshin au #genshin impact sagau #cube.rambles #this is all over the place but I wanted to get my overseer brainrot going

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cranetreegang · 1 year

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Under the Rainfall, I See You - Ominis x FemReader

FRESH OFF THE PRESS! COME GET YOUR FRESH HOT OMINIS FANFIC! EXTRA FLUFFY WITH A SIDE OF FLUFF!

If you have seen this -> Daredevil Kisses Elektra <- then you know what's up. Like this is just how I believe Ominis sees when he's got the wand. You CANNOT change my mind. Okay maybe you can, im easily swayed, but for now, this is my belief on the subject.

Summary: As the two head back from a trip to Hogsmeade, a sudden rainstorm may dampen the mood, or show them more of each other than they thought possible.

Word Count: ~ 2,200 words

Read my other Ominis Fics Here!

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Her eyes glance up at the crimson and golden leaves under the cloudy afternoon sky. Bird’s chirp and fly between the branches above her and Ominis as they walk the leaf covered path. She inhales the fresh, cool air and she can’t quell her exultation at the changing of seasons occurring around them.

“There’s more just up ahead.” Ominis informs her with a slight grin.

She can’t stop her smile as she turns her gaze to the boy next to her. He has a grip of her parcel from Hogsmead tight under his arm, refusing any and all her efforts to let her carry the package herself. He has his wand in his hand; the red pulsing emitting at a steady beat. His robes hang off his shoulders and his suit underneath is freshly pressed. His gaze is directed in front of him and his features are formed in a soft, easy smile. She enjoys gazing upon him when he’s like this, she concludes. He comes to a stop then turns away from her, to somewhere off the path.

“There. Do you see them?” He wonders.

She forces her attention to where he’s facing and sure enough she can see the glow of the Lacewing Flies poking between the foliage. She takes out her jar and runs over to the cluster of bugs. She captures as many as she can into the glass container then places it in her bag with the other three she’s gotten today. She runs back over to her awaiting friend, who has amusement dancing over his pale features.

“You laugh. But, when you run out of Lacewings again in Potions, you’ll be thanking me.”

“I shall go ahead and pledge my gratitude now for your infallible generosity then.” His snicker makes her smile widen.

“How do you tell the difference between the Lacewings, and all the other bugs? They all sound the same to me.”

“A perk of my condition.” He dryly replies. “They have a certain chitter. I don’t think I can aptly describe it. I just know it’s the sound of a Lacewing.”

She pulls out one of the jars and brings her ear to it. She closes her eyes and listens to the flies.

“How fascinating. They do chitter. I’ve never noticed before.” She holds the glass jar in front of her with amazement. She stuffs the jar back into her sack then looks over to Ominis. The boy who sees more than she ever possibly could. It sends her heart thundering in her chest the longer she stares at him. “I appreciate your patience and for entertaining my ingredient gathering.”

He bows his head, “My pleasure. Especially considering your promise to share some of those ingredients with me.”

She giggles, “Of course. Although, you may need them far more than I. What with your tendency to burn your brews.”

He lets out a sigh, “I truly detest that class. I look forward to the day when I no longer have to endure the stench of whatever questionable experiment Weasley decides to concots that day.”

“You must admit, there’s nothing better than listening to Professor Sharp scolding Garreth.”

He nods with a chuckle, “It never gets old. Literally. It’s the same tongue-lashing every time. I swear, I think Garreth does it on purpose to rile up Professor Sharp.”

“At least it does take the attention off your rather horrid concoctions.” She bumps into his shoulder with a smirk. Ominis gives her a playful shove back with a scoff.

“They aren’t that horrid.”

His shoulders slump enough for her to notice and she bites her lip at his dampened pride.

“You know, you could always ask me for assistance. I don’t mind. And I’m not half bad at brewing. As you well know.” She offers, her voice betraying how hopeful she is for his acceptance.

His lips dip into a frown, ready to dismiss the proposal, when his mind gets the better of him, “I may take you up on that.”

She gives a sharp nod, “I hope you do.”

She admires Ominis for his strong independence. At the same time, she wishes he would be more willing to reach out for help. She often worries he keeps his troubles to himself because he fears pity from others more so than suffering on his own. As much as she wishes to press the matter further, she leaves it with the chance he would actually take her up on her offer.

“Thank you again for coming with me.” She says as they get within eyesight of the castle’s gate. “Hogsmead is just so much better with a friend. And I was most pleased you agreed to come.”

Ominis nods, “I couldn’t agree more. And I too was pleased at your offer. Although, I’m not sure how you’ve managed to get Mister Pippin to adore you so.”

“I may have helped him with a rather difficult delivery. And he most certainly does not adore me. I’m sure he’s like that with all his patrons.” She dismisses with a light laugh and a roll of her eyes.

He gives her a raise of his dark blonde brow with a matching smirk, “He most certainly does too. My ears work just fine. And I heard him sing all those praises about you in perfect clarity. Meanwhile, I was barely acknowledged as anything more than a nuisance.”

She giggles with a bite of her bottom lip, “Almost sounds like you’re a bit envious.”

“Me? Envious?” He chuckles with a slight shake of his head, “A preposterous notion.”

“Uh huh. Sounds like something someone completely overtaken with jealousy would say.”

“Is that so?” His cheeks are sore from the constant smile he’s been sporting since she first asked him to come with her.

He’s ready to tease her further when his skin prickles. He pauses mid stride, turning his ear more to the skies. There’s a subtle shift in the wind, the temperature dropping ever so slightly, and he can smell the fresh moisture in the air. So much so, he can feel it on the tips of his fingers. He moves her package to be tucked under his robes to protect it.

“Ominis? Is everything alright? Are there more Lacewings nearby?” She comes closer to him and he focuses back on her.

He smiles, “Yes. Everything’s fine. It’s just about to rain, is all.”

She stares up at the sky in wonder. She hadn’t noticed the sky had darkened into a baleful gray.

“How could you possibly know that?” She whispers in amazement.

He smirks, “Another one of my many quirks.”

A fat drop of rain lands on his head then on his shoulder.

“Well, we should get you inside, lest we get wet. Don’t want this wonderful day to end with us getting sick.” She says while turning to head towards the castle. His hand barely catches her forearm, making her freeze in place with surprise.

“Wait.” He says in a near whisper. His mouth opens and shuts several times, his brows furrowing while he shifts between his feet. More droplets of rain land on them, but she doesn’t rush him into speaking. Instead, she puts his hand into her own, giving him an encouraging squeeze.

“What is it?” She asks.

“Stay out here with me.” He finally says. “Just for a moment.”

Her head tilts to the side at his request. She gives him a soft smile then nods, “If that’s what you wish. May I ask why though? I don’t mean to sound presumptuous, but you don’t seem the type to be dancing out in the rain.”

“What if I were to say that is indeed the reason? Would you think less of me?”

“Not in the slightest.” She replies with no hesitation. “I may tease you about your dancing though.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Ominis has a faint smile as he turns his face up towards the sky. He knows she’s watching him, waiting for his true answer. The feeling of her gaze on him, shoots hot currents throughout his body.

“Each raindrop, as it lands, creates a sound. And for a little while, it’s like I can see.” He lowers his head towards where she is. “And I would like you to be here with me when that happens.”

Her chest tightens and in a quiet breath, she whispers, “Okay.”

He grins then looks back up at the sky, “Here it comes.”

She looks up as well just as several drops begin to land on them. The heavens open up and soon, they’re in a downpour. She laughs at the coolness washing over her while Ominis turns his gaze down to her, his wand tight in his other hand. He senses the finer details of her face. The contours of her lips as they form into a relaxed smile. Her damp hair sticking to her cheeks. The way her eyes are closed as the rain lands upon her. He’s taken aback by the tranquil picture before him and he can’t find a single thing he would change about this moment. Other than to let it last.

“Beautiful.” He whispers to himself. The word being lost to the pounding rain and distant thunder.

She lowers her head then opens her eyes to find Ominis staring right at her. Her smile widens at the sight, making his chest rise in a near silent gasp.

“Is everything alright, Ominis?”

Watching her lips move and to see his name spoken, sends a shiver through his whole being.

“Yes.” He manages to say. “Never better.”

He looks as if he’s been stricken. She’s not sure what the source of his timidness is. But, with how he’s looking at her…

“What do you see?” She asks.

He takes in her concerned expression. The slight pinch of her brows which carry into her voice. The tilt of her lips forming the beginnings of a frown.

In a surge of intrepidness, his hand leaves hers and travels up to her face. She watches with wide eyes, her breath caught in her throat, as his fingers gently glide over her cheek. Her eyes flutter shut in an attempt to feel only his touch amongst the raindrops. He tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear with a soft smile, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone, then he lowers his hand away. Her eyes open to find him in a similar state as herself.

She’s not sure what to do, her mind ceasing to form any sort of rational thought. He shivers at her intense stare.

