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myfictionaldreams · 6 months

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Day 29: Coercion/Blackmail - Dark!Marauders

Summary: They were waiting for the ideal chance to find you alone and the perfect opportunity arose when they saw you on the Marauder's map as you were sneaking around the Restricted section of the library.

Tags: 18+ readers only, smut, dubious content, mean!marauders, Slytertherin!Reader, manipulation, coercion, blackmail, threatening, scent smelling, oral (f receiving), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, restrained, panty sniffing, masturbation, nearly caught, dacryphilia

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“Well, well, well boys, look who we’ve got here”, James boasted, shuffling over to where Sirius and Remus sat on either end of the Gryffindor sofa, leaving enough space for him to squeeze in between. The Gryffindor Seeker sat with a smug grin on his handsome face as he displayed the Marauders map for both of his friends to see, pointing directly in the middle where your name hovered.

“Is she in the restricted section of the library?” Remus asked, leaning closer to James to make sure that what he was reading was true.

James looked between Remus and Sirius, still grinning so wide that his cheeks ached, “Yes, she is, Moony. Our slithery little friend seems to be sneaking around in naughty places that she shouldn’t be”.

Sirius sighed heavenly, his body melting back into the overused cushions of the maroon sofa. “Today really is my lucky day”, he admired, all the cruel intentions flashing through his mind with the opportunity presented to him. You were their favourite plaything and had been since the first year. Being in Slytherin, you were natural enemies with the Gryffindors, but as much grief as they gave you, you were always quick to give it back, so it was a constant repeat as to who could best the other.

Now, the opportunity was too perfect for them to pass up on. There you were, in the middle of the night, in the restriction section of the library with no one around, and oh, they were more than ready to confront you. James thought about bringing along his invisibility cloak, but as they were all grown, there wasn’t much space to squish them beneath, so it was easier to use the map to see if there was anyone on the route that they would bump into.

You cursed quietly under your breath; you hated the restricted section. It felt so eerie and dark. However, you were researching some unsanitary subjects that couldn’t be found in the books without chains wrapped around them. Lifting the lamp above your head, you continued to search for the relevant topic, keeping your breathing slow and shallow to listen for any signs that one of the Professors was on patrol nearby.

As you searched through the third row of books, you heard the shuffle of multiple footsteps. Your heart immediately jumped into your throat as you blew out the candle in your lamp and rushed deeper into the restricted section to hide in a dark corner.

“I’d stop running if I were you, little snake. We know you’re here”, Sirius taunted with a cheerful tone to show how delighted he was to be in this situation.

The tip of your wand, defiantly pointing towards them, was what they saw first of you as they held up their wands for light. “What the fuck are you three doing here?” you asked pointedly, rolling your eyes and relaxing the tension that had built since you’d heard the noise.

The three Marauders gathered around you, forming a semi-circle, boxing you into the bookshelf. Even though the four of you were always at loggerheads, you weren’t actually threatened by them. In fact, things between you were borderline between enemies with benefits. They were always upfront about their attraction to you and would frequently tease you because of it. So far, nothing had occurred other than fleeting kisses, but every time the four of you were alone together, the tension was palpable in the atmosphere. You enjoyed this cat-and-mouse game that had developed; even though they were beautiful men, you couldn’t think of anything worse than sleeping with Gryffindors, especially with the rising suspicion from the other Slytherins.

Lowering your wand and tucking it into the pocket of your robe, your eyes flicked between each of them and sharply asked, “How the fuck do you three always find me? Are you stalking me?”

The back of James’ fingers stroked across your cheekbone. A touch that you didn’t flinch away from but gently shoved his hand away as he reached your jaw. Shaking his messy black hair, James smirked, his hazel eyes devouring you in the darkness of his lamp resting on the bookshelf beside you.

Remus’ head condescendingly tilted to the left, “We were just worried for your wellbeing. The restricted section isn’t exactly a welcome place for students”.

It was your turn to develop a smirk as you looked over his body, remembering the event from last week. “You know better than most that I can look after myself, Lupin”. Last Tuesday, he’d accidentally stepped into the way of you practising a particularly brutal jinx during defence against the dark arts.

Remus’ eyelids lowered, so he looked at you through his eyelashes, “I didn’t properly thank you for that one, did I?” Even though he was being sarcastic, you didn’t miss the severe undertone to his baritone voice.

“Poor Moony here had to spend the night in the hospital wing. You’re lucky he’s still just as handsome as before”, Sirius mocks, reaching to grip his friend's face and shaking his head for emphasis until Remus shoves him away.

Once more, you’re rolling your eyes at their antics. “Well, maybe Lupin should watch where he’s walking next time I practise spells”.

James shifts closer as he stands to your left, his body casually leaning against the bookcase, “So hostile tonight, Princess. Do you need some way to get your anger out? I know the perfect way”.

Your eyes seemed to be in a constant state of rolling, finding James’ words more annoying than serious as he licked his bottom lip suggestively.

“Maybe I don’t like being interrupted when trying to do something important. So, why don’t you three run back to your little Gryffindor hiding hole?”.

James cocks his head to the side as he looks back at Sirius and Remus, who has stepped even closer, causing the apples of your cheeks to warm at the increasing temperature, even in the creepy section of the library.

“You know, Moony, I do recall you being head boy”, James casually remarks to Remus, who grins, the pink scars that were still healing down his cheeks stretching with the movement. Glancing down, he held up the shiny pin attached to his pristinely knotted tie, showing you the badge.

“You’d be correct about that, Prongs”.

Sirius now steps forward, mimicking James’ stands, but this time to your right, leaving Remus between them and directly in front of you. “I’d love to know Moony. What would the head boy say to a sneak snake wandering around the castle in the middle of the night and the restricted area no less?” Sirius asks with a fake, quizzical look on his handsome face as some of his long hair slips from behind his ear, causing a sinister shadow to hide part of his smirk.

“Well, Padfoot, I would say to that certain little snake that she was breaking a handful of school rules and deserves to have points taken away from her, a weekend of detentions and the head of Slytherin to be woken and informed”.

You scoff, looking between the three of them as your arms folded across your chest. “Ha ha. You’re hilarious, boys”, your voice is laced with sarcasm, “Your scare tactics won’t work with me”.

“Oh really?” Remus continued, stepping forward and raising his hands to rest on either side of your head, pressing into the chains surrounding the books as he dropped his head to be eye level with you. “The thing is, Love, I’m not joking. Why would I abuse my powers like that?” Glancing over his shoulder to Sirius, he asked, “How long do you think it would take you to get to Slughorn’s office? A couple of minutes?” he turned back towards you. “I’m sure he could get there before you do. Professor Slughorn will be very interested to hear why his favourite student is walking around the restricted section in the middle of the night, don’t you agree?”

Your stomach twisted with unease as your confident exterior began to crack. “Why the fuck would you three care where I am? It’s got nothing to do with any of you. I could just as well wake up Professor McGonagall and tell her you’re all out of bed”.

Remus purses his lips as he fakes contemplation, but it is Sirius who speaks next, joy evident in his voice, “Ah, you see, the thing is beautiful; there’s three of us and only one of you. All it would take is one of us to hold you here and another to go and wake our friend Sluggie. And oh, would you look at that? There’s still one of us spare to help hold you down”.

Your heartbeat begins to increase, causing palpitations beneath your ribs as your anxiety begins to take over. “You guys aren’t funny, you know. You’re wasting my time.” You attempted to keep the facade up that you weren’t bothered by their words, but you knew they weren’t messing around.

Remus suddenly grips your cheeks, causing you to startle and jolt at the rough hold he had, squishing your lips out and forcing your eyes to look only up at him. “We aren’t joking around. We think it’s about time the Slytherins stop getting away with everything, and what better example to use than their silver star? I’m sure you’d continue to be everyone’s favourite when I take away; hmm, would 50 house points be sufficient?”

Your heart felt like it would pound out of your chest as you stepped closer to him, now toe to toe, and the tips of your noses nearly brushed together as you tried to look as vicious as possible. “50?! What the fuck is your problem, Lupin?” As you spoke, your fingers reached into your robe to grab your wand, but James was quicker, muttering expelliamous and catching your wand with his nimble fingers.

James tutted, shoving your wand into his pocket within his robe, “You know, Moony, I think another 10 points for the bad language might be a good idea. Why don’t you do that, and Padfoot will go and wake up our favourite potions master?”

You were breathing at a dizzying pace as you looked away from Remus to watch with fear as Sirius began to strut away, his arms swinging leisurely. “Wait! Wait, please!” Sirius stopped walking, turning to look over his shoulder to show you the dazzling smile and quipped up his eyebrow as he waited for you to continue. “What- What do you guys want?” you couldn’t help the stutter, shoulders dropping in defeat as you slumped back against the uncomfortable bookcase.

The long-haired Marauder swaggered back over, delighting evidence on his face as he returned to leaning beside you. A single finger grazes beneath your chin, hooking onto the end and tilting your face towards James as he bragged, “You know what we want”.

Of course, you knew, it was all they ever asked with their perverted minds, always talking with their dicks and then their hearts. It had always been a joke because that was all you had taken it for, a hilarious, sleazy joke.

“That’s always been a joke, so quit playing around”, you say, but the fighting your voice has dimmed.

“Does it look like we’re joking?” James asks.

“So what is this? You’re all blackmailing me so that you can get your dicks wet? I’m sure there are plenty of other pathetic girls who would be more than happy to do what you’re asking”, you say with as much venom as you can muster, but there was no denying the core-clenching pulse that ran through your pussy.

“Oh honey, you know it’s not our dicks that we want to get wet, and there’s no other cunt we’d rather be licking than yours”, Sirius says, tilting his head up to talk in his sweet purr that had your thighs squeezing together in an attempt to relieve some tension that had increased tenfold in your clit. All three of the men in front of you noticed the movement and had to adjust their stances, seeming to be as tall and intimidating as possible, but that only made you more horny.

With all of the previous times that they had made sexual advances, they had not once mentioned their own pleasure. All they’d ever asked and begged to do was have a taste of your pussy.

‘Give us a taste’, ‘I bet you’re nice and sweet’, ‘I can get you gushing against my tongue, Princess’.

It was always comments like these that had you either jinxing them, rolling your eyes or simply walking away to the comfort of your bed, curtains closed so you could imagine the acts with your fingers between your legs. It was almost a daily occurrence that you masturbated to the thought of the three of them in your bed, and it would be easy just to give in and say yes to their requests. Still, you would never lower yourself to sleeping with a Gryffindor, let alone the three most arrogant and infamous students throughout Hogwarts.

However, now you were stuck between a rock and a hard place. You knew that if you said no, you could have the detention and deducted points, and they would happily walk you down to Slughorn's office. But, to be truthful, there was a small part of you that was becoming bored with the cat-and-mouse chase, that part being your cunt.

Sirius replaced the finger under your chin, turning you to look up at home, “So? What do you say? We don’t expect anything from you, but each of us gets a taste, and we’ll let you go on your merry way”.

You sigh through your nose, chewing on your bottom lip as you contemplate your answer, even though you know already what you are going to say. “I know I’m going to regret this”.

Sirius moves so close that you can see the different shades of grey in his eyes, “Trust me, Sweetheart, you aren’t going to regret this for a second. I can guarantee that”.

Your eyes flick between his and his dangerous lips, a movement that has him grinning and showing his perfectly pearly teeth, knowing your answer because you even say it.

“Fine. But I’m not touching any of you, and after, you have to promise that you’ll let me walk away without losing any points or waking up Slughorn”.

“Your wish is our command, ma’am” James dramatically bows to add to the performance.

Your sigh brushes over Sirius’ face as you move back to look at them individually. “So how do you want to do this? Shall we go to a classroom or something?”

Remus shakes his head, nodding towards your skirt, “Take off your underwear”.

Okay, so they were expecting to do it in the middle of the restricted section of the library. You were thankful for wearing a skirt to keep some of your modesty as you shimmied the material down your legs and stepped out of it. Before you could hide them in your pocket, Sirius was snatching them from your hands and stuffed them into his back pocket.

As your mouth snapped open to argue with him to give the underwear back, Remus was distracting you by dropping onto his knees. As he lifted the edge of your skirt, Sirius and James grabbed onto a leg each and lifted you to sit on the shelf of the bookcase, holding each limb up until your knees were as close to your chest as possible, spreading you open for Remus.

All you were able to do was hold onto the sturdy shelf above your head, fumbling with your words with how embarrassed you were to be completely exposed to them all as the positioning of your legs now pushed your skirt away.

Remus groaned hungrily, taking a deep sniff as he leaned in close. You gaped at him, internally cringing and embarrassed that he was actually smelling your arousal. Before you could tell him to stop, his hands were roughly parting your folds, presenting your dripping hole further for him as your hips bucked at the contact. It was filthy watching him stick his long tongue out and lick a long strip from your perineum up to your engorged clit.

His big green eyes never left yours, and you were captivated by looking away, crying out and needing more as it truly dawned on you that this was actually happening. Remus seemed to simultaneously be touching all parts of your cunt with his wet, wide tongue, digging into your clenching hole, slurping out the juices that were seeping out and then lewdly sucking on your bundle of nerves until you were whining from the overstimulation.

It was all Remus had ever wanted, and it seemed he was good at it, and for a second, you regretted all the time wasted having said no to them all. Your fingers dropped to hold onto his head, keeping him close and using it to try and buc your hips to ride his face, but with the men holding up your legs, it was difficult to move.

