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. 💕
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Mammon's the type of guy who will randomly remember that mc will die at a certain age and get sooo depressed, he can get this thoughts at midnight and go to mc's room just to wake them up and cry about their mortality
You're right though, it makes sense that Mammon might do something like that. Mammon adores MC and he's going to be devastated even thinking about losing them, up until he and his brothers find a way to prevent it. Because he will not lose them, he can't–
For demons, the passage of time means just that. Days turn into months turn into years turn into centuries, and not much changes. Demons take for granted that Solomon is a rare exception, not the norm, when it comes to aging and mortality. Most humans talk about time differently than demons, too—they realize it's a rare, finite commodity they have to make the best of.
Take Mammon's precious human, for example. He starts to notice little groans or hisses of discomfort they make when their body aches in ways it never used to. They scrutinize their appearance in the mirror more often, and realize their skin's not as firm—and is that a grey hair?!
Maybe Asmo notices too, those times when he scrolls through his Devilgram feed to look back on fond memories with you. He sees you all the time, but looking at photos from a year ago? Five years ago? He can see how much you've changed.
If the demons haven't figured out a way to address their beloved human's mortality already, something is going to remind them that they're running out of time.
[Mammon x gn!Reader, 0.6k words, sfw. Content warnings: references to death/mortality, grieving, angst.]
Mammon put on the cheesy-lookin’ human world movie because it was long after midnight and sleep eluded him. He figured if it was as dumb as it looked, he might finally doze off.
By the time the end credits start rolling, he's a blubbering mess.
He’s always cracking jokes and making sarcastic commentary during bad movies. Ain’t that the whole point of watching ‘em, to have a good laugh?
But sometimes movies catch him off-guard, like the one tonight. Usually they’re films you pick, the ones you promise he will enjoy and you’ll accept the consequences if you’re wrong.
(Maybe you make everything so much better just by being there with him.)
Mammon doesn’t like to think about the possibility of you not being there anymore. He already has to deal with your visits to other realms which is annoying enough, but he can deal with that. It's the thought of you being gone forever, the thread of your human life inevitably cut when you grow old, or if something happens to you—
He hates thinking about it. It’s like a black hole inside him that traps his heart in a vicegrip and makes it impossible for him to breathe. He takes for granted that most humans aren’t like Solomon—you won’t be around forever, and he tries so desperately not to think about it because it kills him inside.
He tries to do what everyone else does: carrying on and basking in the warmth of your very existence without considering what comes next. If the others worry about the day when you suddenly won’t be there anymore, no one else says anything.
(But sometimes Asmo frowns when you peer at your reflection in the mirror and joke about the little wrinkles you’ve developed, and Beel shoves more food onto your plate when he thinks you’re not eating enough, and Levi complains that you’re too tired to pull all-nighters with him like you used to.)
He wipes his eyes and curses this damn movie about the lovey-dovey human couple growing old together, how they lived together and loved together and eventually died together. It should be romantic, but it fills him with dread.
Mammon looks down at the pact mark etched on his skin. One day you’ll disappear, and your pact mark will too. He won’t be able to chase after you anymore to keep reminding you that he’s yours, and you’re his.
He rushes across the house in a panic and ends up outside your bedroom. He can hear you snoring softly on the other side, but the familiar sound is a small comfort. He cracks the door open, and the light from the hallway spills across a familiar lump underneath your blankets. He doesn’t mean to wake you when he slips between your covers and melts into the warmth of your body as he wraps himself around you.
You peer at him sleepily, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. “Wazza’matter?” you mumble with a yawn. You wrap an arm around his waist and snuggle closer to his chest. “Y’okay?”
Tears roll down his cheek and he swallows around the lump in his throat. He doesn’t answer right away—not until he suppresses the urge to sob uncontrollably, like he just did in his room.
“Just couldn’t sleep,” he whispers, and you’re too tired to notice the way his voice cracks.
“M'kay. G’night, Mammon,” you murmur as your breathing slows and your body relaxes in his arms.
He holds you close and matches his breathing with yours. He strokes your back and bites his lip whenever a new wave of tears fall from his eyes and drip onto your pillow.
He knows by morning the stains will be dry, the evidence of his despair washed away by time, just like you will be one day.
He's so exhausted but his heart is heavy. He doesn’t sleep.
Read more: obey me! masterlist
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Twenty Years Later: Joel Miller x F!Reader - Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven: Almost
Plot: Joel, Ellie and Y/n work their way across Wyoming in a desperate search for Tommy.
Word Count: 12.6k
Warnings: tlou ep.6 spoilers, language, death, loss of a child, angry outburst, trauma, anxiety attacks, 16+
A/N: SURPRISE! One day ahead of where I thought I’d be, swooping in for a dose of bedtime angst 🌙
As always, I have to put that this series is 16+ and I will not be adding anyone to the taglist if your age/range is not specified in your bio. Gotta look out for younger eyes 👀
This chapter and the one that will follow are the chapters. They’re the culmination of this whole frickin’ journey. It’s been so fun to eead your theories about Joel and Rosebud’s breakup, and now you’ll have (some of) your answers. I hope it lives up to what you imagined, or maybe even surprises you. Above all, I hope y’all enjoy 😘
—————
December 2023. Somewhere in Wyoming.
Fuck the philosophers of the pre-Cordyceps world.
Time healed nothing.
If anything, time made pain worse. Because, with enough time to study its victim, the pain could evolve. It could morph into anger, bitterness…much like Cordyceps, it could consume its host until they were shrouded in so many layers of hurt, they became unrecognizable.
Time healed absolutely nothing.
Marlon returned to his cabin, hanging the two rabbits he’d killed on the hook outside the door. The little warmth the home managed to retain welcomed him in, but the inside had changed since he’d been gone.
“Who the hell are you?”
Y/n sat adjacent to Florence, Marlon’s wife, blowing on a spoonful of soup. “A deep admirer of your wife’s cooking,” she answered.
Marlon stood confused at the door, slowly removing his jacket.
“And the gun.”
The old man turned to see another stranger, this one a man, emerging from the kitchen. He had a pistol drawn on Marlon.
“And you?”
Joel shook his head, carefully moving towards Marlon, “Just someone passin’ through. Take the gun out, two fingers only, put it outta reach.”
Marlon obeyed, dangling his pistol off his fingers and setting it on an end table. All the while, Y/n sipped her soup.
Marlon looked to Florence, “Why didn’t you shoot them?”
She nodded across the room, “The gun’s all the way over there. They didn’t hurt me by the way.”
“Yeah, I got eyes,” Marlon walked to his chair, he’d already deemed Joel as a very minor, if at all, threat.
“He won’t shoot you,” Y/n interjected, not once looking up from her bowl, “He threatens everyone he meets.”
Joel’s hardened stare landed on Y/n’s face, her casualty was greatly undermining him.
“You made ‘em soup?” Marlon gestured to Y/n’s meal, along with Joel’s untouched bowl that sat on the coffee table.
“Yeah, I did,” Florence answered, “It’s cold out.”
Y/n reached across and touched the woman’s arm, “And it’s lovely, Florence. Thank you.”
Joel sighed in exasperation, “We’re lookin’ for my brother.”
Marlon scoffed and removed his baseball cap, “Well, I ain’t seen him.”
“I haven’t told you what he looks like,” Joel replied.
“He look anything like you?” Marlon asked.
“A bit.”
Marlon shrugged, “Then I ain’t seen him.”
“They’ve got a girl with them,” Florence nodded up the stairs.
“Can I come down now?” Ellie called from above, overlooking the ground floor.
Joel and Y/n answered at the same time.
“No.”
“Yeah.”
Their eyes flicked to one another, Joel’s frustrated, Y/n’s calm. She was done playing the gunslinging traveler when unnecessary.
Ellie, always siding with whichever of them gave her what she wanted, bounded down the stairs.
“Ellie,” Joel reprimanded, as if it would do anything to stop her…
“Ooh-wa,” Marlon chuckled, looking to his wife and Y/n.
“What did I just say?” Joel said as Ellie joined him.
“Joel, come on,” she replied, aiming her handgun at the couple, “They’re like, a thousand.”
Marlon ran his eyes over Ellie, “Who’s this little psycho?”
“Never mind her,” Joel leaned forward, pushing his map across the table to Marlon, “I need you to tell us where we are.”
“If you got a map, why’re you lost?” Marlon asked.
“Must’ve missed all the street signs in the enormous fucking forest,” Ellie shot back.
“Ho-ly,” Marlon smiled to his wife, the two of them sharing a laugh.
Joel glanced over to Ellie, she was mirroring his posture, his tone…she was trying so damn hard to be like him. “We’re somewhere here,” he pointed to a spot on the map, “Exactly where? And your answer better be the same as your wife’s.”
Marlon’s eyes flicked to Florence, “You tell ‘em the truth?”
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Are you tellin’ me the truth?”
“Yeah.”
Marlon leaned forward and pressed a finger to a spot on the map. It wasn’t the answer Joel was looking for.
“Well,” he holstered his gun, “You found a great place to hide, I guess.”
“Hide?” Marlon chuckled deeply as Joel settled on his couch, “Came here before you and your wife were born, sonny. Get the hell away from everybody.”
“Not his wife,” Y/n was quick to reply before taking another spoonful. It had been three fucking months of assumptions and both Joel and her were exhausted by them.
Florence turned to Y/n, “I didn’t want to.”
“Eh,” Marlon waved his wife off and looked to Joel, “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you about your brother but if you’ve come this far, then you know what’s out there. You seen Cody?”
“Yeah, got close enough,” Ellie answered from the arm of the couch, “It’s crawling with Infected.
“Yeah, Laramie,” Marlon listed off, “And Wind River Reservation. Anywhere people used to be. You can’t go there no more.”
Y/n set her soup aside and leaned forward on her elbows, deciding it was finally time to take the conversation seriously. “So you’ve never heard the name Tommy Miller?”
“Nope,” Marlon answered.
“What about the Fireflies?” Ellie asked.
Florence nodded, “We get those in the summer.”
“Not the bugs,” Ellie replied, thoroughly put out, “The people.”
“There are firefly people?”
Y/n joined the joke and gestured down the length of her body, “In the flesh.”
Marlon, Florence and Y/n shared a laugh, Joel couldn’t tell whether he was more annoyed or disappointed.
“You got any advice on the best way west?”
“Yeah,” Marlon leaned forward, “Go east,” he ran a finger along a stretch of water on the map, “But you never go past the river here. Ever.”
“What’s past the river?” Ellie asked.
“Death,” Florence answered, “We never seen who’s out there, but we see the bodies they leave behind. Some Infected, some not,” she turned to Joel, “If your brother’s west of the river, he’s gone.”
Joel and Y/n’s eyes met across the table, both trying to conceal their worry under Ellie’s ever-present gaze, but knowing they could share it with each other.
“You’re not gonna scare us,” Ellie said, confidently.
Florence nodded towards Joel and Y/n, “Scared them.”
They quickly buried their anxieties under blind determination. Whatever lay across the bank, it didn’t matter. They had to believe that Tommy was both alive and well on the other side.
Filing out of the cabin, Joel and Y/n marched ahead of Ellie.
“You don’t seriously believe them,” Ellie half-stated, half-asked.
“They’ve lived here a long time,” Joel replied, trudging through the snow. He could feel his heartbeat speeding up.
Y/n turned around to see why she couldn’t hear Ellie’s footsteps following theirs. The girl was unhooking one of Marlon’s rabbits, “El, come on, don’t steal their food.”
Ellie was undeterred as she swung the game over her shoulder, “They don’t know anything. Never heard of the Fireflies.”
“Yeah, they wouldn’t have out here,” Y/n stretched her arms out around her to the snowy expanse, “Doesn’t mean you have to steal t-“
Y/n’s words faded in Joel’s ear, a steady ring filling the space. It was happening again.
Joel stumbled forward, resting a weak hand on a piece of the cabin’s fence, his breathing became labored. His thoughts began to spin with worst case scenarios in all their various forms that could become reality, if what lay on the other side of the river was real. Every nightmare his mind drummed up ended with Y/n or Ellie d-
“Joel,” Y/n called, she was the first of them to notice. She walked to meet him, “Joel.”
“Joel?” Ellie echoed, she’d had yet to witness one of his episodes, “Joel, are you okay?”
“Shut up,” he said, verbally waving Ellie off.
“Holy shit, are you dying?” Ellie continued.
Joel shook his head and shut his eyes, trying to block them out, “I’m okay.”
Y/n wasn’t so convinced, she laid a firm grip onto Joel’s shoulder. “Joel, c’mon.”
“Okay, but are you okay?” Ellie asked again.
“I’m fine,” Joel insisted, wishing desperately that Y/n would remove her hand, but not possessing the strength to shove it off, “I’m fine.”
“No, no, but are you?” Ellie wouldn’t stop, why couldn’t she stop? “Because just a reminder, that if you’re dead, we’re fucked.”
Y/n’s gaze darted to the girl, “Ellie-“
That was enough to bring Joel back to Earth.
“I said I’m fine,” he pushed, contradicting his words with his palm pressed to his chest. “It’s just the…cold air all of a sudden.”
Y/n let her hand slide off his shoulder, wholly aware that he was lying. The episodes had been occurring more and more over the last few weeks, they seemed to be getting worse the closer they got to wherever Tommy was or wasn’t.
Joel refused to ever tell her what triggered them, hell, he had barely figured it out himself. What he did know was that he couldn’t deal with what lay at the core of them all. That would have required an honesty he hadn’t possessed in twenty years.
“All right, uh,” Ellie was the first of the three to bounce back, “So let’s go find Tommy and the Fireflies. It’s gonna be easy,” she slid between the fence and called back to them, “All we have to do is cross the river of death.”
Joel and Y/n were left on their own, the former waiting to catch his breath, the latter waiting on an explanation.
“Would it have killed you to back me up in there?” Joel asked, his usual sour mood replacing the small glimpse of vulnerability.
“Yeah,” Y/n’s watched him bury the lsat thirty seconds, denying her an answer once again, “‘Cause that’s our biggest problem.”
She slid through the fence after Ellie, leaving Joel to bring up the rear of their group.
The last three months had been trying, but not in the ways Joel and Y/n might have thought at the beginning of their quest. They could only stay silent with each other for so long before they had to talk, and they’d reached a place where they weren’t at each other’s throats any more. While the snow had frozen the earth, their anger had melted…
Leaving all the underlying emotions to fill the vacant space.
The physical distance they kept hadn’t changed, but the unspoken chasm between them was beginning to cave in on itself. With each passing day, it was growing harder and harder for Joel and Y/n to pretend like they didn’t need each other.
In every one of Joel’s attacks, his guilt slammed into him like a tidal wave, threatening to drown the life out of him. So many people he’d let down and when he opened his eyes, he was staring into the face of one of them. One look at Y/n caused everything he’d told himself about her over the years to follow the undertow out to sea.
Y/n, in all her righteous rage, was beginning to do the impossible…she was starting to understand why Joel had done what he’d done to her. She’d spent twenty years cursing his name, a constant boil in her stomach that bubbled whenever she thought of him, but there’d always been a voice in her head reminding her of the ‘why.’ All of Joel’s actions from Outbreak Day on had been driven by a deep pain inside him. That inkling was starting to spread through Y/n’s mind, the dye well on its way to consuming the whole brain.
In a perfect world, they’d have come to one another, humbly, and talked it through. Instead, they held their grudge, with its dying flame, as the barricade between them, hoping that it sparked once more.
—————————
In the fall, fires had been a luxury, but as winter rolled in, they became necessary to make it through the night.
Y/n and Joel sat on opposite sides of it, Joel adding another layer of duct tape to his boot and Y/n stitching up a busted seam in her leather gloves. It was the apocalypse’s version of domesticities.
Ellie was above them, having scaled a rock to get a good look at the stars. A green glimpse of the Aurora Borealis waved through the midnight blue sky.
Joel whistled for her eventually, “Come down from there. You’re gonna break your neck.”
Ellie reluctantly returned to the ground, choosing to sit close to Y/n and watch her mend her glove. The two of them had grown closer over the past three months. Joel would never let his guard down wholly for Ellie, but Y/n was more comfortable letting the girl see her as she was.
“Ahh,” Ellie said, spotting the flask Joel was taking a swig from, “Can I have some?”
“No,” Y/n and Joel said in perfect harmony.
“What? Just to warm up,” Ellie clarified, “C’mon.”
Joel’s eyes flicked to Y/n, who knew she couldn’t hold old world rules to their situation. Her gaze falling back to her handiwork served as Joel’s answer.
Ellie took the flask, made sure to give a little ‘cheers’ to Joel and took a drink. She grimaced as it ran down her throat, “Yep,” she strained, “Still gross.”
Ellie held out the flask to Y/n, who shook her head. The thought of being anywhere near where Joel’s lips had been unsettled her.
“So I’ve been thinking,” Ellie started after a short stretch of silence, “Let’s say we find the Fireflies, it all works, they draw my blood and put it through some of their fancy machines and make a cure.”
Joel’s brows furrowed in confusion, “Okay.”
“Then what?” Ellie asked, “Like, what do we do?”
“Oh, it’s ‘we?’” Joel replied.
“Yeah, the end of this partnership comes as soon as we get to the base,” Y/n pointed between herself and Joel.
Ellie nearly rolled her eyes, “Okay, fine. Whatever, you. Separately. You can do anything you want,” she looked to Joel first, “Where are you going? What are you doing?”
Joel glanced at the sky, to admit his true answer would kill another piece of the remnants of his heart. “It’s never been an option,” he cleared his throat, “Maybe…”
For a split second, he saw it all again. His old house. Tommy in the kitchen, raiding their fridge. Sarah at the table, doing homework.
And Y/n, somewhere in the middle of it all, laughing and looking to Joel with a softness that both uplifted and settled him.
“An old farmhouse,” he lied, “Some land…a ranch.”
Y/n stared down at her needlework, knowing that each word was a lie.
“Cool,” Ellie replied, oblivious to the history surrounding her, “What kind?”
“Sheep,” Joel answered, it was the first animal he could think of, “I would raise sheep.”
“Sheep,” Ellie repeated under her breath.
“They’re quiet,” Joel continued, his stare falling on Ellie, “Do what they’re told.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Ellie got the hint, “So just you and a buncha sheep. Romantic. Is there…” her eyes swung between Joel and Y/n, “Room for anyone else in the pens with you?”
The assumptions made by strangers that Y/n and Joel were a couple were enjoyable compared to Ellie’s constant attempts to push them together. They were getting more frequent and less subtle.
“I go back to work after this, El,” Y/n said, finishing up her last loop, “Doubtful I’ll be getting back to Boston any time soon, so I’ll probably stay at the camp out here.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Ellie shook her head, “I asked what you wanted to do. Out of anything, anything in the world.”
Y/n stopped her stitching, staring down at the needle, wondering if she poked herself hard enough, if she’d be able to draw blood. Would she be able to feel the prick? Or was she just numb enough that physical pain couldn’t touch her?
Joel had noticed that Y/n was beginning to slow down more. On the move, she was as fast as ever, but in the quiet moments between, there’d be times where the world was in motion, and she was perfectly still. It was like she was somewhere deep, deep in her mind, waiting for whatever hold had come over her to break and allow her to return to reality.
Y/n swallowed thickly, her past life flickering before her eyes like a movie montage. Sharing a beer with Tommy while watching a Cowboys game. Painting Sarah’s nails for her with a color the girl had stolen from Y/n’s bathroom. Laying in bed with Joel, deep in the pillows and listening to him sing softly over his guitar…
Her dreams were dead.
“I want to work,” she answered, it wasn’t a total lie, “Help people. If I stop for too long…then what the hell am I doing?”
Joel wished he didn’t recognize the underlying sentiment, that if she stopped moving at an inhuman pace, the grief would consume her. But he did, because it was the same way he lived his life.
Y/n clipped the thread with her teeth, beginning to tie a knot, “And what about you? What are you gonna do after you save the world?”
Ellie gave a small smile as Y/n nudged her with her shoulder. She turned her gaze to the sky, specifically the very visible moon. “It’s probably because I grew up in the QZ. Behind you, there’s ocean and ahead of you there’s a wall,” her smile grew the longer she stared at the stars, “Nowhere else to look but up. I read everything I could in the school library. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell…” Ellie sat forward with enthusiasm, “But you know who my favorite is?”
“Sally Ride,” Joel and Y/n both answered, it wasn’t hard to guess.
“Sally fuckin’ Ride,” Ellie slapped her knees, enunciating her point, “Best astronaut name ever!”
Whatever levity had come over their campsite faded quickly, Y/n watched as Ellie’s passion turned to sobering…grief? Guilt? She was hard to read sometimes, the innocence of youth and the scars of rushed adulthood creating something entirely new.
“It’ll work, right?” Ellie asked, “The vaccine?”
“It’s a little late to start wonderin’,” Joel responded, his hands folded over his stomach.
Ellie looked down at her lap, unable to look either Y/n or Joel in the eye. “I tried…with Sam.”
“Tried what?” Y/n asked.
“I knew he was infected,” Ellie confessed, “I rubbed some of my blood into his bite. I know,” she hurried, trying to stop Joel’s anxious admonishment before it came, “I know, it was stupid, but I…” she looked back down at her lap, “I wanted to save him.”
Y/n diverted her gaze to the fire, feeling the warmth of it deep in her belly. Not a day had gone by where she hadn’t thought about Henry or Sam. It had taken her a full day after their deaths to even be able to speak. The sorrow in Henry’s eyes before pulling the trigger on his own life haunted her. The pain of understanding still lingered in her chest, coming out to play every once in a while and remind her that no matter what she did, no matter how hard she worked to be a good person…she couldn’t erase what she had done.
“Well, I reckon it’s a lot more complicated than that,” Joel plainly answered, “Marlene, she’s a lotta things, but…she’s no fool. If she says they can do it, they can do it.”
Ellie absorbed his answer before turning to Y/n, waiting for her reassurance.
Y/n pulled herself out of her grief, barely quirking the corners of her lips up. “It’ll work,” she replied.
Ellie seemed to accept both their responses, letting silence fill the space again until she decided it was time to end her day. “How’re we splitting up the watches?”
Joel sighed, Y/n’s gaze already waiting for him when he looked up at her.
“We’ll do ‘em both,” he answered, “Get some sleep. Dream of…” he capped the flask and exchanged it for his rifle, “Sheep ranches on the moon.”
Ellie nodded, grabbing her sleeping bag and walking to the deeper part of their hideout, “I will.”
Y/n fitted her repaired glove back on her hand, tucking them under her armpits for extra warmth. This was the hardest part of each of the day/ When it was just Joel, her and the unmentionable divide between them.
Joel tried to distract himself, gazing up at the moon and focusing on tracing the constellations around it. But the self-discipline he tried so desperately to maintain concerning Y/n was slipping, his eyes using some uncontrollable part of his mind to drift over to her.
Y/n was struggling to keep up her stoic decorum, the urge to let her and Joel’s conversations warm growing stronger and stronger. It was natural in their mutual isolations to wish for someone to talk to. But with him in front of her, the figurehead of the past she wanted so desperately to go back to…she craved a piece of a memory, any memory, that only he could give her. A short hit of dopamine to get her through the next day.
“So, Tommy,” she began, it was the only part of their past she could safely return to.
“What about him?” Joel asked.
“Is he…” Y/n chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to phrase the question right, “Is he still…Tommy?”
Joel sighed, the memories of two decades ago mixing with the last version of his brother he’d seen. “He’s still a pain in the ass, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
Y/n gave a very small smile, “But he’s still him?”
Whatever she was looking for, Joel couldn’t give her. None of them were like they’d been twenty years ago, except maybe her. She had managed to keep her humanity intact. He was darkness in both their eyes. As rough as he’d been on her at the beginning of their journey, now, he didn’t want to shatter her illusion about perhaps the one person left on the planet she loved.
“Yeah,” he replied, “He’s still him.”
Y/n nodded, deciding not to ask anything else and let the moment stay pleasant. “I can take first watch,” she volunteered.
“No, you go ahead,” Joel shook his head, “I’ll wake you up.”
“Okay,” Y/n replied, too tired to fight him. She grabbed her own rifle before unrolling her sleeping bag on her side of the fire, stretching out under it and using her arm as a pillow.
Joel kept his eyes off of her until the even rhythm of her breaths told him she was asleep. Then, and only then, did he let himself watch her, trying to combat the various fears that filled his head. She was there, in front of him, alive and well.
But how long could he keep her like that?
—————————
Even in his sleep, Joel couldn’t find rest.
A barrage of images, flashes of colors and echoes of screams, played through his mind. When he startled awake, like every morning past, all he could feel was an overwhelming sense of loss.
The gun was gone.
This was it. His grand failure.
He bolted upright only to find Ellie, a few feet away, standing guard with his rifle.
“Still mumbling in your sleep,” she stated, “I woke up early. You and Y/n,” she glanced over at her still-sleeping guardian, “Were passed out, so I took second watch.”
“You gotta wake one of us up if that happens,” Joel snapped, quickly getting to his feet and crossing the distance between him and Y/n, “You can’t do things like this.”
“But I can,” Ellie smiled, “‘Cause I just did.”
Joel crouched down, shaking Y/n’s arm lightly in an effort not to startle her, “Hey.”
All credit to him for trying, Y/n still woke with a gasp. It was her basic programming.
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” Joel was quick to reassure her as she rolled onto her back.
Y/n scrunched her eyes, blinking the sleep away from them, and sat up. It was daylight. Joel hadn’t woken her up for her watch, again.
“My fault,” he accepted the blame she was getting ready to place on him before continuing his conversation with Ellie, “We’re responsible for you, okay?”
“Then don’t fall asleep,” Ellie challanged, “I was quiet, I checked my six, I looked for tracks, I found the high ground and I kept watch,” she explained as Joel approached her, “Like you taught me to. What can I say, man? I’m a natural.”
Y/n scoffed as she unzipped her sleeping bag, “And you’re not cocky about it at all.”
Joel held out a demanding hand, taking the rifle from Ellie, but accepting that she’d done the job right. “You wake us up next time,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Ellie replied, smugness evident in her tone and on her face.
Without another word, Y/n and Joel collected the few things they’d unpacked, smothered what remained of the fire, and the three of them resumed their hike to an unknown destination.
—————————
Even if they’d have been warned in graphic detail what lay over the River of Death, it wouldn’t have changed Joel and Y/n’s minds. The only way to Tommy was to risk their lives crossing, and they did so with very little hesitation.
Ellie, bless her soul, had found plenty of ways to keep herself entertained on the way, including trying to teach herself how to whistle and requesting hunting training. Joel still wouldn’t budge on the latter.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” Ellie started at some point in their hike, “And I think I figured out what happened between you two.”
Joel and Y/n tensed up as they walked alongside one another, Ellie’s cleverness worked against them most of the time.
“Obviously, you two were a thing way back when in Texas,” she explained, adding a twang to the state’s name, “And then at some point, you guys break up. The ‘why’ was what was tripping me up, until I realized, boom…there was somebody else.”
Y/n forcefully exhaled, wondering whether the theory was more preferable to the truth.
“Now, I can’t quite figure out which one of you would’ve slipped up,” Ellie continued, “But even if you didn’t cheat with them, there was someone who got in between you enough to equal a big fight, throwing things at one another, screaming how much you loved each other and eventually ending with you swearing never to speak again. Which is why you two were ready to kill each other when you met in the QZ.”
Joel was near reaching his boiling point, fighting the pull to spin around to Ellie, wave a finger in her face and explain exactly how the situation had gone down. But the reality of those words finally escaping his lips and taking up space in the world was an unbearable thought.
Y/n was near breaking too, feeling the cracks in her chest begin to spread. She needed off the topic if she was going to be able to take a breath. “What the hell kind of stories were you checking out in between astronaut books?”
“Whatever,” Ellie brushed it off, “I know I’m right.”
Thankfully, she let the subject go as soon as they closed in on an old, out-of-usage dam. The water still gushed through it and into the river.
“Dam,” Ellie punned.
“You’re no Will Livingston,” Joel remarked.
“Yeah, yeah, but who is?” Ellie smiled, “So that made electricity?”
“Yeah,” Joel answered, predicting Ellie’s next question, “Don’t ask me, I don’t have a clue.”
He resumed their walk, Y/n and Ellie trailing behind.
“You know, you could have just made something up,” Ellie said, “I would’ve believed you.”
The three of them hiked a half hour more before coming up on another side of the river, or perhaps, an entirely separate one.
“Look at that river,” Ellie remarked, “It’s crazy blue.”
Y/n and Joel were hardly paying attention, both in their own separate thought bubbles. Any time the subject of their past relationship was brought up, it reset the clock on their comfort with each other and took at least an hour to warm back up to one another.
“Hey,” Ellie spoke up, “What if this…is the River of Death?”
The adults stopped in their tracks, the thought hadn’t dawned on them after the victory of crossing the first body of water. Joel whipped out their map, Y/n came to join him and the two of them examined it carefully.