“Oh, Ominis. You’re cold.” She smiles, reaching for his hand. “Let’s get you back before you freeze to death.”

He can only nod and let her tug him back towards the castle. He can’t stop his trembling. Not when every few seconds she looks back at him with a sweet smile. He understands now how a smile can be warm because he doesn’t feel a morsel of the cold rain upon him. Just her hand in his.

They burst through the large wooden doors into the safety of the castle. She giggles at their drenched state.

“I don’t suppose you know a spell to dry us off.”

Ominis shakes his head, “I’d imagine Incendio would do the trick. Or burn off our clothes entirely.”

She snorts then casts Incendio, “Only one way to find out.”

She hovers the crackling flame just over his arm and begins the slow process of drying themselves. Her eyes keep darting up to his face, ensuring he’s not in any pain or discomfort. But, to also take in his features with being so close. His cologne is still present despite the overall fresh fragrance of rainshower upon both of them. His lips hold a soft smile and his silver, moon-like eyes, while staring off into the distance, are serene. His dark blonde hair is plastered around his pale face in an uncharacteristic manner from his normal tidiness. She can’t help herself as she reaches her hand up to him, similar to what he had done to her.

His lips part in surprise at her touch near his temple, but he doesn’t find the contact unwelcomed. Her fingers are adroit, as if he were a delicate porcelain doll, as she moves his hair back into place. Almost as quickly as it happens, she’s back to drying the both of them. He’s thankful at his innate ability to keep his most extreme emotions concealed, as he could only imagine what he must look like otherwise. After a few minutes, she ceases the spell with a satisfied nod.

“Should be enough to not slosh around the castle now.”

He examines his less damp state with a grin, “Not bad. Thank you for that.”

“Of course.” She says in a quiet voice.

As the silence between them stretches on longer and longer, the worse their nerves get. She wants to say something, anything, but her tongue and mind are far too numb to speak.

“May I walk you back to your dorm?” He offers.

“Yes.” She replies all too quickly for her liking. “I mean-, uh, yes. I would like that.”

His smile is one of relief, and when her hand finds his, he’s all but elated.

“Lead the way then.” He smiles.

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AN: Gonna be real, i tried pretty hard with this one to be a banger. But, I fear I may have tweaked it too much and now it's just mid. ugh. i love staring at something for so long and just end up hating it. that's kind of how i feel about it. but like i love it still???

idk, let me know what y'all think! love hearing any feedback <3 thanks for reading!

also, let's just pretend that Incendio is like a tiny flame at times, and she didn't set them both on fire :)

#ominis gaunt #ominis x reader #hogwarts legacy #fanfic #fanfiction #hogwarts legacy fanfic #fluff #ominis gaunt x mc #ominis gaunt x reader #creative writing #ominis x mc #ominis x you #ominis x oc #ominis gaunt x you

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trillscienceofficer · 17 days

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I've been crediting the way Chakotay dismisses B'Elanna's vision in “Barge of the Dead” mostly to the events of “The Fight” and how Chakotay was (understandably) afraid of the barrage of images from the depths of his mind, and how this fed into the fears he has about his grandfather's condition and his own predisposition to it. As a result, he is more diffident about helping other people assigning meaning to their visions, not trusting himself as he used to any longer. After rewatching “Mortal Coil” though I think Chakotay is, also understandably, very wary of validating anyone's mystical experiences (or lack thereof) surrounding death, because one such experience very nearly brought Neelix to suicide and Chakotay almost didn't realize it in time. The way B'Elanna's talks about her own vision can't not recall what Neelix went through, in Chakotay's mind; B'Elanna almost died, and now she feels like she needs to die again. Add to this the history B'Elanna has with self-harm and unnecessary risk-taking behavior from “Extreme Risk”, a history that Chakotay knows all too well, and his mind is made up. He cannot allow this to happen on his watch, especially not to B'Elanna, so he dismisses her recollection of the vision, he downplays it even if it comes across as him not accepting B'Elanna's culturally-informed perspective on her own experiences. In short, I think a mix of fear and guilt is what makes Chakotay unable to appreciate the difference between Neelix' nihilism and his loss of purpose and B'Elanna's longing for meaning and closure through ritual.

I don't think the Voyager writers thought this through as much as I am here, mind you. They likely just had Chakotay play the 'voice of reason' because they couldn't have Janeway doing it, or the parallelism between B'Elanna finding peace with (the memory of) her mother and B'Elanna's acceptance of Janeway's trust would have collapsed, making the episode less incisive. (We can also talk about how yet again the show paints Janeway as a mother figure, in my opinion the lowest-hanging fruit possible, but I digress.) That it sort of contradicts Chakotay's pre-established characterization and background was likely not a big consideration, which is unfortunate. However if we don't take the 'reset button' for granted, this behavior from Chakotay can be taken a sign of the way he changed throughout the show, even it's sort of negative character development. He's more afraid, and more rigid in his understanding of others than at the beginning of the journey, especially when it comes to B'Elanna. The years of survival on Voyager have taken a toll on him. I obviously still think he was wrong to dismiss B'Elanna and that the show needed to handle that conversation between them with a lot more care for both characters, but keeping “Mortal Coil” and “Extreme Risk” in mind definitely helps with lessening the sting of a scene that otherwise seems to come out of nowhere.

#ep: barge of the dead #chakotay #b'elanna torres #neelix #voy #suicide mention #self-harm mention #<- normal show that makes me write these tags in multiple posts #get closer i promise i'll be having just a regular amount of thoughts about this episode :)

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alienpossession · 4 months

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Body a Day 30: Pecs

He was skinny and pretty much self-aware, shy nerd. The idea of going to the gym terrified him, especially with the fact that he was homeschooled all the way until what supposed to be his senior year now. But then, the alien that crash-landed on his backyard during the summer changed the course of his life, because not only the alien physically manipulated the nerd, it mentally conditioned him to ensure its expansion

Gone are the days when his days comprises with only hours of tutoring and video games. Even during winter, he still worked himself out in the gym for 3-4 hours per day.

He would hit the gym in the sluttiest possible outfit to maximize the seductive impact he now possessed, and he's not shy to make the advance if he spotted that the other party is interested or taking too long of a glance. Six months normally wouldn't generate such drastic changes in normal people, but the nerd has turned 180 degree different with the ballooning pecs, rippling abs and sensational quads that put people in awe or envy due to its perfect proportion. The tattoos added some nice rugged addition to his look, and the beard and thickening hair helped to make him look like at least a college senior rather than a barely-turned-18 years old high school senior.

He's not shy to show off his body nowadays, and a lot of the town folks wondered how on Earth a studly piece of meat like him never entered formal schooling. Because if there's one thing the town lacks off is a sport hero they can rally behind, and he seemed like he built for that. They all remembered that the reasons mentioned by his parents were mostly about their son social anxiety and also frail physique, but nothing's frail or socially inept exuded from the walking sex god. When confronted about the massive changes (and the frequent sex he has with plenty of the townsfolk), as if glazed or something, his parents just said that the nerd is still their sweet, loving son who cannot possibly do such things accused to them. The townsfolk simply left in the blind that the nerd's parents already mind-fucked by their own alien-infused-son and just see a parents loving their son unconditionally. Other than that, the townsfolk also left in the blind that the people around them that already fucked by the former nerd practically became an unwilling vessel for the budding aliens that grow inside them undetected. Be it men or women, the seed can grow to take control of the human they were laid into, and no one can even tell when the person's already not themselves any longer and the alien already over-ride the control of their body. The parents are one of them, and some of his early sexual conquest too, but sooner or later, everyone will take the seed and get splashed by the water-like substance coming out from his lactating huge pecs that will help the growing process of the seed on their body and getting mind-fucked by it when the time has come. By the time they realized that inside their body, there's another consciousness lurking in the dark, it's going to be too late already to reverse or halt the process as they will succumb to the control of the invading alien. With this rate, he will help everyone on his wrap before Easter next year and then off he goes to university where he can reach wider populace.

---

This marks the end of my Body a Day posting activity. Thanks @max-the-many for the prompt, I wouldn't get to 100 posts this fast without the self-push coming to scratch off the prompt list lol. I think I'll take a break (2 weeks or so) from posting unless something really come to my mind. Thanks for all the support!