If he was spelling your name with his tongue against your clit, he was delving it as deep within your cunt as possible. The noises coming from both you and him were filthy, and it took an embarrassingly short amount of time before you were cuming, eyes closing and head tilting back as your walls clamped down around his tongue in quick bursts of euphoria.

He didn’t stop stimulating you until you were slumping back against the books, and Sirius was quick to drop your leg and replace the positions with Remus, dropping to his knees in front of you as Remus stood, still licking his lips and holding onto your leg.

To their credit, they only used their mouths, and for a minute, you had contemplated begging for more, but your ego kept your lips sealed tightly. Sirius didn’t give you any time to try and catch your breath before he had his own taste, his mouth warmer than Remus’. With his tongue sticking out, he shook his head like he was trying to dig his way right into the centre of your core.

Your fingers were sliding through his silky hair, pulling on him to try and get him to slow down, but he liked the pain that came with the hair pulling, so it only pushed him on further. Sirius's hands rested on your hips, pulling your body onto the edge of the shelf so he could move his face harder against you. As he fucked your pussy with his tongue, he pushed the tip of his nose against your clit, sending scorching pleasure into your abdomen.

Just as you were on the very brink of an orgasm, Sirius’ mouth disappeared from you entirely so he could watch your body tremble and pulse with the need to cum but not be given the proper stimulation for it.

“Fucking hell Sirius, just let me cum already!” you hissed at him, losing some of the control over the situation.

Sirius doesn’t say a word, but he does laugh heartedly as his face attached to your mound once more, delving between your folds and licking until you were cumming with mind-spinning pleasure.

James didn’t even wait until your orgasm had subsided before he pulled back Sirius’ head and shoved him out of the way, dropping to his knees and beginning his feast. Sirius didn’t argue with him but stood to hold onto your leg, the lower half of his face gleaming with juices and pink from being rubbed against.

The glasses on James’ face were cold against your skin as the rim of them pressed into your mound. He gathered as much spit onto the tip of his tongue and let it drip over your pussy, spreading it around with his tongue until you were as sloppy as possible. This only added more pleasure to do, feeling how wet everything was down there, the whisps of air cooling certain areas before he was back sucking and licking at it.

Just as you were getting into it and falling into the pleasure that was causing your body to jolt as you were becoming extremely overstimulated, a heavy thump sounded from the entrance to the library. A breath later, all of the lamps were extinguished by Remus’ wand, descending you all into darkness as you anticipated them all to stop. Except, they didn’t. James continued as if nothing had changed, but now his hand was covering your mouth to help keep your moans muffled.

You were beyond tense, hands shoving at any body part of the three men you could reach, trying to stop them from holding you in place. A faint light glowed from a few rows away, and to your horror, you realised just how close you were to being caught by one of the professors, being held down and eaten out by three men.

It was so overwhelming that a few tears escaped the corner of your eye as a quiet sob slipped from your chest. Remus pushed his body in closer, “Shhh Princess, it’s ok. Once you cum for prongs, this all stops”.

Thankfully, as he finished talking, the light began to disappear, and the Professor decided there was no use checking the restricted section as there was never anyone this far into the room. With the light gone, you could finally lose control, still crying as James sucked violently for as long as he could against your clit until you were bucking your hips and flooding his mouth with squirt as you came hard.

It took a long couple of seconds for your pussy to calm down from the orgasm, but even as your walls stopped contracting, they still continued to throb in time with your heartbeat. Your entire body was aching, especially your legs and chest from where you’d been crying. The lights of their lamps were illuminated once more to reveal James looking at a piece of parchment, announcing that the coast was clear. You didn’t have the energy to ask what he was holding as Remus and Sirius helped your feet back to the ground.

With your legs now together, you could feel just how swollen and puffy your clit and folds were from being poked and prodded by three mouths. Your knees also struggled to hold your weight as you clung to Remus, who helped you stay upright and find the energy to stand by yourself.

For once, there are no condescending or mean words coming from him as he gently cups the back of your head and strokes the space between your shoulders in calm circles as your sobs slow to a quiet hiccup.

Eventually, as the clock tower bell chimes to symbolise that it is 2 a.m., you are able to pull away from Remus, wiping the wetness from your face with the back of your robe and then straightening your skirt. Glancing over to Sirius, you held out a hand to him and a hand to James.

James gave you back your wand, but Sirius simply patted himself down and looked at you with a frown, “Hmm, seems I’ve lost your underwear. Sorry, Princess”.

You don’t have the energy to argue with him as you sigh, “You don’t tell a soul about what’s happened here.” You point your finger at each of them, but James responds.

“Wouldn’t dream of telling anyone. But I will be dreaming about you tonight when I’m touching my cock with your taste still in my mouth”.

Your face heats with embarrassment as your eyes trained on the floor, lifting your lamp and beginning to limp away, trying to hold as much dignity as possible. Still, it was difficult with how uncomfortable and sensitive you were feeling, depending on bookcases to lean on as you made your way out of the library and back towards the Slytherin common room.

As soon as you are out of sight, Sirius sighs, dropping hushed back against the bookcase you were just leaning on and unzips his pants, pulling your underwear that he hadn’t lost from out of his pocket and holding it up to his face. With his cock free, he has no shame as he touches himself vigorously and, in a matter of seconds, cums all over the floor.

Remus frowns, looking down at the thick globs decorating the floor, “Really, Padfoot? You couldn’t wait until we were back to the dormitory?”

“I’ve never had blue balls like that in my life. It was fucking hurting Moony, give me a break”.

Remus shifts his own cock in the restraint of his trousers as James says over his shoulder, “She's heading straight towards Filch. Shouldn’t we go and stop her?”

Rems peers over his friend's shoulder, looking at the open Marauders map and watches as your name floats towards Filch. The tallest Marauder shrugs, “No, it’ll teach her a lesson about being out of bed after hours”. They all share a dark grin and begin to gather their stuff before walking out of the library.

#dark marauders #the marauders #remus lupin #sirius black #jamies potter #the marauders x reader #poly!marauders #remus lupin x reader #sirius black x reader #james potter x reader #james potter smut #sirius black smut #remus lupin smut #harry potter smut #kinktober #kinktober 2023 #mine*

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softlyspector · 3 months

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The second crow

Summary: There's not much in your tiny town, and Joel doesn't expect to stay long.

Pairing: coal miner!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13.5k

Warnings: once again writing about grief, mentions of suicidal ideation, small town setting and drama, past death of a parent (reader), past death of a child (joel), avoidant reader, mentions of natural disaster, anxiety, brief smut, smoking, alcohol mention

A/N: She wrote another long ass fic! This took months to write and then collected dust in the drafts because I'm scared. This is the kind of thing I post and run away from because there is so much of myself in it. This is probably the most me you will ever get. Please allow me this little moment to be sappy about it in the author's note. I don't know if anyone even reads these but I'm going to shove my love in here anyway. This fic is very special to me for a lot of reasons. It deals with a lot of personal issues I've been grappling with, and it is very much a love letter to where I'm from. I hope you enjoy this fic, can find something in it to relate to, and can appreciate the little slice of idealized love for home I've indulged in here. Thank you for reading! And as always, I would love to hear any thoughts you have.

And, he will never, ever know it, but this fic is very much dedicated to my best friend, who was the first person to hang on and say I won't let you go this time.

The door clatters back in the wind; the glass rattles in the frame. Snow swirls into the front foyer before it slams shut again.

A man you don’t recognize steps through the archway, and into the front room. A layer of coal dust lays fine and thin over his coveralls, settled into the creases in his face. He carries a battered miner’s helmet, a duffle bag, a rifle, and nothing else.

“Hi,” you say, surprised from your place behind the kitchen counter, plucking down holiday decorations that had long overstayed their welcome. “Somethin’ I can help you with?”

“Sure,” he nods and approaches, eyes flicking around the small front room, overcrowded with furniture that was in style thirty years ago, peeling patterned forest green wallpaper that you’d love to be able to replace one day, or at least fix up.

You can’t be bothered to feel anything but curiosity.

Strangers are a rare thing.

Rarer are strangers that come from so far away that they do not know not to come inside covered in coal dust and snow, before they have cleaned off. It sloughs off him in minute, shimmering waves, fine lines of black that sparkle in the white, winter light.

Rivulets of sweat cut through the dust on his face and neck, and pools at the base of his throat. Snow melts in his hair and along the shoulders of his coat from the blizzard outside.

A chunk of ice falls off his boot with his final step toward you. You watch it slide across the floor and under the edge of a battered bookshelf. “I’m lookin’ for a room. Guy at the bar pointed me here.”

His accent is a drawl and not a twang, the syllables of his words hang long in the air. Not quite southern. It takes you a long second to pin-point its origin. “Tell me, do they have coal mines in Texas?”

He blinks at you, fingers tightening on the rim of the hardhat in his hands. “Yes ma’am.”

“And did you mine coal there?”

“Can’t say I did.”

“And you didn’t get much snow either, I take it?”

He huffs out a surprised, exasperated chuckle. “Not like this.”

“I figured so,” you smile. “With that way you’re trackin’ dust and ice across my floor. You’d know better than to come in the front door like that. Or at least to stomp off the snow a little.”

The stranger looks back at the mess he tracked across the room and then turns back to you, looking sheepish, maybe a little horrified. “I apologize, I shoulda realized—”

“Don’t worry about it,” you shake your head. “It’s all right. But most folks along this street will feel the same, except the bar, so keep that in mind.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“A room you said?”

He nods, then shakes his head. “Well, if I didn’t offend you too bad, that is.”

“You didn’t. But you should know we got a miner’s shower in the basement.”

He just nods again, glancing around the room. You didn’t think someone could get culture shock from your little town, but you think you see all the fixings of it on this stranger’s face. The coal dust and the slushy streets aside, the miner’s shower and kicking snow off his boots seems to have done it.

He looks lost, in more ways than one. Down on his luck, melancholy but different to the kind of sadness you usually see. Tired. Like there's something missing about him.

You go through the motions of asking how long he’ll be staying with you, figuring which room to put him in — end of the hall, you decide, the least drafty of the two. Not like you ever had many guests.

You can’t help feel a little sympathy for him, standing uncomfortable in the middle of the room because you’d pointed out his mistake.

“So, Texas, what brought you to our little town?” You ask and pull on your coat, motioning for him to follow you back outside.

The front steps are slick with ice, in need of another layer of salt. You step carefully over it, the stranger offering you an arm to hang onto as you descend, and lead him around the side of the house, the path already dug out from the snowfall of the previous night.

Dark is falling quick, the sun sinking below the mountains, layering the valley in its usual early darkness, the crests of the hills in the distance cast in an eerie golden orange even through the snowfall.

Texas doesn’t answer you, the tread of his footsteps quiet behind you. When you reach the back of the house, snow up to your ankles padded in from the yard, you turn to face him, snow battering at both of you. “Just work.”

“Why here?”

You like knowing strangers. They’re easy to know, because there’s no chance of them turning and knowing too much, of looking behind your questions and smiles and seeing anything important. You are anonymous to them as they are to you, and that's how you like it. Nothing you might reveal means anything.

He doesn’t answer you and so you leave it. “Well, whatever brought you here, we’re glad to have you. We don’t get many folks from other places.” You turn to the door you’ve led him to, “Now, when you get in from the mines, you come in this way.” You hold up the proper key and let both of you in. “Just to rinse off, y’know? Won’t make you clean up down here, too cold. But otherwise, you can come on through the front door as long as you kick the ice off your boots. All right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He sounds so serious and polite, brow lowered over his eyes.

“Well, okay,” you smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Yours is the first place Joel lands in a long time that he feels comfortable.

Everything has a worn, lived in feel to it, like generations of families and visitors and travelers have passed there before him, like the warmth of their ghosts still linger in the walls and beneath the floorboards.

The front room is cluttered with books and all kinds of knicknacks, postcards that look like they were sent by people who passed through or visited before the town stopped getting so many visitors. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors groan no matter where he sets his feet.

It reminds him of somewhere he’s been before, or something he used to know, and can’t say exactly what.

Maybe it just reminds him of all the comfortable places he’s ever been, that very particular small town intimacy that he’s tried to remain anonymous and separate from for the last year or so.

He means to stay just until the snow storm passes.

And then it does and he keeps on staying.

It’s funny, how quick he takes to you, feels the ache of something settled just at the bottom of his chest, echoed back at him in your eyes. A kind of loneliness and seeking that he tramps down any time it dares raise its head.

“You know,” you had said the second evening he was there. He had been thinking about getting something to eat, and instead found himself letting you pour him a cup of coffee. “You can stay for dinner. We used to feed everybody who stayed here. But that was before the passenger trains quit running. Before my time, nearly. Now it’s just those guys that pass through and wanna go over to the bar anyway.”

“I don’t want ya to go outta your way—”

“Please,” you’d scoffed. “I’d be glad for the company.”

“All right,” he’d found himself agreeing to that smile, the invitation of company he hadn’t wanted or needed in a long time. “Anything I can help you with?”

You’d shaken your head and he sat when you’d gestured at the table. “Very kind of you to offer, though, Joel.”

He hadn't been sure what to say either, that second night, because he’d been alone for so long, and talk had come at a minimum since he left Texas.

The house sighed and Joel sipped his coffee, watching the points of your elbows, the jut of your hip, as you cooked. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been sure what to say, because you had; well versed in quiet strangers it seemed, which would come to bother him.