“Fuck,” Y/n mumbled under her breath, pressing a hand to her temple.
“We don’t know it yet,” Joel quickly said, walking ahead a few steps to get a better view of their surroundings. Y/n followed closely, with Ellie on their heels.
A noise on the hill above them caught Y/n’s ear, her eyes lifting from the map to see a group of riders coming straight for them.
“Joel,” she shook his arm forcefully, bringing his attention upwards.
At the first glimpse, Joel grabbed Ellie’s free hand, Y/n taking the other, and they bolted for the forest. There were enough riders to circle them in, aiming their rifles at them and cutting off any escape route they could have found. They were fucked.
“Get behind me,” Joel told Ellie and Y/n, only the youngest of the two listened to him. The three of them held their hands up, “We ain’t lookin’ for any trouble, we’re just passin’ through.”
“Drop the guns,” one of the riders ordered.
Slowly, Y/n and Joel slipped their rifles off of their shoulders and placed them on the ground.
“You,” the same guy nodded to Ellie, “Take five steps back.”
“We can talk through this,” Y/n said, her voice gained strength the moment Ellie was addressed.
“How about you shut the fuck up?”
“Okay,” Joel spoke quickly, his hand instinctively flinching towards Y/n’s as she was threatened, “Easy,” he looked behind to Ellie and said with a low voice, “You’ll be okay.”
Ellie backed up reluctantly, her eyes darting between the riders, Y/n and Joel.
“You been near any Infected?”
“There’s no Infected out here,” Joel answered the man.
“The hell there ain’t,” the rider replied, whistling immediately after. One of them walked a dog, a German Shepherd, forward. He was barking wildly. “Last chance for a bullet. If you’ve been infected, he will smell it, and he will rip you up.”
Y/n and Joel’s blood ran cold.
The dog came forward, sniffing from Joel’s boots up to his torso, and deeming him safe. He went through the same motions with Y/n before walking back to its keeper. Joel and Y/n felt the same hesitant relief, could they really make it out of this?
“Like I said,” Joel said, “We’ll just move on.”
But life wasn’t that merciful to them. “Now her,” the rider nodded back to Ellie.
Y/n turned to face the girl, Ellie’s eyes widened with childlike fear. There was nothing Y/n could do to help. The second she raised her pistol, she’d be dead. They’d know they were hiding something and they’d shoot Ellie too. But if she stayed perfectly still, resting all of her hope on a blind theory, maybe…just maybe…
Joel wasn’t thinking hardly as rationally as his ex. His ears began to ring, his heart began to race, all his senses blinding him with terror as the dog approached. He was helpless again, his hands tied behind his back as he watched someone he cared about die a slow, meaningless de-
Ellie giggled.
Y/n huffed a sigh of relief at the sound, her and Joel turning to see the dog licking Ellie’s face. She fell back onto the snow, laughing and scratching the animal’s neck. When she smiled up at them, Joel and Y/n felt the oxygen return to their lungs.
The rider whistled for the dog to return, “You just bought yourself ten more seconds. What are you doin’ out here?”
It took Joel a few of those seconds to come back to his surroundings, “We’re just lookin’ for my brother. That’s all, nothin’ more.”
“Ho!”
The rider to the left of the one threatening them nudged her horse forward, stopping a few feet closer to Joel and Y/n. “What’re your names?”
“Joel,” he answered.
“Y/n.”
The woman looked them over, her bandana covering all but her eyes. “I can take you to your brother,” she finally said.
Joel’s lips parted in shock, instantly tilting his head to gaze over at Y/n, who wore the same surprise. Tommy was alive.
The woman called back to one of the riders, ordering them to go retrieve the two extra horses they’d left to graze. They were brought back, saddled and all, and Joel, Y/n and Ellie were directed to get on them.
Y/n jumped on one first, her and Joel both helping Ellie onto the rear of the saddle.
“You hold on and you don’t let go, alright?” Y/n said, wrapping the reins of the bridle around her fist. It had been a long time since she’d ridden.
“Mm-hmm,” Ellie hummed, locking her arms around Y/n’s middle.
Joel promptly mounted his own horse, nudging his them closer to ride alongside Y/n and Ellie.
“Let’s move out,” the woman called to the group.
They rode about fifteen minutes, galloping further west. In the distance, a building could barely be made out. The closer they got, the more Y/n and Joel could tell it was a fort. The party slowed as they approached the gate, two riders getting off their horses to help open it up. Joel and Y/n followed without question, despite having a dozen.
Y/n’s breath caught at the sight inside the walls.
It was a town. A proper fucking town.
Unlike the QZ, the place they were looked whole, kept up. The buildings weren’t crumbling, they stood firmly planted in the ground. All around them, people were strolling, not running. Children were screaming in play, not in fear. There were even snowmen lining the outside of one of the storefronts.
Y/n wanted to look back at Joel, to make sure he was seeing it too. She instead kept her eyes forward, scanning over her surroundings in awe.
Joel was entirely confused, but otherwise occupied by checking each and every face they passed to see if it was Tommy. Eventually, the sounds of construction instinctively brought his attention to the side of a building where two men were hard at work. The second silhouette, a tall, thin, dark haired man, didn’t require an extra second of examination. Joel knew it was his brother.
“Tommy,” he shouted.
Y/n followed Joel’s line of vision and let out a hushed gasp.
Tommy looked up from his work, scanning the group for the familiar voice. His eyes fell on his brother, shock freezing him for a few seconds before he began to climb down the scaling.
Joel slid off his horse, his steps quickening as relief flooded his body. Tommy strode towards him, the two of them meeting in a solid, long overdue, embrace.
Tommy laughed into Joel’s shoulder before pulling back to get a good look at him, “What the fuck you doin’ here?”
Joel took a breath, taking in their surroundings, “I came here to save you.”
Tommy’s brows furrowed while Joel exploded into a fit of laughter, the two of them pulling each other back in.
Y/n wound her leg over her horse, dropping to the ground and handing Ellie the reins. She kept her distance as she watched the brothers reunite, a sharp pain running through her chest she hadn’t felt in two decades. But when Tommy opened his eyes, gazing over Joel’s shoulder, he straightened up.
Tommy looked between his brother and Y/n, dumbfounded by the sight of them in the same vicinity. He broke away from Joel, walking the distance before matching Y/n’s quickened jog, and lifted the woman into his arms.
As soon as Tommy embraced her, Y/n’s long-held tears began to fall.
“What the hell?” Tommy asked, his mouth muffled against Y/n’s coat.
Y/n was too overwhelmed to explain anything.
“I tried,” Tommy rushed out, having held onto those two words for twenty years, “I tried to find you, I couldn’t.”
“I know,” Y/n sniffled, “I know.”
Cleared of any wrongdoing in her eyes, Tommy held Y/n a little tighter and pulled her off her feet. She laughed as she cried, digging her face into the denim of Tommy’s jacket.
If Joel had thought he could handle the reunion, he’d been wrong. The sight of his brother and his ex, so thrilled to be in each other’s presence again, split him. It was the first time in three months he’d seen Y/n genuinely happy, so full of joy she was brought to tears.
Joel could feel his own eyes growing wet.
Tommy set Y/n back on the ground, keeping an arm around her shoulders and looking to Joel. When Y/n and Joel’s gazes met, there was no trying to hide any of what they were feeling. It was a heavy moment, but a joyous one, and they had to sit with it.
“Y’all must be starving,” Tommy said, “Let’s head to the mess hall, give us some time to talk.”
The rest of the riders trailed off, leaving Joel, Y/n, Ellie, Tommy and the dark skinned woman who had led brought them there. Y/n and Joel remained on foot with Tommy, though Y/n kept a hand on Ellie’s reins all the way to the mess hall.
Inside, the woman Tommy introduced as Maria, made special effort to get Joel, Ellie and Y/n hot plates of food. Weeks of mostly rabbit had them shoveling their meals into their mouths, none of them even asked what they’d been served.
“There’s more if you need it,” Maria offered, her and Tommy sitting across from the threesome.
Joel looked up from his plate, “Thank you, ma’am. It’s been a while since we’ve had a proper meal.”
“Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper meal,” Ellie interjected in between bites, “This is fuckin’ amazing.”
Y/n took her eyes off her plate to shoot Ellie a raised eyebrow.
Joel’s southern upbringing turned him white with shock, he quickly looked up to Maria. “Sorry. Ellie, let’s mind our manners.”
Tommy smiled at his brother, it all sounded very familiar…
Ellie looked across the room, spotting a girl watching her from behind a wooden beam. She glared back at her curious stare, “What?”
Y/n pressed a finger to her temple, “Ellie…”
“What’s wrong with you?” Joel asked.
“What about her manners?” Ellie replied.
“She was just curious,” Maria cut in, “Kids around here don’t usually look or talk like you.”
“Right…” Ellie was unimpressed, “Well…maybe I’ll teach them. And I want my gun back.”
“They also aren’t armed,” Marie replied, the group had been forced to check their guns at the front door.
“You know what?” Tommy jumped in, “Uh, I think maybe y’all got a little off on the wrong foot.”
Ellie gestured to the woman, “She was gonna have her guys kill us.”
“Well, we gotta be real careful about who we let into this place,” Tommy explained, “But it’s all bark. We’re just tryna scare off those who might wanna try us is all.”
“Well,” Ellie returned to her plate, “You’ve got a couple of 90-year olds shitting themselves out there.”
Joel and Y/n’s heads turned at the same time, “Ellie.”
“They say that you leave dead bodies laying around?” Ellie continued her tirade.
“Those are the people that tried us,” Maria said.
“A bad reputation doesn’t mean you’re bad,” Tommy stated.
“Not always at least,” Maria added, staring right at Joel.
The tension at the table was palpable, Joel, Y/n and Ellie all wating for Maria’s glare to soften. That wasn’t going to happen.
“Ma’am,” Joel’s voice firmed up, while still retaining its southern pleasantness, “We’re grateful for your hospitality and all,” he looked expectantly to Tommy, “But it’d be nice to have a moment here, maybe just for family.”
Family, and whatever Y/n and Ellie were.
Tommy was half holding his breath as he leaned forward, “Well, um,” he took his wife’s hand, “Maria is family, actually.”
Y/n nearly had the wind knocked out of her, thankful she didn’t have a piece of food in her mouth.
“Oh, shit!” Ellie put together the pieces, “Congrats.”
Joel couldn’t take his eyes off of their clasped palms, painfully transfixed by the bands around their fourth fingers.
“Yeah,” Y/n added, quickly trying to adjust to the idea of Tommy as a husband, “Congratulations.”
“Joel,” Ellie lowered her voice, “Say congrats.”
It was going to take a hell of a lot more time for Joel to absorb the news. “Congrats,” he attempted.
It wasn’t that it was awkward, it was that the ever present dagger in Joel’s heart suddenly twisted.
“Well, how ‘bout a tour?” Tommy suggested, eager to exchange the tension for some fresh air.
“Great idea,” Y/n replied, wiping her mouth off and rising before anyone else. There was a pit of anxiety slowly and steadily building in her stomach and she needed to walk it off.
They were quick to find out that the heart of the town looked even nicer than the edge.
“We settled here about seven years ago,” Maria told the group, “Just a handful of us back then,” she pointed down the middle of the town, “That section was already a gated community, so we built the rest of the wall out from there. Stopped most of the raiding parties, but we still find pockets of them.”
Joel, Y/n and Ellie stayed in a horizontal line behind Maria and Tommy, the foreign environment causing them to want to stick closer together. Unwittingly, Ellie was once again being made the barrier between Joel and Y/n.
“And you said Infected?” Joel asked.
“Yeah, but usually smaller colonies,” Tommy answered, “Wandered off from the cities. All this open country out here…” he looked back to his brother, “It’s a turkey shoot. I still got my 700, but I found a variable power scope. Sub-MOA. Can headshot those fuckers from a half-mile out.”
Ellie’s ears perked up, “Can you teach me how?”
“No, he can’t,” Joel was quick to shoot down the idea.
“How do you keep off the radar?” Y/n asked, “I mean, using all these resources, how has FEDRA not tracked you guys down?”
“Carefully,” Maria answered, “Being in the middle of nowhere helps. Not advertising what we have, staying off the radio.”
Tommy snuck a look to Joel, who had come up alongside him. There was the answer he’d been waiting three months for.
“House of worship,” Maria continued to talk through the buildings, “Multifaith. School. Laundry. Old bank works as the jail, not that we’ve needed it.”
Joel’s eyes drew upwards to the electrical lines, “And you draw power from the dam?”
“Got that workin’ a couple years ago,” Maria answered, “After that, sewage, plumbing, water heaters…lights.”
“This place actually fuckin’ works,” Ellie remarked as she walked, leaving Joel and Y/n behind.
If Y/n thought she’d gotten a taste of normality back at Bill and Frank’s house, this felt like some sort of starvation induced hallucination. Except there was food in her belly and ice cold air in her lungs, it was all real.
Tommy and Maria led them towards the agricultural section of town, rows of greenhouses and animal pens lining their way.
“Hey, Joel, look,” Ellie pointed to the heard of sheep ahead of them, “Baaah,” she laughed before turning to Maria, “So are you, like, in charge?”
“No one person’s in charge,” Maria responded, “I’m on the council, democratically elected, serving 300 people, including children. Everyone pitches in. We rotate patrols, food prep, repairs, hunting, harvesting.”
“Everything you see in our town,” Tommy gestured around them, “Greenhouses, livestock, all shared. Collective ownership.”
”So, uh,” Joel figured, “Communism.”
Tommy was quick to scoff, “Nah. Nah, it ain’t like that.”
“It is that, literally,” Maria turned to her husband, “This is a commune. We’re communists.”
Tommy stopped short as the realization hit him, Joel and Y/n trailing behind purely to watch his full reaction.
“Easy there, soldier,” Y/n smirked, patting him on the shoulder while Joel matched her expression.
Rejoining Maria and Ellie, where Ellie was petting one of the horses poking their heads out of the stables, Maria changed subjects.
“Well, I’m sure they’d like a shower, some new clothes,” she addressed Tommy, “We can put them in the empty house across the street from us.”
“Yeah,” Tommy nodded, looking to Joel and Y/n, “It’s a decent place. Pretty much untouched since ‘03, but it’s the heat goin’ in it. Could do worse.”
“Oh, trust me,” Ellie spoke up, “We have been.”
“We’ve been doin’ fine,” Joel defended them, nervously rubbing his hands together. He needed to talk to his brother, just them.
Y/n was absentmindedly tapping her foot, matching Joel’s energy. The town itself was lovely, and Joel was bearable, but there was something about the combination of the two that was making her feel uneasy.
“Well,” Maria picked up on the mood, “I’ll take Ellie over there if you three wanna catch up?”
“Uh,” Y/n raised her hand quickly, “I’d actually love to join you.”
Tommy started to speak up, he was more than curious as to how Y/n and Joel had reunited. One look at the readiness in Joel’s eyes to be without her ceased his tongue from moving.
Ellie, however, had started to require both Joel and Y/n’s presence with her. Without one, she was restless. “Joel…”
“You’ll be fine,” Joel reassured her as he and Tommy walked off. He managed not to seek out Y/n’s eyes, it felt like the first time in days he’d had any control.
Y/n expected that parting from Joel would give her instant relief, but even when Maria led her and Ellie to their lodging, it didn’t come. In fact, the more distance they put between each other, the deeper Y/n could feel the anxiety within her. She was miserable with him and unsettled without him.
The house Maria assigned them was lovely, modest yet welcoming. Y/n nearly felt her heart break walking in, feeling the warmth of the air flood her body. It was like stepping back in time, a piece of seemingly meaningless history preserved perfectly.
“I’ll leave some clothes on the bed for you,” Maria told Ellie, pointing up the stairs, “First door on the left. There should be a towel and soap already there.”
Ellie looked expectantly to Y/n.
“I’ve got a few things to grab over at my place,” Maria said, “Maybe Y/n could help me?”
“Go,” Y/n nodded to the girl, “I’ll be back.”
Ellie filed upstairs, leaving Y/n and Maria to themselves. Maria made sure to lock the door on her way out, handing Y/n the key after.
“There’s only one, so don’t lose it,” she noted, leading Y/n across the street to her and Tommy’s house. The house felt much the same as the other one did, a few differences in designs, but nothing spectacular.
Maria began to rifle through a closet near the downstairs bathroom while Y/n meandered through the living room.
“Y’know, Tommy told me about you,” Maria called from across the room, “I’ve only heard your name once or twice. Every other time, he just referred to you as Rosebud.”
The nickname sent a sickening pain through Y/n’s stomach. “Oh, yeah,” she tried to play it off nonchalantly, “He gave me that nickname the night I met him and…”
“Joel?” Maria finished, popping her head out to try and get a read on Y/n’s reaction. She had a lot of feelings regarding her husband’s brother.
All Y/n felt capable of doing was nodding, blindly feeling around for the chair closest to her. She wandered the room, her eyes drifting to the fireplace before scanning her way up and-
Her heart stopped.
Sat on the mantle was a chalkboard, two names and two dates written across it.
Kevin - 4/3/00 - 9/29/03
Sarah - 7/20/89 - 9/27/03
Negative emotions always tended to stay right below the surface, regardless of the cliches about burying them. They were easily accessible under the right conditions, and if the wound was deep enough, it didn’t take much to trigger them. Y/n was already on the edge, teetering between holding onto the last bit of anger that had fueled her the past twenty years and collapsing under the weight of her grief.
Sarah’s name decided her fate.
And she crumbled.
—————————
“Those things I did, Tommy, those things you judge me for…I did those things to keep us alive.”
“We did those things,” Tommy pushed back, “And they weren’t “things’,” we murdered people. And I don’t judge you for it, we survived the only way we knew how…but there were other ways. We just weren’t any good at ‘em,” he paused, preparing himself for Joel’s reaction, “But I do judge you for what you did to Y/n.”
Joel sighed, he couldn’t take it. He physically could not handle discussing that day with Tommy.
“Joel, you l-“
“I know what I did,” Joel’s voice rose, he held up a hand more to calm himself than anything else.
“And now, twenty years later, here she is,” Tommy gestured to the door as if Y/n was right outside, “Do you even know where she’s been? What she’s been through? ‘Cause I don’t! And I’d have liked to know.”
Joel’s anxiety was beginning to bubble in his stomach, the vines climbing up his throat, ready to choke the life out of him.
“Have the two of you even talked about it?” Tommy asked calmly, his own emotions on the verge of showing.
Joel gripped the bar counter so hard, he thought he might snap the wood. He rolled the cold glass in his palm, trying to hold onto anything he could, as if it could save him from being sucked back into the vortex that was the past…
—————————
September 28th, 2003. Austin, Texas.
Cordyceps.
It was the only word people were capable of saying.
Cordyceps.
One little strand of fungi had taken out the entire world.
Joel, Y/n and Tommy ended up quarantined at a triage clinic. It was deemed one of the only “safe zones” for non-infected citizens. Dozens and dozens of people, crammed into a tiny building, practically sleeping on one another.
Joel had yet to string more than two words together since Sarah’s death. He was nearly unreachable. It was tragic enough for a parent to lose a child, it was another thing to cradle your daughter as she bleeds out in your arms.
Y/n felt like she was moving through cement, unable to fully comprehend what was going on around them. Her grief was overwhelming her, leaving her no more than twenty minute interludes between fits of wailing. But with Joel completely decommissioned, she was forced to rise to the occasion and take charge of their situation.
She returned from another attempt to reach her parent’s house, her cell phone getting no reception. She’d also tried the pay phone and Joel and Tommy’s phones. Nothing.
Y/n settled beside Joel in their corner of their hallway, it was nearly empty on account of it being the middle of the day. Most people took their walks around then. Tommy had volunteered to go out on patrol with a couple other veterans that were there.
“I still can’t get through,” Y/n started, hugging her knees to her chest, “Tried my parents, Annie, Jason…” she thought of her siblings, “Nothing.”
Joel didn’t even acknowledge her presence, he just kept staring down the hall.
“I have to get up there, Joel,” Y/n finally said, the thought had been keeping her awake all night, “I have to find them, make sure they’re okay.”
Many people assume that grief is but one emotion; sorrow. A deep sea of pain that you are thrown into without a floatiation device. But those who have never experienced it know not of the vastness of grief. There is anger, there is frustration, there is betrayal, there is jealousy…all of which can change you into an entirely different person.
And Joel was slipping away by the second.
“Joel, I have to go,” Y/n spelled it out in simpler terms for him.
Nothing.
“And I can’t go alone…” Y/n continued, worried that he had completely shut down. She rolled onto her knees, taking one of Joel’s cheek into her palm, “Joel, I need you.”
Joel stared forward, motionless.
Y/n was flying blind, unsure of how much was too much talking or how little she was supposed to be acknowledging Sarah’s death. But the world was, quite literally, falling apart. She couldn’t navigate the wreckage on her own.
“Joel,” she whispered, “I know it hurts-“
“Don’t,” Joel turned to her, the speed of it causing Y/n to pull her hand back, “Don’t.”
Y/n’s eyebrows came down in confusion, “Don’t what?”
“Don’t you act like you know what I’m feelin’,” he snapped, tears filling his eyes.
Of all the reactions, Y/n couldn’t have ever predicted this one.
“Joel, I was there too,” she replied, keeping her tone gentle, “I was-“
Joel pointed his finger at Y/n, their faces inches apart. “I’m her father,” he gritted through his teeth, “You were a bystander. They are not the same.”
Y/n inched back, bracing her body with her hands. He’d never so much as raised his voice at her.
As much as she wanted to let him grieve, she couldn’t let him descend into hostility. She wasn’t sure if her tactic would hurt him further or allow him to see the truth, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Joel…” she began, he was back staring numbly at the wall again. Y/n drew a shaky breath, the memory was so fresh in her mind, she could still hear Sarah’s voice. “She called me mom.”
If there was one thing about Joel’s reaction to his daughter’s death, it was the sheer delirium it threw his brain into. Much like Cordyceps, it was ripping through every cell of his body, changing the fundamentals of every inch. Whatever reaction he may have had to the news of Sarah’s decision had been poisoned by what he was allowing her loss to do to him.
He locked his hands together, gripping them so hard his knuckles turned white. Shutting his eyes, he let his head drop between his arms and took a shallow breath. “No, she didn’t.”
Y/n was afraid his mind was slipping away from her. “Joel, she did,” she continued, trying to push past the lump in her throat, “I went upstairs to bed a-and she called out for me.”
“She didn’t,” Joel repeated, his hands practically shaking with rage.
“Joel,” Y/n began, reaching up to touch his arm.
“NO!”
Joel jumped to his feet, his shout echoing in the empty room. He’d scared Y/n enough for her to fall back against the wall.
“She didn’t fuckin’ say it,” Joel aimed his finger at his girlfriend again, “You weren’t her damn mother.”
Y/n stared up at him with tears in her eyes.
“Doesn’t matter if you wanted to be,” Joel kept going, “Doesn’t matter if you tried. You weren’t. You were some fuckin’ woman livin’ in her house.”
Y/n got to her feet, trying ever so hard to be patient with Joel’s grief. But she wasn’t going to allow him to take her last normal moment she’d had with Sarah away from her.
“You weren’t there,” she argued back, “It happened, whether or not you want to believe it,” Y/n pointed a finger at her own chest, “She chose me.”
“You’re fuckin’ lyin’,” Joel growled, spinning away from Y/n and putting his hands to his hips. He couldn’t look at her.
Y/n was entirely lost, praying that Tommy returned soon. She couldn’t manage Joel in this state on her own.
Joel couldn’t see straight, let alone think straight. Only one thing seemed to ring true in his mind; Y/n was lying. She was a liar. She was lying about his dead daughter. What kind of monster would lie about a dead child?
Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, Joel’s delirious realization began to make sense, leaving him with only one course of action.
“I’m done.”
Y/n could barely register the sudden shift, from anger to calm. “What?”
Joel turned back to her, sweeping his hand through the air, “I’m done. We’re done.”
The air thickened suddenly, the stakes of his statement as important as the next breath Y/n drew.
“Joel-“
“No,” he shook his head quickly, “This is over. I’m not gonna stay with you when you’re lyin’ about my child-“
Y/n took an urgent step forward, reaching out for his arm, “Joel-“
“You don’t get to try and make yourself feel better about her now that she’s g-“ Joel choked on the word, flipping back to grief for a mere second, “Oh, God…”
Y/n was on the verge of panic, he was completely out of his mind. “Joel,” she urged, “Don’t do this. Take a breath and-“
Just like that, he was engorged in rage again. “Don’t. Don’t fuckin’ touch me, don’t even fuckin’ look at me.”
“Joel,” Y/n cried, her tears streaming down her face, “I love you. I’m here and I love you.”
Through the haze of insanity, Joel could feel her words. They wrapped around him, cradling him close to the warmth of her chest. He could almost feel something again, something pure and safe…it nearly pulled him back to shore.
Nearly.
Joel crossed the space between them, lowering his voice to a growl, “Well, I don’t love you.”
If there was an exact moment to point to as to when Y/n’s heart shattered, it was then. The force of Sarah’s death weighed so heavily on her chest, she was convinced she was in the midst of a heart attack. But when two tragedies occurred, so close together, it was always the second one that broke a person beyond repair. The second is unexpected, pushing you into a new level of grief you didn’t think you could feel. That was the one that could drive you to madness.
Snot and tears mixing across her lips, Y/n shook her head. “You don’t mean that,” she mumbled.
“I do,” Joel replied, his voice so full of confidence, “You’re a fuckin’ liar.”
Y/n felt like she was drowning, kicking and flailing under the waters, trying to find some way to make Joel believe her. To pull him out of his delusions.
The two lovers stood in the hall of the clinic, squaring off in a battle neither one of them knew how to fight. Their heartbreak was manifesting in completely opposite ways.
Scanning her face once more, to remember in the years to come, Joel turned on his heel and walked away from Y/n.
“W-wait,” she trembled, quickly following after him, “Where are you going?”
“To find Tommy,” Joel said, his fists curled at his sides as he marched through the clinic.
“Joel, stop,” Y/n begged, trying to keep up with his pace, “Joel!”
Joel made his way outside, where the clinic was still accepting injured civilians. All around them was tragedy, while one was unfolding between them.
“Joel,” Y/n called again, six feet behind him, the grief in her bones slowing her down, “Joel, you can’t go out there. Tommy said-“
“Don’t tell me what my own brother said,” Joel practically shouted, refusing to look back at her. He needed a quick escape.
Scanning the makeshift parking lot around them, he spotted an F1-50. He stalked towards it as if it were prey.
“Joel,” Y/n called in between her sobs, she was more terrified for him than anything else.
Once he got to the truck’s door, Joel slammed his fist without hesitation through the glass window.
“Joel!” Y/n cried, watching the blood begin to trickle down his knuckles.
Joel reached through the shattered window, felt around for the lock/unlock button on the door and clicked it. He threw the door open and got inside, the glass on the seat cutting through his jeans and into his thighs.
Y/n surged forward, Joel’s absolute insanity was becoming real. He was actually leaving her. She took hold of the door handle, “Joel, don’t. Don’t,” she hyperventilated, “I can’t do this without you. I can’t. I can’t.”
Her pleas began to crack the ice around his heart, just enough for him to allow another gust of icy wind through his chest. He became indifferent to her cries.
Joel slammed the door shut, the force of it pulling Y/n forward.
“Joel, don’t do this,” she sobbed, clinging to the side of the truck, “I love you. I love you. We can get through this. We can get through this.”
Joel felt around for the keys, finding them conveniently left in the ignition. He switched the truck on.
Y/n’s chest heaved, her window for reasoning with him closing. “No, Joel. Don’t do this! I love you, please, don’t do this.”
Joel’s body trembled, some sane part of him knowing that was he was doing was inhumane. But grief’s noose tightened around his throat, reminding him that the sicker state of mind was where he belonged now. His heart was nothing more than a liability now.
He pressed down on the gas pedal.
“No,” Y/n yelled as the truck shifted, she was practically tripping in the dirt trying to move with it, “Joel, don’t! Don’t do this to me! Please! Don’t do this to me!”
Joel ignored her cries, turning the truck towards the open road.
“Don’t do this,” Y/n shouted, her voice straining and fluctuating with her tears. If he didn’t stop soon, she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the truck. “Joel!”
The final cry did it, Joel couldn’t handle any more. He pressed down further on the pedal, jolting the truck forward.
Y/n was able to catch one last look at him, a final glimpse at the man she loved with her whole heart, leaving her as if she was nothing more than a dead body already. When her hand slipped from the truck, Joel having sped up to escape her, she knew he was forever lost to her.
She stopped running, screaming into the cloud of dirt he’d left, “JOEL!”
Y/n watched him steer the truck out of the clinic’s lot, pulling onto the dirt alongside the road and driving off. Her wet eyes followed the blur until it was completley out of sight.
That was when she fell apart.