#body a day #alien possession #alien takeover #male possession #alien expansion #male muscle growth

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idyllic-affections · 11 months

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Hiii^^ hope youre having a great day/night!! can i ask for platonic Tighnari and his child? where his child got a fever where its temperature hit 100 degrees, like how would he deal with that. If only its fine by you to do! take care and stay hydrated!!

what does tighnari do when his child is ill?

summary. how does tighnari handle his child's illness?

trigger & content warnings. fevers, descriptions of medicine and pills.

tropes, pairings, fic length, & other notes. comfort. tighnari & biological child!reader. 0.5k words. they/them pronouns used for reader.

author's thoughts. hello lovely!! i went with biological child!reader bc i think that would be a cute dynamic, just tighnari and his lil fox child <3 as someone who lives in a VERY hot state in the united states of america, i have had my fair share of experiences with the heat and fevers and whatnot. heat stroke sucks. getting EXTREMELY sick sucks. one time i had a fever of 106°F. that was crazy. pleaae remember to drink water this summer, especially if you live in a hot place like i do! dehydration can be very very serious.

tighnari, although worried, is confident in his ability to handle his child's fevers.

tighnari is no stranger to heat stroke.

he's no stranger to being extremely sick, either, much as he hates when it happens.

on top of all that, he is no stranger to illnesses and ailments. he's a forest watcher. he's seen his fair share of conditions, so he's more than qualified to take care of his kid.

(he also might be just a little posessive—he dreads the thought of letting some other doctor taking care of them, only to make them even more sick. he's a worried mother fr. he'd be furious with himself and with the hypothetical doctor if something like that ever happened.)

he's very doting, but almost in an overbearing way LMAO

tighnari has them take medication on a very regular schedule. it's as if he has a sixth sense for when it's time for them to take their medicine again.

he may craft the medicine himself using local flora, but if their fever is bad enough, he'll go to sumeru city to pick up pills or liquid medicine (depending on what his child can take; as a person who can't take most pills, i totally understand being unable to swallow them). in the time he's gone, he usually has collei watch them. he trusts her.

he also sets a damp rag on their forehead, changing it every now and then once he feels like its absorbed enough heat from their body.

tighnari just stays very close to them in general if possible. he's worried, and he's noticed that they get a little fidgety and restless in their fever-induced delirious state if he's not around. when their fever delirium is at its peak, they might even cry if they can't hear or smell or otherwise sense him.

if he's busy with something he absolutely cannot reschedule or push back, he'll leave them with a clothing item of his. it's not the same, but it's better than nothing.

he often ends up sat at their bedside because of this. he can't have them stressing out; it'll both make their fever worse and make it harder for them to recover.

tighnari also does his best to keep them cool. sumeru is both hot and humid, and he knows from experience that their ears and tail will retain a lot of that heat, so he does a lot to keep their overall body temperature down.

he'll often end up carrying them to the river below gandharva ville so they can cool off like that. he'll carry them back, too. they may be too unwell to walk straight and he doesn't want to risk them falling or otherwise hurting themselves.

another thing he does is makes sure they eat enough.

they may not want to nor feel like they need to, but they do need to eat. if he somehow fails to coax them into eating, he'll get collei. it's hard to deny collei when she cooks specifically for them.

tighnari is said to be a little irritable when they're ill.

best not to ask him any dumb questions if his kid is sick (there are no dumb questions... not until his beloved child isn't doing well LMAO)

you think "teacher mode" is bad under normal circumstances? wait until you ask him something silly when his kid is ill.

yeah...

he's overall just very doting and attentive and worried for their health. everything goes back to normal once they're on their feet again <3

please consider reblogging, it helps me out quite a lot!

#aphelion's headcanons 🌸#favoniuslibrary #astronetwrk #platonic genshin x reader #platonic genshin impact #platonic genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #genshin x child reader #genshin impact x child reader #tighnari x reader #tighnari x child reader

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racefortheironthrone · 5 months

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Do you think Charles Xavier is a good person? Or, if not, how close to the mark does he consistently land?

"In judging a man like Gandhi one seems instinctively to apply high standards, so that some of his virtues have passed almost unnoticed."

"...Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one’s preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others."

("Reflections on Gandhi," George Orwell)

I've talked about this here and here, but yes, I think in order for Charles Xavier to work as a character he has to be a good person. I would argue that the Charles Xavier of the Silver and Bronze Ages was always a deeply flawed man, prone to manipulation and deception and overriding people's free will in the name of the "greater good." Later writers, in their efforts to write their own stories that seek to make Xavier even more complicated, have had a cumulative effect that eventually becomes overpowering - to the point where the complications are all that's left. As I've said before:

"In recent decades (certainly since Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis, although I would argue you see signs of it in Morrison’s New X-Men), there’s been a tendency to deal with this issue by giving Xavier such increasingly large feet of clay that it’s become an active hindrance to how the character is supposed to function within the story and vis-a-vis the audience. I would argue this created a great deal of unnecessary tension in the fandom come HOXPOX, where a significant part of the fandom was convinced that Xavier was mind-controlling characters who were supposed to have had a sincere change of mind, because if Xavier was involved, whatever he was involved with had to be bad or dangerous."

This becomes a problem of audience buy-in when you try to write stories in which Charles Xavier is supposed to be on the side of the angels, because now you have to overcome decades of the readers being conditioned to the opposite before you can get them to engage with the story on its face.

To Morrison and many of those who came after him, the answer is that Xavier is simply an exhausted concept that needs to be pushed aside, so that the franchise can be led by new characters with new ideas. With all the best will in the world, this was tried repeatedly, and it failed. First, it was "killing" Xavier so that he could be replaced by Cyclops as the new leader of mutantkind on Utopia - only for Cyclops to basically do the same shit he was pissed at Xavier for having done; then in the Carey run we had Xavier's amnesia, the reconstruction of his mind by Exodus, and the retcon of his childhood connections with Mr. Sinister so that he was alive but totally distrusted; then in Avengers vs. X Men, Cyclops killed him; then in 2018 there was the whole mystery about whether his soul on the Astral Plane been swapped with or merged with the Shadow King.

After a decade of attempts to push Xavier out of the franchise, they finally gave up, in part because I think they ultimately realized that Charles Xavier is a load-bearing character for the franchise. Even just as a foil, he's too important to the themes and character dynamics, and if you try to replace him you usually end up just replicating him inside another character.

To my mind, the most successful writers to deal with Charles Xavier in recent years have been those, like Jonathan Hickman and Kieron Gillen, who have managed to lean into the idea (expressed in those Orwell quotes above) that what makes Xavier interesting and complex is precisely that he is a good man. Out of his universal love for all, he will turn the individuals he loves into pawns to be sacrificed for the cause; in order to achieve an outcome of a better world for mutants and humans, he will violate any procedural ethic; to save billions, he will trample over the free will of hundreds of thousands.

And that is precisely what ORCHIS weaponized against him to bring down Krakoa.

#xmen #xmen meta #professor x #charles xavier

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jacevelaryonswife · 1 year

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MY LOVE MY LOVE MY DARLING MY DEAREST <3333

might i request some jacaerys (our beloved) where jacaerys is made to attend aemond's betrothal party (i don't know how to explain it but like one of those things where the lord's take their unwed daughters to suggest them as a betrothal, please dm if it's confusing I AM VERY BAD WITH WORDS HELP) because you know public united front but maybe someone pulls a prank (lucerys perhaps? trying to make this fit logistically 👀) and blames it on jacaerys so he's just bumbling through before ducking under a table to hide and meets this lady who is trying desperately not to get married and is hiding? THANK YOU FOR CONSIDERING MY ANGEL <333 (sorry if this got too long my love <3)

She’s resplandent, so confident

∴pairing: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader

∴warnings a note: no one, just fluffy. I made some changes in your request to make the story more dinamic. 1,2k words.

jacaerys velaryon masterlist

Courtesy was one of the qualities shared between Prince Jacaerys and you, both externally honored with the suitors presented during Prince Aemond's engagement, but dissatisfied under the kind and grateful banner. In comparison, perhaps your case was worse than the heir of Rhaenyra Targaryen, since your lord father was basically accepting any agreement by your hand, not caring about a suitable age group of the other gentlemen. It was terrifying to sustain a false smile while feeling totally humiliated at that table, so, requesting permission to have some air before another gentleman introduces himself, you were released from your obligations to pick up one of the delights arranged on the desserts table.

So, you saw from afar a lord bearing a silver and blue coat, old enough to be your grandfather presenting himself to your father. For the seven!

Your legs were agile when you sneaked quickly trying to hide, taking advantage of the fact that some tables were empty and the attention was on the dance between the betrotheds (a surprise to see the one-eyed prince being a dancer peculiarly... bold), you hid with a slice of cake under a distant table graced by a black towel that covered it from end to end.

On the other side of the hall, Jacaerys Velaryon enchanted ladies of all ages with his charm and education, a true prince beyond the title. He was aware of his duties and knew that he needed to get married soon and have heirs, and he also couldn’t deny that a part of him was satisfied with the attention received, it was reassuring, in fact, to know that the rumors about his paternity weren’t a hindrance for the butterflies to approach. But at that moment he just needed to rest his lips after kissing so many hands in a short time. And then, approaching the dessert table, he heard a distant sneeze. Strange, there was no one in the direction of the noise. Seconds were spent looking carefully in the same direction, until another sneeze intrigued him sharply and made him go to the source of the noise. It couldn't be...

“My lady? What's going on?" He asked as he stared at your wide eyes.

"My prince!" Your exclamation was low, although scared. "Don't tell anyone, please!"