He would come to hate how easily you get on with strangers and push everyone else away.

But he hadn’t known that the second night.

Maybe he just hadn’t realized how starved for company he’d really been. But he liked you right away and the way you just talk, every thought you ever had floating up and right out of your mouth without a filter.

It takes his mind off the things he tries to forget anyway.

So, he had eaten with you that second night and every night that he can afterwards.

A week passes and you expect Joel to move on, like everyone does. But he doesn’t, he asks for the room for another week, and then another, and another.

Joel clips steadily into your life, until he’s part of your everyday routine.

He gives you extra money for the dinner appointment he keeps with you each night, though you tell him he doesn’t have to.

He makes himself helpful in the evenings even though you suspect he’s always exhausted but never able to get any shut eye. He drinks coffee by the pot full, and though you wonder what it is that keeps him up at night, you don’t ask. You don’t ask anything of him, because it isn’t your place, though your curiosity burns hot.

The stranger is becoming not a stranger and you don’t know how to feel about that. Maybe this time you would manage to let someone in without feeling like the world might cave in on you.

The stranger, Joel, is kind and sometimes funny. He’s handsome and it’s hard not to like his company. He doesn't talk much but you don't mind.

The dark shadow that hangs behind his eyes has nothing to do with you. But it gets hard to remember that when you end up spending so much time with him.

It isn’t long before your neighbor, and friend, starts in on teasing you about him. Each time Janie comes to the back door with fresh bread from the bakery she makes eyes at you and asks after your handsome boarder.

You claim to know nothing of him, despite knowing so much and so little all in one.

You start to worry every Sunday that he goes out on his own into the woods that he’ll never come back, and that all you’ll have left are the footprints he left in the snow, and even those will be long gone when the year eventually and inevitably warms up.

It scares you that it worries you at all. It shouldn’t matter at all if he suddenly disappeared into the snow.

But he always comes back, never with any game even though you told him nobody cares about the no hunting on Sundays rule, and with a look in his eye that says he did kill something, just not something you could see.

When you figure out he’s carrying nothing to work with him to eat, you insist he go next door and get some pepperoni rolls from Janie. “What is it?”

“What’s it sound like?” You ask and roll your eyes. “They’re good to take into the mines with you. You can’t work thousand hour shifts and not eat. Don’t you have a lunch bucket or somethin’?”

“Thousand hour,” he scoffs. Then, “No, I don’t.”

“Jesus, Joel.”

He laughs and it’s the first time you’ve heard it. It’s nice, and sounds surprised in the air, punched out of him in a short burst. “All right,” he agrees. “All right. I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

But he leaves before the sun comes up and comes back long after it’s set and so you can’t just let it go. His whole days are set in perpetual darkness, and the very least he needs to do is eat proper.

You know you shouldn’t, but you worry about him.

“Just do it,” you grouse at him, shooing him away from the coffee pot. “She makes ‘em fresh everyday and it would make me feel better. It’s common, anyway. It’s what a lot of guys take down there. And you wouldn’t want me dying of worry over you, would you?”

Joel grumbles about it, but he does as you ask, and when he comes in in the evenings, he doesn’t look so pale anymore. The bruises under his eyes never go away, the puffy bags of sleeplessness that he supplements with coffee at all hours of the day, morning and night, but he doesn’t look so wan and so it’s better.

Even quiet as he seems to be, he looks at you when you talk and always says thank you when you put a plate down in front of him, and makes it out to be a great ordeal when he asks if he could trouble you for a cup of coffee.

One evening, a couple weeks on, he slumps down at the table with an unusual amount of heaviness. His shoulders are damp with a thousand snowflakes, coal dust rubbed haphazardly off his face, the weight of a heavy sky on his shoulders.

Joel asks for a cup of coffee but he looks like he’s been sleeping even less than usual.

He looks exhausted, purple bags beneath his eyes, and even though it’s none of your business, you ask, “Sure? Might be you won’t sleep.”

“I’ll be all right.” His voice doesn’t leave room for argument, a tad dismissive.

“You’ll eat with it,” you snap. “Or you can go find it somewhere else.”

He blinks up at you, surprised at your tone. “I can be mean, too, Joel Miller.”

It takes a second but he nods. “I’m sorry. I was raised with better manners than that.”

“I know it. It’s all right.”

Almost like an apology, he tells you about Texas that night, about his brother, about what he’s found he actually misses from home, how he used to be a carpenter before he did this, how he can play the guitar.

“What is it you’re lookin’ for?” You ask softly when he stands at your sink with bowed shoulders, washing the dishes, meticulous about it.

He shrugs. “That’s just it,” he says without looking at you, hands reddened with the heat of the water. “There's nothin’ to look for.”

“You’re that Mr. Miller, aren’t ya? Lives over at the inn, right? Have all winter long?”

Joel is in the tiny general store. It’s mid-March and you asked him to get milk. There’s about five shelves total, a freezer, and a refrigerator. He’s been in and out plenty of times without any kind of trouble.

He glances at the man leaning against the cooler door next to the one he has propped open and gives a vague nod. “Sure.”

“Well, we was just wantin’ to know what’s got you hangin’ around over there for so long.”

It ain’t phrased like a question.

Joel glances over his shoulder, finds two women and the owner of the store looking over at them from the front counter.

“Mister?”

He turns back to the man attempting to intimidate him. “That so?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, she don’t seem to have a problem with my stayin’ there,” he grabs the milk you’d asked him for, the least he could do after all those dinners you cooked. He tries to repay you, do things around the place but you’re resistant to it, independent and sometimes angry, and damn stubborn about it. “So I really don’t see what that has to do with you, anyhow.”

The hostility bleeds red in the air. He pays for the milk and doesn’t wait for the change, figuring he wouldn’t get it anyway, and that a few coins didn’t matter anyway.

When he opens the backdoor, snow and ice and street grit knocked carefully off his boots at the bottom of the steps that led up to the porch, you smile at him.

“You got some protective friends.”

“Excuse me?”

He tells you what happened, lets you put a cup of coffee in front of him on the table and press a friendly hand to his shoulder.

And, Jesus, it shouldn’t, but it makes something deep in him ache. If your hand lingered, if it rubbed the top of his spine and between his shoulder blades, he’d be all right with that; he’d lean into it.

But your hand disappears just as quick.

“Oh, honey, they’re just suspicious of anyone that hangs around town for too long.”

“Why’s that?”

“You ain’t noticed? We don’t get people from other places around here, and the ones we have take everything. With not a lot to go around. They just don’t know you.” You smile wryly at him over your shoulder, mouth twisted crookedly. Your gaze flicks over him, lingering for a second, but then you shrug and turn away.

“Make an effort, if you care to. They’ll come around. They just don’t know you, it’s not like you get out,” you rib lightly.

“Cute.”

“Can’t help you go from here to the mines and back and that’s it.” You’re smiling when you say it, the curve of your cheek visible to him even though your back is turned.

He rolls his eyes and you laugh when you catch him doing it.

He can’t figure why it matters to him, but it does.

So, Joel makes the effort, or does his best to.

He makes his way over to the neighbor’s place and offers to fix their front step he noticed was loose, wood rotting through. He fixes someone’s leaking roof. Runs deliveries of groceries to the old folks who can’t get out and regale him with stories that take at least two hours to tell. He shovels snow until he’s so exhausted he does actually pass out at night.

It gets around that he’s handy and not asking for anything in return and a nice young man according to the older people and so he finds he has something to do each evening for almost a week straight.

Maybe that was a mistake, but if Joel knows anything it’s that small, poor towns run on favors. He knows that you smile when he tells you why he’s back so late each evening.

A week or so after the general store incident, he receives a parcel of muffins, and overhears one of the neighbors commending him in your kitchen. “Maybe he’s not so bad. We was worried. No one ever sees him. You should bring him over to the church sometime.”

It shouldn’t matter, but it does. You laugh and say, “I don’t think either of us are the church goin’ type. But I always know a good man when I see one, you should know that by now at least.”

“You sure do. Think he could fix our porch swing before spring comes?”

“Don’t see why he couldn’t.”

He makes an effort to be seen. It’s nice, he guesses, that people know his name again. It’s nice to feel needed somewhere, even if it smarts a little. It’s nice to feel like maybe he isn’t looking for nothing anymore.

Joel tells himself that it just makes things easier for him, just so he can get goddamn milk without being accosted. Milk for you, for dinner.

No, it has nothing at all to do with you, or the way you called him a good man, or the way the tips of his ears went hot with it.

Not getting to talk to you for a week straight in the evenings almost becomes worth it.

It has nothing at all to do with that big lonely hole in his heart, or the memories that snagged like sharp teeth at the edge of that wound.

The mines are way out past the edge of town.

It’s a long damn walk there and back. The morning is pitch black when he sinks into the cold earth, and only dregs of light are left when he comes back up in the evenings.

But the town, when he draws near, sparkles with light, bright with moonlight reflected on the snow that won’t seem to melt, even as April begins to creep in.

Spring should be well on its way, but the world still smells frozen and bruised, like pine needles and coal dust and the enduringly brutal cold.

Most that stay in town are just passing through town, on their way to somewhere else. He finds he doesn’t mind being the only permanent fixture at your place.

Some of them are all right, most of them really, but a few make him wary. He worries about you, though you don’t seem concerned about being alone. He supposes you did it long before he got there, and you’ll do it after he leaves.

They’re gone within days, anyway, so he doesn’t say anything about it. But he wants to, the words like bubbles that want to pop in the back of his throat. He wants to tell you to be careful and not so friendly.

He’s exhausted by the time he makes his way to the basement door, folds away his coal encrusted oversuit and rises off the worst of the sweat and dust quick. He’ll take a proper shower later.

You and him have fallen into a routine the last couple months, the fine sharp edge of April waiting just around the corner, and with it the hopes for warmer weather, that the temperatures will rise and the wind won’t bite quite so harshly.

There’s always something hot waiting for him on the table, even if you aren’t there to see to it. Most nights you’re there, but you are busy. More times than not lately, you’re somewhere else, doing something else, maybe like you’re trying to unstick yourself from him just a little. But you’re just busy, popular in town as a local, a regular nearly everywhere.

He always sits with you when he gets the chance, eats with you. He likes to. It keeps his mind off of what he’d left behind, what he lost.

Just like working himself to death all day does. It’s hard to think beyond the physical, backbreaking pain of the labor to what lay in back in Texas.

You and him create a routine together, solid and steady.

When it’s interrupted, he hates to admit it burns.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that you are profoundly lonely, despite the plethora of people in and out of your life—the visitors and guests, but the townspeople, too. You’re a regular everywhere, and somehow always alone.

You’re friends with the baker next door, at least. As far as he can tell, she’s the only person you’re really close with in the town.

The baker has started coming to the back door in the morning, a sly smile on her face that he’s not particularly keen on. He has started taking the basket from her, answering the knock that never waited to be answered, the door always pushed in before either of you could get to it, a basket of fresh bread and the pepperoni rolls he’d started buying off her weeks before to appease you.

He forgets to eat more than he ever has before. It just doesn’t seem to matter.

A couple times a week, you sit down to cards and cigarettes and drinks with the baker. He listens to the gossip from the front room, a book with words that blur and never sink in propped on his knee. To hear the two of you together, it makes something in his throat close.

He usually has Sundays off, days where he’d climb out into the great unknown of the valleys and hills that surround the picturesque town, almost village-like with all its holiday lights still strung up to keep the long dark days of the enduring winter season at bay, and, rifle in hand, go hunting.

It’s illegal to go hunting on Sundays, but you assure him no one cares as long as it’s after the church services are over.

He never manages to get a shot off anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Everytime he thinks he’ll be able to lift the gun to his shoulder and pull the trigger at the creature sighted in the scope, he doesn’t, he can’t. He sees his daughter instead. He sees Sarah’s closed coffin; he sees her bloodied face, shards of glass spread around her like a halo of sparkling snow; he sees her blonde hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, tubes crawling in and out of her mouth and chest and arms.

And all Joel has to show for it is a scar across the bridge of his nose, a tight pinch in his right shoulder that hadn’t been there before.

There are a lot of deer around, but birds, too, ducks and geese, rabbits, foxes. All of them remind him of his kid and so the rifle remains unused. He can’t help but feel like he might be killing his kid all over again.

The basement is dark and chilled when he gets in, but not cold or damp. Snow crumbles from his boots and leaves an icy shine behind. There’s a broom beside the door and he does his best to sweep the mess to the drain in the center of the basement floor.

Something weary weighs on him. He feels heavy all the time, tired beyond belief, and like a hole might open up in his chest at any moment, like the heart of him might slip out, bloody and mangled, right onto the floor.

This isn’t the first town he’s stumbled onto, lost and wandering, unable to stay in Texas without thinking of his girl. It is the first town he’s stayed in longer than a week.

It’s been near a year since she passed in that hospital, machines turned off, chest ceasing to rise and fall.

He thought he could take it, be strong, be there as his child died right in front of him.

He’d had to agree to it after all, sign all the right papers and talk to all the right people, and get a thousand and one second opinions from all kinds of doctors to be sure.

No brain activity. No chance of ever waking up. Hung in limbo forever, and he couldn’t abide that, that maybe she was in pain and trying to move on and leave and find rest and he wasn’t letting her.