She dropped to the ground, screeching like a wounded animal, clutching the ground underneath her fingers. She screamed loud enough for a clinic staff member to rush out, reaching out to help her. Y/n wrenched out of their loving grip, shrieking for them not to touch her. She didn’t want their oxygen masks, their sedatives or their counseling.
Sarah was gone. Joel had abandoned her. If this was death coming to collect her, she would go willingly into its embrace.
—————————
December 2023. Jackson, Wyoming.
Y/n dropped to her knees in the middle of Maria and Tommy’s living room, clutching her stomach.
“I think I found everything,” Maria announced, walking out from the closet and spotting Y/n. She rushed across the room, kneeling down beside her.
Silent sobs turned to violent ones, shaking Y/n’s body with a force she hadn’t felt in twenty years. Unlike that fateful day, Y/n allowed Maria’s caring arms to wrap around her as she wept.
“I’m sorry,” the kind woman said, pressing close to Y/n’s ear.
There was nothing anyone could say to put any of the pieces back together. Every part of Y/n’s grief over Sarah’s death, Joel’s abandonment, the choices she’d had to make after she was left on her own…it was all coming to the surface after three months of repression. The physicality of her sobs exhausted her less than the act of holding herself together in front of Ellie and Joel.
Five minutes or a half hour, Y/n wasn’t sure how long she spent on the floor, Maria cradling her as if she were a child. At some point, the tears stopped and she was once again aware of her surroundings.
“Tommy told me all about you,” Maria said, still holding Y/n, “About your family. How good you were with Sarah.”
Y/n sniffled, fighting the urge to gaze back up at the girl’s chalk-written name. It would only send her back into tears.
“It doesn’t matter what happened between you and Joel,” Maria continued, clearly she knew a lot more than perhaps she should have, “You helped raise that girl. Far as I’m concerned, you should feel a mother’s grief.”
A mumbled cry bubbled from Y/n’s lips. Every day she felt the loss of Sarah like that of a lost limb, the phantom pain constantly pulling at her body.
—————————
“I’m gonna be a father.”
Tommy’s words paralyzed Joel, he physically lost the sensation of his heartbeat, his breath…it all stopped, allowing grief and bitterness to fill the hollowness within him.
“To be honest, I’m scared to death,” Tommy lifted his glass to his lips, “But I don’t know, uh…” he smiled, “I feel like I’d be a good dad.”
Joel wanted to scream, he wanted to punch a hole through the fucking wall to counter the pain of the universe’s cruel slap.
“Guess we’ll find out,” he replied, reaching for the bottle of whiskey and refilling his glass.
“‘I guess we’ll find out?’” Tommy repeated, practically indignant as he looked to his big brother, “That’s all you got?”
Joel settled against the bar, keeping a firm stare on Tommy, “What else am I supposed to say?”
Tommy got to his feet, exhausted by bearing the brunt of Joel’s grief. “Just because life stopped for you,” he said, “Doesn’t mean it has to stop for me.”
Much like after losing Sarah, Joel was acting purely on emotion. The world had ripped away everything from him, and here Tommy was, with everything he’d almost had.
“We’ll grab some supplies and be out of your hair in the mornin’,” Joel bit out, turning from his brother and grabbing his jacket. He burst outside into the cold air.
—————————
“I, uh,” Y/n sniffled, trying to collect herself, “I should get back to Ellie.”
“Don’t worry,” Maria said softly, “I’ll take care of her. You take a moment to yourself.”
Y/n practically scoffed at the idea, she hadn’t had a second to herself in three months. But the tension within her was so great, she didn’t have the will to fight Maria on the offer.
“Thank you,” she laid a hand on Maria’s arm, letting the woman help her to her feet.
Y/n stumbled out into the cold, trying to absorb the sound of the children’s playful screams, the crunch of the snow under her boots, the feel of her breath slamming back into her face each time she exhaled…she’d had anxiety attacks before. Taking stock of your surroundings was supposed to help.
Except she was too far gone for coping strategies, she needed alcohol and she needed someone to talk to. Someone who understood.
On their way in, Maria had led them past a bar, and Y/n felt like a bloodhound, tracing her way back through the crowds to find it. The world may have changed, but she knew she’d find exactly who she needed at the counter with a thing of whiskey in his hand…
—————————
Joel stumbled out into the snow, leaning up against a metal lightpost. His breath was catching, his heart pounding out of his chest, the tinnitus flooding his ears once again…
Once upon a time, Tommy’s life had been his. He’d had his daughter, so bright and beautiful. A home that they’d made their own, despite the wounds that had led them there. And Y/n, his Y/n, the missing piece of his and Sarah’s life, a ring nearly on her finger…
And as much as he wanted to blame Cordyceps for losing all of it, he was hardly faultless.
He’d had twenty years of guilt soaked isolation, trying to convince himself that what his grief riddled self had thought was truth. Y/n had to have lied for him to continue on with life, because he couldn’t face the alternate. He couldn’t believe that he had abandoned her for no good reason…
It was a conclusion he’d come to weeks ago, the more time he spent with her reminding her of who she really was.
Across the way, there were families gathered around the Christmas tree. Joel’s eyes mindlessly drifted over them, catching on one woman’s silhouette. Her head of curls, the weightlessness of her voice…in his panicked state, it was Sarah.
He took clunky steps forward, chasing the illusion that his daughter was standing in front of him. He wanted, needed to believe it to be true. There had been some terrible mistake, they’d abandoned her body too soon and by the grace of God, she was-
A small child ran up to the woman, revealing her true face.
Joel stopped, his heartbreak pulling him back to reality. This was how far his mind could take him under the worst circumstances. He was convincing himself that his daughter was still alive and twenty years prior, he’d convinced himself that the love of his life was a liar.
It was grief that stood every chance at breaking him.
—————————
Y/n crossed through the middle of town, spotting the Christmas tree and the surrounding crowd singing and chattering around it. She couldn’t handle the sight, ducking into the bar as quick as she could.
Tommy turned around, glaring at the door, ready to rip into Joel further. “Oh,” he muttered, putting away his anger at the sight of Y/n, “Thought you were Joel.”
“I’m thankful you’re not,” Y/n remarked, walking to the counter and spotting the open whiskey bottle. He was everywhere she looked.
She reached over the counter and grabbed a glass, filling it a little over halfway, “You two not getting along?”
Tommy sighed, rolling his glass in his palm. “Complicated,” he answered, “But I’m preachin’ to the choir, aren’t I?”
Y/n bristled, lifting the glass to her lips and letting the burn of her throat force her into feeling something.
“Maria’s pregnant,” Tommy blurted out.
Y/n’s arm fell to the bar, the glass hitting it hard. To say she was shocked would have been a gross understatement.
Tommy smiled up at her, “That so hard to believe?”
“Well, you gotta cut me a little slack here,” Y/n replied, dazed, “The last time I knew you, there was a new girl every week. I was kinda half-convinced you already had a kid.”
Tommy chuckled, he’d missed her so much. He considered Y/n another loss from Cordyceps, though it chose his brother’s grief as its medium.
“I…” Y/n pulled out the barstool next to him and sat down, her mouth still agape, “How do you feel about it?”
“Good,” he nodded, “I think. Maria’s already been a mom before, but…I really do think I could be a good dad.”
Y/n rested her hand on Tommy’s wrist, drawing his eyes to her. “You’ll make a great dad,” she said, proud and with a smile. It was the first good look at him she’d gotten. Though he sported a few more wrinkles and scars, a mustache now hanging over his upper lip, his eyes still held the same sparkle.
Tommy beamed back at her, laying his hand over hers. The warmth shared between siblings still flowed between them.
“So that’s why…” Y/n glanced at the door, absentmindedly pointing outside.
“Yep,” Tommy turned back to his whiskey.
“Oh,” Y/n murmured, so caught up in the beauty of the news that she hadn’t thought about how Joel might have reacted.
“Can I ask you somethin’?” Tommy asked.
Y/n shook her head with a small smirk, “C’mon, it’s been twenty years but you don’t have to be formal.”
It wasn’t formality, it was handling gasoline near a wildfire.
“How the hell are you two doin’ this?” Tommy asked, setting down his glass to give the topic his full attention.
In her anxious state, Y/n hadn’t stopped to think that Tommy would bring up the very thing she was running from.
“There were…” Y/n cleared her throat, “A lot of threats the first few days. Lots of hate. Mostly from me. But we had to…come to some sort of truce if we were going to get through this.”
“Joel told me you’re with the kid,” Tommy cut in, “She’s not yours?”
Y/n snorted, “No. But she’s…” she paused, unprepared to unpack what Ellie meant to her, “She wasn’t going with Joel unless I came with. So really, she’s to blame for all this.”
Tommy chuckled, taking a quick sip before repeating the same question he’d asked Joel, “You two talked about what happened yet?”
Y/n shrugged, feeling the weight of twenty years in her shoulders, “What’s there to talk about?”
“I think there’s everything to fuckin’ talk about,” Tommy replied.
The seat was suddenly digging into her thighs and there were electric currents in her legs. Y/n slid off the barstool, trying to take slow steps around the bar counter to deescalate her body’s nervous energy.
“How long did it take him to tell you what happened?” Y/n asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“Ah, the full story?” Tommy said, shaking his head slightly, “All I heard when I got back from patrol was you two had broken up. I finally got it all pieced together after about two years. Gave him hell for it too.”
Y/n’s smile was filled with frustration, she threw back the last of her whiskey.
“I looked for you,” Tommy said, reiterating what he’d said at the gate, “I mean, I combed every fuckin’ inch of that place tryin’ to find you. I wasn’t gonna leave you.”
“I know,” Y/n replied, slipping behind the counter to pour herself another glass, “I figured that out at some point. That you wouldn’t have gone along with that…”
Tommy watched Y/n’s face carefully, a new emotion covering the expanse every few seconds.
“You don’t actually believe what he said, do you?”
Y/n poured a shot of a random liquor, “Why shouldn’t I believe him?”
“C’mon,” Tommy turned to her, “He was out of his mind with grief, we all were. He wasn’t thinkin’ straight.”
“I’m sorry,” Y/n raised a hand to her head, “Are you defending him?”
“Hell no,” Tommy gave a firm shake of his head, “I’m tryin’ to make you understand that he lied. He was lying. He didn’t stop lovin’ you, he-“
“Stop,” Y/n forcefully set the bottle down on the counter, some of it spilling out the top, “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
Tommy settled down in his seat, unaware he’d lifted off it while talking.
“You have no idea what I went through after he left,” Y/n struggled, her voice threatening to cease up, “What I had to do…” she sniffled, unable to hide the tears, “And then he came back. He fucking came back, and I haven’t been able to escape him for three months.”
Staying silent and still, Tommy allowed her the space to purge everything out of her system.
“And now we’re here,” Y/n gestured around them, her voice growing watery, “And it’s so fucking beautiful, I could cry. Look at me, I am,” she paused, squirming under the pressure of the sob building within her, “And it’s killing me. It’s killing me. To be here, to see you, to see all that…”
Y/n ran a hand through her hair, leaning against the counter. All that they could have had.
“I can’t,” Y/n held up a shaking hand, “I can’t…be near him right now. Because all I see is her, is us…and it’s fucking breaking me.”
Tommy looked down at his glass, wondering whether or not he was about to push too far. “That doesn’t sound like hate to me.”
Y/n’s bottom lip trembled, she knew exactly what it was. And she’d have rather died than admit it.
“Well, it needs to be,” she whispered.
——————
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Two idiots in love. (P6)
Joel Miller x anemic!reader
Summary: The two lovebirds are slowly opening up to one another, even as the world around them feels like it's closing in.
Warnings: Death, suicide, blood, guns, tragic backstories, parental guilt
Masterlist
Part 1 and 7
....................................................
Joel and Y/N woke up to the sound of Ellie's screams.
Joel sat up quickly as Ellie ran into the room, a now infected Sam tackling her.
Y/N let out a scream and the sound of Sam's growls, and Joel rushed to lean over to the gun next to him.
But Henry beat him to it, pointing it at Joel, "Nope, Nope."
The two men were now in a stand-off, as Joel became desperate to help the girl.
When Joel moved to help her, Henry fired a shot near his feet, making Joel back up with his hands in the air.
Y/N was still seated on the ground, her legs bent, and her hands planted on the floor, ready to move at a moment's notice. Her eyes didn't leave Ellie. Her voice was desperate and shrill, "Henry, please!"
When Ellie cried out again, Henry turned and shot at the kids, the bullet going directly through Sam's head.
The entire room went silent as they realized exactly what Henry had just done.
Joel studied the girl closely, "Ellie…?"
She just stared back.
Y/N moved to stand up, grabbing at Joel's sleeve.
He instinctively helped her, grabbing her bicep and pulling her up quickly.
But Henry wasn't in his right mind.
He pointed the gun at Y/N and Joel, contemplating his choices now that he had killed his brother.
Joel's hands reached out with a calming voice to the man, "Easy, easy…"
Henry's eyes shifted back and forth from Sam's body to the two.
Joel slowly pushed Y/N behind him, covering her body with his, "Henry, gimme the gun."
"What… what did I do? What did I do?"
Henry was going mad.
Joel was patient, but on edge, "It's alright. Just gimme the gun. C'mon. Give me the gun."
"What...did I do? S…Sam?"
He was growing more and more desperate in his decent.
"Give me the gun, Henry."
"HENRY, NO!"
Another shot.
And Henry was dead.
…
"Who the hell are you?"
Joel stepped into the living room of the cabin, his gun pointed at the man who had just entered, "Just someone passing' through. Now, take the gun out, two fingers only, put it outta reach."
The man sat across from his wife, throwing his hat down like this was nothing out of the ordinary.
Joel continued, "I'm lookin for my brother."
"Well, I ain't seen him."
"I haven't told you what he looks like."
"He look anything like you?"
"A bit."
"Then I ain't seen him."
The wife interrupts, "He's got a girl and a woman with him."
Joel's gaze turned harsh.
"Can I come down?" Ellie yelled.
Y/N's voice was heard next, "Shut the hell up!"
He sighed, "No. Ellie!"
But Ellie didn't listen.
She bolted downstairs, "Come on. They're like a thousand."
Y/N slowly walked down the stairs, joining them with sour look on her face from Ellie's stupidity.
"Who's that little psycho?" The husband points to Ellie.
"Never mind her." Joel pushed. He set down a map on the table, "I need you to tell us where we are. And your answer better be the same as your wife's."
The man sighed, pointing at the spot.
"Well," Joel nodded, putting away his gun, "you found a great place to hide, I guess."
…
The second they stepped out of the lodge, Joel began to panic.
His arm reached out to the fencepost, resting against it.
"Joel. JOEL?"
"Ellie, stop." Y/N reprimanded.
"Is he gonna die?"
"He's fine!"
"He can't die. Because just a reminder that if he's dead, we're fucked."
Y/N pushed Ellie's face away with her hand, then moved to Joel.
She stood behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders, just as a gentle reminder that she was there.
Finally, he snapped to. "Sorry. It's the cold air all of a sudden."
"'S fine." She said, "Just catch your breath."
When he was finally ready to move, they continued their trek.
…
Nighttime came and the trio found themselves around a warm fire.
Y/N was helping Joel tape his boot together while Ellie climbed up the rock masses around them, trying to catch a glimpse of the northern lights.
"Come down," Joel yelled. "Gonna break your neck."
Ellie sighed and returned to the fire.
Joel took a sip from his canteen, then offered it to Y/N who declined.
"Can I try some?" Ellie asked.
"No."
"What? Just to warm up."
He contemplated, looking at Y/N to get her opinion. She just shrugged as she finished her taping job and pulled herself up to sit next to Joel.
He finally reached forward to hand the girl the canteen.
She took a sip.
Her eyebrows furrowed in disgust, handing it back to him immediately.
"So," she says, "Let's say everything works out and they take my blood and make a cure…"
Joel nodded, "Okay…?"
"Well, then what? What are we gonna do?"
"We?"
Y/N's head snapped to Joel at his bluntness.
Ellie sighed, "Okay, fine. Whatever. You two. You can do anything you want. Where are you going? What are you doing?"
Joel immediately retaliated, "It's never been an option. Maybe…" he thought aloud. "An old farmhouse. Some land, and a ranch."
"Cool. What kind?"
"Sheep. I would raise sheep. They're quiet. Do what they're told."
Y/N let out a small snort under her breath, catching the man's attention.
"Okay, sweet girl. What are you doing?"
She leaned back in thought as she felt Joel's gaze on her. "I… I don't know. I… I gave up on those kinds of daydreams a long time ago."
"C'mon," Ellie nudged, "There's gotta be something you've always wanted."
"Hmm," she hummed. "If we're getting into the high fantasy shit, I guess…" she stared off in thought.
Joel's hand found its way into her hair, brushing it away from her face, "What?"
"Maybe a family of my own."
Silence.
"Enough of me, though. What about you Ellie?"
She smiled, "Maybe it's just cause I was raised in the QZ. Nowhere to look but up." She stopped too. "It'll work, right? The vaccine?"
Joel grimaced, "It's a little late to start wondering."
"I tried it with Sam…"
"Tried what?" Joel sat up slightly.
"I knew he was infected so, I rubbed some of my blood into his bite. I know it was stupid but… I wanted to save him."
"Well, I reckon it's a lot more complicated than that. Marlene is a lot of things, but she's no fool. If she says they can do it, then they can do it."
Another bought of silence.
Ellie broke it this time, "Which watch are you taking?"
Joel sat up, "I'm taking all of them. Now get some sleep. And… dream of… a family of sheep ranchers on the moon."
Ellie laughed, moving away from the fire and going to bed.
Y/N hadn't moved or spoken in a while.
Joel's hand grazed her leg, "What's going on with you? You haven't been at all talkative since Kansas City."
"I had a family once."
He leaned back slightly, not ready for such a confession out of her. Judging by her stare at the flames, she was in her own world and needed to get her thoughts out.
"You did? Beyond your sister?"
She nodded. "I had as much of one as I could've."
This puzzled him. "Alright. Tell me about them."
She finally tilted her head to look at him. "I don't know if I'm strong enough to. I haven't… talked about them in years."
"Well, I got nothing else to do for the next seven hours until daylight."
She laughed and leaned back. "I doubt it would take that long."
"Only one way to find out."
A smile came to her face as she looked to the man. "I… uh… When I was young, I made some… dumb decisions."
Joel nodded, his attention focused solely on her as he soaked in every word.
"And… I got pregnant during my last year of school. The guy was a fucking idiot and left the first sign he could. Can't say I blame him."
He knew better than to interrupt her monologue, as much as he wanted to.
"…That baby was everything to me. It's what brought…Tess… and I closer together. She offered to help me out. Let me stay with her until I could afford a house. And… I lived too far away from her when the outbreak happened.
"The child was almost one at that point. I remember hearing the sirens. I packed what I could and they loaded me in one of their trucks. We got to the QZ and… they took the baby away. I fought as hard as I could. Enough that they practically choked me out until I couldn't fight them anymore.
"I remember seeing them take the child away though blurry vision. The wails. Can't tell you if they were from me or him, though…"
"Him?" Joel finally interrupted.
"…Yeah. Him."
"…what was his name?"
"What was your daughter's name?"
Joel's jaw clenched.
She continued, "Only fair. Eye for an eye."
He nodded before grunting, "Sarah."
"Cam."
Her gaze moved back to the fire, "By the time Tess found me again, I was nothing. I hadn't eaten. I looked… awful. I miss being that sick. Feeling something. Anything. Now when I think about it, I feel nothing. Well, I did…"
"And now…?"
"Watching Henry and Sam and… I shouldn't have let my baby go so easily."
"Hey," his deep voice grunted. "You didn't willingly let that happen. It was out of your control."
"You don't ever feel guilt, Joel?"
He tilted his head in frustration. "More than you could ever fucking imagine."
She pushed herself closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder, "Were you serious about that sheep farm?"
"Little bit. Left out some details though."
"Like what, Miller?"
He hummed, "Someone to share it with, I guess."
She smiled, "Is that an invitation?"
"If you're accepting invitations then… I reckon it is."
She hummed.
Joel continued, "Were you serious about that family?"
"I don't know. I don't think I would be able to."
"Well," Joel sighed, "You have more than enough time to decide which invitations you're picking. I heard there's one that's going to the moon."
She laughed lightly, closing her eyes.
He kissed her head with a small, "Go to sleep."
…
Y/N forgot how much she hated the cold.
God, she hated the cold.
The three had been hiking though snow for days, and the white contrast against the evergreen trees was starting to kill her eyesight.
So when they found the river, she was just glad there was another color to look at.
Until the sound of horses stopped them in their tracks.
Joel grabbed Y/N's hand, pulling her back until he realized they were surrounded.
"Stay behind me." He pushed the girls behind him protectively. "We ain't looking for any trouble. We're just passing though."
"Drop the gun."
Joel hesitantly did so.
"Now you two," one man said, pointed to the girls, "Take five steps away from each other."
Joel stepped forward, "How about we just talk this through?"
"How about you shut the fuck up."
"Alright. Easy." He looked over his shoulder at the two, "You'll be okay."
A deep breath left Y/N's lips as she began to back away from the only two people she cared about.
"You been near any Infected?" The man on the horse continued.
"There's no Infected out here." Joel lectured.
"The hell there ain't."
The man whistled, and another guy brought over a large dog on a leash whose barks and growls made Y/N's eyes widen.
"Last chance for a bullet. If you've been infected, he will smell it and he will rip you up."
But Joel let the dog approach him. It sniffed carefully. But decided he was harmless and moved back to its owner.
"Like I said," Joel continued, "We'll just move on."
"What about them?"
Joel looked over his shoulder at the two. Y/N was not a concern to him. But Ellie? He wasn't sure what the dog would make of the Infection-less Infected that she was. But he knew it was getting hard for him to breathe.
Joel snapped out of his panic attack to see Ellie petting the dog with a smile.
Y/N had a relieved look on her face as she looked back at Joel.
He nodded to her to give her some relief from him as well. He knew she needed it.
Everything was going to be alright.
He was going to make sure of it.
And when they complete this, he was going to devote himself to give her the life she wanted.
Whatever life that may be.
........................................................................
Tag list: @lover-of-books-and-tea, @pedropascalfan221, @lottieellz101, @bambisweethearts, @hiroikegawa, @elliaze, @littleshadow17, @n7cje
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The House of Mysteries is Arguably Sentient Right?
(O.O ) I sit here... contemplating the... WEIRD Ghosts Danny might come across. The true Haunted Houses. Planets. Theaters. Boxes bigger on the inside. Living ships and A.I.s, Etc.
All things can die. If the house of mysteries is someday utterly destroyed? Is that not death? If the Planet and Green Lantern Mogo is broken to pieces like non-sentient Krypton was, has he not perished?
Do they not stand equal chance of become Ghosts?
Are.... Are Haunts even created? Or are they a symbiotic ghost relationship? The dual fulfilling of Obsession. A house, properly haunted and taking care of someone. And a Ghost, watching TV or organizing stamps or living out the fantasy of their Perfect Life.
All behind purple doors.
Houses are demolished all the time. Or lost to war or disaster. An old enough house? Enough people living and dying in it? Could arguably start to accumulate ectoplasm. Become, not sentient, but a touch more. And in dying? Like any animal, leave behind that Idea of who they were. That ALMOST and Instinct.
Certain places though? That are alive? That have seen far too much death? They seem to carry over. Castles and long burned libraries, coliseums, and frozen hills. The places life was lost, over and over or all at once.
Floating islands from long dead planets.
I bet we could find Kryptonian flora on some of them. If we looked in the right area. It must be a strange mix. Down right bizarre. Facing just about anything and wondering if it's sentient.
With Ectoplasm? It could be.
But at the same time? Imagine the RELIEF? Of, after the stress and fear of dying, waking up CHANGED, somewhere new and alone... searching desperately for something, anything, to ground your self? The relief you'd feel... when a door seems to drift right into out of nowhere. Just? Gentle bonk.
And yeah, it's purple. Looks like every generic door that's ever been. But? It has this VIBE. Like you're staring at the door to your first shit apartment, but it's YOURS and YOU paid for it and you're... you're home now. You open it.
And it's like some crammed every inspo board you ever had and all the parts of every room you ever loved, together. Familiar, new, and best of all? NOT a vast swirling green void. You drift inside.
If you're like so many ghosts? Probably never leave. Why would you? It's spooky and loud and crazy out there. Everyone's nuts. In HERE it's nice. No fights, art and food the way you like it, time feels muted and far away...
You only really snap OUT of your happy Vibe Sesh with your House Haunt when someone intrudes.
There us probably a whole flip side of the Zone that we never really see. Haunt politics. Competition for the really GOOD Ghosts. Haunts that don't want a ghost because they are waiting for somebody who may or may not come.
Other fuckin MOGO'S. Seriously. Sentient planet. That may be rare, may even be the sole example IN THEIR UNIVERSE, but the Zone is Multiversal. Literally Infinite.
Which means there ARE at least a handful or more of SENTIENT PLANET GHOSTS. How do you?? Cope? "Oh this is my buddy, the PLANET EARTH." But possibly BIGGER.
Fuck that's a lot of Ectoplasm. Thank Zone their Obsession's are usually "Be Prosperous Planet" and "orbit and protect this Star, which is sentient and my frient".
Oh? They forgot to mention the SENTIENT FUCKING STAR? As in giant ball of fire and death? Whoops! :T
Don't worry! THEIR Obsession is their planets! It's a full circle thing. Just leave that little system alone and they won't annihilate you and everything you've ever loved! Easy.
Lookin a little pale there, your Majesty. You need to lay down?
(And to think, all this... because Pariah's Castle got into a literal land war with other castles over who gets the New King.)
(Accusations of being a Greedy Bitch were thrown. Suggestions to Get Good and stop being A Loser Crybaby were offered. Somehow, there were cannons? Danny is still unclear but has been told under NO circumstances is he to step foot in ANY ghost building until mediators can be brought in. It could be seen as declaring a preference.)
@hypewinter @hdgnj @ailithnight @nerdpoe
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Six Days, Part II - (Sierra Six x F!Reader)
I wrote this because ✨️Six deserves a lil more than a kiss✨️ 😌 I read the first The Gray Man book, and some characterization is based on it, but mostly this is movie-based. Let's pretend Lloyd Hansen survived his ordeal, shall we?
A/N: I had not yet read Ballistic (Book 3 of The Gray Man series) before writing this so the unintended similarity between Ch 36 and my work here was unintentional. I'm gratified to know Court Gentry so well lmfao. 💀 My bad, Mr. Greaney.
Lil Spotify playlist I listened to while feverishly typing. (Wipe Your Eyes is a Sierra Six song, I said what I said.)
Beginning / Ending / Prequel
TAGS: Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Angst, Six x F!Reader
WARNINGS: MINORS DNI 18+, sexual content, mention of rape (rape is not threatened nor occurs), drugging, blood/wounds/death.
WORD COUNT: 8.6k (yeah, I'm REALLY sorry)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IIII
The room is dim when you wake. It can’t be later than six o’clock, but the bed is empty, cold where he should be. The bedsheets rustle as you twist to read the green-lit clock on the bookshelf. Your face ticks in confusion at the numbers spelling out 9:09 a.m.
Must be a cloudy morning. Too bad I can’t see out this fucking frosted window, you grumble internally.
Sitting up, you pull the sheet a little tighter to your naked chest and squint at the bathroom door, bringing it into focus despite your sleep-laden eyes. It seems completely closed, but if Six is in there, he’s unusually quiet.
You drop the sheet and leave the bed, looking for your clothes on the floor. On Six’s chair, a pile of material catches your eye. Your hand trails across the folded, new clothing; you pick up the top item, the tags still attached. A smile splits your face in two. He’d laid out a pair of plain white underwear, denim shorts, and a green t-shirt. You quickly locate your old bra and underwear and throw away the bottoms. You’re too uncomfortable without the support of a bra, so you put it back on despite its desperate need of a wash.
Once clothed, you knock on the bathroom door but it swings open with the contact. It’s dark and unoccupied. A sudden wave of fear hits you and you take a step back.
Where's Six?
Irrationally, your mind taunts you: Did he leave me? Get what he wanted and cut his losses? A small sound escapes you at the intrusive thought, but you remember the way he had held you all night, the gentle yearning of his touch, the devotion in his sapphire eyes. You silence the unhelpful worries. No way. That’s not him.
Shit, shit, did something happen? Oh, my god, I hope he’s okay. The fears cycle through your mind. He’d never left without telling you before. Not back at the original safe house, not here, not ever. Unease settles in your chest like a virus.
It was evident he had left and come back this morning to bring you new clothing, but where was he now? You move into the bathroom, quickly flipping on the light to try to dispel some of the dread. You drop to your knees and begin feeling around the floor as grime and dirt pile along your fingertips.
Oh, god, I bet it’s under this disgusting-ass flooring.
You lean left to grip the rough edge of the linoleum where it lies underneath the sink. Pulling at the aged material, it comes up easily enough, and you’re rewarded by a discolored section of hardwood floor. The linoleum slips from your dirty fingers, and as you reach to grab it again, a loud crash booms behind you.