Jace quickly looked around so as not to draw attention. "Why are you hiding? Did something happen?"

"I cannot say."

"Why?"

"I cannot say! Just... leave me here." You retreated further into the table.

Amazed by the nature of the situation, the prince imitated your condition and infiltrated under the table, to your surprise and horror. "My prince, you don't have to," you whispered.

He felt he needed it, all of a sudden. "Did anyone hurt you, my lady?"

"No, no one hurt me.” Not physically, but you felt hurt and emotionally disgusted.

"Then why are you hiding? I can try to solve it, if you allow me to-"

"It's nothing, my prince, you don't have to worry," you replied, making an upset pout.

He copied your pout, looking at you carefully. Clearly questioning in the traditional way would not work, so Jace opted for a different approach.

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to pressure you. We have not yet been properly introduced, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon,” he raised his hand towards you, “honored to meet you.”

You couldn't believe that Princess Rhaenyra's son was formally introducing himself under a table because of you, seven hells, what a scandal! You presentation yourseld in a low voice, uncertain and worried about what was happening because of your.

"I don't think this is appropriate, my prince, you shouldn't be in this situation," he added.

"Neither do you, my lady, but here we are," he said, "and I would really like to know what happened to make you be here and I don't intend to leave here until I understand.

Oh dear.

"Nothing happened, it's just... my lord father and my lady mother are looking for a betrothed for me, and I just wanted some time to stretch my legs," you started, "and, a lord approached our table just now... an older lord, much older than me, and I panicked."

His mouth opened subtly. "Well... uh... I believe that your father wouldn’t accept, if that is the intention, a marriage between the two of you," he said uncertainly, seeking to reassure you with what he thought was plausible.

“My father would change me for a herd of goats, if I were favorable,” you replied bitterly, looking down.

The confusion and shock were even more evident on Velaryon's beautiful face when he heard that words. Such a fate seemed too horrifying, however, common for some ladies, unfortunately.

"My lady, I..." he stuttered a little, "I'm sorry, I don't know what to say."

"I know, it's okay."

Your weak voice denounced the opposite. Although it had been prepared for the situation, the choice of suitors had not been satisfactory, especially the last one. This was a situation that Jacaerys would not need to go through, since his mother was more flexible about it, however, it did not stop him from helping a lady as adorable as you.

"I have an idea. What if I showed up in your company? Maybe it could be a temporary distraction to your father."

Temporary, well-used term.

“It can work at the moment,” you said, maybe you can save time to find a better suitor. "Maybe... if you, my prince, could grant me a dance, so he can see."

"Well, I should have made that invitation, forgive me for being so slow," he joked, "but yes, I would be able to dance with you, my lady."

He smiled sweetly; soft brown eyes shining towards him, oh, how beautiful and kind he was! A real delight!

You replicated Prince Velaryon's smile and waited for him while analyzing the movement to leave the table without being noticed, however, at the same moment that Jace lifted the towel, Prince Lucerys widened his expressive eyes with the image.

“It's not what you're thinking,” Jacaerys seriously warned him. The heir of Driftmark quietly nodded in confusion, looking at the rest of the hall. "Are there many people close?" Jace whispered.

“No,” Luke imitated his brother's tone, watching him come out from under the table.

You wanted to sink on the ground with the astonished look of young Velaryon on your shrunken figure below waiting for the endorsement of Prince Jacaerys to leave.

"Don't tell that to anyone," he said to dear Lucerys, "let's go, my lady," he raises his arm to lead you to the salon, "where is your lotf father?" He whispered.

"A little further to the right, my prince."

Without looking directly at your family and the old lord who presented himself as a suitor to your hand, you positioned yourself in the hall together with the prince, receiving attentive looks from some ladies, the royal family and your own family. So far neither of you has chosen partners for a dance, so the whole situation was seen as suggestive for Rhaenyra Targaryen and a real dream for your mother, who didn’t bother to hide the surprise when contemplating the scene. "It's Prince Jacaerys!" She murmured to your father, who only expanded his eyes in interest, to the misfortune of the old lord.

“Call me Jace,” he smiled toothlessly at you, making your body tingle in response.

"You honor me, my- Jace, thank you for doing this."

"You're welcome, my lady.”

When the music started, another dragon danced happily with a butterfly that would come to be known as his future betrothed.

—————————————

General taglist: @chompchompluke @fan-goddess @kravitzwhore @partypoison00

#jacaerys velaryon x reader #jacaerys velaryon #jacaerys #jacaerys velaryon x you #prince jacaerys #prince jacaerys velaryon #jace velaryon #jacerys x reader #jace velaryon x you #soft fic #fluffy #hotd #fanfiction #jacaerys x you

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mylostloversbookmarks · 1 year

Note

thank you!! My request is: Joel x female reader. Age gap. They met after Joel and Ellie arrived in Jackson, they started to know each other, at first they kept it a bit like a secret but then, when things started to get more serious, they didn’t hide anymore. Things got so serious that after a while (not immediately, like a year or two) Joel asked reader to move in with him and Ellie.

Ellie loves reader and she’s more than happy that Joel found his special someone. Could you add a scene where reader is with Ellie one afternoon and they see Joel with a woman, acting really intimate, which connects to reader’s thoughts about Joel being a bit weird the previous days. She thinks he’s cheating on her, also because the woman is really close and intimate to Joel in that situation.

She wants to leave before he sees her but Joel notices her presence, tries to talk to her but doesn’t deny the accusations at first, (so a lot of angst!!!) which makes reader think she lost the love of her life.

They don’t talk for a few days and try to ignore each other when possible, despite living together. Ellie is sad and suffers from this situation. Joel loves reader too much to ruin things so he puts his pride aside and tries talking to her. They eventually talk it through, he was not cheating (choose whatever the alternative to that is!!) maybe a little fluff at the end or also something else? You choose!

also, if you have any rules or have triggers about something that I requested please let me know and change the story how you need to.

And I’m extremely sorry if this request is too long and detailed.

thank you!!!

Guiding Lights - a Joel Miller one shot.

Characters - Joel Miller x Reader

Word Count - 8.7K

Warnings/Tags - 18+ only Minors dni. Typical canon language, Swearing, Angst, Fluff, Alcohol consumption, , Sus!Joel, Soft!Joel, insecurities, suspected cheating, no actual cheating, I think thats all?

A/N - @addictedtotlou This is my first ever fic request and I cannot thank you enough for sending it through, and also for dropping into my inbox to let me know it was you that requested it! I'm sorry it took so long but I hope you enjoy <3

Feedback, Reblogs and comments are always appreciated!

You often find yourself reminiscing on the day you met Joel and Ellie, it feels like forever ago now, though it has only really been a few years.

The winters in Wyoming were never kind, but that year, Mother Nature had been particularly cruel. Strong winds and vicious snow blizzards reduced visibility to almost nothing. You had heard those posted to the lookout stations talking over lunches and complaining about how bad the conditions were getting.

So in a bid to keep the good folks of Jackson safe, Tommy and Maria decided to double the number of patrols around the commune in an attempt to keep an eye on the horizon for any potential threats who could be hiding just beyond their sights.

Needless to say, it had been a rather slow work day in the Tipsy Bison, with the usual counting and re-counting of stock, checking on the latest brew of beers and whisky, ensuring everything was going as planned, and cleaning of the already immaculate bar, all finished in record time.

Expecting the usual after-work rush that never came, you sent the other two bar staff over to the mess hall to see if the kitchen needed any help with preparations for tomorrow's meals.

As the two said their goodbyes over their shoulders, you heard one of them mumble a shocked "What the hell?"

With your interest piqued, you stepped out from behind the old wooden bar and crossed the floor to the large square windows at the front of the building. Your eyes followed their gaze and watched as the afternoon patrol crew filed through the large wooden and steel-clad gates of the commune.

You waved as a few of your regulars passed you, a few tipping the brims of their ten-gallon hats. You quickly realised what had drawn your colleagues' attention when your eyes landed on two new faces in the middle of the crew.

The first newcomer was a man; he wore a thick brown winter coat and jeans that looked like they could stand up on their own, and you could see the toe of his work boot was mended with what looked to be duck tape. His eyes were sharp and focused, darting around him as if in search of someone or something.

Instantly, he gave you the impression of someone who had been on the road for quite some time. Having been there yourself, you felt a surge of sympathy for him, but you were still wary of him, not knowing why he had been brought inside the walls.

The second was a girl, whom you assumed to be the man's daughter; she was small and looked to be in her early teens. Strands of her tawny brown hair peek out from under her winter hat. big, bright eyes, taking in her surroundings in wonder, while the man stared straight ahead. The girl seemed to be unaware that all eyes were on her, from those who stood on the street to others standing in shop windows, just as you were.

You followed the other barstaff out to the porch and offered the girl a small smile as your eyes met, she quickly looked away without returning it. It wasn't often that Jackson took in new people, opting to keep off the radar to try and protect what you had here. Maria was on this afternoon's patrol and had no doubt made the call to bring the two into the commune.