They assured him that she would not feel a thing, and that was good, but no one warned him that he would be the one taking it all on. It felt like being carved open, split down the middle, like he was raw and turned inside out and someone was holding a hot needle to his lungs.

He hadn’t been able to help the way he fell to his knees and howled, sobbed.

So, after the funeral, he sold his house and left. Did odd jobs and backbreaking seasonal work for almost a year, a different town every week, until he stumbled on this mining town, deep in the hills of some place long forgotten.

By the looks of the buildings, it might have been busy once, trains and visitors and people, but the mines feel like they’ve been there since the beginning of time. There’s something ancient in the air and down in the deep earth.

Maybe he stays because he got into town on the anniversary of the accident.

He’s goddamn stupid if he doesn’t think it has nothing to do with you, though.

Joel should have already moved on when he heard about your little inn, in the bar down the street, but snow had moved in, so thick and white, he couldn’t see more than an inch in front of his face. The roads would be bad for days after, the least he could do was get away from that shitty company housing while he waited, and get a few more days of pay.

But the roads cleared, and a week passed, and then another, and another, and he still hasn’t met that urge to keep moving, to put space between him and Sarah. He only thinks of her when he’s trying to sleep, and those fateful Sundays.

The kitchen is empty and cold when he closes the basement door behind him, a thin wind spiraling in from the cracked open back door.

The porch is dark but the outline of you is clear, sitting on the plastic-covered porch swing with a cigarette between your fingers. “Those things’ll kill ya they say,” he says by way of greeting, leaning against the siding.

“And what exactly do you go breathing in everyday down in them mines that’s so healthy?” There’s a snap in your voice that usually isn’t there, that mean streak that lashes out from time to time.

Joel pulls the door almost shut, shuts the little bit of light leaking outside away. “Are you all right?”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he says. “Should I leave ya?”

It takes a minute for you to answer. “Get a coat and come sit.” After a second you add, “If y’want.”

So he gets a coat and sits next to you on the swing. The plastic crinkles under his thighs. “Do you smoke?”

“I used to.” He should leave it at that but more words follow that he doesn’t intend. “Stopped years ago, a couple months before my - my daughter was born.” He falters a little on the words.

Joel braces himself, stiffens, all the bone and muscle inside of him going deadly tight, waiting for the inevitable questioning. Maybe you don’t care to ask or maybe you feel him tense or hear something in his voice because you don’t ask.

Something pricks at him, disappointment maybe.

“Well, it’s just us here,” you say simply. “You want one?”

Sarah never knew he smoked.

He takes the one you offer and the packet of matches.

“I don’t usually,” you say without prompting. “Smoke, that is. Sometimes when I drink.”

Joel takes a long drag and holds it in his lungs for a long minute. It feels good and tastes as bad as he remembers. “Card night.”

You smile at him, cigarette slowly brought to your lips. “That’s right.”

He almost asks what it is that has you smoking without your friend, but he figures you’re about to tell him anyway. You talk a lot. He likes that about you.

So he waits.

And you don’t say anything.

There’s just a long melancholy silence where your words normally are.

On a usual evening, he comes upstairs and bothers you about letting him help you some way. You don’t like letting people help you, like it even less when he just does it anyway.

On a usual evening, he’s threatened with expulsion from the kitchen, and then gets caught up on local dramas, some of which he is beginning to understand, while he sits at the table with a cup of coffee and you pretend to never need help.

The snow makes a sound as it hits the piles of the stuff that has yet to melt, frozen hard and unforgiving everywhere.

He’s never been around snow, much less sat outside as it fell.

The whole world goes quiet with it, like he got sucked into a black hole and sound got swallowed up around nothing.

And in the silence, he can hear the individual plunks of each flake settling onto the frozen ground. He wouldn’t have thought it made a sound at all.

“You sure you’re all right?” He asks and slips one arm across the back of the swing, realizing that you never answered him in the first place.

You just draw in another long breath and inch closer to him on the swing.

Maybe he’s not as crazy as he thought. When you look at him, there’s something in your eyes, a grief that he feels reflected back in your eyes, sharp like a tack shoved into the delicate skin between thumb and forefinger.

The ache in his chest is present on your face.

“Just one of those days,” you say and smile. “Sorry I’m not myself.”

You’re plenty yourself, just muted. Quiet.

He does quiet pretty well, so you just sit there and listen to the snow, breathe it in, shudder against his arm until he just wraps it around you, trying not to put too much thought into it.

You don’t look at him. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

He’s not sure how long you sit there. He just knows he’s numb when your hand covers his, your fingers feel hot against the freezing ache that’s set in.

“My dad was a miner. Pretty much everybody is around here, I guess. Those mines,” you say and shake your head. “They give. We wouldn’t exist without ‘em, but they take too. They take what they think they’re owed in the end. You can’t take that much out of Earth that old and expect nothin’ bad.” You hesitate for a long moment but when Joel squeezes your hand, you continue. “My dad died in a mine collapse around this time a couple years ago. So I guess that’s what I'm thinkin’ about today.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and, slowly, your head tips against his shoulder. The cigarettes are stubbed out, the butts deposited in an ashtray. “Usually, this time of year all the snow is already gone. And then the rains come and everything floods. And that spring, the mine collapsed with it.”

He thinks of telling you of his own grief, his own loss, and the way he ran away from it. The way he’s still trying to run away from it. But something sharp twinges in his chest and he stays silent. Layering his grief over yours wouldn’t help no one, least of all you.

Telling someone about her, someone who didn’t know her, having to describe her — he wants to, and can’t imagine doing it, all in one.

Maybe it isn’t right to, anyway.

Instead, he squeezes your hand, tilts his chin against your forehead. “You always run this place?”

“No. Back when there were people still passing through, my aunt did. It’s not like there’s much else to do around here so I just decided to keep it going when she left.”

“It’s nice.”

“Think so? One day it’ll be a five star hotel.”

He chuckles. “I don’t doubt it. Almost too rich for my blood now.”

“Honorary guest,” you disagree. “Always. Room reserved for you, just in case.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious,” you laugh and relax fully against his shoulder; the tension bleeds out of you, the curve of you spilling softly into him.

You sit like that for a long time, until the snow stops coming down.

It’s then that the world does go silent as a grave, like the two of you are the last people alive.

“It’s been real nice havin’ you here,” you say suddenly and quietly, like someone might hear, like you might disturb him. The puff of your breath clouds, crystalizes in front of him like something physical he might pluck from the air and put in his pocket.

Glad to have been here, glad to be here, he wants to say and doesn’t. It feels wrong to be glad to be anywhere at all.

When you tilt your face up, your eyes are soft. He doesn’t even think about it.

He just kisses you.

You taste like blackberries, dark sweet and sour. The cigarette on your tongue is only an afterthought. The sound you make when he cups your head in his hands and tips it back, rehomes itself in his chest.

When he pulls you into himself, you sigh.

Five days later, it’s a Sunday. Another snowstorm is passing through the hills, and any snow that had managed to melt that week comes right back.

Joel only realizes when he’s brushing his teeth—preoccupied with thinking about maybe not going hunting for once, and cleaning the damn rifle instead—that it’s unusually cold. He rinses his mouth out and goes to find you.

The steps creak and crack as he descends them, like they’re covered in a spiderwebbed ice that might split and send him into some achingly cold depth if he isn’t careful.

He finds you bundled up in a coat by the backdoor, a scarf wound halfway up your face, just your eyes visible above the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” you say, voice muffled and eyes wide. “The heating went out and there’s nothin’ to be done about it until the snow clears up a little and it ain’t supposed to until tomorrow.” You shake your head. “Never snows this goddamn much or this late in the season,” you gripe, a bitterness in your voice.

“Well, that ain’t your fault,” he says, watching you wiggle your fingers into a pair of gloves. He thinks you’re just layering up, but when you reach for your boots by the back door it becomes apparent that you intend to go outside. “And just where do you think you’re goin’?”

You pick up a basket next and reach for the doorknob. “I need wood for the fireplace—”

“Then let me get it for ya,” he says, stepping into his own boots, tugging the basket out of your hands as he goes. “You’ll freeze out there.”

“No, Joel, you’re a guest here—”

“C’mon,” he says. “It ain’t like that now and you know it.” You don’t say anything but when he looks up, you’re frowning at him. “We got anyone else around?”

“Just—it’s just me and you.”

He doesn’t know why you sound so upset about it. “Good. Now where’s the wood?”

You blink and glance away, pulling at your gloves nervously. “In the shed. Should be enough little pieces but the ax is by the door if some of it needs broken up.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have some coffee ready for you.”

“You don’t gotta do that.” He opens the door, snow swirls in.

“I’m doin’ it anyway.” Then. “Joel?”

He turns.

“Thanks.”

He’s not sure what he’s being thanked for and you still aren’t really looking at him, so he nods and plunges into the white blur that is the back yard, the whip of blizzard wind harsh against his face.

Inside the shed he finds that more of the wood does need axed.

He can’t get the way you looked at him out of his mind. You’ve been busy the last couple days, always out or taking care of something, pushing away any of his attempts to. . .what? He isn’t sure. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he made things complicated, messed something up along the way.

He fears that pushing has nothing to do with the grief that had made a home on your face that evening you spent on the porch together, but what came after and what he hadn’t said.

You have been different too. Like something wary and stiff.

He chops the wood, feels every lift and swing of the ax. It seems to ache more in the cold. Everything does.

Joel shoves the wood into the basket and stacks the extra pieces back onto the pile. The house is marginally warmer than outside without the brutal slice of the wind. He leaves his boots by the back door and finds you poking around in the grate of the fireplace.

You back away when he approaches and it stings that you do.

“Somethin’ the matter?”

“No. ‘Course not.”

But there is. Some kind of wall went up between you the other night. He should have said something. “All right. I’m, uh, I’m gonna get outta your hair for a while.”

He doesn’t think of being in a blizzard, just that he needs to get out of your house before you ask him out of it, before you kick him out of it.

The only thing he can think is that he doesn’t mean shit to you. Somewhere along the way, things got messed up, like they always do. His ex-wife’s face flashes behind his eyes, all that happened with her, all of it that always seemed to be his fault.

Joel grabs his gear and goes out into the blue-white of the snow and makes his usual trek to a spot up in the hills. He sits with his back to a tree and listens to the way the weather beats down. The metal of the rifle goes ice cold between his knees, the bluster of the wind coats him in a perfect white.

He might just be the only living thing out. The world is quiet apart from that brutal, beautiful shush of wind through trees and snow through air.

He’d be ashamed to admit it, but the only thing he thinks about that day, is you.

Joel’s hair is still damp and curling lightly against the back of his neck when he finds his way to the kitchen.

He’d come back frozen to the bone, ice in his hair and eyebrows and the webbing of his lashes. It’s all melted now, and you have to resist the urge to reach out and touch him there, the back of his neck where you know his skin is soft, the feathery thick hair that grows a little long these days.

“You have a minute?” Joel asks, right hand toying with the strap of his watch. He’s looking at you the way he always does lately, like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A stab of guilt rakes pointed talons along your belly.

You did that, you always do that.

Stop it, you think. Don’t do that this time.

“Hey,” you nod, trying. “Sure, I do. Was gonna ask you to come sit with me anyhow.”

He pauses, takes the cup of coffee when you extend it to him, fresh brewed, a peace offering of sorts. Peace over what, you don’t know. “Y’were?” He sounds surprised, takes the cup from you, his fingers brushing yours.

“Sure,” you answer, swiping your hand over your thigh. His gaze follows. “It’s just s’cold upstairs. Electricity’ll be out ‘til tomorrow probably. At the earliest. So.”

He nods and looks down into his cup and you feel bad about the last week again. Of how you’re pushing again and don’t know how to stop. You held him at arm's length, made sure you were out and busy and away, watched him stop smiling at you again, replaced instead by uncertainty.

It’s unfair.

He should probably hate you over it.

You wonder why he’s still here.

When he looks up at you, you smile and his shoulders relax marginally. “All right. I’m gonna get more wood, then I’ll be there.”

You show him the bottle of whiskey when he comes back inside, smelling of frozen air and pine. “Just to stay warm,” you promise.

He doesn’t say no to the drink you pour him, or the way you inch closer to him.

Because it’s cold, you tell yourself, just like it had been on the porch that other time.

The pull of longing in your chest hasn’t eased since then. You shouldn’t have let him, you’re bad at hanging on to people and afraid they’ll disappear, and you’d rather hurt by choice. You’d rather be alone and ache.

But Joel is here and real and still in front of you, still looking at you.

It’s terrible because he wants you to know things about him and you want to run away. You want to push him away, until he leaves or hates you or both. He brought up his daughter and even though you think it might have been an accident, you think he might have wanted you to ask about her.

And you hadn’t.

He doesn’t make it any easier on you by being warm and solid and pressing an offering open arm along the back of the couch.

Just like the other time.

You accept it, because it's cold. Just because it’s cold.

It has nothing at all to do with the way he strokes your shoulder and tugs you close to him, the way his head tilts down over yours when you press the cold tip of your nose into his neck by accident and then leave it there on purpose.

You aren’t expecting him to say anything. The guttering of the candles lulls you to sleep, the pepper of white snow against the black swirl outside soothing. “You know,” the sound of his voice rumbles against your ear. “I didn’t know snow made noise.”

You blink. “What?”

“That sound it makes. When it’s real quiet, you can hear it land.”

“Suppose you can, yeah.”