The front door bangs open. You spin around, knocking yourself on your ass. Your heart fears it’s an intruder, but your brain expects it to be Six, mad at you for not hearing his knock.
As the door swings wide, you’re faced with an unfamiliar man, clad in a blue patterned shirt and slacks, standing with a firearm in his right hand. It’s the first thing you see, but it’s not pointed at you. The man looks relaxed - happy, you notice.
“Hey, doll. Been lookin’ everywhere for ya.” His voice is upbeat yet menacing.
“Whatcha doin’ to that floor?” He marches over to you, roughly grabbing your upper arm.
As his fingers dig into your flesh, you stare at the stumps where his little and ring fingers should be. He hoists you to your feet. You don’t even struggle as your brain tries to play catch-up.
“Who- the fuck are you?” Your voice trembles despite your efforts to the contrary. Your heart is throbbing, painful aching in your veins; your worst nightmare is coming true.
“You haven’t heard of me?” He sounds surprised. “Well, isn’t that hilarious. Mr. Moral Compass has been keeping secrets from you.” He makes a mockingly sympathetic face.
“Where is he?” Your voice cracks and pain pricks in your eyes, your vision watering. You’re petrified of this man’s answer.
To your great discomfort, the man laughs. It’s a terrifying laugh: somehow, all of his features seem warmed by his mirth, like he’s energized by your distress.
“That's supposed to be my line, buttercup.”
He makes a condescending gesture, “Someone saw you clomping around this hallway out here. Not very smart, are we? And wherever you are, Six is sure to be trailing like a sad puppy. But I’m not too worried about where he is right now; he’ll follow us, and that saves me quite a bit of effort. Not to mention bullets and bruises.”
It takes a second for his words to find you through the panic, but when they do, you’re nearly lightheaded with relief. You’d thought you managed and processed that first night well. It had given you confidence in your ability to persevere. But standing here, face-to-face with a man who seemed to know things you didn’t, who exuded the dangerous energy of a wild animal, you were frozen in fear. However, if Six was still out there, still okay, you had some hope. You had every hope in the world, in fact.
Six. Six, please. Please walk through that door. All your wits could offer was to repeat his name like a prayer.
“Let’s head on out, shall we? Car’s waiting.”
His grip on your arm tightens painfully, and you still don’t fight him. He steps toward the bed and, with a flourish, places a piece of paper on top of your pillow.
“MapQuest for 007,” he explains without explaining.
You know you can’t win a physical fight with this much-larger, armed man, but the dam in you breaks as he pulls you toward the exterior hallway. You’re already leaning forward from the way he’s holding you, so you aim at your closest target. Your right fist slams just below the zipper on his slacks and he exhales with a yelp, doubling over. He recovers too quickly, though, and whirls you around, leveraging your throat with his forearm. He squeezes and wins a pained, high-pitched rasp from you.
“Do it again and I’ll leave your dead body for him to find instead of that paper,” he says through gritted teeth.
You shiver and try to swallow, panicking when you can’t. He loosens his grip enough for you to shuffle along, and when he tries to walk you both through the door a second time, you let him.
You were right, the sky outside was blanketed by wooly clouds threatening to let loose a deluge. The old city you’d holed up in was quiet for the time of day, and no one saw the well-dressed man toss you into a waiting black SUV. Your cheek smacks the faux-leather gray seat, and you push your arms underneath your body to reorient yourself.
The air inside the vehicle is artificially cold and smells new. The pleather squeaks as the two armed men who had been waiting outside your room seat themselves on either side of you. You hadn’t seen them until the well-dressed man had dragged you from your shelter out into the sterile-looking hallway. It seemed to you that they were reasonably sure you were alone. There was no way he wouldn't have sent an entire team in if he’d thought the two of you were together, right? This man didn’t dress like it, but maybe he didn’t have the funds for a whole team. Six had mentioned to you once how expensive one mercenary could be, and the going rate for a whole group could feed a small country for a week.
A thumb and forefinger pinch your nose, and your mouth drops open automatically. Your hands shoot upward to fight off whatever assault is beginning, but then the agent to your left pops something small into the back of your throat. You try to choke it out, but he had thrown it skillfully, and you accidentally swallow. You lurch forward violently as the driver accelerates.
You gag but nothing comes up. Coughing, you ask, “What'd you give me?”
The kidnapper’s smooth voice answers you from the passenger seat, “The ineloquent call it the ‘date-rape drug’.”
Utter fear shocks through your body at his blunt words. You’re a chemist, you know exactly what it is he gave you.
He turns a little to face you, “Sugar, you look nervous. Don’t worry,” his voice is jovial, “This is a date, not a rape.”
You shrink into your seat as best you can, trying to protect yourself. City blocks quickly turn into dilapidated housing, then farmland since Six’s safe house was close to the outer edge. You don’t know anything about the country you’re in, so memorizing the now-green scenery would be useless. Instead, you decide to evaluate and catalog the men next to you.
The man on your right is tall and tan. With his ironically trustworthy face, you would’ve never given him a second glance if you passed by him on the street. He’s holding what you believe to be a submachine gun, and a pistol butt pokes out of his waistband.
Your friend on the left is his friend’s polar opposite. This man makes you feel like the kidnapper does, and your hands shake just by looking at him out of your peripheral vision. His sharp, pale features keep anger at the forefront. His dark eyes, though rarely on you, twitch with menace. He’s carrying the same weapons as his partner, but you see an added hunting knife hanging from his black cargo pants. Unconsciously, your weight shifts to your right side, trying to put as much distance as you can, though, of course, you know the other man is truly no better.
Heavy exhaustion suddenly falls on you like an anvil. Lethargy places immense pressure on your limbs. Your world goes startlingly black for a second, then you realize you’ve closed your eyelids. You try to lift them, but it’s so difficult. Straining, you see a sliver of blurry light, but your eyes return to darkness. It feels like a weight is pressing on your chest - like Six did last night. Delirious, you half-smile at the recollection. Your head drops to the side with its own weight, and your final conscious thought is that you hope you fell to the right.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feeling more peaceful than he ever had in his life, Six had woken that morning on his side with your head on his right bicep. You were asleep facing him, your right calf sandwiched between his thighs, your hand curled on his chest. If he didn’t include every other time he looked at you, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Six felt a sense of possessiveness surge through him; he was never going to let anything take you from him. If you wanted him, he would be there.
Six had never told a woman that he loved her. Certainly not romantically. He wasn’t completely confident in how it all worked, but he no longer wondered what it felt like. Six knew by the way he wanted to care for you as you did him. It was evident in the way he found himself pulling your favorite mug from the cabinet each morning before you’d even woken; it was evident in the way his body thrilled as he counted your not-so-sneaky glances at him. Six knew how powerful love was because he felt all other aspects of his life drop in priority to you. He didn't pretend to be good at it, but he couldn't stop himself from trying.
In a matter of excellent timing, you rolled away, tucking your head down and off his arm. He extricated himself from the bed, intending on performing a quick errand. He was incredibly energized; after yesterday’s long-awaited activities and then the full night’s sleep he’d gotten, he felt sure he could do anything.
After showering, he located an old, plain black tracksuit set that he’d hidden years ago in the bathroom closet. It wasn’t exactly clean after all this time, but it wasn’t the disgusting shirt and pants from the past few days which was all he cared about.
He thought about leaving a note, but it was so dark outside that he knew you’d still be asleep when he returned. And also, he had no pen. Nimbly, he moved to your side of the bed where he carefully tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, his feather-light touch never waking you. You sighed into his hand as it curved down your cheek, and he felt himself twitch at the familiarity. He quickly decided that he’d be keeping you in bed today; his high energy would be put to good use.
Six casually moved out onto the streets of the old world city. It was just past eight-thirty. The air was nice: warm and breezy, hinting at the coming storm. It wasn’t a bustling locale, but its population was large enough to provide some cover. Six’s furtive yet discreet searches around the area told him that all was well, so he trekked through the city to a store he knew supplied women’s clothing. He figured your old clothes were no longer suitable - he himself had torn them off in more ways than one - and he had nothing in his cache that would be practical for a woman. He was still cautious, still calculated. If he needed you to run, you couldn’t be tripping around in too-long pants.
The brightly lit store didn’t have much, so he purchased the first items he saw that best fit the summer weather, making no guesses as to your size since it was something he’d memorized for this exact situation. He thanked the shop clerk in his native tongue, then took a shortcut back to the room.
He returned as the green numbers glowed exactly 9:00 a.m. to find you still sleeping as he had suspected. He laid the pieces on the chair and then moved to the kitchenette. His jaw set as he realized the food was entirely gone; there wasn’t any substantial meal to be eaten, and canned peaches weren’t going to satisfy the both of you. Grumbling, he took another survey to confirm your slumber, then exited once again, locking the door as he left.
On his ten-minute jaunt to the corner store, Six felt uneasy. Now he believed the electricity in the air had nothing to do with the impending thunderstorm. He felt the breeze rustle through his blonde locks and tried to relax a little. He had a few - well, he couldn’t call them friends - in this general part of Europe, but only one lived in this area. He hoped the man hadn’t seen him; or you, considering the man might know about the situation.
He’d run out of cash, and his nearest stash was about a four-hour drive away in Latvia, so he was forced to steal a loaf of bread and two chunks of meat. Six left his not-inexpensive watch as payment, but he regretted being forced to this level. He’d never stolen anything in his life (except the odd vehicle, those almost couldn’t be helped) and he hated it. He was paid well for his services; he never needed to steal. Every bit of decency he could afford, he performed. If you hadn’t been waiting, he would’ve contented himself with the peaches for the next few hours, but you were injured, and moving on to Latvia could wait one more night.
His walk back from the store was circuitous by habit. He took two extra turns and an alleyway before opening the glass-paned door to the building. The room you two had been sharing was the very first on the ground floor, and something was horribly wrong.
Groceries fell to the floor, replaced instantly by his gun. He swept into the room, then the bathroom, already knowing you weren’t there. A sharp intake of breath sounded as he realized the linoleum had been disrupted.
Thank God, you’d gotten into the safe room.
He grunted as he pried open the heavy trapdoor, already beginning to tell you everything was okay, when the dusty hole gaped empty beneath him. The breath heaved out of him. He cursed loudly and slammed the door shut with such force that it reverberated throughout the lower floor. He spun around and his eyes snagged on the paper positioned on the pillow you’d occupied only moments earlier. He snatched it up.
- Do you miss her like I miss my fingers? -
Below the handwritten taunt was an address. Six needed no further information - he sprinted out of the building and up the street.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Groggy and unsteady, your left eye opens a little before your right. Warm light streams from a small round window at the other end of the room. It’s dusty, and motes float about in the beams. Your hands chafe at the handcuffs, but the most uncomfortable aspect is the rickety chair you’re roped into. Your shoulders ache and your neck is pained at the position you’d been unconscious in.
Fear rises in your throat, bubbling like lava in your chest. But it’s mutating with another emotion you’re not sure of just yet. You rock forward violently and shift the old chair forward a little, trying to move toward the window. The impact of your weight rattles the rafters, and you realize that endeavor is hopeless if you want to remain alone. You try to scoot, using your untied feet to pull you along, but the chair catches on a warped floorboard, and you’re left stuck.
Panting from the claustrophobic panic and the exertion, you begin taking some calming breaths you’d read about once for test anxiety. It helps, but then you hear the creaking of hinges as a trapdoor falls away a few feet from you. The ladder slides down smoothly, and moments later the head of a man appears. His fit, sweater-wearing body follows. He glares at you.
“You got bits of ceiling plaster on my sweater.”
“What’s going on? What do you want me for?”
You expect him to say something about your job, to demand access to the research, to complete some of it yourself; maybe he wants you to oversee a project of their own. You have no idea and you’re not prepared for what he answers.
“I don’t want you at all, honey. Sorry, you’re not my type. I like women who don’t punch me in the dick.” He says testily. “No, I want your boy, and I want him to be sad. I had no idea you existed ‘til a friend snapped a few pictures of the two of you getting cozy.”
He unfolds three photos from his back pocket. The first is through the large glass backdoor in your original safe house, the telephoto lens capturing Six’s hand nearly touching your lower back, your head turned to smile at him. A second photo was taken from a distance through a window, and it shows Six sitting on the couch beside you, talking. The man holds up a third photo, this one of the two of you outside, Six’s face glows with that reluctant smile he favors, though it's much larger than usual; facing away from you, he looks downright joyous at something you must’ve said or done.
The emotion you’d had trouble naming finally identifies itself as you spit, “Fuck you.”
The man backhands you hard enough to split your lip, but he doesn’t knock you over. Tears spring to your eyes instantly, and you yelp. The moment this man had stepped through your door, you’d done your best to prepare yourself for physical pain. You were still surprised, still shocked by it.
The man crouches in front of you, his eyes level. Your upper lip curls into a snarl.
“I know Sierra Six. That man is a goody-two-shoes. Although, apparently he’s been lying to his lady love. See, I did do my homework: your employer’s security contract with Six ended a month ago. He’s been bunking with you because I sent him those photos the day before termination. If he stayed with you, I knew it was genuine.” He pauses, then jeers, “He doesn’t allow himself to get attached to people.” The man smiles, perfect teeth flashing behind pink lips as he waves the photographs, “But I found the one he has.”
Unable to fully comprehend what’s happening, you just stare. You’d been through quite a few emotions over the past twelve hours and the tumult in your head was raging. Your admittedly hands-off employers had never told you when the protection detail’s contract ended, they probably had just assumed Six would leave of his own accord. The house had been furnished with anything you would’ve needed so you’d kept on working, and your employers kept getting what they paid you for. As long as the status quo remained, no one would’ve questioned each other.
“So, you’ve got me here in this dry-ass attic because you don’t like Sierra Six?” Your confusion manifests with righteous anger. This man is using you, not for your brain, but to get to someone you care about.
He sharply raises his left hand as an example, “I fucking hate him, actually.
“Don’t your manicures cost less now?” You hiss venomously.
Your chair nearly tips when his hand connects once again with your face. You spit out blood, but you’re weak and it lands pitifully on your shirt.
Your mouth already open, you ask one last question, ”And when Six comes for me… you’ll kill him?” You are still angry, but your worry over Six causes your voice to break.
“All part of the show, babe. I’m not monologuing to you.” He shrugs, smiling as if he wasn’t just monologuing to you. He stands and jogs forward-facing down the ladder. You hear his rich voice say something about a knife, and your body goes rigid. More pain. Your heart rate skyrockets and traitorous tears fall.
Calm down, get calm, I can’t be calm, just be calm, this is insane, deep breaths, it won’t help, you’ll be fine, your thoughts race uncontrollably.
Stressed wood and hinges ring out from the ladder as he reappears with a switchblade. He squats and ties your ankles to the chair legs with little effort, despite your kicking. Then he pulls another chair from the far side of the attic to face you.
“Oh, I’m Lloyd, by the way.” He grins as he slices at your already-injured leg.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Though he’d brought a comfortable chair, Lloyd didn’t stay long. He made a few cuts, watched you scream and squirm a little, but then his stomach had growled. He stood, wiped the bloody knife on your denim shorts, and folded the weapon as he left the attic. He made a little quip about letting bed bugs bite, and then the trapdoor squealed as it shut, as he left you in darkness.
The window across the room is dark blue, now. You beg your mind to relive the previous sunset, but the pain in your wrists and your leg are agonizing. Lloyd had cut a shape into your leg, and you didn’t want to see it. You’d not looked as he worked, and you were unable to do so now. Maybe it’ll be gone by morning, you childishly wish.
Again and again, your mind returns to Six. As much as you may have had a right to be, you didn’t have the capacity to be upset with him. Certainly not right this moment, as all you wanted was to be secure in his arms, and it was unlikely you’d be too pissed later, either. Six was your friend. Sure, he was generally reserved, closed off - but those were his natural defenses, and it was impossible not to feel his sincerity, his regard. Six had stayed on without payment for an entire month. He’d asked for extra men, probably calling in a favor instead of offering a reward. Just because he wanted to protect you. If he’d felt it was best to keep the truth hidden, then the truth was probably best kept hidden. After all, the man was the best tactician around; even you knew he had a near-mythological reputation.
Simply put, you trusted the man unequivocally. You just wished that he would both hurry and stay away. If this lunatic managed to kill Six by using you as bait, you weren’t sure you could live with the guilt. Six spent so much time walling himself off from everyone, and you’d purposefully broken down those defenses. Now you were both in danger. Six was all you had, all you’d wanted, and now that you had him you were about to lose him.
You sat there as time slipped by, in the dark, crying, until your body exhausted itself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IIIII
A splitting headache wakes you. Your neck is screaming at the position it’s been in for hours, and you feel a little nauseous. The strong light from the round window allows you to clock the time at late afternoon, and you regret waking. Your body straightens when you realize that the sound of the trapdoor opening is what woke you. The sound sharpens and you tense, waiting for more pain.
As expected, Lloyd’s face beams at you. Immediately, you’re on edge: if Lloyd is happy, you shouldn’t be. He finishes climbing the ladder, and when he does, he motions to someone else to come up.
“Guess who,” he raises his eyebrows conspiratorially.
“No,” you plead. "No.”
“Mhm. ‘fraid so.” He couldn’t possibly smile wider.
A blonde head that you’d recognize anywhere materializes. He’s shoved by someone else you hate to see: the pale man on your left. The pale man looks terrible. His face is swollen and bloody. Since the ladder rises away from you, you don’t see the prisoner’s face until the pale man roughly turns him around, but you knew it would be Six. He’s slammed into his own rickety chair. His beard is sticky with blood, and a cut near his right eye oozes more blood. His black tracksuit is filthy and torn, and his hands are bound in front of him with zip ties. The instant he faces you, he holds your tearful gaze, and he winks. Your eyebrows constrict briefly in confusion, but you return to utter despair quickly. Lloyd was never going to let you go if he captured Six, and you’re pretty sure he never even offered that lie up to you. Now you were both going to watch each other die. Your chest heaves in sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” your voice is a hoarse whisper, but Six frowns and shakes his head. His attention is forced away from you, however, when Lloyd steps in front of him.
“Wow, Lloyd, you should’ve squeezed the CIA for a better patch job. You look like shit.”
Lloyd laughs, “Aw, don’t make me kill her already. I was just getting excited.”
“Did you do that to her face?” Six asks conversationally.
“It wasn’t the only thing I did,” Lloyd answers suggestively. And though you can’t see his face, he grins at Six who barely keeps a leash on himself. He files that comment away for later fuel.
Lloyd begins to speak, cajoling as Six flexes his jaw, his expressive eyes never leaving the threat. “The CIA didn’t ‘patch’ me up. They’ve pinned that whole … situation… on me. Rather unfairly, wouldn’t you say?” He doesn’t give Six time to answer before he continues, “I have other powerful friends who aren’t hunting me for war crimes. But they don’t matter. They support my little personal revenge mission, although they’re not funding it.” He holds up his hands, “Don’t be offended I didn’t send a whole squad after you, Six. I’m pretty depleted after all your shenanigans. But anyway!” He claps his hands, “Don’t you wanna know how I knew?” He sounds thrilled.
“A little birdy told you?”
“Your friend Denver. Now isn’t that just the worst? He sold you out. ‘Six has found himself a girl.’ His plan was to live that night, but hey, can’t win ‘em all, right?”
Lloyd moves to grab his chair, and you’re able to see Six’s reaction. His face doesn’t change, but you know those eyes. He’s not completely shocked, he can’t afford to be in his line of work, but you can see the betrayal, the sadness pooling there.
Since he has line of sight on you, again, he takes advantage and the corner of his mouth quirks up quickly. The smile is gone before you’re even sure it existed - but that’s the second time he’s signaled you. Trying to keep me from panicking, as always, you reason. You give him an answering smile, but it’s sad, and he grunts in frustration.
Lloyd has his chair in hand, and he looks animatedly between the two of you - back and forth, back and forth, as if trying to choose. The pale man, still standing next to Six, laughs. Your disgust evident on your face, Lloyd makes his choice and sits directly in front of you.
“Did you miss me, honey?” He purrs. You know from his tone that everything this man is about to do has one purpose: to twist a dagger into Six’s soul.
“Didn’t really get a chance, asshole,” you pour every bit of rage and hatred you can into your voice. This man might break your body, but you’re pretty sure this level of anger will protect your mind.
“Let me see that six.” He orders, which stops you right in your tracks.
“What?” You ask, perplexed.
“The six! The six I gave you.” His bottom lip pouts, “You didn’t even see what I gave you?” And he points at your thigh.
Amidst the blood, you finally see the pattern he had carved into your leg. He hadn’t cut as deeply as your other wound, just deep enough to ensure scarring.
“You said something about wanting a six, right?” He plays dumb. “If that one’s not big enough, here, I’ll do another.” He lifts the knife quickly and you start at the sudden violence.
Behind him, you hear Six grunt, then an unfamiliar, more pained-sounding grunt. Lloyd doesn’t hesitate before he jumps behind your chair and sticks the knife against your neck. As he does so, you see the body of the pale man drop to the floor, his submachine gun in Six’s freed hands. Your chin tilts up as high as you can to avoid the blade.
“You brought a knife to a gunfight, Lloyd.”
“Quite the party foul of me, huh?” Lloyd rejoins. “Oh, well. That’s where your bitch comes in handy.”
Six doesn’t react. Lloyd's using you as a shield, but he is much larger than you. One good shot would knock him back enough that Six was confident he could reach you before Lloyd recovered. Six starts to squeeze the trigger when the knife leaves Lloyd’s hand, aimed directly at his heart.
Six bats away the shining switchblade with the gun, which sends him a little off balance. Lloyd uses his chance to rush Six. Like the football star he had been, he tackles Six to the floor. Six groans in pain as the wind is knocked from him, and a scream tears from you. At the last second, you remember that the other man in the car, the one on your right, was probably somewhere below. Surely he had heard the thumping, right? Why wasn’t he coming?
Six quickly gets the upper hand, kicking out from underneath the other man, smashing the gun into Lloyd’s face twice as he did so. Six is loath to shoot the man outright because he really wants to beat the shit out of him first. Lloyd gets to his feet at the same time Six does.
Frantically, you knock the chair over, and try to wiggle sideways towards the knife Six had hit. It was several feet away, very close to what now looked like a standoff. Six hears what you’re doing, and circles a little more to his right, putting himself between you and Lloyd. He thrusts the butt of the gun at Lloyd’s gut, but Lloyd grabs hold of it. Six immediately ejects the magazine faster than he’d ever made the move before. He releases his hold on the weapon, knowing it won’t make a difference. Lloyd gives him an eyebrow raise before tossing the gun down the ladder.
Your chair scrapes with every inch, but your desperation gets the knife into your right hand right as you hear the gun fall. You saw at the ropes around your body, then once free of that, you cut the flimsy material around your ankles. Unfortunately, you are still handcuffed to the chair’s armrest. Keeping the knife in hand, you lift the old chair and slam it against the floor, once, twice. Thinking better of that, you sit down and jam both heels on the underside of the armrest, hoping to force the slim piece from its spindles. That worked. Unfortunately, you are still handcuffed.
Six waits for Lloyd to swing first, and when he does, Six puts every play he’s ever learned into action. He swings haymaker after uppercut at Lloyd, most of them connecting viciously. Lloyd gets in several licks, but each time Six shakes it off with a growl. Hoping to shorten this dance, you hold up the knife, hoping it’s Six and not Lloyd who sees what you have to offer. They both notice.
As Lloyd starts to run at you, Six leaps forward, grabbing him around the throat by his forearm. He uses the momentum to slam Lloyd down to his knees. Lloyd twists and claws at him, but Six is stronger. To Lloyd’s endless consternation, Six has always been stronger. You gawk on in horror. You’d seen Six kill a man before, but this was different. This was personal, angry, justified. Six is silent as his arms strain, pressing every bit of strength he has into Lloyd’s windpipe. Lloyd is gagging, gurgling. It was terrible.
“Go!” Six commands through gritted teeth, and though he wasn’t looking at you, you obey. You didn’t want to see this.
You flee down the ladder, knife still in hand. Subconsciously, you take in your surroundings: a vacant, crumbling mansion. The white hallway was cracked, and moldy. No furniture could be seen. You could still hear Lloyd’s death throes above you, so you stumble along the hallway, desperate to end the nightmare.
Your right leg, so damaged, gives out and you hit the floor. You see stair railings a few feet away, but you can also see the attic entrance from where you fell, and you weren’t going anywhere without Six. So you drag yourself up against the wall and try to slow your labored breathing as you wait.
A few minutes later, a man dressed in black climbs down. Your heart pounds at the sight of the blonde hair. You stand, wobbling, and drop the knife. As he reaches you, he wraps an arm around you. His hand presses your head to his chest.
“Let me see your hands.”
You hold up your cuffs. He unlocks them with a small key you can only assume he got from one of the bodies upstairs. He nudges you forward, and you start down the hallway, then down the stairs. When you get to the bottom of the wooden steps, you see why the other man never came running. He lay bloody on the floor of the foyer. Six had killed him first.
“Didn’t know where you were in this big old house, so I made my entrance known. Lloyd would take me wherever you were. Amateur.”
Stepping around the body and out the front door, you hysterically giggle at the stolen car Six had parked normally. “You literally walked in the front door?”
“Yeah.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IIIIII
Lloyd had taken you over the Latvian border by several hours, so while you were in the right country, you were still a couple of hours away from Six’s cache. As he drives, you curl up on the back seat, trying to relieve your sore muscles and your stinging leg.
It’s nearly midnight by the time Six pulls to the curb a block from his newest safe house. The streets were bustling with people enjoying their evening, and it wasn’t difficult to blend in. In the darkness, no one could make out your bloody leg, his bloody face.
Six breaks the padlock off the abandoned-looking building’s side entrance, then steps inside, ensuring it was uninhabited. There’d been no actual threats to your life besides Lloyd Hansen, your company hiring Six as a precaution over rumors, but Six was never going to take a chance again when it came to you.
He ushers you through the door, then tucks you into his side as he opens another door. It’s pitch black, and you cling to his jacket. You hear the door shut behind you, then you hear the sound of his hand sliding along the wall trying to find the light switch.
He succeeds and the room is illuminated in warm, artificial light. It’s another ground-floor apartment, and it’s similar to the previous minus Six’s favorite wingback chair. He takes your hand and guides you into the bathroom where you see the biggest difference yet. The bathroom is clean, spacious, and it has both a bathtub and a shower.
“Capital cities have the best safe houses. More people to maintain them,” he replies to the question in your mind. “Strip.”
Your head jerks up to look at him. He unzips his track jacket but leaves his pants. You pull the hem of your shirt over your head and drop the bloodstained fabric to the floor. Six crouches in front of you and unbuttons your shorts.
“I’m a professional,” he whispers, trying to lighten your wordless mood as he covers your new knife wound with his hand and pulls your shorts down.
He takes your hand to balance you as you step out of the bottoms. As he touches you, he looks for a sign of disgust, fear, something that will break his heart but make sense after what you’d been through.
He grabs a washcloth from the counter and wets it. He crouches in front of you again and begins softly cleaning the blood from your thigh, leaving a wide gap around the actual wound.
You’re a little unsteady after the lack of nutrition and the stress your body has undergone the past day, but you steel yourself for a moment: you focus on not freaking out, not crying just yet in order to take stock. You watched him kill someone. How do I feel about that?
In your heart, you know that it doesn’t change anything you feel about him. Six killed bad men - always had, always would - and you’d known that when you met him. Your torso shakes, nearly hyperventilating. No, the worst is that you could’ve died, you could’ve watched him die. You collapse onto his shoulders, your arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry.” He says, the timbre of his voice letting you know that he means it for all that has occurred. For what Lloyd did to you physically and probably emotionally. For not telling you the truth, but mostly for putting you in the situation in the first place.
Too emotionally distraught to check the words thoroughly, you try to relieve his guilt: “’s not your fault someone loves you, Six.”
Still not noticing your own words, you bury your face in his shoulder, and your tears fall freely. The noise he makes under his breath sounds affectionately amazed.
He stands, picking you up, and your legs wrap around him automatically. Your cuts are nearer the outside of your leg, but it still sends a jolt of pain down your limb when you use it to latch onto him. He sets your bottom on the countertop. One hand rubs your back while the other nestles into your hair.
He knows you’re in shock, and he knows you didn’t mean to tell him you loved him like that. It’s good to hear, and he can’t help the sunrise in his heart, but his primary concern is consoling you. Or distracting you, if possible. Early in his career, he had learned that the best way to move forward was to stop overthinking. Distractions worked well for that.
“Shower or bath?” He asks.
He doesn’t have an ulterior motive, and you’re more than welcome to answer with neither. But in his mind, if it comes to it, he could try to make you forget today for a little while. You sniffle as you pick your head up off his shoulder to see his face.
He’s looking at you like you just saved him, and it’s somehow exactly what you needed.
“Shower.”