As the crew passed, heading further into the small town, you saw the man's head snap to the left, and he opened his mouth.

"Tommy!" he shouted, his deep, booming voice ringing in the silence. In an instant, he was off his horse and running in the direction of the scaffolding that had been put up to repair some of the damage to a neighbouring building.

You watched on in stunned silence as the two men ran towards each other, unsure of what the newcomers intentions were, but before you had made it down the two steps of the porch, the man wrapped his arms around Tommy and began laughing, disbelief colouring the sound.

The two men stood embracing each other, both breathless from laughter, and you knew immediately who the newcomer was. This was Joel, Tommy's brother.

Tommy had spoken of him before; usually after one too many whiskies at the bar, he would open up to you about how guilty he felt about staying off the radio. He would say things like, "It's only a matter of time before he comes looking for me, Y/N; what am I supposed to do? Turn him away?" and "One thing about my big bother is that he's persistent."

You had always offered words of understanding and comfort and almost always cut him off and sent him home after those conversations, knowing that no good could come from him drinking any more alcohol.

Part of being the town's main bar tender was also being a listening ear whenever someone needed it, but with Tommy, it was different. He and Maria had become your closest friends, and you would always be there when either of them needed you, working or not.

You always got the sense that something had happened between the two men that couldn't be fixed. As you watched the brothers reunite, you realised that the thought couldn't be further from the truth.

Maria caught your eye as she dismounted from her horse and jerked her head to the side, beseeching you to join her. You nodded at her and crossed the road to where she was standing, hitching her horse to one of the many posts dotted around town.

"Maria, is that who I think it is?" You asked her quietly, not wanting to draw attention to the conversation.

"Yeah, it is," she spat. "I don't know how the hell he found us out here." She continued, venom dripping from each word.

You knew that Maria had never actually met Joel, but from the stories Tommy had told you both in the early years, she knew what he was capable of and decided then and there that she did not like him. You, on the other hand, had a more objective outlook on things.

You were not involved in the same way Maria was, of course; she and Tommy were married after all, so you could understand her reservations when he opened up about his past with his brother and the things they had done and what they thought they needed to do to survive.

The problem was, Maria had been in Jackson longer than you and Tommy and therefore had less of an idea what a brutal hellscape it was outside the walls. Maria wasn't stupid; she knew that it was dangerous, but it had been so long since she had to live like that, to really be surviving, not trusting anyone you met along the way, not knowing where your next meal was coming from, or if you were going to make it to worry about the next meal.

You, on the other hand, had lived that life for longer than you would like to remember, and though you didn't have innocent blood on your hands, they were far from clean. So you could sympathise with Tommy and the demons that clearly kept him up at night. So you felt the hatred that Maria has for Joel was a little unfounded.

"I'm happy he found him again," you admitted, unable to help the undercurrent meant by your works. What you really wanted to say was "This should have happened a long time ago if you had let him respond to Joel's calls on the radio" Meeting her narrowed eyes, you saw a flash of anger in them. No doubt you will get an earful for that comment later.

You knew what she was going to say: that Joel wasn't going to fit in here in Jackson, that Tommy was better off without him, and that you should keep a safe distance from him. But she didn't have the opportunity, as Tommy was already walking towards the two of you.

Joel had walked back to where the girl waited on her horse; a worried, almost disappointed expression crossed her face as he gestured towards Tommy. You watched as he gently helped her down from the animal, making sure she was steady on her feet before the pair followed behind Tommy.

"Y/N, Maria, ah… this is my big brother, Joel," Tommy announced, his tone a mixture of pride and nervousness.

"Hey, it's good to finally meet you; I've heard a lot about you." You smiled kindly at him; he nodded once in response, his expression guarded.

"I'm Ellie! It's nice to meet you," the girl chirps cheerily before shoving her elbow into Joel's ribs. "Joel, say hello," she all but hissed at him, which makes you chuckle.

"It's lovely to meet you, Ellie." You beam.

"It's, uh, good to meet you," he managed quietly.

Two years later...

A loud knock at your front door startles you. Your hand flies to your heart as you curse under your breath. Who the hell would be calling on you at this hour of the morning?

You pad down the hallway and open the door to find Joel standing there, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He seemed keyed up, and your heart drops to your stomach; something must have happened.

"Hey, is everything okay? Did something happen? Is Ellie alright?" You squeaked at him, the panic rising in your chest causing your voice to go up an octave.

"Yes, darlin, everything's fine, Ellie's good; don't worry; I just need to talk to you about something, that's all," he assured you in his thick Texas drawl.

"Everything's good… but you need to talk to me about something at 6 a.m." You questioned him dubiously, arching an eyebrow at him.

"I promise everything is fine; I have morning patrol and was hoping I could catch you before I head out," Joel explains, the ghost of a smile playing on his plump lips.

"Ah, okay, that makes sense, sorry; c'mon, handsome." You laugh as you open the door for him to enter and close it after him.

He follows you down the hall into the small kitchen, lingering in the doorway and studying you. You can feel his eyes roaming your figure as you pour him a cup of coffee. Strong, black, no sugar—just the way he likes it.

Turning with the mug in your hand, you let out a breathy laugh at the sight of him. He looked wired, far too awake for this hour of the morning. Was he sweating?

"Joel, baby, are you alright?" You ask curiously as you hand him his coffee and take your usual seat at the end of the dining table.

"Yeah, I just…I wanna ask you something but I don't know how" he confessed sheepishly, his large hand coming to scratch nervously at the back of his neck.

"I'd like to think you know me well enough by now to know you can ask me anything." You said it with a smile, hoping to calm whatever was causing his nerves.

"Yeah, no, I know, I just don't want to freak you out; there's no pressure, and I understa-"

"Just spit it out, Joel." You interrupt him. In the two years you had been with Joel, you had never seen him struggle for words with you, and it was making you anxious.

"Okay," he huffs out, pulling the dining room chair out so he could sit facing you. He takes a long drink of coffee before continuing, and the suspense is killing you.

"So I was speaking to Ellie, and you know we both love you; hell, sometimes I think she likes you more than she likes me!" He chuckles fondly: "Look, we've been seeing each other for a while, and now that everyone knows, I think it would be good, you know, f-for Ellie if she had a…I dunno, like a mother figure on a more permanent basis." The words were falling out of his mouth like an avalanche. He desperately hoped he was making sense, but you still weren't understanding.

"Permenant basis? What do you mean?" You ask, confusion clear on your face, making him laugh again.

"Yeah, like on an everyday basis," he enphasises. Urging you to grasp the meaning of his words.

"Okay, um, I mean, yeah, I think that's a great idea. I love that kid. I will tell her about making an effort to hang out every day." You promise him sincerely and are touched that he thinks of you as a mother figure to his daughter.

"That's not really what I was thinking, baby; I mean, on a permanent basis, like you would live in the same house." He husks softly, his eyes searching your face for your reaction, and his heart sinks to his boots as he watches your brows knit together.

"Did you have another fight?" You ask him, reaching your hand up to stroke the side of his face, your thumb lingering on the heart-shaped patch of his beard where the hair refused to grow. "Ellie's always more than welcome to stay here when she likes, but Joel, I don't think her moving in here is the answer."

He takes your hand from his face and holds it between both of his; he huffs all the air from his lungs and slowly takes another deep breath. Straightening in his chair, he locks eyes with you.

"I knew this would be an easy ask, but I didn't imagine you making it this hard on me," he says exasperatedly, huffing out another loud laugh.

"I don't understand." Confusion layers your tone, and you are sure your face is doing the same.

"I'm not asking if Ellie can move in with you; I'm asking if… if you would like to move in with us Y/N" He admits. His brown eyes are soft and lingering on your face, and his thumb is tracing small circles on your wrist.

This was not the conversation you were expecting to have over your morning coffee; your brain was barely functioning, and your mind started to race. The last two years of your life, with Joel and Ellie passing by before you in a blur of colours and memories.

You had sympathised with Joel's struggles to adjust to life in Jackson, and given that you worked in the only bar in town, he quickly became a familiar face. You ignored Maria's warnings to stay away from him; after all, she didn't know him from Adam, and you felt it was unfair to judge someone on the things they had done as the world fell apart overnight.

So, slowly but surely, you found yourself at work, hoping each night that he would stop in so you could get to know him better, and he always did. Always opting to sit at the bar, despite there being plenty of more comfortable booths to sit at.

At first, it was always you who initiated the conversation, asking him how his day was, how the patrol had gone, and how Ellie was fitting in, and you listened tentatively to what little information he would give you. Until eventually, after a couple of months of the same routine, he started to open up to you.

He would ask you how you were, how your shift had been, if you had a good day off, and on occasion he would let slip that he "missed you yesterday" when he called in for a drink on his way home from patrol, only to be disappointed that you were nowhere to be found.