“My daughter,” he starts and your breath hitches. The broken eggshell of memory delicately being pressed into the palms of your hands. You’re being trusted with something. “She only saw snow once, I think. Real slushy and wet. Not like you get around here. And I don’t remember it makin’ a noise.”

You swallow the instinct to change the subject, to say something dismissive, to push and push.

“Did she like it?” You ask after a moment. “The snow?”

“Yep. Got off from school. Made the world’s tiniest snowman. Maybe only a foot high. Made snow angels that turned out to be more mud than snow. My brother thought that was real funny.”

You laugh and lean into his shoulder. He smells like snow and damp cotton and gun oil. “What’s her name?”

Assuming. No, hoping. You are hoping that he’s just missing her, that the chipped china memory in your palm is of a girl he misses and doesn’t mourn. But you could tell the other day, you could tell by his voice and the way he isn’t with her. If he had a choice, he’d be with her.

Joel isn’t like you.

He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

He clears his throat. “Sarah. She was, uh, she was twelve.”

“Oh. Oh, Joel. I’m sorry.”

And you are. That is a loss no one should ever know, and Joel is not the kind to carry it well. It leaves those purple circles under his eyes, burrows deep ruts into the arteries to his heart, half his blood just drained away. It leaves the coffee pot empty, it whispers fourteen hour work days, and still no sleep.

It pushes a rifle into hands that always come back without game.

“Anyway, I think she would have liked this shit,” he gestures to the snow beyond the window with the mug in his hand, coffee and whiskey. “Think she would have liked it here.”

“It’s okay, when you get to know the place.” You follow his eyes. “It’s home, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

What part he’s agreeing with, you aren’t sure you want to know.

He looks at you again, and you can’t bear to meet his gaze through the dark that’s fallen on the room, to see too deeply into what lay there. Sharing his daughter with you, that she died so young. A lot of things about him suddenly fall into place in your mind.

The grief and the love with no place to go. It makes sense why he’s there, running away from something that could never be ignored.

You take the cup from him and pull him up by the hand.

He fits against you, pulled in tight, so easily. You feel the brush of his mouth against your cheek, his fingers against your back.

You sway, and there’s no music. You want to say that you’re sorry again. Not for his daughter, because he wouldn’t want to hear it, but for everything else — the running you’re both doing, the snow and the cold, and how clear it is that everything in the world looks like grief and loss and the big hole in his chest.

“I think you should ask Joel to get a drink.”

Janie pauses mid-chop, knife hanging in the air. Your friend the baker turns to look at you over her shoulder. “What did you just say?”

You wince and fiddle with the edge of your sweater. “Joel. You should ask him.”

“Now why,” she starts, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist. “Would I go and do somethin’ like that?”

“Well, I think y’all would be good together—”

She sighs heavy and long, rolling her eyes as she sits down across from you and takes your hand in hers, still wet from rinsing the vegetables off. “You’re doin’ it again, you know.”

“Doin’ what?” You snap, yanking your hand back, accusatory.

“As soon as you think somebody is getting too close you push ‘em away. I know you know what you’re doin’. And I know if I hadn’t had the sense to hold onto you so hard all them years ago, you woulda done the same to me. And we’d just be neighbors.”

She raises a brow at you when you sputter. But it’s true. You know it’s true.

It happens all the time, with everyone. It always hits you so hard, the sudden smothered feeling, the scared, confused, cornered animal feeling, when hanging onto something seemed impossible and wrong.

“You know that man don’t want nothin’ to do with me.”

“He always answers the door to you in the mornings,” you defend weakly.

“As a favor to you. He does everything for you, and I know you noticed or you wouldn’t be trying to pass him off on me. You don’t gotta be so avoidant. Not everything disappears.”

You know, but you what you don’t know is how to stop it. The sharp talons and fangs that spring out whenever someone gets too close are always a surprise. You hate it when people care about you, when you care about them.

It’s like there’s a box around you, growing smaller with each passing second. So, you flee, before the box crushes you, or before the thing trapped in there with you gets to do it first.

That’s what you’re really afraid of, after all, not that someone might care about you, but that they one day might stop.

“I told him about my dad,” you admit.

Janie freezes, blinks, and then looks over at you. You look back at her, miserable about it. “Oh, honey.”

“And he. . .you shoulda seen the way he—” The way he looked at you. You almost tell her about Sarah, but don’t. That loss isn’t yours to tell, no matter what, even if it would tell her exactly how close he’s drifted to you.

You don’t know what to call it, anyway. The way he looked at you the night of the snowstorm, the air chilled and the whole world cold except for the two of you pressed together. His hand in yours, the mocking remembrance that you had forgotten in that moment to feel trapped.

No, that had come later. When you couldn’t breathe before going to bed, when your skin felt pinched and tight. That moment is tinged in your mind with the heaviness of a hand pinching the back of your neck, instead of the gentle press of fingers to your spine, his mouth against your cheek but not your lips, not again.

“He’ll leave soon and it won’t matter,” you dismiss with a shake of your head. “He’s got to be goin’ soon. I know it.”

She pats your hands again, pity in her gaze. “It will matter, and you know it. But it seems to me he’s stuck. And it isn’t this town or those mines that are keeping him here. He wants to hang on. You should, too, for once. He’s looked like nothin’ but a kicked dog lately, and one that might bite at that.”

The snow melts over the next couple of weeks, temperatures rise rapidly. For a while, the sun shines, the weather is nice; the skies a purest bluest blue.

Joel doesn’t leave.

He smokes more on the back porch, his eyes far away and haloed with something distant. He stops hunting on Sundays, and starts going fishing at the lake instead, and unlike before he brings back a haul.

For a minute, it seems like things might be okay. You don’t allow yourself to have any more quiet, secret moments with him, but you don’t push either. You try not to push.

But you wonder if he wants that, if he might have wanted to kiss you again when the heat went out and you were stupid enough to let yourself reel him back to you.

Then, one day, the rains come. Clouds so black they appear blue roll in and sit heavy in the sky for a day, winds whipping the leaves of the trees back so their bellies show. Old warnings about just how bad the weather was about to get.

The skies open up, and the rain doesn’t stop.

For weeks.

Suddenly all anyone can talk about are the floods and the landslides that are likely to happen any day.

You wish they wouldn’t, or at least not to you, or have the decency not to look at you with pity when they talk about it. What if there’s a mine collapse? Well, you think, that too is likely.

The creeks swell until they look like rivers; the rivers glut themselves with so much rainwater the levees threaten to bend and break, the banks of the lake disappear, silt stirred so deeply that the whole lake goes brown with it.

Joel stops fishing.

You expect them to close the mines, at least for a while. But the coal companies have never cared about any of you, and they weren’t about to start.

“Mornin’,” he says, his voice a soft grumbling rumble.

“Hi,” you say, not turning away from your spot by the window, watching the rain pour down seemingly harder.

The rain and all it could wash away, makes you anxious. Makes the whole town anxious. Flooded river plains and lake shores, mountainsides crumbling down to sweep everything away. It’s embedded in you, something your body learned generations before you were born.

A generational curse, a landscape that could steal everything, that had and would again.

“You okay?”

The sound of the coffee pot sliding out of place, liquid being poured, ceramic clicking down onto the counter.

“Yeah. The rain makes me anxious.”

“All anyone talks about are the floods.”

“Same way every year,” you shrug, like it doesn’t keep you awake at night. Like you haven’t stopped sleeping and pace all night long. “Hard thing to forget, once it happens to you.”

Joel makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and joins you at the window. “It’s gettin’ lighter every day, at least.”

You think he means it to comfort you.

“The sound, though.”

The sound of rain tapping at the window is like nails on a chalkboard — warning.

He covers your hand with his for just a second, the squeeze of his fingers around yours barely felt. “I know.”

Too close.

It’s too close.

You don’t want him to know that.

You move your hand before his skin has fully left yours, jerking away like you’ve been stung.

He clears his throat and shifts, floorboards squeaking awkwardly beneath his socked feet.

Socked feet. Hand on yours, rough skin against yours. Tender words, gentle tone.

It all feels like he knows too much, wants too much. You take a step away from the warmth he radiates under the guise of reaching for the handle of the dishwasher. “You think you’ll be movin’ on soon?”

A surprised silence follows your words. “What?”

“It’s just you been here awhile.”

He doesn’t answer and you start to unload the dishwasher, carefully stacking the ceramic on the counter even though you’d normally just put them up in the cabinets. “Big waste of money, stayin’ somewhere like here for so long. If you’re waitin’ for better pay or something, I can tell you it won’t happen. Not even if you talk to the union.”

A long silence follows your words. It’s a buzzing, angry silence. “You ain’t even gonna look at me?”

You shrug and your body continues on autopilot, still not looking at him, stacking dishes one after another.

Clink, click, clink.

The door to the basement doesn’t exactly slam, but it shuts much harder than usual.

You sit the mug in your shaking hands down on the counter and stare at it without seeing.

The pressure in your chest isn’t gone. It never is, after. You push and push and push, until they finally let go. And then the loneliness and pain rub their hands together and slip back into their comfortable home in your chest. It’s almost a relief to have it back.

God, why does someone knowing something about you, caring about you, feel like getting your arteries ripped out, one fine line at a time? Why does it feel like your skin is shrinking and your throat is closing up?

Your eyes sting and you wish you wouldn’t have said it.

But you did and he’d be on his way soon enough and everything would be simple again.

You can remain in your little box all alone with carefully constructed walls that push everyone to the periphery of your life. They belong at arms length where you believe it won’t hurt you when they leave, where you convince yourself you’ll have enough time to recognize the signs and do it first.

He can’t get any closer, can’t see anymore than he already has.

Joel has to leave. You have to push him away, before he makes the choice himself and leaves you bleeding.

But Joel isn’t like you, you think again. He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

The rain comes down harder.

The house rattles with it.

You think about the mines flooding, and finally cry.

Joel doesn’t leave, but you can tell he’s trying to figure out how to. He’s trying to leave because you want him to, and that’s what matters.

You don’t know how he picks where to roam next and you don’t care. You’re glad he’s going to leave.

He doesn’t eat dinner with you anymore, barely nods at you when you see him though you try to be busy with something else when he comes in in the evenings, or not in the kitchen at all, not in the house at all.

Joel leaves so early in the morning that you don’t see him then either. The ache that slices like a knife through the ventricles of your heart tears open a little wider each day. He makes the coffee now, and always makes enough for you, too, the pot left on to keep it warm for you. One morning you find an envelope in the center of your kitchen table.

Panic overcomes you, until you open it and find a week’s worth of money. Scrawled on the outside, I’m sorry to keep imposing.

You rip the envelope up, angry, because you don’t want to think about what it means that you got scared. Fear that he had already been gone.

Near a week later, late in the afternoon, when the sky is a deep purple, Janie knocks on your backdoor. Her voice is frantic. She smells like raw flour and sliced apples.

There’s mud on her boots and that’s the only thing you can think of as she talks at you, her voice far away.

You think about the mud on her boots and her boots on your floor and how she always takes them off on the porch no matter what.

She’s still talking, words flowing a million miles an hour, and you just think about the smell of bread and how she normally, always, takes her boots off.

She shakes you by the shoulders suddenly, hands clamped tight against your skin. “Did you hear me?” She asks urgently. “One of the mines collapsed.”

“Which one?” You snap, reality snapping sharply into relief. “Which one? They're all shut down but one. Which one?”

One that is empty, or not? The one with people, or not? The one with Joel, or not?

“I don’t know. Nobody seems to know but—”

You pull your raincoat off the hook by the door and shove your feet into the first pair of shoes you see, and dart out and into the rain, the hale of it cold against your skin and your face.

It’s been a cold year. This time last year, it was warm and sunny already, things like a mine collapse a far off, unreal, non-possibility.

The mud sucks at your boots but soon enough you’re on the road and running.

You run and run and don’t feel the burn in your lungs or the pain in your thighs. There’s nothing that will keep you from getting there. The town is small and built in relation to the mines.

You’ve always been a mining town and so it’s not far. It shouldn’t take you long to get there.

Joel walks in the mornings. It’s not far.

But time moves slow, and your body seems to move even slower than that.

Shouldn’t you have known? Shouldn’t you have felt something? The beating heart of the earth tearing something away; that primordial, knowing pit taking back what had been taken from it? What it was owed in return?

Not him. Not him.

He didn’t owe this stretch of Earth anything. And it is not owed him.

The hills and mountains rise up around you, the comforting presence of them, like ancient, silent sentries, suddenly loom a little more sinister. Crumbling and old and vengeful, just waiting to swing a fist down on something you cared about, something you loved, something you always try to push away. Because it would always be destroyed. The town, or a neighbor’s house, or the banks of the swollen river and lake eating up precious farmland.

That’s one thing, though.

Towns and houses can be rebuilt, the banks of rivers and lakes and the sides of mountains reinforced — other things, well, you can never get back.

He has to be okay. When you wanted him to leave, this is not what you meant. This is not what you wanted.

You move backwards in your mind, mapping out all the times Joel has come home. Where he’d usually be in his journey to your house after work.

It used to be he only came home after dark, but spring has arrived and the sun stays longer each day, and you think you should meet him on the road. You should find him at any moment; unless the mine collapsed and he was unlucky, trapped and lost and suffocating; or lucky and already dead.