You’d love nothing more than to be warm, bloodstain-free, and staring at Six naked. Without another word, he drops his pants and unclasps your bra. You push your underwear off. You latch around him again, and he carries you into the shower. You drop your legs and stand while he adjusts the temperature. The shower’s wide enough that you don’t feel the water at all as it warms up.
As the water begins to steam, Six looks over at you and holds his hand out, palm up. A smile touches your lips and he answers with his own as he pulls you to him underneath the showerhead. His hair soaks instantly. He rotates so your hair can rinse free of all the shit it had gone through in the last week.
Six takes a clean, soapy washcloth and stoops to finish cleaning your leg. He tries to ignore the shape that those cuts are in, but it’s still torturing him. He’d tried to forget it the moment after the words had left Lloyd’s mouth, but now he was face-to-face with the physical consequences of his feelings for you. He straightens up and lets the water get the rest of the blood.
You watch as his expression twists, and he won’t meet your eyes.
“They’re shallow. They’ll heal.”
“Yeah, right into my fucking name.” He begins washing himself as a means to avoid your face.
“It’s not your name." You cup your hand to his cheek. "Hey, ‘Six’ is not your name. Those marks will heal, and even if I’m still able to see the number, it doesn’t bother me.” Your voice rises with each word. You’re trying to tell him that it’ll be an incidental scar, and even if it mattered, it’s the pseudonym of the man who rescued you.
His stormy eyes meet yours finally, skepticism clouding them. “It doesn’t matter to you that you were tortured and permanently scarred," his voice acerbic, "because of me?”
“It does matter, but it wasn’t because of you, Six. It was because that guy was insane. He was unstable. He hated you and I was useful.” You're pleading with him to hear you. Your hand slides up from his cheek into his drenched hair.
You decide to gamble a joke, “Always wanted a man’s name tattooed on me, anyway.”
Your eyes shine up at him fervently, hoping the joke corroborates your apathy over the wound. Because that really didn’t matter to you. The physical scars were nothing - they would heal without issue. If anything, you worried about being separated from Six. How would you ever feel safe without him again?
Your gamble works. He snorts and leans his forehead to yours. Stray water droplets collect in his facial hair.
“But you’re right, that’s not my name,” he murmurs, then carefully presses his lips to yours. He’s gentle, but pain issues forth from your split skin, anyway. You flinch slightly, and Six murmurs, "Sorry."
Angry at the reminder, you decide you’re not letting Lloyd take any more seconds of your life, so you deepen the kiss. Your lips part to allow him in, and at the first touch of his tongue, a spark of tension flares.
He hums deep in his chest at your enthusiasm, your reassurance. Six’s right hand curves around the back of your upper thigh, underneath your ass, and he half-lifts/half-pushes you into the icy wall of the shower. You hiss in surprise, but his warm body follows with a grunt a split-second later, and you’re no longer thinking of anything but him.
Your hand drops to stroke his velvet length against your thigh, and Six’s groaning mouth leaves yours to trail along your jaw and drops to the hollow he knows you love. His hands caress your curves, one hand traveling to grasp your breast as the other hand slides between your legs.
You gasp as the friction of his rough palm, then his fingers, send a jolt right to that coil in your stomach. He squeezes your breast gently, and his thumb rolls over your nipple as Six drops to his knees.
“You don’t have to -” you start, but change your mind instantly as you appreciate Six below you: his hair drips into his profoundly blue eyes; water runs down his well-defined body, and his thighs flex as he shifts closer to you and sits back on his heels. His large hands wrap around your hips. You feel your breath hitch as he angles forward and his breath touches your tender skin a moment before his heated mouth. His tongue flattens against you before flicking at the perfect pace; he alternates between the two patterns. The heat floods through you in a deluge - your eyes slam shut, your head rolls back, and when your stomach constricts, your legs go weak.
He makes a pleased guttural sound that vibrates into your skin, and he plants one firm arm upward along the inside of your hip, his hand on your ribs, to keep you upright. His other hand on your hip welds you firmly to him. Your cries of pleasure echo in the space, and he feels himself growing painfully hard.
Your body having been stretched to its limits in so many ways means the euphoria you feel now has you coming easily. Six feels the tension in you splinter, feels the shuddering in your legs. The pride it gives him is unmatched as he holds you still. You moan into the steamy air, and he knows could do this forever.
He continues at the same pace, but in a moment of lucidity, you miss him against you. You pull at his shoulder, and he obliges, standing. His right hand grasps the underside of your knee, palm on the outside of your leg, and he fits himself right against you. You can feel him twitch with expectation. An aftershock of your first orgasm ripples through you, and has you clenching around nothing. You shiver, already anticipating how good he will feel.
“Please, Si-” you beg him, unnecessarily.
He makes a sudden decision, cutting you off, “It’s Court.”
Your eyes fly up to his. But before you have a chance to speak, he steadily shifts up into you. His quiet groan is punctuated by your gasps. His eyes close involuntarily at your tight warmth. Your nails dig into his biceps where you’d braced yourself. The stretch hurts a little this time, but you're too satisfied with the closeness to care. Relishing the unique intimacy of being inside you, he skims one hand down your side before he drags himself unhurriedly out, and thrusts back in.
He begins to slowly increase his rhythm, and with each incredible entrance, you both let the sounds spill out from your mouths uninhibited. Before long he is driving into you so unrelentingly that all you can do is hang onto him. He never neglects your lips for a second, his deep, messy kiss the only thing keeping you sane. You feel white-hot; it’s nearly painful, but it’s so good.
Tears leak down your face. His left hand cups your cheek, thumb swiping away the salty liquid. He can see you’re about to snap once again by the way your face pinches, then begins to unwind underneath his hand. He drops his hand to work you over further. He never knew life could be so sweet. Reserved, isolated his entire adult life, he knows that he’s never going to be happy if he’s not coming home to this.
“Don’t say Six,” he begs. It’s never mattered to him before. He was the same person no matter what anyone referred to him as. But he wanted you to know, to have the purest version of himself. The version no one else had.
He looks down into your eyes as he asks, and when the understanding hits you, it’s the final nail in your coffin. A sob echoes in the small room as your walls constrict around him, fluttering. He revels in the image of you falling apart against him.
He kisses you again, then lets his lips hang open over yours as you both breathe heavily from the wicked roll of his hips. He’s blurry through your tears, and you blink a little to better understand what you just saw flashing in his eyes. What you’d seen there two days earlier, too. He loves you, your mind supplies unasked.
Court’s rhythm changes to deep, passionate thrusts as he tries to bury himself in you. His desperate grunts send aftershocks throughout your thighs. He’d never stop if his body would allow it. He gradually slows his movements, still working you through your own high. He finishes with a low, animalistic noise and closes the small gap between your mouths. Neither of you move, panting.
You look up at him through your lashes, your eyes full of tears at the emotion between you two. He kisses you, hard - full of everything he'd wanted to say for months. After several moments, he lets go of your leg, and removes himself from you.
Unwilling to stop touching you, though, he takes you by the hand as he exits the shower. You twist the knob to shut it off as you walk by.
He wraps an old, gray towel around his waist, and hands one to you. You squish your hair, then wrap it around your chest. He’s quiet, uncomfortable for some reason, so you take his hand again, and back him up against the counter. He barks a reluctant, low laugh at you pretending to be able to keep him pinned. He rests his hands on your waist.
“Why are you sad?” You ask bluntly.
“I’m not the one who was just crying,” he deflects with a quip.
You raise your eyebrows and frown at him.
Remembering that he wanted you to know him, he cautiously answers in a halting undertone, “I would like a calm life.” He stops, thinking. “Maybe with you...”
It's almost a question, and he doesn’t say what he means exactly, but you understand. You're his chance at a normal life. A happy life.
“Maybe not a calm life, no, but you could have me.” You phrase it as a potential, though it’s not one. He’s had you wrapped around his finger for months. You'd do anything if your reward was this man.
His face doesn’t change, so you try again, “You already have me; so, it’d be nice if you’d accept it.”
“Oh, I don’t even get a choice, now?” He smirks faintly, his thumbs rubbing along your hips through the thin towel.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel happy without you,” you confess your earlier thought. Your hand traces over the tattoo on his chest. “I know I wouldn't feel safe."
He sighs heavily. “I can’t say nothing will ever happen,” he says honestly, “but I can promise I'll be there." He pauses, trying to figure out how to express himself. "If you want me, then-"
“I always want you, Court.”
You cut him off, speaking his name for the first time. When when he smiles, it finally touches his eyes. His grip tightens on your waist. He's contemplative for a moment as his look turns mischievous.
He lowers his voice, “About that book you tried to kill me with: I think I remember a page or two -” he breaks off as he bends faster than you’re capable of reacting to, and throws you expertly over his shoulder, smiling at your laughing shriek.
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That Summer, Chapter 1
Pairing: Frank Castle x F!Reader
Rating: M
Story Summary: Frank Castle has been on the move ever since he "retired" as The Punisher after finding out the truth about his family's murder and handing his former best friend, Billy Russo, off to the Feds.
With his new identity as Pete Castiglione, Frank decides to settle down in a small town in Iowa, where he finds employment as a farmhand/handyman for you, a widow who's struggling to keep your farm running by yourself after the untimely death of your husband a year prior.
As Frank grows closer to you, his past -- and true identity -- begin to catch up with him, putting his chance of finding peace -- and both of your lives -- at risk.
Warnings/Tags: Canon-Typical Violence, The Punisher S1 Compliant ONLY, Slow Burn, Eventual Smut, Frank calling Reader "Ma'am" is it's own warning 🥵
Word Count: ~3k
A/N: This is all Jon Bernthal's fault for looking so damn good in a flannel shirt and jeans.
Title from the Garth Brooks song of the same name.
Taglist: @danzer8705 @carolinaxvz @thepunisherfrankcastle
BangBangBangBangBang!
Frank Castle grabbed his pistol out from under his pillow as a sudden loud knocking on his motel room door startled him awake.
He had pulled into a small town in Iowa around 2 AM and had gotten a room, hoping to get a decent amount of sleep… but apparently there was no such luck since someone was banging on his door at fuck-o’clock in the morning.
He let out a deep breath and relaxed as he realized that the commotion was actually coming from a few doors down, the banging now followed by a woman's angry voice yelling that she knew that someone named Roger was ‘in there with that skank’. Sounds like a lover's quarrel .
He stashed his gun back underneath his pillow then looked at the bedside clock, which read 7:23 AM.
He sighed. Might as well get some breakfast since I'm up anyway.
He took a quick shower then dressed, noting by the silence that whatever had been going on between the angry woman and the allegedly-cheating Roger had apparently already been resolved.
There was a small hole-in-the-wall diner directly across the street from the motel, so Frank decided to just walk over there for breakfast.
He headed in and sat at the end of the counter, groaning when his back cracked.
He pulled out the bottle of aspirin he had bought at a gas station on his way into town and opened it, shaking out a couple of pills before popping them into his mouth and swallowing them dry. He'd certainly slept in worse places than the back of a van and cheap, shitty motel rooms back when he was in the military, but now that he was getting older his joints were definitely preferring a nice, soft bed to sleep in.
The waitress, an older woman whose nametag read Mildred , walked over and poured him a cup of coffee. “Welcome to Sal's, what can I getcha?” she said.
Frank quickly scanned the menu. “Uh, I'll have the bacon and eggs, eggs over easy, please.”
“Sure thing, hon. Coming right up.”
Frank looked around the mostly-empty diner as Mildred shuffled off to go put his order in with the cook.
An old jukebox stood along the far wall -- its choice of music being country ranging from the 1950’s to the 1980’s if Frank had to guess -- while a framed black-and-white photo of the diner sat above the jukebox, the presumed Sal standing proudly in front of the building and pointing to a brand-new sign.
Frank glanced back towards the door, a hand-written flyer pinned to a bulletin board catching his eye.
“You lookin' for a job?” the waitress asked, setting a plate in front of him.
“Uh, yeah, actually, I might be,” Frank replied, still looking at the flyer. He had been considering settling down somewhere for a while and figured that The Middle of Nowhere, Iowa might be just as good a place as any.
He pulled out his phone and flipped it open, only to notice that he had forgotten to charge it the night before and that the battery had died. “Ah, damn, my phone's dead. You happen to know where this is located?”
Mildred nodded. “Yeah, it's down at the end of Route Six, just past Eureka Creek at the edge of town.”
“Mind giving me directions?”
“Sure, when ya leave here head right on Route 3, go down a ways ‘till ya see the sign for the hardware store, then hang a left on the road right past it and go all the way down. Ya can't miss it.”
“Can I take the flyer?”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” Frank finished his breakfast and coffee then pulled out enough cash to cover his bill and leave Mildred a nice tip before setting it on the counter. “Here ya go.”
Mildred walked over and took the money, counting it quickly before heading towards the register at the other end of the counter to close Frank out. “Thank ya, hon. You have a nice day now.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Frank took the flyer off of the bulletin board and folded it before sticking it in his pocket.
He headed back across the street and packed his duffle bag before checking out of the motel.
He unlocked his van and climbed in, reviewing the directions in his head before starting it up. Right outta here, left onto Route 6 after the hardware store… past Eureka Creek all the way to the end of the road. Got it.
He turned out of the diner's parking lot onto Route 3 and headed towards the edge of town, turning left past the hardware store down a gravel road with a faded sign that declared it Route 6 .
After a few minutes of bumpy driving he crossed a rickety-looking wooden bridge built over a small waterway (what Frank presumed to be the aforementioned Eureka Creek), which transitioned to a winding dirt road leading to a two-story farmhouse.
To the right of the house was another building that appeared to be a cabin, and beyond that was a barn, an older model truck half-covered with a tarp, a tractor that clearly hadn't run in a while, and a fenced-in pasture whose fence was in dire need of repair.
Definitely seems like there'd be plenty for me to do around here, Frank thought as he climbed out of the van.
He could hear barking coming from inside the house as he shut the door and began walking towards the front porch.
He paused just shy of the front steps as the front door opened slightly and you appeared.
You eyed him warily from behind a screen door, which remained closed. “Yes, may I help you?”
“I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am, especially with it being so early,” Frank began as he dug the flyer out of his pocket and unfolded it. “But I was told you were looking for someone to help out around here?”
You nodded, glancing briefly at the flyer in his hands before looking back up at him. “Yes, that's right.”
Frank cleared his throat. “I apologize for not calling first but my phone is dead, so Mildred over at the diner gave me your address. Is now a good time to talk?”
You hesitated momentarily. “Yeah, now’s fine, just give me a minute though.”
Frank nodded. “Sure thing, ma'am.”
He waited as you closed the door, hearing a heavy lock turn on the other side. He couldn't blame you -- he'd be cautious too if some strange person turned up on his doorstep unannounced.
After a few minutes, he heard the lock click again and the door open.
A large black and white dog came bounding out past the screen door, stopping in front of Frank and sniffing cautiously at his boots.
You followed, this time carrying a tray holding a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses and wearing a much friendlier look on your face. “Sorry about him,” you said as you set the tray down on a small side table and closed the door once again. “He's friendly though, I promise.”
“Ah, that's alright.” Frank squatted down to rub the dog’s muzzle. “What’s his name?”
“Frank.”
Frank chuckled. Guess that's a sign that this was a good idea. “Frank, huh?”
You shrugged. “That was the name he came with. He's a rescue.”
Frank turned his attention to Canine Frank. “Nah, that's a good name, huh boy?”
He stood. “I'm Pete. Pete Castiglione.”
You introduced yourself in return. “Would you like some lemonade, Pete?”
Frank nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I'd love some.”
He walked up the steps to the porch as you poured two glasses of lemonade.
You handed him one of the glasses. “Here, have a seat.”
“Thank you.” Frank took the glass and sat before taking a sip of the cool, perfectly sweet drink. “Mmm. This is excellent. Thank you.”
“You're welcome.” You took a sip of your own lemonade as Canine Frank settled himself at your feet. “So, Pete, do you have any farming experience?”
Frank shook his head. “Actually, no ma'am, I don't, but I'm a real fast learner and I don't have a problem with getting my hands dirty. And whatever needs fixing, I can do as well.”
Your eyes flicked down to Frank's battle-scarred hands. “Well that's good to know, at least. I'm afraid it's been a bit of a struggle trying to keep up with repairs around this place while also tending to the animals.”
You took another sip of your lemonade. “Where’ya from, if ya don't mind me asking?”
“New York.”
You eyed him carefully. “Long way from home. Running from or towards something?”
Frank chuckled and shook his head. “Bit of both, I guess.”
“Honest answer. That's good. Honesty’s important around here.”
Frank nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Honesty's important to me too.”
You looked out towards the farm, then sighed. “I’ll take you on on a trial basis -- let's say two weeks. If it seems like you're at least starting to catch on to everything then you can have the position permanently, if not then I'll give you the half month’s pay that I'll owe you and we'll go our separate ways. Sound fair?”
Frank nodded in return. “Yes, ma’am, sounds completely fair.”
You stood. “In that case, how about I show you around?”
Frank finished his lemonade and set his glass down on the table. “That'd be great.”
You led Frank towards the barn. “We're a small farm, with just 6 horses and 5 cows, a dozen hens, a couple of bee boxes, and Frankie boy here. We used to be much bigger but… well, it became too much to handle on my own.”
Frank had a feeling there was more to that story, but said nothing.
You tugged on the barn door, grunting in frustration when it didn't budge. “That's one thing on the repair list -- this damn door. It's always getting stuck.”
You tugged one more time, the door finally letting loose with a loud pop and sliding open.
Frank followed you into the barn, which was neat and tidy -- well, as neat and tidy as a barn could be. “I can take a look at that door for you now, if you'd like.”
You nodded and waved a hand at the door. “By all means, go right ahead.”
“Got a ladder?”
“Yeah, just a second.”
You walked towards the back of the barn and unhooked a short folding ladder that was hanging on the left wall. “Will this do?”
Frank nodded. “Yes ma'am, that'll work.”
He waited as you brought the ladder to him then climbed up. “Ahh, yeah, I see the problem right here. One of the tracks is loose so they keep catching on each other.”
He looked down at you. “You got a screwdriver handy?”
“Yeah, there's a toolbox over here.” You walked over to a large tool chest and began rummaging through it, quickly producing a screwdriver. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Frank quickly screwed the track back into place and stepped off of the ladder. “Go ahead and try that door now.”
You walked back over to the door, which now slid easily in both directions. “Ah yeah, there we go. Thanks.”
Frank shrugged. “No problem, ma’am.”
You led him towards the stables. “Alrighty, so here are the horses. We've got Sunshine, Missy, Eclipse, Nutmeg, and Amaretto.”
You stopped at a stable that was further away from the others. “And this is the aptly-named Midnight.”
Frank looked between the jet-black horse and you. “Why is he being kept separate from the other horses?”
“He's not tame yet. I've been trying but haven't had any success.” You paused. “My husband was the horse trainer, I just don't seem to have the knack for it.”
There it is. “Was?”
You nodded. “Tom passed away just over a year ago -- car accident. He was coming back from Des Moines with a load of feed when his tire blew out and he ran off the road. Struck a tree, killed him instantly.”
Frank winced. “I'm so sorry. I know what that's like, though, I… I lost my wife and kids a few years ago too.”
“I'm sorry for your loss as well.”
Next you showed him the cows -- Lulu, Clarabelle, Daisy, Petunia, and Millie -- then the area where you kept the bees. “I usually handle them on my own but there might be an occasion where I would need you to help me harvest honey. You're not allergic, are you?”
Frank shook his head. “No, ma'am. That won't be a problem.”
“Okay, good. Let me show you where you'll be staying.”
You took him back around to the cabin. “Here it is.”
Frank followed you up the steps to the small porch and waited as you unlocked the door.
You opened it. “Come on in.”
He followed you inside and took a look around. To the left of the entranceway was a small kitchen, complete with a stove/oven combo, microwave and coffee maker.
“There’s a grocery store in town if you want to stock up on groceries,” you explained, “but you're also welcome to come have meals in the main house too if you'd like.”
Frank nodded. “I’m not much of a cook, so that would be nice if you wouldn't mind the company.”
“Not at all.”
Beyond the kitchen was a living area that connected to another side porch, then a small laundry room with a washer and dryer. “This was Tom’s and my place before we built the main house,” you explained as you showed him the bedroom and bathroom. “It wasn't much, but it was home while we needed it to be.”
Frank shook his head. “Nah, this is perfect.”
You handed him a key. “Breakfast is at six, lunch at noon, dinner at seven. Work starts tomorrow morning after breakfast.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Alrighty then, I'll give you your privacy, leave ya to get settled in. Let me know if ya need anything.”
“I will.”
Frank went out to the van to get his duffle bag as you headed back to the main house, Canine Frank on your heels.
He headed back into the cabin and unpacked his meager belongings, hiding his pistol in the nightstand next to the bed before plugging his phone in to charge.
He put a load of laundry on to wash, glad to have his own washer and dryer to use rather than having to find a laundromat.
He returned to the bedroom intending on taking a nap when he looked out of the window, spotting you carrying a large square bale of hay towards the barn and looking like you were struggling.
He headed outside and walked towards you. “Here, let me help you with that.”
You stopped and handed him the hay bale. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”
“No problem. Where we headed?”
“Horse stalls.” You wiped the back of your arm across your forehead. “It's been taking a lot longer than it's supposed to to muck them out because I've been having to transport the hay by hand and in smaller bales ever since that tractor’s been broken, not to mention having to move the horses to another stall instead of being able to let them pasture during the day because of the fence.”
Frank glanced over at the broken-down tractor. “Listen, I'm not really one to sit around and be idle, so instead of starting tomorrow why don't I help you with the stalls then go ahead and get started on that repair list for you? I can fix the fence then maybe take a look at that tractor, see if I can't get it running for ya tonight.”
You nodded. “That would be great. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
You quickly showed Frank how to muck out the horses' stalls, and together the two of you managed to get them cleaned and re-lined with bedding in just a few hours.
“Okay, that's the last one,” you said as you finished mucking out the stall you used to temporarily house each of the horses. “Thanks a lot for your help.”
Frank shrugged. “That's what I'm here for.”
You looked at your watch. “It's just about time for lunch, so how about you wait till after we eat before starting on the fence?”
Frank nodded. “Alright.”
You led him to the back of the main house. “Lunch usually consists of something simple like sandwiches and chips,” you explained as you went up the steps of the back porch and took off your boots. “But there's chili cooking in the Crock-Pot for dinner tonight.”
“Both sound great,” Frank replied, taking his own boots off before following you into the kitchen. “I'm not a very picky eater.”
You washed your hands then went to the refrigerator and began to gather the makings for sandwiches. “I've got turkey and ham, cheese, and fresh lettuce and tomatoes from the garden along with some pickles. Help yourself to whatever you like on your sandwich.”
Frank washed his own hands as you set everything out on the counter along with two plates, a bag of chips, and some condiments. “Thank you.”
You made your sandwich and set your plate on the dining room table. “Something to drink?”
Frank nodded as he made his own sandwich. “Some more of that lemonade would be really nice.”
“Sure thing.” You walked back to the cabinet, pulled out two glasses, and set them on the counter, then pulled the pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator. “Go ahead and have a seat, I'll bring this over.”
Frank sat a couple of seats down from you, thanking you as you set his glass of lemonade in front of him.
He picked up his sandwich and took a bite, chewing and swallowing before asking, “What else is on the repair list?”
You huffed out a light laugh and shook your head. “Honestly too much to name, but I can give you a detailed list tomorrow.”
Frank nodded. “Okay.”
The two of you continued eating in silence, Frank stealing a glance at you as you looked thoughtfully out of the window.
He could see the pain of loss on your face as well as determination to keep the farm afloat and silently vowed to do whatever it took to help you succeed.
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Burning Hearts Chapter 17
Pairing: Law x Straw Hat Zoan Type (named) OC
Summary: You were teleported across the globe in an instant, away from your crew. Your body was badly broken and beaten, thrust into the harsh landscape of a Northern island. You are discovered by the Heart Pirates and brought back to health. Startled upon waking up in a foreign place with an unfamiliar crew, you are shocked with the news that you’ll be spending two years there. Trafalgar Law, the captain of the Heart Pirates has made a promise to train you, but will it become something more than a mentor relationship?
****MINORS DNI***
Taglist: @zoros-fourth-sword @cottoncandyloverrrr @nothing-but-brass @airwolf92
Burning Hearts Chapter 17: Happy Birthday
— —
Fall had arrived on the island and the air temperature wasn’t the only thing that had turned colder. As the leaves on the trees turned from green to a burnt orange, Law had turned distant not just from you but from the rest of his crew as well. You knew there would be a shift in your dynamic after you lost control and took a chunk out of his arm, but holding a grudge against you didn’t seem like Law’s style… and it wouldn’t explain his indifference towards the other crew members.
You had a nightmare a few nights ago and found yourself knocking on Law’s bedroom door, looking for comfort in your restless state but you were met with nothing. Another day, you had attempted to drop off breakfast in his office but you were told to “leave it outside” and he would “get to it eventually.” Hours later you walk down the hallway to find it untouched and each delicious morsel you prepared was undisturbed.
“Hey Bepo,” You ask with a mouth full of peanut butter on a piece of bread from a loaf you freshly baked the day before. “Why is tomorrow’s date on the calendar crossed out all weird?” You point at the calendar on the fridge and tap it with a long fingernail.
“Oh… well… it doesn’t matter…” Bepo says nervously from the doorframe in the kitchen, twiddling his large clawed thumbs.
You choke down your breakfast and cock your head.
“Okay you’re being weird about it and you suck at lying so give it up, big guy.”
Bepo sighs.
“That’s the captain’s birthday.” He says finally while staring at the floor.
“Okay…? That doesn’t explain why it’s blacked out.”
“Well, he hates his birthday. Insists we ignore it, actually.”
“Why?” You inquire.
“He’s always hated it. We never really asked why. We got him a cake one year and he yelled at us before spending the rest of the week alone in his room. We just figured out that it’s best we leave it alone. That’s probably why he’s been weird lately… he knows it's coming up…” Bepo looked distraught.
“Hating a day of the year seems silly… but I guess so do most of the things he does…” You wash and dry your hands and head past Bepo to return to your room. “Thanks for the info.”
— —
“Hmmm… okay steam for fifteen minutes…” You slide your pointer finger down the hand written rice ball recipe to make sure you were getting the correct timings and measurements.
“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” A voice calls from the doorway and you turn around to see Shachi coming in to the kitchen, obviously following his nose.
“Rice balls. They’re not done yet and they’re not for you, so hands off!” You call as you throw the dish towel over your shoulder and fix your apron straps.
“Oh the captain’s favorite huh? Somebody must be trying to-“ Shachi’s sharp-toothed smile fades once he sees the calendar on the fridge behind you. “Wait… what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Making the birthday boy his favorite dinner, idiot.” You return to the stove.
“I’M the idiot? Are you insane? He’s gonna freak out if you even MENTION his birthday, let alone make him dinner! Do you have a fucking death wish?” Shachi rushes over to you and tries to squeeze behind you to turn the stove off. You swat his hand away from the knob.
“Will you cool it? Let me do this. If he gets mad at anyone, let him get mad at me. Now get out before you’re an accomplice.” You slap Shachi on the back and push him out of the kitchen.
You spend another hour in the kitchen diligently molding rice balls into perfect little triangles and arranging them onto the plate in a neat little tower. You smile at your handiwork, but you were still a little apprehensive of how your birthday stunt was going to go over with the grumpy doctor. You grab a piece of paper from the pad next to the fridge and a pen and scribble out a makeshift sign to put next to the meal saying “DO NOT EAT” with an angry face.
You head to Ikkaku’s room and knock on the door.
“Come in!”
You push the door open and smile at your friend, immediately heading to her closet.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your presence, my lady?” Ikkaku says sarcastically as she watches you start going through her rack of clothing.
“Do you still have that black dress? The wrapped one? Kind of a slutty little hemline?”
“I do, it’s collecting dust in there in the back. And why do we need to get dressed up on a Tuesday evening at home?”
“I have a plan.” You smirk as you retrieve the dress from the back of Ikkaku’s closet.
“Wait… it’s not… is it? Oh my god, Daisy this is a bad idea. You are severely underestimating how much that man hates his birthday. Haven’t you seen the way he’s been moping around the place lately? You cannot do this!” Ikkaku shouts at you from her position laying on her bed.
“I think you’re severely underestimating how much that man likes rice balls and boobs. Men are simple… even the crazy ones.” You wink as you flit back to your room, dress in hand.
— —
You look at yourself in the mirror before you head out to bring your plan to fruition. Ikkaku’s black dress was wrapped tightly around your figure, tied in one bow at the waist holding it all together. The neckline dipped low on your chest and the thigh high hemline made your legs look much longer than normal. You had unbraided your long hair, leaving it in soft waves cascading down your back and shoulders.
“If this doesn’t work, nothing will.” You say to yourself ask you reach the kitchen and pick up the plate of rice balls you had made earlier. Approaching Law’s door, you swallowed harshly and straightened your dress before knocking.