It made you giddy; he was on your mind constantly; it made you feel like there was a swarm of butterflies in your belly, but you thought it was only harmless flirting as there was a considerable age gap between you both, with Joel being in his fifties and you in your early thirties, you didn't think Joel would be interested in a relationship with you.

But how wrong you were! After a couple of weeks of late-night drinks after the bar had officially closed, Joel had bitten the bullet and asked you out, though he asked if you wouldn't mind keeping it between the two of you as he didn't know how Ellie would react to him seeing someone and you gladly accepted.

You understood that Ellie was and always would be his first priority, and you admired his unwavering dedication to her, especially after finding out that Ellie wasn't his blood relative; he had taken her on as "cargo," as he affectionately put it. As a way to get one step closer to finding his brother, but she had worked her way under his skin, much like she did with everyone she met. It was so difficult not to like her. With her quick wit and foul mouth, she never failed to make you laugh. She was definitely his daughter, blood or no blood.

The thought of Ellie brings your mind back to the question at hand: should you move in with them? Was now the right time? Was Ellie even okay about this? Did she even know Joel had asked you? Each question raced through your mind until your mouth found one it could form words around.

"What does Ellie think of this?" You asked Joel intently, reading his face for any signs of worry or panic at your question, but there were none to be found.

"I mentioned to Ellie a few months ago that I thought it would be nice if you were around all the time, and she agreed, and then I sat her down yesterday and told her that I was thinking of asking you today, and she was all for it. I don't want you to feel pressured in any way, though; it's okay if it's too soon; you can say no, and we won't be offended in the slightest!" Joel assures you, his voice is low and genuine.

He lifts his right hand to the side of your face and gently brushes the hair out of your eyes, his calloused thumb stroking back and forth as you lean into his touch, allowing your eyes to fall closed. Taking a deep breath, you throw caution to the wind.

You close your eyes, taking a deep breath, your voice drops to a whisper. "Yes, I'll move in."

Suddenly your body was moving, and not by its own volition; your eyes were still closed, so your brain was having trouble registering what was happening. When your eyes flashed open in surprise, you were caught up in Joel's arms, spinning around your small kitchen with your feet no longer planted on the floor.

"Joel!" You squeal through breathy laughter, placing your hands on his broad shoulders to steady yourself.

"Are you sure, baby?" He asks, his eyes sparkling with delight.

"Yes, I'm sure handsome, but I have one condition!" You warn him, arching a fluffy brow.

"Name your price, sweetheart," he smirks at you through the whiskers of his full moustache.

"I get to tell Ellie," You beam back at him, your hand rests on the back of his neck, fingers scractching lightly at the curls that have formed there.

"I think she'd like that," he ghosts against your lips, lightly brushing his nose against your own until you lean up and crush your mouth to his.

Three years later...

It has been a hectic few weeks for the community in Jackson, working through yet another savage winter. You were just through the middle of it, and the end was in sight. The snow storms were not as frequent and the winds were not as wild.

Work has been keeping you busy. You are still the main bartender at the Tipsy Bison, but much to Joel's dismay, you have also picked up a few patrol shifts to lend a hand to Tommy as a few of the older patrol crew stepped back into other work duties due to ill health.

It has felt like months since you and Joel have spent any quality time together, despite living in the same house and working in the same community. Whenever you were both home, he seemed distant and preoccupied, as if there was somewhere else he wanted to be. You tried to engage him in conversation, but he would only give you short answers before retreating into his own thoughts.

At first, you thought that he might just be stressed out from work duty or the weather, as bad as it has been, but as the days turned into weeks, you started to feel a growing sense of unease. You have never seen Joel act this way before, not with you at least, and you don't know what to do.

You miss his closeness; the late-night conversations at the bar while you finished up your shift—all of that has stopped, and no matter how many hours you spent trying to figure out why, you always came up blank.

So needless to say, you were looking forward to spending some quality time with Ellie this evening to help take your mind off your worries. You had stood under the shower for longer than you intended, just enjoying how the steaming water rolled down your tense frame.

With a sigh, you shut off the water and wrapped yourself in your towel, headed into your bedroom to get dressed, and you couldn't help but feel a surge of gratitude that the house had heating, an especially rare commodity with the world's current condition. Jackson really was a paradise of sorts.

"Ellie! C'mon kiddo, we're going to be late for the movie!," You shout from the bottom of the stairs, shrugging into your winter jacket.

Movie night Fridays have quickly become a tradition for you and Ellie, especially now that the winter has rolled back around and it's too cold to spend much time outdoors.

"Alright, I'm coming; Jesus, keep your hair on!" Ellie mutters as she makes her way down the stairs, where you wait for her.

"We only have 20 minutes before the film starts, and I know you're going to want to get snacks, so we've got to make tracks." You laugh as she rolls her eyes at you.

"Alright Mom," she mocks, sarcasm dripping from each word.

"You're such a little shit, you know that, right?" You tell her fondly with a warm smile.

"I know, it's all part of my charm," she grins.

"Ah, I see, and does Dina know all about your charm?" You playfully jab her ribs with your elbow, wagging your brows up and down.

"Ugh, you're so annoying; you know that, right?" Ellie counters, always so quick-witted.

"I know, it's all part of my charm," You repeat her words back to her, earning another eye roll.

The two of you leave the house and trudge out into the snow; thankfully, the blizzard has calmed, and now fat, fluffy flakes of snow flurry around you like something from a movie scene.

As brutal as they can be, you have never seen anything more beautiful than Jackson in the winter. It was like something you would see on a postcard of a ski village in the French Alps, all timber buildings and string lights illuminating the small town.

On Friday nights, the mess hall was turned into a makeshift movie theatre for the youth that lived in the commune, offering them some respite from the grind of daily life. It was complete with candy, drinks, and, of course, pop corn.

At first, Ellie hadn't seemed all that interested in going, not knowing many kids her age, but after a lot of coaxing and the promise that if she didn't like it, she didn't have to go again or even stay for the full movie, Though she quickly found her feet with Dina, the rest was really history.

"Where's Joel tonight? I thought he was going to come with us." Ellie asked curiously.

"Oh shit, I meant to tell you earlier; he said Tommy asked him to cover the evening patrol tonight, so he can't make it." You explained, not really sure why Tommy needed him to cover after already doing the afternoon patrol, but it must have been important, so you didn't give it a second thought.

You and Ellie walk in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the peaceful walk through town. You were about to ask her how she was getting on with her work detail when she came to a standstill.

"I thought you said Joel was on patrol tonight?" she demanded, her face contorting in confusion.

"Uh yeah, Ellie, I just told you that." You confirm, your own confusion mirroring hers.

"Then what the fuck is he doing in the bar?" She fumes, gesturing behind you to the window of the Tipsy Bison.

Sure enough, there he sits at the bar with Jenna. Joel was nursing a whisky, and she was playfully peeling back the homemade label of her beer bottle. They are sitting in the corner booth by the window, leaning towards each other to the point where their heads are far too close to be appropriate.

In that moment, your breathing stopped. Your stomach sank to the floor, and an overwhelming sense of panic and dread began to claw viciously from your chest up your throat, resting heavy on your tongue.

"Are you okay?" Ellie asks nervously, not really sure what to do or say in this situation. It could be nothing, but even to her, it definitely looked like something.

"Y-yeah, I'm good. Ellie, why don't you go on down to the mess hall, and I'll meet you there in a few?" You tell her more than ask, your eyes never leaving the window.

"No way fuck that I'm staying with you!" she demands, her eyes growing wet around her long lashes.

"No, Ellie, I need to talk to Joel; I will catch up with you in a few, okay?" You meet her eyes and nod in the direction of the mess hall. She only nods in response; your tone is final as she turns on her heel and storms towards the makeshift movie theatre.

What the fuck is happening right now? You trusted Joel; it never bothered you when the ladies in Jackson would bat their eyes at him or when their glances lingered a little too long. You took it as a compliment; hell, if you were them, you would stare too.

Your relationship was built on a foundation of honesty and trust from the very beginning. You have told him things you have never shared with another living soul, and he has done the same with you. Never in your life did you think you would be lucky enough to share a connection with someone the way you have with Joel, let alone after the world had ended.

And now here you stand in the middle of town, watching the man you love cosy up with another woman in plain sight, not even having the decency to try and hide it from you.

You stand there for another few minutes, watching how he leans across the table to talk to her, laughing and caressing his arm in response. It sets fire to your blood, and you can feel it moving like molten lava in your veins.

You're moving before you realise you have made the decision to do so, your feet carrying you furiously forward, up to the short creaking steps and through the entrance to the bar, and then there you are, looming over their table. Your eyes bore holes into his skull. He jumps in his seat and scrambles frantically to hide the notebook that was sitting open on the table between them. You didn't pay it a second glance.