The road twists and turns. You have to slow because you live in the hills, everything and everywhere is steep. Your chest starts to burn and you wish the trees hadn’t started to get their leaves yet even though it's so late in the season because then you’d be able to see further, you’d be able to spot him earlier.

Maybe it’s too early for him to already be along the road.

Your coat is soaked and so is the little house dress you’re wearing. Your shins and ankles feel cold from the rain and the chill in the air.

But then you bolt around a bend, and there he is.

His name jumps out of your mouth, careens across the gravel road, and echoes around the valley through the din of the still falling rain. It sounds lush against the leaves. It sounds horrible against drain pipes and gravel.

He looks surprised right before you crash into him and lock your arms around his neck. He drops his backpack and catches you, arms circling you tightly.

“Joel.”

“Hey—” The sound of his voice makes your knees weak and you’re afraid for a moment you might slip to the ground, into the graveled mud, and dissolve along with the rain.

“The mine collapsed,” you say, feeling the grit of coal dust beneath your cheek, the warmth and weight of him leaning back into you, strong arms tight around you. His palm slides against the back of your neck, thumb stroking slowly.

“I know it.” His voice is gentle, like you’re a startled, feral dog that might turn on him at any second. “S’why I’m on my way back now.”

You start to shake and cry and he just rubs your back and tugs you more firmly into his chest. He seems to understand what’s wrong. His palm settles against the back of your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his chest as the rain continues to siphon down over you. It’s all right. I’m all right. He repeats and repeats and repeats. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Hey,” he pulls back eventually, the cups of his palms cradling your face, pushing the tears away. “I’m gettin’ you all dirty.”

“I don’t care,” you grip his sleeves, press your hands over his. His face is streaked with gray so deep it appears purple, like there are bruises latticed over his face. “I don’t care. And I’m sorry.”

“All right.”

It’s too late, you think. Too little too late, pushed too far, and by your own hand, so you have no one to blame but yourself.

But he’s alive and he’s okay and something precious has not been reaped by the Earth.

You try to step back but he steps with you, not letting you go. Apologies swim to the back of your throat again, heavy on your tongue, but he’s already shaking his head at you.

Hazel eyes stare deep into yours, rivulets of water snaking down the side of his face, tracing through the coal and dirt. You don’t look away from him this time.

Your words get trapped, congested and clogged, sticky and stuck together.

“Joel—”

“Let’s get outta the rain.” His hands slide down your face, briefly slot against your throat, and then trail down your shoulders and arms. “Let’s do that at least. Before you catch your death.”

“Okay.”

You bend down to scoop his backpack off the ground, surprised because he lets you keep it and keeps his hand threaded with yours. His skin is wet against yours, the crinkle of your fingers together just a little uncomfortable.

The rain comes down harder, lightning sparks, the angry slash of violence through the sky, thunder crackling right after.

The walk goes quicker than your run. Time is moving at a normal pace again, you can breathe again.

“I’ll meet ya in the kitchen,” he says when the town and your street resolves itself. He turns and takes his pack from you, pinches your chin between thumb and forefinger and tilts your face up. “All right?”

You nod and release his other hand, and watch him walk away. You know the moment he reaches the back of the house because you hear the clatter of the basement door opening.

You just stand in the front yard for a long moment as shadow fall, as the rain continues down harder than ever.

The rain pounds against the side of the house, the windows when you step inside. The tree your neighbors have been telling you to cut down for years sways ominously, lashing the front window and the siding. The noise of it is awful.

You stand there, dripping pools of water onto the kitchen floor, anxiously waiting for Joel to come up the steps, like you’d gone and pulled a ghost right up out of the ground. He’s all right, you tell yourself. He’s all right. Real and not some ghost.

When he comes up the steps, his gaze flicks slowly over you. He holds a hand out. “C’mon. ‘S get you cleaned up.”

You’re shivering. The material of the dress clings to your skin like webbed silk.

It’s so pathetic, the way he comforts you and the way you want him to. You shouldn’t let it happen. You feel stupid, all that worry after all that pushing.

He follows you up two sets of stairs, to the third floor, the loft where you reside even though so many of the rooms below always remain empty.

Joel settles you on the edge of the bathtub in your little bathroom and fishes around in the cabinets until he finds what it is he’s looking for. He doesn’t ask you where anything is and you don’t offer.

He smells like earth and pine. He doesn’t complain or pull away when you touch that hollow place in his cheek, when you stroke his beard and watch the muscle jump, jaw clenching and releasing.

“Joel,” you say when he kneels in front of you with a washcloth in his hand, a first aid kit open on the bathroom counter. “I’m not hurt.”

He just pats the water away from your face and hands and arms. “Y’are. Musta ran through brambles or somethin’. Legs are all torn up.”

The surprise is muted when you look down and find you have been scratched all to hell.

“I’m sorry,” you offer.

He shrugs. “Nothin’ to apologize for.”

The way he takes care of you is meticulous. Disinfectant and ointment and bandages wrapped around and around. You probably would have just rinsed the cuts out and slapped the biggest band aid on and called it a day, but that’s not good enough for him and that makes you want to cry.

There’s only so long you can handle sitting there, shivering, feeling the press of his very warm hands into your cool, bruised skin, before you’re slipping to the floor too, kneeling with him, asking for forgiveness for something that doesn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry. And that’s not enough.”

“No.” Hands cupped around yours, stilling the anxious twist of them. “Shouldn’t’ve got so comfortable. I ain’t anyone to you—”

“But you are.”

The words bleed. They are red and bone white and raw and drop like stones between you. He thinks he means nothing. He doesn’t know. “You are. You are. And that’s why.”

Thunder rumbles, and this time, you kiss him.

There’s only a brief second of hesitation.

But then he pulls you in and doesn’t let go, doesn’t complain of the cool tiles and your cooler hands or the way you pull at his clothes.

Joel does jump when you press your hands to the small of his back, when your iced over fingers skim his belly, when you finally get to rake your nails against that coarse chest hair that makes your mouth go dry.

“Hey,” he’s cradling you to him, mouth desperate and eyes wild. “I’m here.”

Go easy with it, his voice asks. Go easy with me.

You knock your forehead against his. “I know.”

Joel nods and his fingers skim up your thighs, beneath the clinging material of your dress. He’s so warm, even though he’d been in the rain too, and his skin feels like it's burning, like the tips of his fingers might sink right down into your flesh.

Cloth parts beneath desperate hands. He cups your breasts in his palms, follows with his lips. Fingers tug your underwear down your legs, and then slide through the core of you, circling and stroking.

It should be a surprise that he’s so delicate with you, but it isn’t.

He kisses you again, his beard scratching pleasantly along your skin. You gasp into him and let him lie you back against the bathroom floor.

The rain continues outside, the lashing the house is getting a far off dream.

The only real thing in the world is Joel, his shoulders beneath your thighs, the clench of your belly, the ache that spreads everywhere.

He presses his forehead to yours when he’s inside you, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

Joel’s mouth parts, he groans into you.

It’s enough.

“Did you know that crows mate for life?”

Joel looks over at you.

Morning is sitting heavily on the windowsill, watching.

His limbs are heavy, sleep pulling at the corners of his vision, darkening the room and dampening the sound of the still falling rain. Your bed is comfortable, and your naked skin pressed to his even more so. “No,” he answers after a minute, just looking at the picture of you, plush curves, the soft spill of softer skin. “Do they?”

You roll onto your side, watchful eyes riveted to him. Slowly, maybe a little shyly, you stretch your arm across his belly. Your fingertips brush his side, and you use the grip to pull yourself even closer. The light is kind to you. You glow in it, lips swollen, the discoloration on your throat from his lips and beard highlighted.

Joel touches you there. You close your eyes for a moment.

“They do. They’re real social creatures, and when their mate dies they make this god awful noise. Sometimes they’ll carry sticks and stones and stuff to leave with the body, like a burial.”

“Mm. Not so different from people.” He thinks of Sarah, the last rise and fall of her chest, the noise that came out of him like something wrenched out of the bottom of his soul. He clears his throat but his voice still cracks a little. “Yeah, reckon we’re the same that way.”

You prop your chin on his shoulder. “Yeah,” you say, voice soft. “There used to be a flock that came around. Or, whatever they’re called, a murder, I think.”

“Murder?” He chuckles and you smile and it’s enough.

“Never heard of a murder of crows? Well, it’s true. The backyard was full of ‘em. For a long time, I fed ‘em. And they’d bring presents to me. Eventually they musta moved on, but a pair stayed. I know I sound crazy but I could tell they were in love. They were mated anyhow, even if they don’t feel love like people do.” You lean into his hand when he presses it to your cheek, like his skin isn’t rough and dry from working so hard, from the long, bitter winter; you lean in like it means something, like the pass of his thumb against the crest of your cheek means more to you than he can know.

He doesn’t know a thing about crows. It doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t, he has a feeling he already knows what you’re going to say.

The limbo he’s been in for weeks has finally ended, of knowing you wanted him to leave but not able to figure out how to give you what you wanted and feeling guilty for it. Just another person he couldn’t figure out how to love right.

Maybe this time hanging on was the right thing to do.

Your eyes flutter closed, head tilted close to his on the pillow, the swell of your body pressed to his. “It went on like that for years. I fed them and they brought me little gifts and everything was fine. And then one morning, there was only one. They mate for life. I never saw the other one again, and it was only a couple weeks, before the other one was gone too. It died.”

Joel leans in, presses his forehead to yours, the rain a painful tattoo against the roof and the windows and the whole wide world. You push into him, returning the comforting pressure, your skin still tacky with sweat. “So you see, I try to avoid being the second crow. But it just means I end up alone and wondering why there was never another crow in the first place.” Your eyes flick open and search his. “So, I’m sorry about everything. I never realize I’m — I don’t know I’m pushing until it’s too late. And I’ve never been good at holdin’ on.”

“I guess I’ve never been too good at lettin’ go,” he admits. “I’m the second crow.”

“I don’t want you to be,” you say. “I don’t want you to be the one left behind. And I don’t want you to leave.”

He nods and looks up at your ceiling. Carefully, you slide closer, until your head is heavy against his chest.

Things change a little.

The rain stops and with it you stop pacing through the nights. Before, he’d listen to the pace of your footsteps against his ceiling, the crack of old floorboards and the snaking sound of water down window panes.

You make every pretense of things being the same until night comes along and you ask him to stay with you. “I just won’t be able to stand it,” you say, nervous hands fisting around the edges of your sleeves. “If you go back to being just a guest. You mean more than that.”

He’s embarrassed to hear it, and likes to hear it all the same.

So, now, he listens to the long overdue hum of springtime insects nestled down into long sweet grass and between the branches of gently swaying trees, like all that snow and rain and blizzards and flooding never existed in the first place.

Most of all he listens to your breathing, slow and even, to replace the sound of your footsteps. The curve of your spine rests against his bicep, the ridge of it like the comforting heel of the mountains beyond your windows.

When he turns and tucks his arms around you, you relax and melt into him so easily it’s like it’s always been done.

So it goes, every single night.

Winter is over, spring arrives quiet.

Joel agrees to go to the town festival with you. Tiny, even by your standards, apparently.

Just some drinking and dancing and live music from a local band. A few games, for which the prizes are all donated.

Things go fine.

He doesn’t mind crowds, though he does prefer to hang on the edges of them.

The night is mild. Your arm repeatedly brushes his.

Joel finds he doesn’t mind that either, the way you stand so close and look at just him. There’s no shortage of eyes on either of you. And when you kiss him, he can practically feel the small town gossip sparkling and wasping in the air like lightning gold, like a thousand bees.

You don’t seem to notice, or maybe you don’t much care. Maybe you’re used to it.

Either way, you’re happy, and that matters to him. It matters to him that you’re happy, and safe, and that you feel those things with him.

“If you’re still here when its warm enough,” you say, “you’ll have to go swimming in the lake. It’s real nice down there.”

It already feels like summer. The air is balmy, the sinking, fading sun he feels like he hadn’t seen in months a red blaze on the horizon.

“Where else would I be?”

You give him a funny look and sip your drink, enthusiastically greeting a couple who approaches. Joel nods at them, takes a swig of his beer, and thinks of his kid. Sarah would have loved this kind of thing, all the people and noise.

He hasn't been hunting in weeks.

“You wanna dance with me?” You smile at him. “Just for one song.”

“Think I’ll say no?”

“I’m actually sure that you’ll say no, Joel.”

He just sets his drink down and offers you a hand. You grin so wide, it looks like it must hurt your cheeks. You don’t dance so much as sway together, pressed tightly together.

“Where else would I be?” He asks again.

“Somewhere else, I guess. Back home.”

Home. He hasn’t had one of those since Sarah died.

This place, as brutal an introduction as he’s had to it, is starting to feel like home. He wants to see the lake in the summer and the trees thick with leaves. The hills probably look beautiful, emerald forests not yet torn up for the things that laid beneath.

It only feels a little like a push.

Instead, he just says, “Yeah. Sure.”

You tip your chin heavily against his shoulder, the weight of your head comforting in its press there.

You aren’t always good about it. There’s a mean streak in you when you feel trapped. Today, you try.

“I’d like it if you stayed.” You say it against his throat, your fingers tangled into his hair, the movement of your hand fond. “If you wanted this to be home for a while.”

He nods, squeezes your hips. “And you should come see Austin. Instead of hearin’ about it. Reckon you might like it.”

“I think I probably would.”

The next morning, he calls his brother for the first time in over a year.