*knock knock knock knock*
“Working.” You hear from the other side of the steel door. You sigh and turn the handle anyway.
“Hey hey!” You say cheerily as you peek your head through a crack in the door.
“Daisy. Do you need something? Are you hurt?” Law looks up from the mountain of papers on his desk. He meets your eyes. His pale grey eyes were winked in and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“No no I’m fine! I just though I’d bring you your favorite dinner!” You step fully into Law’s office and present the plate of rice balls with a smile.
“Oh. I see. Thank you.”
You walk towards Law’s desk and place the plate down.
“I thought you could use a nice meal, it being a special day and all…” You let your voice trail off as you sit down carefully in the leather armchair directly across from him.
“What did you say?” Law furrows his brow.
“I know you hate your birthday, Law, but you have to learn to let people do nice things for you.”
“Who asked you to do this? Who told you today was my birthday?” Law raises his voice and you can see the anger in his face. “I don’t want fucking shit done for my birthday, and it’s clear you knew that and made a big deal out of it anyway!”
You maintain your composure.
“A plate of rice balls isn’t exactly making a big deal about it, Law.” You roll your eyes. “You’re so afraid of people being nice to you that you scream at them for making you dinner on your birthday. Your crew loves you, they care about you. You make sure they’re safe and happy every other day of the year, why can’t you let them treat you for one day?”
“I… I can’t.” Law looks down at his hands on the desk.
“Why? Is it so hard to believe people care about you?” You ask.
“I just can’t!” Law slams his fists down on the desk. You jump a bit, but remain steadfast.
“Fine, if you can’t accept that your crew cares, what about me then?” You say as you rise from the chair and walk towards the side of Law’s desk, getting closer to him.
“W-what do you mean?” Law looks at you from his seated position behind the desk.
“Maybe I can show you how much I care…” You reach to your side and untie the bow holding the dress together. You unreel the dress from your body, slowly revealing a black lace bra, matching panties and a garter belt you had picked up sneakily last time you went clothes shopping in town.
“D-Daisy-“ Law stutters as his eyes widen in shock at your nearly naked form leaning against his desk.
You move towards him and swing your leg over his lap to straddle him before he had a chance to protest.
“You’ll let me show you, yeah?” You cup his face in both hands to make him look up at you, his goatee tickling your palms. The look in Law’s eyes had changed from anger to vulnerability.
“Yes…” He pants up at you.
You respond by slamming your lips onto his in a passionate kiss. Law grunts in response before grabbing your torso with cold hands, making you shudder. You snake one of your hands to the back of his neck and the other wrapped itself in his hair, lightly pulling on the black strands. Law hums in appreciation of your boldness and slides his hands down to cup your exposed ass.
After a few more minutes of making out, Law starts grinding your hips onto his in a desperate attempt to feel more of you. He pulls away from your lips, a messy string of saliva still connecting the two of you when he speaks.
“I-is it getting hot in here?” He asks shakily.
“I don’t know, just take me to bed.” You say as you place more kisses along his chiseled jaw.
“Room…”
And in flash off blue light, you and Law were locked in a frenzied kiss again, but this time you were on top of him in his bed. Law leans up and rips his shirt off his head, knocking his hat to the floor in the process. He leans into you and starts mouthing wet kisses into the base of your neck.
“Off… Please…” Law gasps against your neck as his hands fumble with the clasp of your bra behind your back.
“Let me help.” You giggle and reach around behind you and undo the clasp yourself, your breasts spilling out into Law’s face as you toss your bra to his bedroom floor. Law was completely frozen with his hands on your lower back as he gazed at your naked tits. “You can touch them you know, you don’t have to just look…”
Law is shaken out of his daze and raises his hands to gingerly grope at your boobs, squeezing and pinching at the soft flesh.
“C-can I kiss them?” Law whispers and looks up at you sitting on his lap.
“Mmhmm…” You coo as you stroke his face with one hand. You gently draw his face into your left breast and he latches onto your nipple hungrily. He groans and you sigh and throw you head back at the feeling of his lips wrapped around your sensitive bud.
Law pulls back from sucking your tit and uses both of his chilly hands to squeeze your breasts together and let the flesh jiggle in his hands.
“You’re so fucking perfect…” Law sighs out as he is mesmerized by your breasts, cherry pink nipples erect and begging for him to bite and tease them.
“Law… Please… Need you…” You grind your hips down hard onto his denim clad bulge, desperate for more stimulation.
Suddenly, you’re flipped over onto your back and Law is hovering over you.
“I need you too…” Law says to you frantically as he captures your lips in a heated kiss again. He leaves your lips to trail sloppy kisses down your neck to reach your chest again. He laves his tongue over your nipple and you mewl out as his hands caress your naked sides.
You feel beads of sweat forming on your forehead and between your breasts.
“Maybe it is hot in here…” You pant out.
“Gotta get you out of these…” Law grunts as he rips your black panties and garters off your body, not caring about how many berries you spent on them, he was too desperate to have you naked in his bed. Once you were bare, he leaned back down to kiss and bite at your lower stomach.
“Shit… Law…” You whimper out as he gets closer to where you’ve really been craving him.
*WHAM*
The metal door to the office is slammed open.
“CAPTAIN THE BOILER’S BROKEN AGAIN!!!”
“Shit! Room!”
You had no idea what happened. You had heard the door open and Bepo’s voice from the adjoining office… and now you were fully nude and fully aroused alone in your own bed in your own room.
— —
“What the fuck is the problem?” Law shouts as he springs from his bed.
“Captain! Thank god you’re up! I see you noticed how hot it is, too!” Bepo looks Law up and down.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well the boiler’s on the fritz again and the place is heating up like crazy. I thought you noticed… your shirt and hat are off and you’re all red…”
“Oh.. well yeah I guess it is hot in here…” Law looks down at his bare, flushed chest. “What are you waiting for then? Let me get dressed and we’ll fix it.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Bepo turns to retreat to the boiler room.
“And Bepo?”
“Yes, Captain?” Bepo cranes his neck to look at Law.
“Please be sure to knock. Even in emergencies.”
--
*A/N sorry these are taking forever to write! grad school is back in session so I've been crazy busy! But thank you to those who are still interested and keep coming back! Thanks and love ya :)*
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🦋 Butterfly's Repose~ Jake Sully x fem!human! reader~ Chap. 4 🦋
masterlist~
warnings~ smut, 18+, language, violence, death mentioned, smoking is also mentioned, please lmk if i missed any!
this is sooo chaotic, and i might do a rewrite at somepoint, but not now~
wordcount~ 4k+
★⌒ヽ
The future's lookin' bleak
Your will to live is weak
But honey, hold on for me...
★⌒ヽ
You sit up so fast you bang your head on the lid of the link pod. Cursing silently you stand, rubbing your forehead.
Your father crosses his arms before motioning for you to follow him. You follow after him, not giving anyone a second glance as Grace calls after you.
You sit in silence as he moves paperwork around the desk, searching for something. You twist a loose strand of hair around your finger before speaking, "Dr. Augustine doesn't like how you're meddling in the Avatar program."
He stops abruptly, dropping a stack of papers, and you watch as they float to the floor. His fists clench, knuckles whitening, "Well, it doesn't matter what she thinks, I need you to focus on the mission assigned to you."
Sighing you blurt out, "She's planning on taking us to the Hallelujah Mountains, in two weeks."
He scoffs, tossing an envelope on the desk, "That won't be happening."
Crossing your arms you groan in frustration, "It will be, you know that this is our best chance at getting Parker's damn unobtainium."
You stand hand on the door frame before your eyes catch sight of a familiar picture. A small plain silver frame, a woman with long brown hair and dark eyes smiles, her hair whipping wildly across her face, her eyes squinting as the sun blinds her.
Your hand grips the door frame tighter, "Of course you kept it," you snap angrily as you slam the door behind you.
Storming through the hallways you nearly pass your door, when someone calls out to you. Looking over your shoulder you see Jake in the hallway. Your face heats up when the memories of the last few hours surface and you throw open your door.
He clears his throat before speaking, "Listen, about earlier-"
You cut him off sharply, "Goodnight, Jake."
You shut the door and slide down against it, holding your hands in your head, you whisper, "Fuck."
★⌒ヽ
Hiding from Jake hadn't exactly been easy, but you managed. It wasn't that you didn't like him, things were just complicated, especially after that night.
And hiding from Jake meant hiding from the others too. Grace had been hounding after you for weeks, she at least seemed to sense something had happened. And Norm, well, he didn't understand why you had been so avoidant, but he at least gave you space. Until today at least.
Your feet tap against the ground nervously as you reach for another cigarette, almost lighting it before someone clears their throat nervously in front of you, "Grace wants to see you."
You drop the cigarette and toss your lighter back into your pocket before following Norm to the link room.
Grace stands with her hands on the table in front of her, annoyance clear on her face when she looks up at you, "Where have you been?"
Taking a seat in front of the table you meet her eyes, "Nowhere in particular."
"Damn it, you know how important this is, we leave in the morning! You disappeared for two weeks!"
You shrug your shoulders and lean forward on your hands, your hair falling in your face, obscuring your vision. She grabs your shoulder, forcing you to face her, her eyes full of sympathy as she speaks, "Be here tomorrow, one hour before we depart."
She releases your shoulder and strides out of the room, leaving you alone with Norm.
"I'm glad you're back," he says with a nervous smile as he takes a seat across from you, flipping open a book on Pandoran ecology when the link pod at the end of the room opens up, revealing a disheveled Jake. His brow twists in confusion when he sees you, his mouth opening, "H-how, why. Where were you?"
Standing your shoulders tense, and you speed walk into the hallway, heat rising up your face before you light another cigarette, and hear Norm reprimand you for smoking near the link room.
You almost feel numb waking up the next morning, following Norm into the link room, watching as Grace makes preparations to leave.
"So where're we going?" asks Jake as he enters the room, stopping next to you.
Grace steps towards him, "Getting out of Dodge. I'm not about to let Selfridge and Quaritch micro-manage this thing," she says as she throws a glance at you.
"There's a mobile link up at site 26 we can work out of, way up in the mountains."
A look of shock comes over Norm's face as he steps closer to Grace, "The Hallelujah Mountains?"
"That's right," Grace says.
You groan, but at least Norm looks excited, "Are you serious?"
"Yes!"
You smile as he laughs, and cover your mouth with your hand, as Jake looks up at him in confusion. Norm's expression changes from excitement to one of jealousy as he speaks, "The legendary floating mountains of Pandora? Heard of them?"
You frown at him and whisper to Jake, "It's fine, he's just jealous," with a laugh.
★⌒ヽ
"We're getting close," Grace says over the noise of the blades of the helicopter.
You wince when Trudy replies, "Yeah, look at my instruments," and see them glitching all over the screen.
"Yep, we're in the Flux Vortex."
"Which means we're VFR from now on," Trudy says as she chews her gum.
You try to keep your eyes on the floor of the helicopter, so you don't get too dizzy, but look up when Norm asks what VFR means, and Trudy replies, "Means you gotta see where you're goin'."
"You can't see anything," Norm prompts as you glance out the window, seeing nothing but fog.
"Exactly," she laughs, "Ain't that a bitch?"
And as you crane your neck to look out the window, thoughts of dizziness now gone, you can see them. The mountains, floating, but not moving as you pass them by, are covered in vines and flowers, and ferns.
And you gasp, marveling at the beauty of them while Norm blurts out, "Oh my God."
Trudy laughs again, "You should see your faces!"
And seconds later you're landing.
"Thank you for flying Air Pandora," Trudy says before shutting off the helicopter.
You carefully reattach your oxygen mask and step down from the helicopter, walking up to the door of the lab. Although you don't bother waiting for Grace or the others to enter, quickly take your mask off again and inhale deeply.
Tossing your bag on your new bed for the next six months or however long, you watch as Grace turns on the power, led lights nearly blinding you as Jake and Norm file in.
Trudy tosses a bag down and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge as Grace starts to explain the layout.
"All right Jake, hang a left and you'll be in the link at the end," she points to the end of the room, "Unit One, Beulah. She's the least glitchy."
"Quaritch, you'll be in the middle, Unit Two. Second least glitchy," she says as she passes you directing Norm to where his link is.
You can feel your face heat up in anger when the name leaves her lips, Quaritch, truth be told, you'd rather be called anything else.
Dinner is quiet as you push your food, now turned to mush, around your plate, Grace stares at you, before turning to Norm. You feel a tap on your hand underneath the table and flinch, looking over to see Jake, looking at you, torn between saying something and staying silent.
You grab his hand, entwining your fingers, and you hear him catch his breath before his grip tightens on your hand.
★⌒ヽ
Jake watched as you walked past him to join Mo'at, and gave a small wave. Which you completely ignored before Neytiri appeared before him, her eyes inquisitive as she glanced back to see you.
So, you were still avoiding him, not that that was anything new, he thought to himself as Neytiri took a seat on a nearby moss covered log.
"Today you will learn the language of the people," she said as he sat down across from her.
After Neytiri had discussed the basics of the language, they began repeating words back to each other, starting with how to pronounce certain words and phrases.
"Na’rìng," Neytiri says slowly.
"Na’rìng," Jake says as she pronounces it again stressing the 'a' sound.
"Again, na’rìng."
"Na’rìng!"
He flinches as she smacks his head muttering, "Skxawng," under her breath.
It was just repetition after repetition after that. At first, Jake tried to use learning the new words to distract himself from thoughts of you, but he failed miserably. He wanted to say something, anything to get you to even acknowledge his presence, but he didn't know what.
Just as Neytiri is about to pronounce the word again, he hears your voice coming from behind him, "No, I don't think so."
Standing, Neytiri greets you, "Snatanhì, how are you?"
You laugh, and smile as she gives you a quick hug, "I am well, and you?"
"Jake Sully is difficult to teach, but I manage," her words make your smile drop, your eyes looking over to him.
"I see," you say, coughing into your hand before wishing her luck and following after Tsu'tey.
He frowns as he watches you leave. It had been almost two weeks since you had had any sort of conversation, well other than brief greetings and asking how the weather was.
His brow furrowed as he thought about how to get you to talk to him, or at least stop leaving the room every time your eyes met. Just as Neytiri starts with another word, and his eyes light up with an idea.
★⌒ヽ
The next day your eyes flutter open, and you sit up in your hammock and follow Neytiri, and Jake through the branches of the tree. Watching as Neytiri calls for her Ikran, you wonder where Tsu'tey is.
And then you hear the screeching of Seze, who lands in front of Neytiri, her wings flapping, kicking up the leaves, so they swirl around you.
"Holy shit!"
"Do not look in her eye," Neytiri says as she offers her a piece of meat, "Seze."
"Tam tam, Seze," she whispers as she pats her neck.
"Ikran is not horse. Once Tsaheylu is made," you watch as she makes Tsaheylu with Seze, "Ikran will fly with one hunter in the whole life."
You take a step back as Neytiri mounts Seze, "To become taronyu, hunter, you must choose your own Ikran, and he must choose you."
"When?" asks Jake his voice oozing confidence.
"When you are ready," Neytiri replies as she pulls down her visor and takes off.
You watch as she flies around the tree, and duck when she nearly knocks you off, laughing before you hear Tsu'tey behind you.
"Come, there is more training for you," he says, leaving you to catch up.
You give Jake a small wave and rush after him, wondering what training he'll have in store for you.
It turns out to be more archery. Your limbs feel sore as you hobble to your hammock and lie down, your eyes closing, and then opening. The lid of the link greets you.
★⌒ヽ
You pick at your nails as you record your video log, "Video log twelve, not much to say, it hasn't even been a full week yet. But I have made more progress with the bow, I don't miss my target nearly as much, so Tsu'tey hasn't been too upset with me. And I started helping more with Mo'at," you grimace, remembering how many different herbs and medicines you had to memorize with her.
"I think I know the name of every medicine, how to use it, alternative ingredients, and where to find them now. My brain feels fried."
Racking your brain, you try to think of something else to add, but come up with nothing, opting to instead end the video log.
"Done already?" asks Grace as she writes something down on a paper, free hand holding back her hair.
"Yeah, I'm going to the link now."
She hums in agreement as you pull the lid down, and close your eyes, and then open them.
The day goes by quickly, and you end up spending most of it with Tsu'tey practicing archery and hand to hand combat. You kick your feet at his legs, almost knocking him to the ground, but he catches it instead, slamming you into the ground, his knife on your neck.
You shut your eyes, thinking of a way to reverse the situation when his knife leaves your throat and you hear Neytiri and Jake approach.
Tsu'tey stands and greets Neytiri, ignoring Jake as you stand and dust yourself off, unsheathing your knife, and lunge at him. He stumbles forward as you hold your knife to his neck, your knee digging into his shoulder blades when you feel a hand on your shoulder.
Looking up you see Jake, his eyes filled with uncertainty as Tsu'tey uses your distractedness to throw you off of him. Your knife falls to the ground with a dull thud and you groan in annoyance.
"You distracted me, I almost had him!" you shove his shoulder playfully, smiling before turning back to Tsu'tey, "What's next then?"
After your training with Tsu'tey and watching the sun set, decide to gather some more herbs for Mo'at, and let the bioluminescent plants guide you through the forest, pointedly ignoring the sound of footsteps coming from behind you.
Grabbing a fist full of bark from the tree in front of you, you carefully place it into the basket next to you. You reach down to grab it but feel hands on your waist. You gasp when you feel lips on your ear.
You turn to see Jake standing behind you as cups your face in his hand. You lean into his touch, your eyes closing as he leans in, lips meeting yours. You feel a shiver run down your spine as his hands move to grab your ass, and he pushes you against the tree behind you. His lips trail down your neck, and you cover your mouth to conceal a moan, but he yanks your hand away from your mouth, "Don't, I want to hear you, baby girl."
You stiffen at his words, your eyes going wide as he stares at you, before closing them, "Why?" you whisper, as he kisses your neck, his hands between your thighs.
His fingers slip beneath your loincloth, "I want to hear you when I make you come."
You throw your head back, your fingers grasping at the bark behind you, "Fuck," you moan as his fingers move to rub your clit. Your knees shake as he keeps your clit between his thumb and index finger, rubbing in small circles, teasing you, before he slides a finger inside of you.
You close your eyes and bite your lip to hold in your moan as he slowly slides a second finger inside of you, curling his fingers upward to stroke that spot inside of you.
"Please," you beg, wetting your lips, "L-let me come," you whimper, and he slides his fingers out of your warmth and shoves them into your mouth.
He turns you around to face him, your eyes meeting his, "Do it. No, don't close your eyes, look straight at me."
You whimper at his words, you didn't even realize you had closed your eyes. He slides his fingers out of your mouth, "I want to see the look on your face when you come, baby girl."
You let out a small moan, desperate to come when you realize he's already removed his own loincloth, before he slides his fingers back into your mouth. Your jaw drops as he puts his hands back between your thighs, quickly sliding his fingers back inside of you.
"Fucking hell," he groans, watching your mouth, as you suck his fingers.
His fingers slide out, and he grabs your hips, and slides his cock inside of you, thrusting forward, he slams his mouth on yours, muffling the moan that erupts from you, he groans, "Fuck, you're so tight."
The bark scratches at your back and you throw your head back, your eyes falling on the bright blue sky above you as you focus on the feeling, You wrap your legs around Jake, and moving your arms around his neck and arch your back, to press your chest against him, "F-fuck," you moan, grinding your hips into his.
You feel his fingers dig into your hips as he fingers your clit, and you throw your head back, your hair falling in front of your eyes, as you moan.
You cry out, your whole body trembling, as your orgasm rocks through you. He pumps his hips forward and you feel his cock pulse as he spills himself into you.
You breathe heavily, gasping as you feel his come drip out of you. Jake rests his head on your shoulder, panting. Your arms wrapped around each other.
"Oh, shit," you gasp and Jake lets out a chuckle, kissing your neck, "Don't," you whine, covering your neck with your hand, "Your mouth is right there, I can still feel your mouth on me."
"Good," he whispers to you and you roll your eyes.
Jake pulls out of you and your eyes fall on your thigh, a small red mark from the bark where you gripped it.
"Damn it," you say, wiping at the mark with a slightly irritated sigh.
Jake laughs and kisses your cheek, "Maybe you should stop using trees as your cushion, then you wouldn't have that problem."
"I'm not always having sex with you," you pout.
You grab the basket and begin to gather your things, when you hear his voice, "I can make it so you do."
You look at him, your eyes widening, "Jake-"
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything," he says, getting up.
You sigh, "No, it's just, complicated."
"I know, I just-" and he sighs, "It's just really nice with you, I don't want it to stop."
"I don't want it to stop either," and you meet his eyes, "But it's not that easy," and you grab the basket and begin to walk away.
Jake grabs your hand, "Wait," he says, and turns you to face him "I just want you to know that I want... this," and he gestures between the two of you, "I don't want it to become awkward between us, I want this to stay the same."
You nod, "I-I want that too," your voice is quiet, "I'm sorry I avoided you then, I was dealing with a lot," and you sniffle.
Jake pulls you into a hug and kisses the top of your head and you bury your face into his chest.
"Your Father?" he questions, his voice soft as you nod your head.
"No, I just don't know if I can go through with this."
"With what?"
You sigh, tears brimming in your eyes, "The mission, assignment. Whatever the hell you want to call it, it's not right."
His hand brushes away your tears and pulls you closer to his chest, his thoughts in turmoil.
★⌒ヽ
You flinch at the sound of Grace stirring in her sleep. Looking over you sigh in relief, seeing that she's still fast asleep you maneuver yourself over the metal threshold and sit on the edge of Jake's bunk. His eyes blink slowly before they open and he grabs your arm and pulls you to lay down next to him.
Feeling his arms wrap around you, you smile and nuzzle into his chest. It was strange, you thought, being so close to someone. In your twenty-one years of living, you had never once really given thought to what it would be like to have someone who cared for you.
Of course, you had your Father and Mother. But your Father was never really around much or cared for you much at all until your Mother died of course. And your Mother, well, you had been sure any ounce of love you were capable of having had died with her. But now, you weren't so sure, you thought as you felt Jake's lips linger on the shell of your ear, his warm breath making your face heat up.
"Still awake?" he asked groggily as you felt his arms wrap around your waist, pulling you closer to him.
Humming in reply your lips met his in a quick kiss. Hearing a muffled sigh you laid your head back on his chest, smiling. Things might turn out alright in the end, you thought to yourself as your eyes closed, ushering in a dream filled with past memories.
★⌒ヽ
You could almost taste the anger in the air as you walked to your Father's office, the door cracked open slightly, yellow light illuminating a small sliver of the hallway.
"You're going home, with-"
Your Father was cut off sharply by your Mother's voice, her voice angry as she whisper shouted at him, "I'm not leaving, my whole life's work is here on this planet, and you want me to abandon it because you think I'm getting 'too close' with the Omatikaya?"
Her laugh is bitter as she crosses her arms in indignation, "I can't believe you, it's because of her isn't it?"
You flinch when you hear his hands slam on the desk, its feet scraping as it moves forward.
"The both of you will be leaving after your next assignment, and if you don't, I'll make damn sure you're on that ship first thing in the morning."
She scoffs, "Is that a threat? I don't understand why I can't stay. Let me do my work, it's not like I'm interfering in whatever the hell Parker wants," she pauses to clear her throat before continuing, "And what about our daughter? She was born here, she's never even stepped foot on Earth!"
"She'll be fine-"
Losing your grip on the door, you fall forward, and his gaze snaps to you.
And suddenly you hear your name being called and feel a hand shaking you awake. Rubbing your eyes and look up to see Grace looking down at you, a small smirk on her lips as you sit up and push your hair out of your face.
"What time is it?" you say, words slurred with drowsiness as you rub your eyes again and stretch.
"6:30. Now, hurry up and eat, village life starts early, remember?" she says as you take a seat at the small table.
Norm gives you a good morning before turning back to his computer, and Grace passes you a plate of eggs. You eat them quickly before standing and rushing over to your link, hoping that Tsu'tey will be lenient with your lateness.
★⌒ヽ
The days rush by like a river, fast, and everchanging, and suddenly it's your forty-second day in the mountains. This also happens to be the day Jake convinces Mo'at to let Grace back into the village.
And it seems time flies by faster after that. Three weeks after Grace is allowed back into the village, Tsu'tey takes you to hunt. You follow him through the trees, listening to the sounds of animals chirping and drops of rain falling against the canopy of leaves above your head when he motions for you to stop.
You glance ahead and see a yerik standing in front of a moss covered log. Notching your arrow, you pull back the string and let it fly past you, the force of the string snapping cutting your cheek.
Rushing over to the now flailing yerik you feel guilt twisting in your stomach. But you push it aside and unsheathe your knife as Tsu'tey stands behind you, watching silently.
"I see you, sister, and thank you," you finish as you stab into it.
"Your spirit goes with Eywa, your body stays behind to become part of the people."
You sheath your knife and pull the arrow from the yerik as Tsu'tey looks down at you, "You are ready."
★⌒ヽ
na’rìng [ˈnaʔ.ɾɪŋ] n. forest
thank you so much for reading, i hop you enjoyed!
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Test Flight
A/N: Idk why I've been on a Mammon kick lately?? I feel bad bc my go-to is normally Beel but I struggle to write him ;;;;;;;
Tw: Talks of death, slight gore from the fall and transformation
It started out with a simple comment.
One offhanded mumble under their breath, followed by a dreamy sigh as they rested their cheek further into their palm, elbow propped up on the arm of the couch. With the noise of his brothers and the movie that was blaring on the speakers of his large, rather expensive television- a human movie- one would think he couldn't hear anything. One the human told him they grew up watching, about a boy and a dragon and how the two would soon change their small world forever with one small friendship.
Mammon had turned it down with a scoff, claiming that he had much cooler movies to watch than that weird human kid's movie (the truth is, he would watch anything they told him to, the heartstruck fool he was). He was actually enjoying it, the soundtrack was something he made a mental note to add to his playlist, and the small scenes were heartwarming.
To make it even better, he had stolen the seat right next to his human with very little fighting involved. Maybe it was pure luck, or his brothers finally understanding what was his (they, in fact, did not understand what was his still). But, he considered it fate that he could sit next to them and hear that small sigh, the way their eyes drifted into that dreamy haze of theirs.
"I wish I could fly," Barely a whisper, a soft breath against the cushion of the couch.
Mammon never thought too much about his abilities, aside from the fact that he was one of the lucky few of his brothers to keep the gift of flight after their fall. Sure, it was an easy way to get around and his wings did prove useful when it came to scoring more modeling gigs (though, he really hated when they draped all those fabrics over them. He swore they itched for days afterward and didn't sit right for at least a week).
To be human, to never know the freedom of the clouds, the frozen sting of the wind against your face? He couldn't imagine it.
He could barely sit still the rest of the movie, their comment playing on repeat in his mind as it spun and wove until, before he knew it, the credits were rolling and Lucifer was ushering everyone else to their rooms. He could try to convince the human to stay, however... he had other things to do. Sudden plans he told them (surely they'd assume he was going for a late-night run at the casino and would be none the wiser).
Mammon wanted to wait, he swore that he would find the right time, but he couldn't help himself. He blames his sin, berating it in his mind as he finds himself at their door late into the night. The wood groans as he shuffles his feet, the door in front of him much more imposing in the darkness of the candle-lit hallway than it seemed hours ago when he appeared to drag them to his room for the movie. He can't seem to stifle the way his shoulders jump as the door creaks open.
"Mmn... why are you here so late?" The human, his human, in their pajamas rubbing their eye with the back of their knuckle. He resisted the urge to fix their loose collar, but...
"Get dressed!" He hears them groan and can't bite back the grin that stretches across his face. "'less you wanna go outside lookin' like that," he can't help but wince internally at the sound of his own voice, at the tone of which that phrase was spat out harsher than he meant.
You're beautiful, he wanted to say, to suddenly correct himself, no matter what you're wearing.
"Why are we going outside?"
"Enough questions! C'mon!" he shoves them gently back inside their room, waiting outside and trying to ignore his heart hammering inside his chest. A part of him was anxious about the whole event- what if they hated it? Or if they thought he was creepy for taking that comment so seriously? They weren't... scared of heights, were they?
Shit, he should have waited. It's only been two hours since the movie ended- he could have planned this so much better. He taps his foot nervously, worrying his lip with his golden tooth as he fiddles with one of the rings on his hand, feeling the soothing curve of the metal against his heated skin.
"Mams?"
"Yep!" He tries to hide the way his voice came out as a high shriek, quickly casting a glance around the hallway to make sure Lucifer wasn't on one of his patrols. "I-I mean yeah, yep, let's go-" he places his hands on their shoulders, turning them to the stairs and pushing them forward, constantly moving his head to ensure that nobody was awake to see their escape. "C'mon! Hurry!"
"I'm going!" They whisper back, a quiet shout that makes him sigh as they jump down the stairs. Once on the landing, Mammon feels as though he can finally catch his breath. The air isn't too cold, which is a good thing, considering how cold it gets in the air. He shrugs off his leather jacket, handing it to them.