"I didn't realise the bar needed patrolling this evening," you state pointedly at him, ignoring Jenna, who is doing everything she can to avoid eye contact with you, fidgeting in her seat, and clambering to get her things together. Grabbing her coat and scarf from beside her.

"Hey darlin, I thought you and Ellie were heading to the movies." He asks, his voice rough with his attempts to hide his nerves.

"We were on our way there when she saw this cosy scene from the street." You gesture with your hand towards the table, your voice icy as you let your hand drop to your side with an audible slap, which made Jenna flinch.

"I think I'm going to head out…" Jenna murmurs in a small, quiet voice, still avoiding your gaze.

"That is a wise decision" You agreed without taking your eyes of Joel.

She throws Joel a cryptic glance before clambering out of her seat and quickly making her way to the door, shooting Joel an apologetic glance over her shoulder, which only fuels the rage bubbling up in your throat.

"What the fuck?" You growl at him, doing your best to keep your voice under control. The last thing you wanted was to cause a scene. Especially not at your workplace, regardless of whether you were on shift or not.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks, genuinely confused by your anger.

"Please tell me you're joking," you seethe.

"What? I can't have a drink with a friend." He scoffs, incredulous.

"Seriously Joel? Since when have you had to lie about working to have a drink with a friend?"

"Don't you think you're overreacting just a bit?" he countered, avoiding the question.

"No, I really don't think I am. How could you do this? How could you do this in front of Ellie?!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Joel huffs back at you, his eyes never leaving yours.

Your eyes begin to prick with anger fuelled tears; the feeling of betrayal rips through you, leaving you exposed to his hard gaze. You can't take any more of this. It feels like the room is closing in around you. That you will suffocate if you don't leave right now. You look at him once more, and the fact that he hasn't denied it or assured you that this is anything other than what you fear it to be ,allows your world to crumble around you.

"Alright," you manage in a broken whisper that comes out as a choked sob.

With that, you turn and bolt for the door, desperately gasping for air but unable to get enough to fill your lungs. You have to brace yourself on the railing of the porch. You can feel his eyes on you as he watches you leave from where he sits frozen at the table, but he makes no move to follow after you.

Willing your legs to move, you push off the railing and slowly make your way to the mess hall, slipping in just as the movie is starting. You can see Ellie is sitting in the middle of the crowded room, and she has saved you a seat beside her.

You make your way to the restroom, taking in your reflection for the first time that evening. Your face is red and splotchy from crying, your eyes puffy, and your lips swollen from your teeth worrying at them. With shaking hands, you reach out to turn the tap on, splashing the icy cold water over your face as you try to make sense of what has just unfolded.

You knew Jenna; she is one of the few people trained in blacksmithing in Jackson, but you had never been especially close with her. She would frequent the bar and chat with you about her work day and vice versa, but that was the extent of your relationship with her, and you have never seen Joel interact with her. It just didn't make sense; why would he throw everything away for a fling with someone who lives in the same commune? Did he really think you wouldn't find out?

You do your best to shake the thoughts from your head, focused on spending the rest of the evening with Ellie, you will do everything in your power to shelter her from this. So with a deep breath, you put a smile on your face and left the restroom, smiling and waving politely at familiar faces as you made your way to your seat, stopping by the makeshift concession stand to grab Ellie some popcorn and a soda on your way.

"Hey, I've got you some snacks, kiddo." You whisper to her, not wanting to interrupt the film.

"Thanks, are you okay?" She murmered with a small smile. Taking the snacks from your outstretched hands.

"Yes, of course everything's fine; there was a mix-up with the patrols, so Joel didn't have to work tonight after all." You reassured her softly.

It cut you to the bone to have to lie to her to cover up his indiscretion because you didn't want her to think any less of him. He is her world, and she is his, and you wouldn't be the one to jeopardise that.

You weren't really sure what movie was even playing tonight, so lost in your thoughts that it was just a blurry hum in the background. Ellie had to nudge your shoulder several times to tell you that the movie had was over. Glancing around to find a steady stream of people filing out of the mess hall.

"Sorry, Ellie, I'm just a bit distracted tonight; work has been so hectic recently, and I have so much to do when I open tomorrow." You do your best to laugh it off. Hoping that she will let it go and that she wasn't being as observant tonight as she usually is. The girl misses nothing.

"It's okay, the film was a repeat anyway," she shrugs, not pressing you on the matter, though you know all too well that the questions will come eventually.

"Shall we head home? It sounds like it's getting pretty rough out there," you noted, as another howl of wind wipped around the wooden building.

"Sounds good; I want to have a shower before Joel uses all the hot water again," she ribs in a peel of bright laughter that sends warmth radiating through your now hollow chest.

When you reach the house, you find it in darkness. Joel hasn't made it home yet, and although you are beyond angry, you can't help but worry about him. Of course he can look after himself, but it isn't like him to be out this late if he wasn't on patrol.

The seething voice in the back of your head reminds you that he could be with her. You try to push those thoughts out of your head, but they linger like a dark cloud, casting a grim shadow over what was your perfect - or as perfect as it could be - life.

"I'm going for a shower and then head to bed, you okay?" Ellie asks, once again pulling you from your thoughts.

"Yeah, of course, kiddo, no worries. Do you need anything? You want some tea?" You offer as you head to the stove and place a pot of water on to boil.

"No, I'm good. Thanks though, g'night!" She calls over her shoulder, and then you are alone in the small kitchen.

"Night kiddo," You call quietly to her as you reach for the herbal tea blend that you and Ellie grew in your little garden last summer.

As you wait for the water to boil, your mind starts to race with worry and anxiety. You can't help but think of all the possible scenarios that could be keeping Joel out this late, and the thought of him being with another woman makes you want to break things. You have tried to push those thoughts out of your head so many times this evening, but they keep creeping back.

A few hours later, you are sitting in one of the armchairs in the living room, desperately fighting to keep your eyes open, but in the end you give up, gently placing your book on the coffee table and removing the blanket from your lap. You look at the clock on the wall, and it's just after 3am.

You pad into the kitchen and leave your mug in the sink, too tired to wash it now; that's tomorrow's problem. Heading up the creaky stairs to your bedroom and crawling into the cold sheets. It feels wrong going to bed without Joel by your side, but he is god knows where right now, so you lean over, turn the bedside lamp off, and sink into a restless, uneasy sleep.

You wake to the wintery morning sunshine seeping through your bedroom window. Instinctively, you run your hand across Joel's side of the bed; it's unmade but cold, so he did come home last night, but he was up before you, which is unusual.

Instinctively, you run your hand across Joel's side of the bed; it's unmade but cold, so he did come home last night, but he was up before you, which is unusual.

Slowly sitting up in bed, you stretch your tired bones, sore from your restless few hours of sleep, and swing your legs out of bed. It's only 7 a.m.; you don't usually open the bar until midday, so you have plenty of time to get ready.

You slink down the stairs, careful not to wake Ellie as you do so. Heading into the kitchen mid-yawn, you stop in your tracks as you find Joel standing at the stove, hovering over a pot of boiling water on the closest ring to him.

"Mornin'," he husks without turning; he must have heard you yawning with his good ear to the doorway.

You ignore him, knowing full well that it's petty and childish and ultimately will not resolve anything, but with the way he behaved last night, you feel the cold shoulder is justified.

You both continue with your morning rituals in silence. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but you didn't know where to begin broaching the subject, and the more you stewed over it, the more you felt he should be the one to open the conversation with an explanation, but if you were being totally honest with yourself, you were beginning to worry that you may have jumped to conclusions.

But when you thought about the way they were huddled together, her hand on his arm, and the way she tipped her head back in laughter at each thing he said, the pit in your stomach grew. As did the silence between you.

Things went on like this for days, with the two of you skirting around each other and avoiding eye contact. Only speaking to each other when absolutely necessary, like dinner times, and giving each other your work duties for the week.

You could see the effect this was having on Ellie; she has been especially quiet the last few days, so once Joel leaves for work, you sit with her on the couch and try to get her to open up.

"Ellie, is everything okay?" you ask, trying to keep your tone light.

"I don't know. You and Joel have been acting weird lately, and it's making me tense." She shrugs, not meeting your gaze.

You take a deep breath, knowing that you can't keep avoiding the issue. "Yeah, we've been having some problems. But it's nothing you need to worry about, kiddo."

"It doesn't seem like nothing," she retorts. "You guys haven't spoken in days. It's not like you."

"I know, Ellie. I just don't know how to fix it." You sigh.

"Maybe you could start by talking to him," she suggests.

"It's not that simple, Ellie. There's a lot going on." You shake your head.

"Well, maybe it would help if you talked to me about it," she offers.

"Thanks, Ellie. But it's not something I can really discuss with you. Just know that Joel and I are working through some things and we'll get through it." You smile softly at her, grateful for her kindness.

She nods, not looking convinced but not pressing the issue. You sit in silence for a moment before she stands up. "I'm gonna head out for a bit. Need to clear my head."