If you read this far, you have no idea how much I appreciate it. Thank you for reading and being here, and as always would love to hear anything you have to share. 💕

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

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feelinmatcha · 2 months

Text

❛ 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐎𝐊𝐀𝐘, 𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 ❜

description: your boyfriend tends to remind you that you're so easy to love. characters: alhaitham + scaramouche (wanderer) a/n: had this idea brewing in my drafts and decided to finish it off ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁 .ᐟ

"no, i'm not buying a book from a genre i don't even like."

that's okay, alhaitham will.

actually, the idea of giving you your own bookshelf would already be on his mind as soon as you've successfully moved in with him and kaveh. the only catch? kaveh insists that he builds it himself as a gift.

alhaitham subtly asks you of your favorite wood one evening in the kitchen over a heavy discussion of zaytun peaches that kaveh was supposed to buy earlier that morning. trust me, he already knows which wood you'd absolutely adore, but he took the precaution of asking once again just in case as he'd be quite perturbed that his plan didn't work out in the end like he intended. he wanted it to cater to you, not anyone else.

the topic drifted from zaytun peaches to the week's trending romance novel that you had finished reading a few days ago.

"haitham, you should put this on your to-be-read list!"

"really? what's the appeal, love?"

listen guys and girls, he wants to know why you'd recommend it to him!!!

give him every little detail on why!! you want him!!! out of all people!! to read it!!!

he really just wants to hear you talk about what you find interesting.

contrary to popular belief, he doesn't hate the romance genre. he just finds it... meaningless to read? the last time he gave it a try, there was no actual knowledge in it. just fictional love between fictional characters.

but of course, he would consider it if you were to suggest something. especially if the book has you running laps around the bedroom.

so he sets out on to the nearest bookstore when he's on his 'break' and purchases the same copy you had.

you're DISCOMBOBULATED. BAFFLED.

that night you two would be in bed, settling down for the night, and he whips it out-- his fingers spreads the pages near the ending of the book and he begins reading.

"babe... why are you reading my book?"

"no, it's my book. i bought my own so you wouldn't complain about me creasing the spine."

"but why'd you buy one?"

he side-eyes you, "you suggested the book."

"but i didn't think you'd actually... you didn't have to. i know you aren't fond of--"

"i'm fond of you, and that's enough."

"no, i don't want you starting a commotion here in public."

that's okay, scaramouche will.

he loves you with his entire heart, body, and soul.

if someone stares at you weirdly? they're already being glared down by him. if a salesperson says anything about your attire, your hair (or the absense of it), or your skin-- he's throwing himself across the stall and grabbing their shirt to bring them closer to you.

he makes them apologize.

a woman, a man, an elder, a kid-- doesn't matter. as long as they got a mouth that can yap, he's gonna shut it.

your friends would let what people say to you slide, but he won't.

it's bad enough that he feels as if he doesn't deserve you so when you start thinking of yourself as someone whose less than even the dirt and cement beneath your feet, he's angry at everyone else for letting it get this far.

"what are you talking about? they insulted you and you stood there and took it!"

you don't want to feel like a burden, like someone whose always in need of being protected.

"i'm not your friend, i'm your partner," he grits. "it's what i'm supposed to do, you idiot."

really, it's just the ideal of protecting you that's instilled within his puppet body.

poor baby does not know an ounce of romance yet he said that line so effortlessly and in a way that had you choking on your next words.

as you cling to his bicep on the dirt road, you thank him. profusely. he finds it a bit annoying.

"you need to get better friends." is all he says.

he knew what loyalty was. he practically would get on his knees for it, too. he constantly looked for that in a partner, and you had answered.

he knew loyalty was needed in friendships, as well as relationships. especially relationships.

so it unsettled him when he heard that your so-called friends brushed off the verbal assaults directed to you and had the audacity to then say: "just smile and don't let it get to you"

it wouldn't be the first he's done this and it certainly won't be the last, and that's okay.

he wants to enjoy the smiles, laughs, and jokes you end up sharing with him all in an attempt to calm him down but he's already been calm. he's always found himself significantly calm around you, whether he admits it or not.

"come on, let's go home."

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #alhaitham x reader #alhaitham #scaramouche x reader #wanderer x reader #reader angst #reader comfort #reader soft #reader insert #genshin imagines #alhaitham x you #scaramouche x you #wanderer x you

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readerthatreadsss · 9 months

Note

hello you can make headcanons about yandere soft elijah mikaelson x fem human reader, where he has several yandere traits but to his lover he is a softie.

Alright anon, I GOTCHU.

Please don't be afraid to let me know how I did cause this is not only my first headcanon post but also my first Yandere one :)

Soft yandere!Elijah Mikaelson headcanons

Warnings: Starts off pretty calm but ends a little smutty so minors beware, sub!reader, yandere themes (possessiveness, manipulation, overprotective behavior, compulsion, mild obsession, denial of said obsession, unhealthy relationship tendencies, etc), breeding kink and edging mentioned, also more nsfw themes...

His siblings and enemies consider him to be noble, but when it comes to you? This man is everything but that.

Jealous, paranoid, overprotective? Yeah, that's Elijah.

The first time he met you had been under less than ideal circumstances but he couldn't help but take immediate note of how beautiful and strong you were. You helped the Salvatores to dagger him but that was quickly forgiven once you helped Elena undagger him a short time after. It was then that he saw that not only were you beautiful but you also had a good heart and were protective of the ones you loved, which was more than he could say for most of his past lovers, so he immediately set his sights on you.

Elijah needs to know where you are and what you're doing constantly or he stops functioning. Like he'll be more irritable than usual, snapping at his siblings, more aggressive with the men he's hired to watch you on the very few occasions when he can't, etc.

Most times he's following you with a small notebook where he writes down new things that he learns about you every day...though after enough time he's convinced that there's nothing about you that he doesn't know.

He saw you smiling at Damon for too long while watching you outside the Mystic Grill (without your knowledge) slashed Damon's car tires and ripped out his steering wheel.

His siblings tease him about his obsession with you and he denies it every time. "This isn't an obsession. I've simply taken a keen interest in her," he'll say.

Elijah takes note of your body language. And that's not just general things like how you struggle to hold eye contact with most people you talk to, or how you lick your lips and clench your jaw when you're frustrated. No, Elijah sees the smallest of habits that you don't even realize that you do on the regular.

He also knows your scent better than he knows himself. Elijah can actually smell your perfume/shampoo/lotion from a mile away and it actually comforts him the moment it hits his nose. When he's close enough or in a room with you, there are times when your scent becomes so overwhelming that he has to stop whatever he's saying or doing, close his eyes, and deeply inhale it so that he can go back to normal, (or as normal as he can pretend to be)

You are deeply involved in all the supernatural lore in Mystic Falls so you know that you're supposed to hate the Mikaelsons...but something about Elijah catches your attention. You liked how calm and composed he was or appeared to be in comparison to his brothers. Though he did things that sometimes hurt your friends, you could see and even appreciate the reasoning behind why he did them. He was also less impulsive than his brothers and sister in the same manner that you were less impulsive than your friends (the Salvatores, mainly).

You were one of the few people in Mystic Falls to engage in a conversation with Elijah that didn't end in a threat. You even once complimented the suit he was wearing that day and Elijah couldn't stop smiling for the rest of that day.

He has and will never lay a hand on you, even when his siblings demand that it would be strategic to harm you to persuade the Salvatores to do what they want. He actually threw Klaus into a bookshelf for even suggesting the idea.

Elijah sneaks into your house and watches you sleep on numerous occasions, and even though he knows it's wrong, he uses his abilities to force dreams he's had of the two of you together into your head while you sleep. He just wants you to see how good you could be together.

Since he started putting those dreams into your head, he's caught you stealing inquisitive glances at him, even with your friends around.

He hired someone to research your internet patterns and reading/music history and bought first editions of your favorite books/records and mailed them to your house that same week. You had no idea who sent them but the package was tied with a thick string that had a pattern that you could have sworn you saw on Elijah's tie the week before.

Since then you've been more hyperaware of your surroundings on your day-to-day. (You actually almost caught Elijah a few times but he managed to speed away before you could catch sight of him)

Elijah is known to be very patient in comparison to his siblings. This applies to you too. He wants you to see that he's the man that you belong with in your own time. But who says he can't continue to persuade you without brash tactics? So Elijah continues to send gifts, jewelry, and your favorite things to your house.

He saw you sitting at the edge of a creek one night and decided that this would be the one time where he would stop hiding and watching and just show his face. You two had a long conversation that night about the stars, (because he knew you were into astrology and astronomy) and he even told you that both your astrological signs were romantically compatible.

It was a lie and you both knew it but he loved the way it made you blush.

That was the night you two first kissed. It was better than the many many times he's imagined it. You were obviously apprehensive at first and he had to take the lead on it but he was more than happy to do so. You gave him your number and told him that you would be interested in going out with him. He already had your number for weeks before but you didn't know that.

It only took a few dates and late-night picnics for him to convince you to become his.

You noticed small differences in his behavior since you became official; he'd get slightly annoyed whenever he'd text or call and you'd say that you were with the Salvatores but if you were with Elena or any other female friends it was no problem, the deadly glares he'd send men in the street when you walked together and one stared at you for even a second (these men would end up missing dead in a dumpsterthat same night without your knowledge), or the way his grip on your hand would get tighter whenever you mentioned Klaus by name.

Once you started dating he insisted that you needed to live with him. He bought a house just so that the two of you could be alone and away from not only his siblings but the drama of Mystic Falls. You didn't agree at first, but Elijah sent two of his men to your house to fake a home invasion and that scared you right into his arms and your new home.

When you moved in with him, Elijah gave you a new phone and told you it was a housewarming present. It actually had a tracker in it and was connected to his own phone so that he could see every call and text you made. He asks you exactly where you're going whenever you leave the house. And of course, he checks his tracker just to double-check.

The longer you dated, the more violent Elijah got when it came to people who tried to harm you or take you away from him. But he never let you see him harm others, and on the rare occasions when you would, he'd compel you to forget it. He couldn't live with himself if he made you afraid of him.

Some of your family members got worried and upset when they went a whole month without seeing you and Elijah compelled them all to move across the country.

Despite having to do all of these outrageous things to keep you to himself, Elijah had never been happier. You were finally his and he would do anything to not only keep you his but to make you fall for him as deep as he had fallen for you.

He considers turning you because all he wants is to spend the rest of his life with you without worrying about human illness or one of his enemies taking you away from him, but he wants you to ask him to do it. He knows that bloodlust isn't something that everyone can handle and only wants you to be happy.

On nights when you'd get into arguments with your friends about your relationship with Elijah and come home sad and angry, he would hold you in his arms and kiss your head while you cried. He hated seeing you cry and would internally seeth with rage at your friends for making you sad. But he'd always find a way to calmly tell you that if it were up to him you'd never see the Salvatores ever again but he understands your loyalty. (he doesn't. he really doesn't like the Salvatores or how close they are to you.)

NSFW hcs up ahead...

Elijah is a primarily gentle lover by nature. For your first time, it was mostly because he thought he wouldn't get the chance to do it again and wanted to make the most of it while he could. But as you continued dating he was only rough with you when you asked him to be...which was most times.

On these days when you asked him to be rough...he would completely oblige. He would never degrade you but praises would easily fall from his lips while he pounded into you from behind with enough force to leave you limping the next day. "You look so beautiful taking me like this, love."

He gets extra possessive during sex. "No one else can ever make you feel this good, huh gorgeous? Tell me who's making you feel this good." "You're all mine, love. No one knows your body like I do," he'd growl with a hand softly resting around your throat while he drives into you with a finger fiddling with your clit. And Elijah was right. He knew what made you tick and what drove you crazy.

Elijah loves edging you. Like he will spend a whole hour working you with his hands or his mouth to the precipice of your orgasm only to pull away. He'd only indulge you once you were a sobbing, blubbering mess, begging for him to fuck you and let you come for him. You always wanted to be good for him so you'd never come without his permission.

He definitely feeds on you during sex (with your permission ofc). He loves the intimacy of the act and even makes you drink his blood sometimes. But Elijah also just loves the taste of your blood. It's painful every time he does it but you love the look of satisfaction that crosses his eyes once your blood hits his tongue, so you swallow the pain and allow him to do it every once in a while.

He absolutely LOVES leaving hickeys on your body. He would shout it from the highest rooftop that you were his if he could (he wanted to but you begged him not to), so for now, he's settled for leaving those deep red marks on your skin to let others know who you belong to. Once you tried to hide them with a scarf and he snatched the scarf from your neck and ripped it to shreds in front of your face.

Elijah worships your body during sex. He will caress and kiss every part he can get his hands on. He quite literally cannot get enough of you. His favorite parts of your body are your shoulder, your inner thighs, and your stomach.

You moaning or screaming his name drives Elijah FERAL. Actually, just you saying his name is music to his ears regardless of the setting. Your voice can soothe him in an instant or be his undoing in the bedroom.

There was one day that he got caught up in the moment and said, out loud, that he'd murder any man who even thought about seeing you like this. But you were so cockdrunk that you didn't register it.

Lastly. Breeding kink. Need I say more? Actually, I'll say more cause why not. Elijah obviously doesn't need to worry about surprise pregnancies with you but that doesn't stop him from whispering in your ears that he's gonna "fuck a baby into you," or that he "loves filling your womb with his come"

I know this was supposed to be soft yandere...but I feel like it kinda got away from me and strayed into REAL yandere territory so I hope that's okay?