"Wear this-" He gulps as he watches them shrug it on, his stomach doing flips as he takes a breath and stretches, ridding himself of the magical veil that allows them to look human (or human enough, the demonic glint in their eye or the pointed ears never quite go away. They were lucky enough that humans started dying their hair and wearing colorful contacts in recent years, as most of them were unable to walk around inconspicuously. It was mainly Levi who fell victim to this, drawing attention whenever he made his way to the human world what with his bright purple hair).
The discomfort of the transformation was one that took him some time to get used to, so often that he felt uncomfortable shifting back into a demon (that, and the grim reminder of why the limbs on his back were an inky black rather than the pristine white he was so used to seeing). His skin shifted to make room for the extremities. The tugging at his skull as his horns curled and twisted out of the skin never failed to make him sigh as the pressure built within his head seemed to lessen completely. The wings broke free from his back with a flap of leather, the skin healing over as quickly as it tore as his normal clothes were replaced with the heavy leather he was a little too used to, the pressure from the belts on his chest a welcomed tension- a way to ground himself.
The only thing he couldn't get used to was the burning of the scars on his torso and arms- now a blinding white against his dark skin- as they crept to the surface and made themselves known.
The pressure that hold all his demonic features back lessened as he let out a short sigh, turning to the human.
"You said you wanted to fly, right?" He mumbles as heat creeps up his neck. "C'mon."
"...Seriously?" Mammon gulps, regretting the choices he'd made up to this point as he turns his sapphire gaze to the ground, shoving his hands in his pockets and huffing.
"Listen, it's not every day that you'll get a free ride outta me, got it?"
"Free ride?" Mammon feels his heart sink as his breath catches in his throat, leaving him a blushing, stuttering mess. Shit.
"Not like that! Ya damn pervert! Spendin' too much time with Asmo- I fuckin' swear he's influencing ya-" Their amused chuckle breaks him free of the thought (though, the sound never fails to send butterflies to the pit of his stomach, making him squirm in place).
"I meant like, are you serious? As in... that's a really kind thing for you to do, Mammoney," Oh heavens above, they were going to be the death of him. Biting his lip and swallowing back a giddy chuckle, he straightens his shoulders.
"W-well yeah! Duh," Mammon's voice dips low as he shuffles his feet, listening to the soft scraping of his boots against the stone. "So you uh, wanna go?"
"Of course! How..." They approach him, tilting their head. "Are we going to do this? I can't climb on your back, can I?"
"Nope!" The demon grins, scooping them up in his arms and chuckling at their surprised yelp. They smack his chest with their palms. "Oh, c'mon, that was funny."
"Warn me next time!"
"Next time I'm chargin' ya!" He does a few test flaps (more for show than anything, he could wake up from a sleep as deep as Belphie's and the next second be at Diavolo's castle). They grip a leather strap and pull it, making him freeze for a moment. "Is everythin' alright?"
"...Can you support both our weight?"
"...Are you kidding?" He scoffs. "I can carry Beel like this!" He supports their weight with one arm, dramatically throwing the other onto his forehead and tossing his head back. "You wound me!"
"Dork!" They laugh. "...Have you really carried Beel?"
"'Course," Mammon scoffs. "Ya think he can't get wasted like the rest of us? Just 'cause he's so massive doesn't mean a little demonus can knock him out." Out of the corner of his eye he can see the corners of their lips perk up.
"Ready?" He asks, grabbing them more firmly against his torso and hoping that they couldn't hear the thumping of his heart against his ribcage. They nod and he ducks down a bit, spreading his wings as wide as they could go and sending the two off with a quick start.
He thought maybe he had gotten ahead of himself, that the whipping of the wind as it bit at their faces and tore at their clothing wouldn't be something the human in his arms was used to, that they would need a slower start. He could hear their frightened yelp as their arms jump around his neck, holding themselves as close to him as possible. He quickly tightens his grip on them, rubbing his thumb into their hip until they're both at a height where he could safely soar. "You okay?"
The shaking of their shoulders and quick puffs of breath against the nape of his neck makes his heart jump to his throat as a pit opens in his stomach, making his grip on them even firmer as he ducks his head down to theirs. "We can always go back down, got it?"
Mammon feels the way they relax for a moment, finally tearing their face away from his neck to look around. Their shaking shoulders still as they adjust from the height. He could see the glittering of their eyes, the reflections from both the stars and the lights of the city below trapped within their wide, blown-out pupils.
"Wow..." They mutter breathlessly, relaxing their grip as they gaze below. "This is..."
"Yeah," He murmurs, looking out in the same direction they were. The view of the Devildom held so many memories for him- good and bad. From the moment they fell, the agonizing feeling of his feathers burning to a crisp and falling off in chunks, the holy golden jewelry that he'd always donned scalding his skin as he plummeted to the ground, grappling for whichever brother he could get a hold of (it was Levi, he remembered, how could he forget the man's blood-curdling screams as his wings were torn from his back?). From that moment, for thousands of years, he'd seen this same view. The city below, the glimmer of the stars reflecting off the lakes and rivers, the deep darkness of the forest, the imposing view of the castle standing proudly amogst the buildings scattered.
However, this time, he felt as though he was seeing it for the first time, though their eyes. The wind against his skin was a chill that cooled his heated face, the lights brighter than he remembered them being. Mammon was filled with a deep awe, a childlike innocence he wasn't sure he'd ever felt, even as an angel.
"Amzaing, huh?" He can't help the chuckle that bubbles within his chest, breathless as he stares down at them, face breaking out in a wide grin. "Wanna see something cool?"
"Please don't do anything stupid," He laughs at that, adjusting his grip to be tighter on his partner's waist.
Pouting, he looks down at them. "It's like ya don't even know me!" Taking a deep breath, he shoots up above the clouds, sending the chrystalline droplets scattering as they leave a trail behind them. Once he reaches a high point, he pauses, laughing.
"Mammoney!" The human gasps, shaking the droplets off their face. "Seriously?"
"Oh come on!" He beams. "We didn't even get to the fun part yet!" The man barely catches their surprised gasp as he suddenly stops the movement of his wings, opening them as wide as possible and sending them soaring, weaving in between the clouds and streaking through the night sky.
"Hold your arm out!" He shouts over the rushing of the wind around them.
"Hell no!"
"Just do it! Trust me!"
"I do trust you!" They screech back.
"Then let go! I'll hold onto ya! Promise!" He dips below the clouds, wincing as the ice and water lands on his face. He keeps a wide eye out, searching for an opening in the trees. Once he finally spotted it, a slim pathway guarded by trees arranged in a delicate arch, he held the human close, diving down and following the path for a few seconds until they reached the lake.
"Now!" He shouts, watching as they extend their arm and graze their fingertips along the surface of the water, warping the stars above in delicate ripples. He lands them both atop the gazebo, perching on the roof and giving them a moment to catch their breath between airy giggles.
"That was so much fun!" They cheer, gasping and laughing, moving to sit beside him. Mammon's heart races in his chest, a warm feeling bubbling within him followed by the same strange sense of peace he got whenever he was with them. It was as though they calmed every nerve within him, all the parts of his brain that were normally firing full-corce suddenly silenced. He wouldn't- no, he couldn't- think of anything other than them.
They shift their hand to sit atop his own, their warmth seeping into the back of his palm (his hands were normally cold, something they always teased him about). He can feel their fingertips toying with his rings, grazing over every bump and ridge until theylanded on the ones that sat on his thumb before repeating the process (again, something they did often when the two were alone together).
"Thank you for this," They murmur, leaning their head against his shoulder. He gulps, nervously running his pierced tongue against the back of his teeth.
"Y-yep, yeah, totally," The demon takes a deep breath, careful not to disturb them too much. "I mean-ya mentioned wantin' to fly, and I couldn't help myself." He can feel their cheeks warm through the leather of his jacket (could he even call it that?), their fingers coming to a stop on his hand.
"You listened," They say, hushed.
"Why wouldn't I?" The human stays silent for a second, unresponsive.
"It was fun," Giggling, they turn to him. "So, so much fun. I can'tbelieve you can do that whenever you want."
"'Never thought about it that way," He hums. "Y'know, livin' up in the Celestial Realm where everyone has wings, it ain't really that special. It's like walkin' and talkin' for angels."
"Demons too?"
"Some of us, yeah," He rests his head atop theirs. "But it was a little tricky transitioning from that feathery shit to these bad boys-" He throws a thumb over his shoulder, wrapping his wing around their shoulder and earning an amused chuckle. "Ya shoulda seen Asmo, he couldn't figure out how to use four to save his life-"
"Really?"
"Yep-" He makes sure to make the 'p' pop, sighing. "Man, he was covered in scrapes from the number of times he fell."
"He must've been heartbroken," Mammon laughs.
"Nah, heartbroken doesn't begin to describe it. Devastated, more like."
"...I wanna be able to fly like you some day," Mammon's breath catches in his throat and he could swear his heart stopped beating for a moment as the thought hung i the air, carried by the thrumming of the wind and the chirping of insects around them, a cacophony of sounds that should've lessened the blow and served as a distraction.
"When you...?"
"I mean, yeah."
"Ya ain't gonna be a demon," He grunts. "I won't let that happen to ya."
"But if I become an angel I can't stay here with you and your brothers," They sigh. "I can't live like that."
"You're too good to be a demon," Mammon grins. " If ya did come back as a demon-" I'd be the happiest man alive, he wanted to say, the words stuck in the back of his throat. "I'd force ya to go up there myself. 'Sides, wouldn't you rather eat Luke's pastries every day?"
"Not if it means I can't do this."
"Listen," He reaches his hand to their own, intertwining their fingers and rubbing his thumb over their knuckles. "Even if you're an angel after you... go... I'll find ya, yeah? Just wait at those gates for me, and I'll hop 'em, and all those holy bastards can kiss my ass if they think I won't come get ya!"
They laugh, burying their face in the crook of his neck. "Can you say that about angels?"
"Listen, I know it's true. I wasn't there that long ago!"
"...Simeon and Luke are excluded from that, right?"
"Yeah, they'll be helping me plan your escape," He grins. The thought of them leaving him broke his heart more than anyone could ever imagine, but speaking with them about it, joking with them, picturing their eventual immortal life where he wouldn't have to live in fear of something trivial ending their already short life...
"You're thinking too much about it, Mammoney."
"Ya make me worry too much, Dummy."
They sit in silence, isolated from the world with only the bright stars above as company. Below, the water ripples as small insects bounce on the surface, their iridescent wings reflecting off the moonlight above as they danced and spun. Somewhere on the edge of the pond a frog croaked out a broken song, a broken record deep in the forest joined by the rustling of the trees.
"I love you, Mammon, really," They whisper against his neck, sending a chill down his spine. The man takes a breath, forcing his lungs to push air up and out his open mouth. He turns quickly, pressing his lips to their own warm ones, pressing his hand to the back of their neck to pull them closer.
"Say it again," He gasps, finally parting from their warmth. "All of it."
"I love you, Mammon," The demon grins, pulling them back in for another kiss, a gentle one, barely a brush of their lips before pulling away, taking their quick breaths with him (a small price to pay, he thinks, when he'd give them much more than the breath from his lungs).
"I love ya too."
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Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse
Dannymay Day 24: NASA
Read it on AO3, if you dare.
Of all the places in the Infinite Realms Juno could have sent him for community service, it had to be the fucking Ghost Zone. He never thought he’d miss the Netherworld, but at least there he didn’t have to deal with Warden Pasty Face and the stick up his entire ass.
He banked a hard left, bobbing and weaving through the zero gravity obstacle course provided by the ectoplasmic landscape. Behind him, the thud of armor against rock let him know he was down a pursuer, as one of the guards collided with an island of floating debris.
God, this place was a dump.
He dove through a thick patch of green fog before ducking behind one of the many floating doors littering the not-air; grateful that he didn’t have breath to catch. Walker’s goons zoomed past his hiding place, following his previous trajectory on a trail that didn’t exist.
Ha! Suckers!
He may have evaded them for now, but he would have to keep moving. When they realized that he’d lost them, they would fan out and search, leaving no stone unturned until they eventually found him and dragged him squirming back to that hell hole of a prison to be crushed under Walker’s boot once more. He needed to put as much distance between himself and this part of the Zone as possible. Or better yet, find a way to the human realm.
He looked to his left, green. He looked to his right, green. He looked down, an endless abyss of green stared back at him.
Looks like he was going to have to ask for directions. Great.
The next door he came across was a deep shade of plum with intricate panels of solid mahogany and a crystal knob. He yanked it open.
“Hey! Anybody home? Hello? I’m lookin’ for—”
A sopping wet sponge splashed against his face. It lingered there for a moment before slowly sliding down, down, down and falling into the chasm below, leaving his face dripping suds. “…the ...nearest portal to Earth.”
The door slammed shut.
“Ugh, soap.” He wiped his face with his sleeve, smearing it with fresh grime.
He floated over to another door, this one a dark weathered indigo with a heavy iron latch. He pulled it open with a loud creak, “Wazzup!”
A burly, tattooed arm emerged from the dark interior and slapped him across the face with a dead fish before slamming the door shut.
Jesus, the ghosts here were rude. At least it wasn’t soap this time.
Next, he spun the wheel on a silvery lavender hatch until it popped up with a hiss.
“Hullo down there!” his voice echoed back. “I’m lookin’ for a human portal! Can ya help a brother out?”
A thick tentacle, in a green so dark it was almost black, snaked out of the hole. In a blink, the tentacle lashed itself around his neck, crushing his useless windpipe.
“Look, I’m a hugger as much as the next guy, but this is a little forward, don’tcha think?” he wheezed.
In response, it whipped him back and flung him into the infinite green like a pitcher throwing a fastball.
He soared, eyes watering, hair whipping, and jowls flapping, for what felt like an eternity, but the five watches on his arm all agreed was only a few minutes.
His flight ended abruptly when he splatted against a strange metal structure. Its surface hummed with energy, vibrating his entire being. He peeled himself off, smoothing out the dents its rivets left in his skin, and took a look. A swirling vortex brighter than the surrounding ectoplasm filled its patchwork steel frame. Unlike the other doors, it remained fixed in place rather than floating up and down gently in a sea of green; it was anchored to something, to another dimension.
Bingo.
He stood on the edge of the portal, plugged his nose, and dove into the pool of light.
The portal spat him out in a large room made of the same patchwork metal as the doorway. Though the scent of death was strong here, in the glowing green of the machinery and in the air, it was mixed through with the unmistakable vitality of the living.
Perfect. Now he just needed to… find a way to get his powers back again…
He slumped forward and groaned.
Living people with The Sight were one in a million, and of those, the ones that were dumb teenagers were even fewer. There was no way Lydia was going to help him out again after the whole fiasco with their wedding either. He needed a new plan, a new pawn… well, there was no time like the present to start looking.
He floated up, poking his head through the ceiling into a modest kitchen. There was a table for four in the middle of the room, but only one chair was occupied. A pair of faded blue jeans and beat up red sneakers bounced impatiently and he could hear the scratch of pencil on paper. Sounded like homework. Bo-ring!
Like a shark fin cutting through the waves, the top half of his head glided across the floor to the fridge. Maybe they had beer.
A small pile of brown crumbs just under the door caught his attention. He sniffed at them, chocolatey. He floated a little higher so that his mouth breached the tile and licked up the remains of someone else’s fridge raid.
“Mmm, fudge.”
The kid at the table startled and looked over in his direction. He could almost believe they were making eye contact right now.
It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
“Who the heck are you?”
Looks like it could. He cracked a rotten grin and rose fully out of the floor.
“I’m the Ghost with the Most, pleasure to meet ya, kid.”
He held out a hand to shake, a centipede skittered down his arm and around his dirt-crusted knuckles before heading back into his sleeve. The boy just stared at the proffered digit in disgust.
“The most what? Grease stains on your shirt?”
“That and so much more! You name it, I’ve got it. Charm, good looks, STDs—”
“Modesty.” The boy deadpanned.
“Hey! I’ll have you know I wear pants at least…” he began counting the fingers on one hand, “thirty percent of the time!”
“That’s not what I— You know what? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t soup you right now.” The boy snatched a thermos off the table and waved it threateningly.
Jeez, tough crowd.
He wasn’t sure what kind of soup was in there, but something told him he didn’t want to find out.
“Beeecauuuuse…” His eyes darted around for something he could use to turn the situation to his favor. Math worksheet? No. Half eaten sandwich? Maybe later. NASA t-shirt? Perfect. “I’m a star, kid.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of star?” The boy narrowed his eyes skeptically.
“Red supergiant, Orion constellation… I’m sure you’ve heard of me…”
He crossed his fingers behind his back. Please work, please work.
“Betelgeuse?”
“Got it in one, kid.” He swallowed his relief and winked. “You’re even quicker on the uptake than Lydia!”
“Who?”
“Uhh, no one! Hey, what’s that?”
Betelgeuse darted over to a group of photos on a shelf and picked one up.
“Who’s the chick in the tight blue suit?” He whistled, letting the back of the frame fall open and the picture to unfold. “Really doesn’t leave much to the imagination does it?”
“Um, ew! That’s my mom!” The kid snatched the photo out of his hands and inspected the back of it. “How did you even do that?”
“I’d let her be my mommy any time.”
“…I will literally do anything for you to never talk about my mom ever again.”
“Anything?”
“Like, within reason. I’m not gonna, you know, kill anybody or anything.”
“Would you… be willing to… maybe… say my name three times in a row?” He bit his lip in anticipation.
The kid considered him suspiciously. “Is this like a kink thing?”
“What? No! Pshhh! No! Well maybe sometimes… Absolutely not, no. Cross my heart! See!” He drew an X on the right side of his chest.
“Yeah, no. Still don’t trust you.”
“C’mon kid!” He skidded to his knees in front of the boy. “Please, please, please! I’ll owe you one! I’m good for it! Promise!”
He clutched at the NASA shirt desperately. He couldn’t let this kid slip through his fingers, it might be another hundred years before he found another living person who could see him. He’d tasted the blood of freedom and he wanted more.
The boy grimaced and tried to pull away, Betelgeuse scrabbled after him. “I’ll get out of your hair, promise! Just three little words! Just three!”
“Okay, jeez, fine. If it’ll get you leave,” the boy groaned.
“YES! I mean!” He cleared his throat, “Yes.”
“Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse. Now get out of my house.”
Power surged then fizzled within him.
“Wow. That was anticlimactic.” He deflated. “Ah well, a deal’s a deal! See ya kid!”
He flew up through the ceiling with a sloppy salute.
What a chump! That was almost too easy.
-later-
That was definitely too easy.
Betelgeuse scowled as yet another hand reached through his head to grab a jug of milk.
His powers had been on the fritz ever since he got them back. One minute he was turning the floor into a writhing mass of roaches, the next, poof, they were gone! The unsuspecting sap he’d been about to scar for life left… unscarred.
He could tap someone on the shoulder, but when they turned around, they just looked straight through his carefully crafted horror show of a face; he’d hidden in dumpsters to jumpscare people taking out their trash, but they didn’t even see him; and his fruit fly cream pies went right through their targets.
Figures, it was just his luck that the one fucking human in this whole damn city who could see him was fucking defective.
Betelgeuse opened the glass door and stepped out of the grocery store refrigerator, he needed to find that kid.
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“Haven’t I Given Enough”
König x Fem! (y/n)
TW-Super Angsty
“How was I suppose to know things were supposed to end. I’m a operator from Kortac Faction. My job was to get in and get out with the intel. But it was much more than that.”
“The way she looked at me hurt more then any gunshot, stab wound could hurt. She was afraid of me she wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t let me touch her. I know she didn’t want to believe that I was the beast that everyone talked about.”
“They promised me this was a solo mission. I never wanted her to see me do this.”
“Realizing who the target was. And how much I had fucked up. This was a set up from the beginning.”
“The target was an arms dealer and a smuggler. Or so I was told. But this wasn’t the target. This was a set up to get rid of me. But why? My job was to eliminate him. I had no idea that was her brother. The way she walked in and the way she looked at my handiwork.”
“The way she pointed her gun towards me. The sound of the gun going off. The ringing in my ears echoed.”
“I waited for death. But the sounds of someone falling and the gun hitting the ground. She stood before me holding her chest.”
I always wake up at that part. I don’t see why I’m being made to talk about this over and over I want to forget that it. Look Doc I know this exercise suppose to help me get pass these memories but I keep remembering her. I want to stop reliving that part where I fucked up my whole life.
“SHE DIED IN MY ARMS AND BY MY ALLIES THE 141 TASK FORCE!!!”
“They showed up. And there she was trying to save her brother but she pulled her gun on me. I watched her die.”
“I’ve given my mind, body, my whole life to this cause defending my country and my government.”
“Only to be given this?”
*Konig gestured to the therapist sitting across from him.*
“Sie ist meinetwegen tot”
-she’s dead because of me
“Suspended me, court martial me.”
“So ist es besser für mich. Schickt mich in die Hölle, das ist mir egal.”
-"It's better for me that way. Send me to hell, I don't care."
"Ich habe sie geliebt!"
-"I loved her!"
Konig you do know that you wake up thinking she’s still alive you’ve done that 5 times this month.
“You’re not in the armed services Mr. König”
"Worüber redest du?"
-“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Konig it’s been 40 years since you were discharged. You don’t remember. Mr. Konig you’ve been with us for 10 years”
*The therapist takes notes on her patient*
~patient has no recollection of his episodes this week and keeps thinking he’s an operator from his younger days.
~patient brings up lost love that went by the name (y/n). He carries her picture with him everywhere asking all the staff and patients if they had seen her anywhere on the grounds.
~patient had a violent outburst yesterday. Something from dinner or one of the visitors perfume set him off.
~ran around the hospice like a mad man calling his lost loves name
~this morning woke up and started his army drills again. Disturbing all the patients.
~his condition isn’t improving. He keeps reverting back to his Kortac Days.
~but his condition is worsening. I’m afraid he isn’t gonna make it to tomorrow.
~binx’s our rest home staff member visited his room this morning and will not leave.
Binx is a cat.
I do hope he finds peace.
“Alright Mr. Konig it’s time for bed”
“You’re dismissed Soldier.”
König sat down on his bed pulling out all of his war pins and his uniform. Dressing himself up and fixing his hood.
“She loved seeing me like this especially after I made love to her and after we would dance. She loved slow dancing.”
“She made me promise her that I would find love in this life. And that she forgave me that day.”
“For my country and my job”
“Have I’ve Given Enough?!”
“Mr. Konig do you need me to stay with you?”
One of the staff members stayed in his room with room. Helping him in whatever way needed.
“No, she’s here to take me with her?”
“She’s here”
“Es ist zu lange her, mein Bär?”
-“"It's been too long, my bear?”
There she stood looking beautiful as ever. She looked beautiful as the day Konig had lost her. There she stood in her daisy sun dress. The one that Konig had bought for her for their 2nd year anniversary.
“Mein Schatz, es ist so schön, dich zu sehen. Ich habe geduldig auf dich gewartet.”
-"My darling, it's so nice to see you. I've been patiently waiting for you."
“How do I look?” “I’ve missed you.”
*Konig walked to her but as he touched her hand he too had reverted back to his younger self*
“Bist du jetzt bereit zu gehen?”
-"Are you ready to go now?"
(Y/N) looked at him with a smile holding his hand.
“Yes my Schatz take me with you. I’m ready to go.”
-together they left hand in hand walking to the bright light that led them to the rest of the 141 Task Force.
“Morning announcements.”
Last night our long time patient Mr. Konig passed peacefully in his sleep. His service will be held later this week. My office is open to everyone I understand this is a grieving process and I do encourage everyone to come visit my office. And if you like to visit the service later this week please do notify staff members to add you to the list at the front.
Walking into his room. Seeing all of his pictures of his friends and his beloved brings tears to my eyes. She must’ve been a special woman to him.
“Excuse me Doc what do we do with Mr. Konig stuff.”
“His belongs will be buried with him and his pictures as well. But this one will be framed in the front.”
The photo that was placed in the lobby was a group photo. Where Konig held his beloved in his arms. She stood beside him. And everyone from the Task Force 141 stood together smiling looking at the camera. The way they look in their younger days they were stunning.
But Mr. Konig beloved was quite the looker. She held him on his waist her hand laid on his stomach. The way Konig tried to level himself out for her to stand beside him for the photo.
a/n credit to the artist for the gif. Name is label beneath the gif.
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The Fallen Wolves Brotherhood - Part Nine
Series Summary: Lori "Babycakes" Tate swore she would never date a biker but when her life is in danger, she is put under the protection of a small club known as The Fallen Wolves Brotherhood. She suddenly finds herself attracted to not one, but five bikers.
A reverse harem, biker AU.
Part Nine Summary: The morning after brings new developments and the Brotherhood get to work. (Sorry, I suck at summaries sometimes.)
Pairing: Captain Syverson x OFC, Walter Marshall x OFC, Mike x OFC, Geralt x OFC, August Walker x OFC
Word Count: Approx. 3.5k
Warnings:
Series Warnings: Reverse harem, age gap (OFC 23, ages range from 23 to mid 40s), oral sex (male and female receiving), unprotected p in v sex, anal sex, group sex, masturbation, praise kink, mentions of body fluids, drug use, recreational drinking, sex work, criminal activities, mention of death, violence, use of weapons, mentions of war, mentions of abuse, angst, fluff, probably a lot more that I will add as they come up.
Part Nine Warnings: Mild smut (mostly kissing), some angst
Authors Note: Thanks as always to my lovely BBFs (Best Beta's forever) @henryobsessed and @nashibirne .
Divider made by me. Edited by me, there will be errors.
Masterlist
Parts Masterlist
Part Eight Part Ten
Lori
I woke in the morning just in time to watch Sy walk across the room and go into the bathroom. Naked, of course. His broad, jacked back was covered by a tattoo of the Brotherhood’s patch and it rippled as he swung his arms.
I bit my lip as he closed the door behind him. Even nude the man had swagger. And it was no wonder because he definitely had the skills to back up his bravado.
And he had a fantastic ass.
Fuck. Even when he isn’t in the same room, he made my mind melt.
I stretched, my body ached pleasantly as I raised my arms and pointed my toes. I heard the toilet flush and it was followed quickly by the sound of the shower.
I smiled and thought a shower would be nice. A few more hours of sleep would have been better but a shower would do. Especially with Sy. I definitely needed it after the events of last night. And earlier this morning.
Hoping I wasn’t assuming too much, I stripped off and knocked on the bathroom door.
“‘S open.”
I peeked my head in the door. “Want some company?” I asked a little shyly.
“Ya mean do I wanna see ya naked again? Sure.”
I laughed and shook my head. Sy opened the cubicle door and brought me into the shower.
“Ugh the water’s freezing,” I hissed, “Why do guys always have the water so damn cold?”
“‘Cause we wantcha to use us to warm up,” Sy grinned, putting a hand on my lower back and bringing me closer.
He put his fingers under my chin and lifted my mouth to his. His closed mouth kiss was soft but lingering, moving gently over my lips.
“I could kiss you all day,” he hummed.
“Maybe you can, when you get back.”
“You’d like that?” he asked softly, as if unsure.
“I would,” I whispered.
“If you still want to when I get back, then I’ll give ya a whole day. You, me and kisses.”
“Just kisses?” I asked, teasingly.
“I didn't specify where I'd kiss ya,” he smirked.
He kissed me again. A little harder, holding me closer and he began to thicken against my belly in quick, strong pulses that made my core instantly wet. I moved my hips, the friction making him stiffen faster and it wasn’t long before he was rocking against me in that now familiar rhythm he had that drove me crazy. I was impressed, the man had stamina.
But then he groaned and put his hands on my hips, stilling my movements. “We gotta go before they come lookin’ for us. We have a lot of miles today. Wanna get to the club house before night falls.”
“You'll be leaving as soon as we get there?”
“Yeah. Change of clothes and a quick look over the bike and I'll be on the road.”
I nodded, dropping my head onto his shoulder and encircling his neck with my arms. “Hold me a little longer?”
He didn’t reply, he just lowered his head to kiss my forehead and wrapped his arms around mine.
After showering and dressing we didn’t have time for breakfast before the Brothers were set to have their meeting. That was ok by me. I was even more nervous about facing them than I had been yesterday and my stomach was a little unsettled. Last night something had actually happened, and there was no doubt in my mind they all knew about it.
When I opened the motel door I was greeted by a shock of nearly white hair and Geralt turned with a small smile on his face.
“Good morning,” he said. His grin grew into a smirk and he raised an eyebrow. “Sleep well?”
I blushed and he chuckled.
“Knock it off,” Sy said from behind me, his voice full of faux indignation. And a hint of pride.
“Here,” Geralt said, still grinning, and passed both Sy and I a store bought coffee.
“Thank you,” I said.
Geralt’s smile grew softer as he tilted his head in acknowledgement. Sy reached past me and grabbed his, taking a huge gulp.