"Okay, kiddo. Be safe," you say, watching her leave.

You're left alone in the quiet house, the weight of your problems still heavy on your shoulders. You know Ellie is right; you need to talk to Joel. But the thought of confronting him is daunting, and you don't know if you want to hear what he has to say.

What if he doesn't want you anymore? What if he's not happy and hasn't been for a while?

You decide that enough is enough. After work this evening, you are going to speak to him and attempt to clear the air, hear his side of the story, and try to move forward, if not for the sake of your relationship but for Ellie. It's not fair to have this weighing on her shoulders; it's not her fault, and you hate seeing her unhappy, and you know that Joel will feel the same about his if nothing else.

The workday drags on uneventfully; the only thing standing out was that Jenna had come to the bar for the first time since that evening. She gave you a small smile, and you returned it with a polite nod. You were at work after all and took it upon yourself to remain as professional as possible.

Jenna approaches the bar and orders her usual, which you pour for her without issue, though it makes your skin itchy to be this close to her.

"Have you spoken to Joel yet?" she asks quietly. Wiping her fingertips across the bartop.

You stare at her blankly; the audacity of this woman boggles your mind.

"No," you respond curtly.

"Okay, well, when you do, come and find me. We'll have a lot to discuss." She states matter-of-factly, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips.

Before you have the chance to give her a piece of your mind, she is walking away from the bar, her long auburn hair swishing to her lower back. What the fuck is her problem?

You try to get through the rest of your day without dwelling on the conversation you had with Jenna, focusing more on the impending conversation you are going to have with Joel this evening. Thinking about what you were going to say to him, how you were going to explain how you felt, and how hurt you have been over the last few days.

You lock up the bar and head towards home for the evening, taking a little more time than you usually would, feet dragging, dreading the fight that would likely ensue once you had spoken to him. You tell yourself you will keep a level head, but you know deep down your temper would not allow that to happen if he gave you some bullshit excuse.

As you approach the small, snow-covered pathway that leads to the back porch of your home, you pause there, unable to bring yourself to go inside. So you take a seat on the second step and watch the flurries of fluffy snow as they make their way through the air to join the pillowy blanket that covers everything in sight.

You sit there for what feels like hours. Jackson was always quiet; it needed to be in order to keep what you have here safe, but as you sit in the darkness, the only light coming from the dim porch light and the light seeping through the thin linen curtains from the living room, it feels eerily silent and still. The sound of the backdoor creaking open made you jump. The heavy footsteps that followed, however, were all too familiar.

"You gonna stay out here all night?" He asked quietly, his voice low and soft.

"No, I was just… well, I don't really know what I was doing." You offer a small laugh, void of any humour.

Joel takes a few steps and groans loudly as he lowers himself to join you where you sit. He is quiet for a few moments until he finally speaks.

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the other night and how it must have looked. I'm sorry for not explaining to you then and there what it was; I didn't want to tell you, and I still don't really. But I promise you on my life that it is not what you think it is, Darlin," he says softly, regret heavy in his tone.

"I don't understand Joel; I just want to understand what the fuck has been going on," you pleaded, hating how desperate your voice sounded.

"I know, baby, and I'm going to tell you. I just didn't want to ruin the surprise. I also didn't want to tell you without speaking to Ellie first, but I spoke to her at dinner, and now she understands." He assures you, his hand coming up to brush your cold cheek for the first time in days, and it was impossible not to lean into the heat of his palm.

"Okay, so now everyone knows but me, why were you all cozied up with Jenna? Why did you lie to me about going to work?" You challenged him, removing your face from his touch.

"Hold on," he huffs, shifting his weight to one hip as he fishes for something in his back pocket before continuing. "It will make more sense once you see this, or I hope it will at least," he offers as he hands you a beaten-up, leather-bound note book.

"What is this?" You ask him, you remember seeing it on the table in the bar the other night.

"Would you just open it?" he sighs, rubbing his hand through his patchy whiskers nervously.

You do as he says and open the notebook, and what you find takes you aback. The notebook is filled almost front to back with little sketches of rings and little notes about different metals and gems in his familar handwriting and another that you don't recognize.

"Wh-what is this?" You repeat, stunned. So many thoughts racing through your mind and you are beggining to realise that you have completely misread the situaiton the other night.

"I know I was going to have to tell you about it eventually, you know for your size and all but I was planning to do that after I asked you…but then with the other night I wasn't sure what to say and I was kind of pissed off that you where angry at me, I didn't stop to think that you weren't in on the secret and what it must have looked like to you," Joel's hand came to rest on your knee squeezing reassuringly as he explained the circumstances that lead to what you saw in the bar.

"I have been meeting up with Jenna over the last few weeks, she's the only blacksmith in Jackson that used to make jewelry…specifically engagement rings," he paused allowing his words to sink in before finishing his explination.

"We've been trying to figure out how to make you one, what metals mix well from what I have found on supply runs, whether to hold off if I could find a stone or a gem, or if we could make it without one,"

You stare at him, a mix of astonishment and disbelief washing over you. The pieces start to fall into place, and you realize the truth behind Joel's actions. The anger and hurt that had consumed you begin to melt away, replaced by a flood of emotions, the most promanent being embarrassment.

"You were planning to… ask me?" you stutter, your voice barely a whisper. The weight of your accusation hangs heavy in the air as you struggle to comprehend the situation.

"Yeah, I was. I've been saving up for months, looking for the right opportunity, and I wanted it to be a surprise. Jenna's been helping me because she's skilled at crafting intricate pieces. I wanted to make something special for you, something that would last a lifetime." Joel nods, his eyes filled with sincerity.

Tears well up in your eyes as the realization of your mistake dawns upon you. You reach for Joel's hand, intertwining your fingers with his. "Oh, Joel, I'm so sorry," you say, your voice trembling. "I jumped to conclusions without knowing the whole story. I never thought…I feel like such a peice of shit, I'm so sorry"

"It's okay, darlin'. I should've communicated better, explained everything to you beforehand. I understand why you were upset." He squeezes your hand gently, his thumb caressing your knuckles.

"But why did you lie about going to work?" you inquire, still wanting to grasp every detail.

"We thought it would be best if we kept it a secret until it was ready. And I didn't want you to suspect anything. I wanted the proposal to be a surprise, and I was afraid if I told you I was hanging out with Jenna, you'd figure it out before I had the chance." He shrugged.

"Joel, I can't believe you're doing this. You've put so much thought and effort into making something special for us. I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you. I have been so awful to you over the last few days," You let out a shaky breath, your heart filled with a strange mix of relief, shame and joy.

A soft smile graces Joel's lips as he brushes a strand of hair from your face. "Don't say that, sweetheart. You deserve the world, and I want to give it to you. I love you more than anything, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Tears stream down your face now, but they're tears of happiness. You lean in and rest your head on Joel's shoulder, feeling the warmth of his presence envelop you. The weight of the misunderstanding lifts, leaving behind a newfound sense of trust and appreciation.

"I love you too, Joel," you whisper, your voice filled with sincerity. "I'm sorry for being such a bitch and for overreacting. I should have known you'd never do anything to hurt me."

"Hey, we all make mistakes, darlin'. It wouldn't be the first time I've got pissed at you for something I misunderstood now is it?." he chuckles quietly, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head.

"I guess no ones perfect," you echo his laughter leaning into him further.

As you sit together on the porch steps, surrounded by the beauty of the snowfall, you realize that the snow isn't the only thing that's melting. The icy barriers that had formed between you and Joel are slowly thawing away, leaving behind a comfortable quiet.

"So, now that the cats out of the bag, will you…?" he asks his deep voice thick with emotion.

"Will I what handsome?" You look up at him teasing, your eyes twinkling.

A playful grin tugs at the corners of Joel's mouth as he meets your gaze. "Will you marry me, my beautiful, stubborn, and occasionally misunderstood partner in crime?" he asks, his voice laced with a mixture of nervousness and hope.

Your heart skips a beat at his words, and a surge of excitement courses through you. You pretend to ponder his question, a mischievous glint in your eyes. "Well, I don't know, Joel. I mean, after all that's happened, can I really trust you with my heart?" you tease, a smile playing on your lips.

Joel feigns a look of hurt, placing a hand dramatically over his heart. "Oh, come on now. I've endured snowball fights, kitchen mishaps, you and Ellie ganging up on me and even your questionable taste in movies. If that's not true love, I don't know what is."

Laughter bubbles up from within you, and you lean in closer, pressing your forehead against his. "Joel, you are my love and my rock. Of course, I'll marry you," you say, your voice filled with so much love.

In that peaceful moment, wrapped in the calm of the snowfall and the safety of his strong arms, you realize that there will be silly arguments, misunderstandings and cold shoulders, but you will always find your way back to each other. You let out a sigh of contentment as Joel presses silent kisses against your head, happy to sit here forever wrapped up in him.

Knowing that Joel and Ellie will forever be your guiding lights.

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