Don't be afraid to comment or reblog and my requests are open! Hope you enjoyed <3

#elijah mikaelson #daniel gillies #tvd smut #the originals #fluff #headcanon #elijah mikealson x reader #elijah mikealson headcanon #elijah mikaelson smut #tvdu #elijah mikealson #the originals x reader #hcs #headcanons #soft yandere #yandere x reader #yandere #the vampire diaries

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whenlostinthedarkness · 9 months

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Ellie x reader where they take nudes of each other on a Polaroid camera they found on a patrol and completely forget about them until someone finds them🫣😭

May or may not have written a whole ass one shot because this got me so inspired lol. Thank you for requesting this; Enjoy anon xx

Warnings: Sexual overtones and some sexual stuff sorta but not really, swearing, & use of marijuana.

Word Count: 2.5k

Anytime you and your girlfriend Ellie were put on a patrol route together, you could feel the giddiness exploding between both of you.

On a usual day where one of you had the day off and the other was out on work duties, the one at home would be sitting around, bored, and attempting to busy themselves until their girlfriend returned safe and sound. But today was one of those lucky days where you both were needed on the patrol route.

The start of patrol was pretty chill as both of you alternated between sifting through withered buildings and riding along on your horses, allowing time to appreciate the scenery of the area around in the downtime you had.

"Hey, let's check out that building with the camera sign," Ellie spoke as she rode on her horse directly next to you, pointing her finger in the direction of a storefront sized building.

You peered in the direction she was pointing at before looking back at her with an accepting shrug, "I'm down if you are."

The both of you guided your horses over in the direction of the building before leaving the animals to stand side by side, just a few feet from the broken glass door that went into the, what you assumed to be, old camera store.

"Check this shit out", Ellie said with excitement in her tone as her bright eyes marveled at the colorful, peeled wallpaper and exposed brick in a building that had to have been the ideal modern storefront before all of the infected shit happened.

You squealed as you quickly walked over to a massive bookshelf set on a wall. Several scrap pieces of cardboard and glass littered the shelf, but what your eye had been after was the books that were some how still set on the shelf as if the world hadn't completely shifted since they were first placed on the shelf.

You picked one of the books up, shoving off the layers upon layers of dust and debris that had gathered over the years, until you could make out the title on the cover, 'Camera's Throughout the Years'.

"Shit, look at this babe!"

You glanced over your shoulder to Ellie who was holding what appeared to be an oblong, square shaped, object.

Immediately, you walked over to her as she stared at this object that nearly looked futuristic to the both of you.

" What is it?", you said, tracing your finger along the thing in question.

"Hell if I know," Ellie shrugged, pressing all of the buttons on the mystery item in hopes that it would somehow start talking or moving or..doing whatever the hell its purpose was.

"Let me see if its in this book".

Quickly, you removed the cover of the book and flipped through the pages, scanning the table of contents in search of info, until you came across a diagrammed image of what appeared to be the very thing set in Ellie's hands.

"El, I think I've got it!"

Ellie was quick to move the camera away from her face and look down at the book you held in the palms of your hands.

"Looks like it's something called a Polaroid Camera." Your eyes were still scanning the book as quickly as you could as your fingers followed along with the typed words on the page.

"I think if you press the button over..here on the right..," your eyes were fixated on the object in Ellie's hand and she couldn't help but admire the way your eyes were squinted in concentration as your tongue slightly peaked out between your parted lips.

"...and just lift up on this part...it should open up."

It took you a couple tries, but eventually the top part began to move upwards until it was sitting straight up, exposing a fully intact Polaroid Camera.

"Holy shit dude!", Ellie exclaimed, eyes wild and smile never ending as she examined everything (and I mean everything) about the cameras exterior.

You rattled off the instructions on how to use it as Ellie continued to marvel at the object.

"Looks like we need films in order to use it El," you said with disappointment in your voice, "...unless."

Ellie could tell the wheels in your brain were turning as you looked the camera up, down, side to side; quickly, she handed it over to you.

"Holy shit, there's still film in this thing."

"You've got to be shitting me?!"

"Look!" You exclaimed, showing Ellie the little box of film that was still snugged inside of the square shaped compartment at the very bottom of the camera.

"Should we...test it out?"

"Oh most definitely", you replied to Ellie as you pulled the camera up to your face and looked through it's small view finder.

"Smile for me El."

Immediately, Ellie pulled up her hand to cover her face from the camera, "No fucking way."

You pouted, but continued to follow Ellie with the camera persistently, "Please El."

"What's in it for me?" Ellie smirked, bringing her hand down in order to cross both of her arms in front of her body, just below her chest.

You removed your eye from its focus on the viewfinder and lowered the camera down away from your face with an annoyed, yet amused grin.

"Oh god."

"What?"

"You know what Ellie."

Ellie walked over to you until her feet were planted on the cracked wood floor with the tips of both of your shoes touching. "Enlighten me then."

Smugly, you moved your face ever so slightly towards Ellie, which didn't go unnoticed by her. "You're never fair with your little games."

"What games", Ellie shrugged, fully playing the part of an innocent victim (which she wasn't).

"Mmmm okay."

"Okay," Ellie mimicked, trying to match your tone.

You weren't one to back down from a challenge to one up your stubborn girlfriend and now wasn't any different.

"You really wanna go there?" You moved your body forward, making Ellie nearly fall backwards from your gentle, yet sturdy nudge as she stood directly in front of you.

"Go where?"

"Shut up Ellie," you continued your nudging, but this time you didn't stop. The both of you continued on with Ellie walking backwards and you walking forwards directly into her.

"Make me."

Ellie watched as, the moment the words left her mouth, your innocent eyes seemed to cloud with devilish intention.

Gently, you placed your free hand on top of Ellies and guided until it was landing on your clothed chest; Ellie's pulse instantly began to quicken as her mind and emotions shifted from playful to aroused.

FLASH!

A strong beam of white light over took the dimly lit store as the sound of the film being spat out of the camera took over the only sound in the store, that is until Ellie let out a "What the fuck!"

You backed away from your girlfriend with a playful smile as you moved the camera away from your face and shook the film in your hand; again, doing just as the book advised.

"Babe cmon on," Ellie protested, trying to grab the film out of your hand.

"El, don't you want to see what your face looks like when you grab my boob?"

"No actually, I'd rather just see your boob."

You playfully scoffed, "Maybe you will if you stop being so difficult."

At that, Ellie stopped attempting to grab the photo in your hand, "You better be for real."

You shook your head, "You're ridiculous, you know that,"

Ellie's soft yet playful smile made you crack a genuine smile as you reached out for her hand, intertwining the tip of both of your fingers.

"Awww Ellie", immediately you cradled the photo to your chest with your free hand.

It only took a quick look, but the photo was preciously adorned with Ellie and an awestruck look on her face that made her features seem so soft and relaxed.

Ellie rolled her eyes, still wearing a smile that let you know she was appreciating your admiration for her looks, "Yeah yeah."

"You look so cute dude. I'm going to put this up in my place."

Ellie couldn't help her smile now, not even bothering to attempt to cover it up as you clutched it to your chest with two hands now, gleaming right back at her.

"I guess, it's time for your end of the deal now," you spoke slowly, raising the camera up and out to hand over to Ellie.

"What do you mean?", she questioned.

You smirked, moving your arms out of your shirt until it was lifted up & over your head.

"Wha-what are yo-you.."

Before Ellie could finish her stuttering sentence, your shirt was being discarded onto the ground, leaving you standing in your dusted jeans and grey sports bra.

Your hand out stretched to Ellie, beckoning her to come closer to you, which she happily accepted.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ellie said as she now stood just a bout a foot or so in front of you.

"Helping you get your picture." Suddenly your hands were slowly reaching for the bottom hem of the only fabric that was covering your chest.

"Babe."

"Hmm?", you hummed, lifting the fabric off of your top half until it was discarded alongside your shirt, leaving your chest naked, much to Ellies pleasure.

"Holy Shit." Ellie admired quietly, her eyes naturally raking over your chest and then back up to your eyes. "Are you asking me to take a picture of..you know," Ellie motioned her hand in the general area of where your tits were.

The mix of nervousness and astonishment in Ellie's voice was something you wished you could recored to play on repeat for those days when she was out on patrol without you.

As you stared at your girlfriend, giving her a smile, she didn't think twice about lifting the camera up to her face.

"All you do is put your eye in that little Hole right there and press the red button on the side," you explained, but if Ellie was being honest, she was only half able to comprehend any of your words. She was much too preoccupied with the way your tits were naked for her to devour with her eyes..and now to capture and have for..whenever the occasion arose.

As Ellie peered through the viewfinder, her cheeks reddened as you shifted your shoulders back, making your tits that much more pronounced and ready for her to bring her lips to.

Ellies pointer finger held down the shutter as the familiar noise of the film ejecting itself echoed through the store.

"It'll take a second for it to-"

Ellie interrupted you by quickly placing the camera and it's fresh film onto the nearby shelf and pining your back against the red brick accent wall, surely leaving slight scratches along your bare back.

You gleamed up at her as you wrapped your arms around her neck; it didn't take long for her lips to come into contact with yours in a harsh kiss that was dripping in longing.

Ellie let out a chuckle as her lips removed themselves from yours, "Maybe we should take this along so we could..take some more."

------

A Week Later

"Shut the fuck up Jesse," Ellie nudged her friend with her shoulder as the alcohol in his body made him giggle like a school child next to her.

Ellie and her friend in tow were crunching their way through the snow covered roads as they got closer and closer to the front door of her house after a night out of catching up.

Ellies hand twisted on the doorknob as she flicked on a lamp and stabbed her knife into a nearby table.

"Let me find my weed real quick then we can smoke up."

Jesse nodded, removing both his boots & coat before flopping down on Ellie's couch.

Jesse had been to your home many times before, probably having it subconsciously memorized if you had quizzed him on all the contents of your home...but something caught his eye this time that seemed out of place.

As Ellie went to her bathroom, grabbing the small tin that held potent smelling greenery, Jesse's curiosity got the better of him.

Peaking out from underneath one of Ellie's sketchbooks was the corner of...something..an object that Jesse couldn't fully make out. Looking around quickly, Jesse sneakily thumbed the corner of the object, sliding it out from underneath the leather bound book, until...it was revealed.

His cheeks grew red at the polaroid of you and your naked chest staring back at him, making him forcefully tuck it back underneath the sketchbook.

"Two pre-rolled joints coming up," with every word, Ellie's voice came closer and closer until she was in full view and plopping down on the couch next to her sheepish looking friend.

"Here", Ellie's long fingers pinched the edge of the joint as she passed it over to Jesse, but he didn't take it right away.

"Jess?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry", Jesse's eyes must've been deer in the headlights worthy as Ellie scanned him with a furrowed brow.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"You don't seem fine," Ellie chuckled as she held the lighter up to the white stick in her mouth until it was smoking at the end.

Jesse took the lighter Ellie held out to him, lighting his joint with a look of disassociation still evident on his face.

"Dude, what's up with you?", Ellie questioned as she exhaled.

Jesse gulped after taking the first hit and breathing the smoke out through his nose and mouth.

"You uh..you may want to try to hide this better."

Ellie looked confused at her best friend, "Hide what?"

The substance was beginning to relax Jesse more as he felt the weight on his shoulders soften and his once mortified eyes beginning to fall more closed than usual.

He chuckled, moving his eyes down to Ellie's sketchbook, doing his best to give her the hint without him having to actually say that he found her girlfriends nudes.

"What the hell are you on Jesse", Ellie chuckled, deeply inhaling and eyeing her friend.

Jesse sighed before bringing his hand down to Ellie's sketchbook, tapping his finger against the corner of the polaroid picture that had been revealed to his eyes just minutes ago.

Suddenly, Ellie's squinted pupils grew wider than ever as she came around to what he was talking about.

"Shit," she said, grabbing her sketchbook quickly, but forgetting that the intimate photo that Jesse found wasn't the only one set underneath the journal.

Jesse's eyes subconsciously dragged over to the..not so safe for work images of you, Ellie, and one of Ellie's hand wrapped around what he assumed to be her girlfriends neck.

"Fucking hell Ellie!" Jesse covered his eyes quickly as if somehow that would magically erase the images that were sure to burn into your mind for the foreseeable future.

"Damn it-Fuck, fuck fuck," Ellie swore as she grabbed the remainder of the images, placing them completely hidden under her sketchbook that was now on her bedside table.

"I-I'm so sorry Jesse."

But Jesse was much too fucked up by now to be able to be bothered by the accident, all his mind thought to do was begin laugh vigorously as his hand vibrated as it rested on top of his abdomen.

"Hey, fuck off," Ellie said as she began to lose the embarrassment as she playfully taunted her friend before once again sitting down next to him on the couch.

"I see why you date her," Jesse quipped, his laughter still spilling out to the point where it was difficult for him to get even one word out.

Ellie wasn't sure if it was the weed beginning to do it's job, the situation that had just happen, or a good combination of both, but she too began laughing hysterically and playfully hit Jesse's shoulder.

"Erase that shit from your brain dude."

"Oh don't worry," Jesse nodded through red rimmed eyes, "I'm going to try to."

#Ellie williams #Ellie williams x reader #Ellie fic #tlou #tlou2 #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #Ellie the last of us #Ellie williams smut #kinda?#my writing

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