“It’s not true what I say about you. You’re alright, ya know?” Sy said to Geralt. The older Brother rolled his amber eyes and indicated with a short jerk of the head that we should follow him.
Clutching my coffee cup like it was a life preserver I took a deep breath as we entered Walker's room. I kept my head down as I lingered by the door, but Mike called me over patting the empty space at the edge of bed in almost the same manner as he had yesterday morning.
I glanced at Sy. He was taking a sip of his coffee, making his way over to Marshall. Marshall tilted his head towards me with a crooked smile. He looked tired, his eyes were a little red rimmed. Walker was fussing inside a bag and didn’t lift his head to acknowledge us at all. Geralt was heading over to the small dining table and Mike was still looking at me expectantly.
I sighed with relief and sat next to Mike. Other than the quick, gentle ribbing from Geralt, perhaps no one would say anything about last night.
However, as the meeting began, I noticed the vibe was subtly different. Mike, though still friendly and grinning, hadn’t kissed my cheek like he normally does. Geralt seemed tense, like he was poised for a fight. Walker barely looked at me and when he did, I could see the muscles of his jaw tighten and his nostrils flare.
Marshall stood against the wall next to Sy. They stood in nearly twin positions, both with arms folded across their chests. Sy had his legs apart, shoulders back, chin raised, occasionally bringing the coffee to his lips. Marshall was less stiff, his shoulders hunched, chin down and he looked at me through burning hooded eyes.
Sy whispered something to Marshall. He glanced at Sy, and Sy shrugged. Then his eyes were back on me. I looked away, feeling heat in my cheeks, an ache between my legs and a sickening disgust in my heart. Sy hadn’t even left, and I was already having thoughts about Marshall. What the fuck is wrong with me?
As soon as Walker dismissed us, I was out the door. I needed air.
Mike was not far behind me. Sy and Marshall were following too, but they fell back as I walked across the carpark. Mike stayed with me calling out to stop.
“You can’t just run off like that, Baby,” Mike said when I stopped at the low bricked fence line of the motel behind a garden bed and sat.
“I want to be alone,” I said. “I haven’t been alone in days.”
Mike nodded in understanding but didn’t back off. I rolled my eyes at him.
“What?” he asked, grinning. God, he looked like a big dumb puppy, always excited and bouncing around.
“Just give me a fucking cigarette.” I said, shaking my head with both agitation and amusement as he lit one up for me and passed it over.
I looked out onto the street through the bushes as I smoked, trying to get my head right. Mike started yapping about how when he was a kid, he had tried to walk a fence and a friend of his pushed him off.
“I broke my arm in two places,” he said. “Hurt so bad, and I had to wait two hours in ER. My mum kicked my ass when I got home.”
I smiled. His chatter was often self deprecating and soothing. But most of all, it made me stop obsessing about the seriousness of my situation. With Mike, I felt like I was hanging out in the dorms back at school, instead of being holed up in a seedy motel under the protection of five strangers because someone who had murdered my parents wanted me dead as some sort of message to my brother.
A slow-moving car caught my eye. The driver was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low, but damn, he looked like Jake. He glanced in my direction briefly and I dropped my cigarette in fright. I turned away quickly, ducking low behind the shrubbery and hiding my face into Mike’s chest.
There was no doubt in my mind. That was Jake.
“Hey, whoa.” Mike put his arm around me but leaned back trying to look at my face. “Okay. Not that I’m complaining, but are you alright, Babycakes?”
“Is that car gone?”
“Which one?”
“Electric blue, sedan.”
“Yeah, why?”
I lifted my head cautiously and looked for the car. It was gone.
I looked at Mike and he smiled at me, flashing such a cute and shy grin that at any other moment would have made me swoon. He leaned towards me, licking his lips, his mouth stopping a hair's breadth from mine.
“You ok?” Mike asked. His chest started to heave as his eyes roamed my face.
“I thought I saw someone.”
I looked past Mike to Sy and Marshall. They watched us like chaperones at a dance, seemingly talking to one another, but their eyes were firmly on Mike and me.
I made a quick decision and hoped it was the right one.
“I need to talk to Walker.”
Mike chewed his lip and tilted his head to consider me. His brows came together and the silver barbell in his eyebrow flashed in the sun as he nodded. He flicked his cigarette away and with his arm still holding me, he took me with him as he stood.
As he led me past Sy and Marshall, both men frowned and their relaxed facade dropped instantly as their bodies constricted and coiled into a fighting stance.
“What happened?” Sy rushed ahead of us, drawing me away from Mike and putting his hand under my jaw to look into my eyes. I heard Mike grumble.
“I need to talk to Walker,” I said. A flash of something crossed Sy’s face, disappointment maybe? Jealousy? I couldn’t be sure.
“It’s serious?” Marshall asked from my side.
“It could be,” I said.
“C’mon,” Mike said.
Sy gave me another look over and my throat felt like it was going to close up. For some reason I wanted to apologise to him and I opened my mouth to do so but he shook his head and led me to the room.
Walker raised an eyebrow as I entered. Geralt stood and approached me, lifting my chin to get a good look at my face.
“What happened?” he asked Sy. “She looks scared to death.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I said firmly and lifted my chin out of Geralt’s grasp.
Geralt’s lips pulled thin across his face and he grunted. I shrugged off Sy and stood in front of Walker. I took a quick look at the faces of the other four men and I knew I had made the right choice. Walker would look at the situation calmly; I wasn’t sure if the others would go after Jake half-cocked.
“I saw Jake,” I said.
Walker blinked like he had no idea what I was talking about. Sy muttered a curse and his face darkened. I reached a hand to Sy and rested it on his arm before I continued speaking.
“Jake is the friend I called yesterday.”
Walker raised his eyebrows. “Syverson, get her helmet,” he said. Sy left the room, for once not complaining about being told what to do. “Take your jacket off,” Walker said to me.
I looked at Marshall. He nodded, so I shucked my leathers off and handed them to Walker before I sat on the edge of the bed. Marshall sat next to me, Mike sat on the other side, both looking at each other over my head. Geralt moved to the window, peeking through the curtains, as he pulled his gun out of his holster.
My ankle bounced restlessly as I crossed my legs and I stuck my thumb between my teeth and gnawed on the nail. Walker ran his hands over my jacket seams, checking the buttons and pockets methodically.
“Stop lookin’,” Sy said as he entered the room, tossing something small to Walker. “Mother fucker attached it to my God damn bike.”
Walker lifted his moustached lip in a sneer. He studied the object for a moment before laying it on the table.
“Check every bike,” Walker said to Sy. “Helmets, bags, everything. Twice.”
Sy nodded but hesitated and the two shared a look that I couldn’t decipher.
“Yeah, I know,” Walker said to Sy’s unasked question. “We may need the plan B.” Walker turned to Geralt. “Watch his six.”
Geralt and Sy left, but not before Sy looked at me strangely.
Mike got up from next to me and took Geralt’s position by the window, reaching into his jacket for his weapon. I felt Marshall take my hand.
“Sweetheart.”
I forced my attention onto Marshall. He was looking at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
“No apologies needed,” Marshall assured me. “Tell me everything you know about Jake. Where you met him, how long you’ve known him. Don’t leave anything out, I need every detail.”
I took a deep breath and tried to organise my thoughts into something coherent, but I ended up rambling, not able to finish sentences before remembering something else. Marshall just nodded as I talked, occasionally prompting me with questions. At some point he pulled a small notebook out of his jacket pocket and started writing notes.
As I told Marshall about Jake, I realised I knew next to nothing about him. We met at a bar about three months ago. I remembered letting him take me home, but I had passed out drunk at his house, in his bed. I remembered waking up with a blanket over me, my clothes still on and he had slept on the couch.
“That was reckless, Sweetheart,” Marshall said with a hint of disapproval in his tone. “You could have been hurt.”
“I don’t know why I did that. I don’t even remember the trip home. I don’t even remember drinking that much.”
Marshall and Walker exchanged a look. When Marshall turned his attention back at me, his face was grim. “Do you know his address?”
Nodding, I told them where he lived. Walker made a phone call while Marshall questioned me some more. I didn’t have much more to tell. I didn’t know his last name, his hometown, even what I knew of his job was sketchy.
Sy and Geralt came back reporting the bikes were clean. The guys talked amongst themselves, and I zoned out staring at my shaking hands.
Marshall’s large hand covered mine. It was warm and the outer edge of it was peppered sparsely with dark hair. He put his arm around me, drawing me close and my head fell into his shoulder. He was strong like Sy and just as warm and comforting. His scent was musky, masculine and inviting. His body didn’t feel as hard as Sy’s but he was in no way out of shape and as I pressed my hand to his chest, I could feel the firmness of his pecs beneath his thin t-shirt.
Gathering myself, I started listening to the Brothers talk. They were going back and forth about what to do.
Marshall and Geralt argued for a safe house, their patches gave away their location making it easy for me to be traced. Sy and Mike were in favour of returning to the Clubhouse arguing it was fortified better than the safehouses and able to be defended.
“Did he see you?” Walker asked me.
“I don’t think so.”
“We were partially obscured by the hedge, out front,” Mike said. “I would have made her move if she was out in the open.”
Walker nodded then addressed the Brothers, “I couldn't see a tail. You?”
Sy shook his head and so did the others.
“He must be relying on this to find her, it's unlikely he’s been able to follow with eyes on us without one of us noticing.” Walker handed the tracker back to Sy. “Put it back where you found it. Head South to the border. After a day, destroy it. We’re going to the clubhouse.”
Sy nodded. “I’ll do it, but you’ve got to cancel that job ya got me goin’ on.”
Walker folded his arms. “I don’t think so, Syverson. The clubhouse is a fortress, no one can breach it.”
“Don’t let your fuckin’ ego get in the way here.” Sy stood toe to toe with Walker.
Their similarity in height and stature was uncanny. But where Sy moved with a big man’s lack of grace, Walker was smooth and calculated, his movements slick like he was made of liquid. If it came to a fight, it would be impossible to guess who would come out on top.
“Even if you don’t care about her, losing a client would do irreparable damage to our reputation and—”
“And so would cancelling the job.” Walker turned his back on Sy, and my eyes widened as Sy’s hands balled into fists.
Quicker than I could track, Geralt was on his feet. His arm wrapped around Sy’s waist and walked him out of the room, murmuring in his ear. I got up to follow, but Marshall grabbed my hand pulling me back to the bed.
“Give him a minute to cool off,” Marshall said. “And then you can say goodbye.”
“We’re leaving in ten. Princess, you’re with me.” Walker said.
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“I said no. I don’t want to ride with you.”
Walker inhaled and raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t asking.”
“She can ride with me,” Mike said from the window. “My bike is the fastest, it’ll have the least weight and I can outride all of you. If it comes to it, I’m not much help in a firefight so if shit goes down, I’ll get her to a safe house while you give us time to get away. It’s the ideal option.”
“Kid has a point,” Marshall added.
I had no idea if Mike was right, but I jumped at the opportunity. “I’ll ride with Mike.”
Mike looked at me nodding, with a huge smirk of triumph on his face. I shook my head, hiding my own grin. For a second there he had actually sounded like he was taking things seriously.
Walker’s jaw was clenched so hard, I swear I could hear his teeth cracking. “Fine,” he spat.
I stood up and went to the door.
“Where do you think you are going?” Walker snapped at me.
“To say goodbye to Sy,” I said, opening the door and walking out.
“Fucking little b— Mike, go with her,” I heard Walker growl before Mike shot through the door behind me. I smiled though. It was good to know that I could ruffle that cold, calm exterior of his.
I found Sy having a smoke, leaning against the wall. Geralt saw me first and touched Sy’s shoulder before he walked away. Mike hung back too, leaving the two of us alone. Sy flicked his butt into a tray of sand and held his arms out and I let myself be drawn into his arms.
I felt his chest rumble as he hummed. I would miss that.
Sy lowered his head, his deep seductive drawl dripped like honey into my ear. “Give me some sugar, li’l girl.”
I raised my chin and his lips brushed mine. His hands lowered to the back of my jeans and slipped inside the pockets as he pressed his hips against me. I grabbed the nape of his neck and tugged on it, trying to get closer to him. The cool leather of his jacket creaked as he kissed me roughly, harder than usual. His beard scratched against my chin and his tongue was demanding, controlling, filling my mouth until I was dizzy. He took my breath away, but I didn't care.
He pulled away with a growl and rested his forehead on mine. For a while we stood like that content to breathe in each other's air.
Eventually his gaze drifted towards Geralt and Mike. Mine followed and while they weren’t looking directly at us, I could feel their eyes on us and I lowered my head as my heart began to thump erratically in my chest.
“Remember what we talked about,” Sy said, cupping my cheeks and making me look at him. He licked his lips and swallowed as he wiped his thumbs under my eyes. “‘Bout my Brothers?”
“Sy, I don’t…” I couldn’t finish the thought. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say that wasn’t going to be a lie?
“Just remember, okay? Whatever happens won’t change anythin’ between us, Lori.”
I shook my head. He can’t mean it. There’s no way. I wanted to be mad at him, to yell at him and curse him. Curse all of them for putting me in this situation.
Myself most of all.
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t r o u b l e // chapter one
A Peaky Blinders Balletcore Modern AU
Chapter list
John
"Fuck!" Tommy was pacing, he'd have thrown the glass in his hand at me if I'd have pointed it out but he was, he was pacing. From his desk in the center of the room at which he'd taken our cousins call, to the window where the early morning slow rising sun burn orange like the tip of his cigarette.
The news from London had been bad. Someone had hit our main distillery, made an attempt on Arthur, stabbed Michael and beaten him half to death. They'd made no subtle job of sending us a message and now Tommy was fucking pacing.
I was thinking of our sisters, all three of them in London at that very moment, minding their own business, living a life as untainted by their brothers underhand dealings and fucking awful reputations as was possible.
Any minute now they were in for a nasty shock. At least thats what I thought as Tommy picked his phone up off the desk and called our brother.
"Come on Arthur fucking hell.." his words were punctuated by his gritted teeth, his jaw sharp, grinding as he spoke into the phone that was ringing out with no answer. "You call him..." he snapped his fingers at me, "get him on that lass he's been fuckin..." he added pausing as if trying to remember her name though we both knew she was one in a long line of hopeless cases. He pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away from me leaving me to try and do as he'd said.
"Jesus fuckin hell Arthur pick up your god damn phone!"
I didn't have the lass's number, no surprises there so as my brother drove himself mad trying to phone Arthur, I opened Instagram and tried searching for her there. It didn't take a lot because she'd been tagging our brother in every single post she'd made since they started seeing one another.
"Bit fuckin needy aint ye," I smirked to myself as I took her number straight from her profile and phoned her.
When she answered I struggled to hold in a laugh. Not one of my sisters would have answered the call from an unknown number at this time in the morning, or ever in fact, all of them far too clever.
"Listen uh..." i pulled my phone away from my ear to check her name again, "Taliah... Am lookin for Arthur, is me brother with you?" I asked not expecting the gasp nor the enthusiasm with which my blunt request was recieved.
"Oh my god which one are you? Tommy, John or Finn? No wait let me guess you sound like..."
"John," I said cutting her off, "is he there with you? Tell him Tommy needs him now alright..." I was blunt, it wasn't exactly the most congenial tone but I felt my brothers frustration from across the room and understood where it stemmed from. Panic.
Something very bad was happening to our family and the fact that we didn't know what it was or who was doing it made it all so much more dangerous. It meant it could hit any of us. Even our sisters who were innocent and, for the most part, completely detatched from us.
"John boy?" Arthurs voice was gruff as though thick with sleep but I knew it wasn't sleep he'd been in the middle of when we'd disturbed him.
"Arthur bout fuckin time brother..." I started, tossing my phone to Tommy with a small smirk when my brother snapped his fingers again and held his hand out. He was impatient but I could hardly blame him.
See Arthur, Michael... They could protect themselves, they were armed, they could fight... Ada would be armed for certain, Ada would think she could fight, but the twins would be completely overwhelmed. They wouldn't be strapped, wouldn't be able to fight... So Tommy's impatience my impatience too.
"Arthur I need you to get yourself down to Ada's and bring her here alright, I'm calling the whole family home, we're closing ranks until we know exactly who called a hit on Michael..." I listened to him talking quickly and calmly, he was so certain now that he had Arthur on the line and even when Arthur tried to protest, stating the obvious... That Ada wouldn't come wihout a fight, he remained the same, level tone, certain,"I don't give a fuck if she knocks all your fuckin teeth out brother just bring her and the kid back here and if she tries to argue you tell her its for her own fuckin good and you tell her when have i ever lied to her about life or death alright... "
Calm and certain was more than i could have done in that moment.
"Alright, alright," sighed Arthur down the phone, "but what about the twins Tommy... I can handle Ada alright but I'm not going to that fucking school..."
I laughed at that, realising my mistake only when Tommy raised his brow at me, replying to Arthur in the same breath.
"Johns gonna get the twins."
"What?" I asked flatly. Down the phone i heard our brother laughing, his hands clapping together as he grinned and revelled in my misfortune.
"You heard me John boy," said Tommy, the corner of his mouth tugged into a little smirk, "Londons a long drive brother, you don't have time to pack a bag, not that you need one, you drive down pick em up and drive straight back, i mean it, closing ranks..."
"Whyve I got to go?" I swallowed down uncomfortably as a pathetic kind of panic stirred in me. Somehow Arthur had landed the easier job.
"Cause out of all of us lot, you're their favourite," he shrugged as if it were that simple. As if he wasn't asking me to do something I genuinely believed might end up getting me killed.
Our little sisters see, carried the same stubborn streak the rest of us had. Just because they'd tried to distance themselves from the family name didn't mean they weren't still family. Didn't mean they didn't have the shelby temper running through their veins.
"Aye if it were only one of them I might stand a fuckin chance... Fen y'know, she might but..."
"You'll pick both Sonya and Sylvie up tonight... If they argue with you it doesn't matter because they don't have a choice... And you can tell em that from me eh? If it eases your conscience," the wink he shot me at the end of that sentance did little to draw a smile from me, "take Isaiah with you if you like, Sonya's always been soft on him..."
I let out a long groan, head in hands as I fell back against the window ledge, leaning into the curtains as I swore and thought of my two baby sisters. They'd been terrors since the day they were born, but they'd been easier to handle before they'd learnt how to talk. How to walk and run around causing trouble the rest of us had to clean up. Before they'd learnt their talents and torn away, pursued their own glowing horizons and slowly but surely begun to bury their ties to the Shelbys.
They were both prima ballerinas now, training with the royal ballet, both of them household names among households who were into that sort of thing. Where our eldest sister Ada had pursued politics and teaching, a real community woman, the twins had drawn fame from their talent and, from their beauty. It was better for their careers to distance themselves from the family business and so theyd taken Aunt Pols surname and then they'd stopped coming home, the two of them choosing boarding school and the ballet over Small Heath and a hug from their big brothers.
If there was one thing I was really and truly certain of in that moment it was this. That no matter whether I was the favourite brother or not, if I barged into their life demanding they return home and abandon the lives they'd built for themselves, I was going to get more than just a sock in the mouth.
"Fuckin hell tommy you do realise they won't come back without a good fuckin reason..." I started but before I could really make my point he was chucking my phone back at me hard and making a point of his own.
"How fucking good a reason do you need John? Someone tried to kill our brother today, and they nearly fuckin killed Michael! We don't know who they are and we don't know what they want or how fuckin far they're willing to go to get what they fuckin want.. So i want the whole family back home where I can see them yeah? Not just for their safety but for the good of the family! For the good of the fucking family alright!"
He'd dropped his voice, his jaw clenched tight, his finger pointing accusatory and shaking towards me, the vein in his forhead pulsing with his rising temper. For a second I was quiet. I wanted to tell him it wasn't me needed convincing. That I understood the situation perfectly well, that I wanted the same as him. To keep them all safe.
"Alright..." I said nodding my head, "but its not me I've got to convince..."
next chapter
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“my strange addiction”
⠀⠀ੈ♡˳· kid was never addicted to anything of sort—until you came into his life, the someone he fell in love, and unhealthily addicted to, wanting you all to himself.
⠀⠀➧ fluff? | yandere!e. kid × gn!reader | oneshot
⠀⠀➧ warnings — contains yandere themes, violence, and death/murder (of a minor character.) get out of this fic if you're uncomfortable with these. mistakes and swearing are present too.
⠀⠀➧ requests are closed until further notice!
⠀⠀꒰ 🍨 ꒱ notes: welcome to “my strange addiction,” which is a writing special i made to celebrate this account reaching 500+ followers.
by continuing, you consent into reading this oneshot fanfic which contains yandere themes, violence, and death/murder. if uncomfortable with these, then please don't read this. also, don't go blaming me, i gave you a warning.
Falling in love wasn't at Kid's bucket list when he set out to sea—but it's almost funny on how he is right now, sitting across the deck, eyes focused on you, and only you.
He's in love, he definitely is. So fucking in love with you, he's obsessed.
“Hey, Kid. Aren't ya lookin' at Y/n way too much, mhm? Are ya that in love with 'em?” Killer noted with a small chuckle, sitting with his friend who only huffed by his words, eyes still laser focused on you.
“Shuddup, Kil. Anyway..” Eyes finally moving away from you, Kid then looked at the newest member on his crew who was talking with you, all happy while doing so. “The hell's that newbie? Did Y/n recruit them?”
“Oh... Them? Yeah, just last night, when we were about to leave the previous island, they were with Y/n—who asked 'em to join when we were partying on the bar, if I'm correct..” The first mate mutters, voice getting smaller and smaller the instant he had realized what he said to the red haired captain who is now frowning.
Big mistake, and he knows it.
“Oi Kid, you better not think about it—” “Shut it! I'll do whatever the hell I want and you can't do a thing about it!”
Fuming away, Kid then walked towards you and the crewmate you had recruited, eyes burning in anger.
“Ah, Kid! Hey, I forgot to tell you, we have a new member on our cre—BANG! oh my god!” You gasped, eyes widening the instant Kid pulled the trigger, immediately killing the recruit.
“C-Captain, why—why did you kill them!? Oh my, oh no...” You sighed, shaking in panic and fear as Kid averted his eyes back on you.
“I never gave you the permission to recruit anyone, did I?” Your captain grumbles, taking your wrist and effortlessly dragging you with him to his room. “C..Captain..!”
“Captain, Kid, I-I'm sorry, alright? I didn't know that that would upset you..!” You shrieked, being thrown to his desk with such brute force, causing you to wince.
“Upset? Pfft, Y/n, Y/n, darlin'... You're mistaken. I'm not upset..” Kid says with a husky voice, his metallic arm making contact with your neck, giving it a light squeeze before he—
“I'M FUCKING MAD, I'M ANGRY, AND ANNOYED AS FUCK!” He shouts, suddenly adding pressure on your neck, restricting your breathing. “K..Kid, ca...n't breathe!!”
“I... Damn it, I thought you were loyal, to me, Y/n..” Kid mutters, loosening his grip on your neck, letting you breathe in air once again as he spoke. “Y'know, I let you in my crew 'cause you were loyal, and I fuckin' like ya, a lot.”
“..Captain, what...?” Eyes widened by his words, you then looked at Kid in shock, not believing what he was saying.
“Yeah. You heard me, didn't ya? I said I like you, a lot. A real lot to the point that..” Trailing his words, Kid looked at you, a big, devilish grin on his face, sending chills down your spine.
“To the point that I killed, for you. Anyone who had dared get way too close to you are all dead by now! You know, Y/n, my darling, I even fuckin' killed the members of this crew of mine! Hahaha!”
Confessing his crime with a maniacal laughter, you were then left stunned, unable to mutter a single word out, also unable to pinpoint what you're feeling.. Is it anger? Shock? Sadness? Disgust? Joy? Who knows..
“Say, Y/n, do you at least appreciate what I did for you? I killed people for you, you know. That's how much I love you, Y/n..” Approaching you, Kid snickered, lifting your chin up so you can look at him, eye to eye.
“I love you.” He repeats, caressing your cheek that burned red, akin to his hair. “Now, darlin', do ya love me too, mhm?”
Serving silence, you pondered what to answer. Is it a yes? Or a no? It doesn't matter what you answer, because you knew that you're bound to be doomed either way..
“..Answer me, Y/n!” Kid demands, hand slamming loudly on the table, losing his patience with you...
“You better give me a ‘yes,’ or this bullet goes in your fuckin' head.” Pulling out his pistol, Kid aimed it at you, your head, threatening you, dead serious.
“C..Cap... K..Kid.” You stammered, squeezing your eyes shut as you gulped, feeling the firearm pressed firmly on your forehead.
Fear is surfacing in you, yet no answer left your lips. So silently praying, you waited for how things would turn for you, prepared for the worst to come, but—
“Pfft... Heh, hahahahaha!” Kid laughs, dropping the weapon to the floor before he continued, “I knew it, I can't bring myself to kill ya, it'd be such a shame if I were to lose you anyway...”
Smirking, the red head then quickly inched his faced close to yours, giving you a kiss on your lips, whispering, “You're all mine..~”
© butterfluffy 2022
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I started writing a self-insert OC Venture Bros fic but idk if I'll finish it, however what I've got is too good not to share (spoilers for season 6 & 7)
"This... Is our new target. Or, I guess more like this is Venture's newest Guild mandated arch."
Henchman 21 leaned over the dining room table, shuffling the stack of papers around so he could read them better.
"Doctor Bedlam?" 21 hissed through his teeth, a sympathetic twist in his furrowed brows. "He's like. Y'know."
"What? Like what?" The Monarch demanded. He had one fist propped up on his cocked hip, the other spread flat across the table. It was still a bit funny to see him in both his cowl and a silk robe. "You chickening out on me now, huh?"
"No, no, no, no," 21 shook his head emphatically. "I just think we should exercise some uh... Extra level of caution."
"Is there something I'm missing here?" The Monarch held up their target's picture. "Are you really that afraid of this fucking... Tony Stark/Slumdog Millionaire lookin' motherfucker?"
"The only reason why Doctor Bedlam isn't a 10 is he doesn't actively kill," 21 crossed his arms, one brow quirked. "Imagine a beast like Red Death but sub the bloodlust for, like, literal clinical psychopathy. You wanna act casual about that?"
"Really?" The Monarch looked at the picture again, pursing his lips in thought. "This guy? He looks like one of those cringey pick-up artists but he only goes after yacht club college girls."
Henchman 21 simply shrugged.
"I'm only speakin' the facts, boss. Don't underestimate this guy."
"Feh," The Monarch flapped his hand and let the sheet of paper flutter back down onto the table, already distracted by an exploration of the fridge. "Nothing the mighty Blue Morpho and his trusty Kano can't handle. We'll suit up after breakfast."
🦋🦋🦋
The Monarch-- or rather, Blue Morpho whistled in appreciation once he and 'Kano' were dropped off by taxi at their location.
"Damn, nice digs," The Monarch mumbled. "What floor is this guy on again?"
"Penthouse suite," Henchman 21 double-checked his notes before folding up the paper into a tiny square and tucking it in his pocket. "Top floor, baby. This guy's an arms dealer, he's like rich rich."
"Like Batman rich or like...?"
"I've heard rumors he's like Oprah rich."
"Daaamn."
Shockingly, the duo got into the building with no issue. Strange. The security seemed non-existent, the only visible employee being some older guy snoring at the front desk. They slipped into the elevator but when The Monarch reached for the penthouse button, 21 superceded him, obscuring it with a cupped palm.
"We'll take the floor below then climb the stairs to the roof," He encouraged, thumbing the 29th floor instead. "Who knows what kinda shit he's got waiting for us at the door."
"I still think you're overreacting," The Monarch rolled his eyes but didn't fight back, leaning against the wall as the elevator ascended. "Why the hell would the Guild assign such a supposed level 11 badass to a shmuck like Venture?"
"No clue," 21 frowned for a moment. "It's not like Dr. Venture goes out and does superhero work, he's kind of a shut-in."
"Yeah," The Monarch snickered. "He doesn't save cats in trees or kiss babies or whatever. Sometimes he's almost as much a villain as I am. Did you know he powered one of his inventions with a fucking dead orphan kid once?"
"Fucked up but also hardcore."
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Just across the hall was the emergency exit and, once again, the pair slipped out and up with no issues whatsoever. After a brief climb, they were on the roof and overlooking the rest of New York City from a bird's eye view.
"Alright, here's a vent we can enter through," 21 grunted with effort as one of his knives popped open the grate. "This should hopefully take us to the living room but we'll take it nice and slow."
"Move over," The Monarch barked, easily tucking both long legs into the vent, using a swift rush of momentum to zoom in like a slide. "And have more confidence in your leader!"
Crawling on hands and knees, they managed to move rather quietly, pausing over every subsequent grate to peek down and do some reconnaissance. There were exits into a master bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, and what looked like a study. It was too dark to tell but that seemed advantageous so 21 silently lifted the grate and the pair soundlessly hit the floor on two feet.
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