#but I WAS a clothes horse for about a decade and a half and I have. OPINIONS

[ellynneversweet]

Me, in real, practical life, most of the time: trackpants are pants. Are today’s activities stained tshirt or unstained tshirt events?

Me, watching period dramas: SYNTHETICS? NO PARLETS? PERIOD INAPPROPRIATE STOCKING SUPPORTS? VISIBLE FOUNDATION???

[familyvideostevie]

you have me, you have me only

joel miller x reader you get (minorly) injured on patrol. joel does his best to patch you up and not worry too much. | jackson!joel, hurt/comfort, wound-patching, some blood, a jesse cameo, joel being joel, all that good stuff. | 4.2k a/n: part of the just and just as verse. not too soft but not too angsty, either. just another day after the end of the world, you know? thank you @mrsmando for your eyes on this! <3

___

"Almost there," you mutter. "Fuck."

The icy winter wind dulls the stinging in your palms to a numbness. The leather gloves you've had for half a decade stay tucked in your pockets. You don't want to ruin their lining with dirt and blood.

"How's the head?" 

Jesse pulls up alongside you in a trot. The adrenaline from your patrol-gone-wrong pulses heavy at the top of your spine, your vision sharp and the whole world a little too loud around you as Jackson comes into view at the bottom of the hill. Your head, like the rest of you, throbs.

"I'll live."

He scoffs and his horse snorts as if agreeing with him. In truth, you're more pissed than injured, though it certainly looks like you lost a fight. Jesse's cheekbone will no doubt bloom purple tomorrow and his lip is still bleeding sluggishly. His jeans are splattered with gore, same as yours.

"Thanks for back there," he says.

You shrug and wince when it pulls at the skin of your side where you fell. 

"You, too," you tell him with a grimace. "That was quick thinking with the brick."

You like him -- he's good at his job and he's a good friend to Ellie. You know Tommy and Maria are not-so-subtly training him to run this place someday if he wants to. As a patrol partner, you can't ask for much better. He knows all the routes and he's a good shot and his mom knows everything there is to know about everyone in town and sometimes he passes tidbits on to you.

But knowing your shit doesn't mean a damn thing in this world, sometimes. You can still get ambushed by infected on patrol and it can still fuck up your day.

He waves you off. "I just can't believe an elk chose our station to fucking die in."

"Tommy is going to shit himself when you tell him," you laugh. It pulls at your ribs. God, is there any part of you that didn't take a beating?

"He'll just be pissed he wasn't here."

Your horses reach the bottom of the hill and Jesse hesitates, the green scrap of cloth in his hand. The red one indicating an injured party peeks out from his pocket.

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the clinic?"

"I'm fine," you say firmly. "I can patch up at home."

He eyes the cut on your forehead and your scraped palms but caves under your glare and waves the green flag.

"Joel makes the same face," he mutters. "Ellie does, too. Freaky."

The gates open and you grunt when you get off your horse, palms back to stinging.

"Joel's two expressions are pissed and annoyed," you say. “Not hard to pick one up.” You press the back of your hand to your forehead and it comes back tacky with blood. "Fuck."

"I don't think you'll need a stitch." Jesse holds his hand out for your patrol rifle and pats the neck of your horse. "I'll debrief and get these guys settled. You go home."

Normally, you'd protest. But you really just want to take a hot shower and sleep for twelve hours, so you nod and shoulder your pack carefully.

"Make sure you tell Tommy about beating a stalker to death with a brick," you call over your shoulder. "He'll be impressed."

Jesse laughs.

Snow crunches under your boots on the way home. Fuck, you're exhausted. The adrenaline fades with each step and the aches become sharp pains. There aren't too many people out today on account of the cold but you nod and wave, ignoring the double takes at the blood on your clothes.

It'll be a pain in the ass if you can't patch the ruined knees of your jeans. Maybe you can convince Joel to carve something for the woman down the street who can sew better than anyone in town. Finding new pants is damn near impossible.

You’re practically dragging your feet by the time you reach your house. The mailbox labeled Miller, the wind chimes gently swaying on the porch, all of it puts you at ease. You made it home.

The porch steps groan as you climb them and the front door opens from the inside as you reach the top. Joel steps out, hand still on the knob when he looks up and sees you. His eyes widen.

He was on patrol today, too. You left at the same time but he had a shorter route and must have gotten back a while ago.

"Are you coming to meet me?" you say with a grin that's genuine despite the way your body pulses with pain. He does this sometimes -- milling around the gate, chatting with people on the wall as he waits for you to return. You never really feel like you're home until you see his face.

Joel does not smile back. His eyes rake over you the same way he surveys a room, cataloging all of the important things. The gash on your temple, the rips in your jeans, the way you're favoring your left side. The blood, too -- it's everywhere, you're sure. Palms, knees, collar. Jesse helped you wipe your face before you rode back so that you could see without blood in your eyes, but you must look pretty fucking rough.

"Jesus," he says. His hand twitches like he's going to reach for you. "You okay?"

"I'll be better when I'm not standing out in the cold."

His nostrils flare and he heads back into the house, you on his heels. You dump your pack and sit down heavily on the bench to take off your boots. Joel beats you to it, lowering to one knee with a slight groan, fingers working at your laces.

Normally he'd ask how patrol was, how Jesse did, if you saw anything interesting. Instead, his cheek twitches like he's clenching his jaw so hard it hurts. He unties your double knots with practiced ease and his silence fills the entryway of your house.

In another life, the sight of him on one knee would set your heart aflutter. As it is, you want to run a hand through his hair and smooth the worry lines on his forehead. You know him and this is how he handles it -- he chews on blame that doesn't belong on his shoulders until he can fix it.

"I'm fine," you say softly. You open and close your hands, resting them on your knees. You got most of the gravel out but there's dirt and god knows what else embedded in the tender flesh. Joel pulls off one boot with a firm hand on your calf and then the other before finally looking up at you.

"You wanna explain...this, then?"

His hand waves up in your general direction. There's no tremble in his palm but his brows are furrowed, his shoulders set in that way of his, like he's bracing for bad news. You have a rule about not lying to each other. So if you say you're fine, you're fine. Achey, bloody, and gross, sure. But you made it home in one piece and now you'll let him take care of you and he has to be okay with that.

But you don't mind reassuring him. He worries, and you know the feeling.

You shrug and fail to hide your wince. Joel wraps a hand around your ankle and squeezes lightly.

"I've had worse," you say. "I'll tell you about it if you patch me up."

He softens a little and sighs. It won't do anything to remind him that he can't go back in time and stop you from getting hurt. Joel knows he can't fix everything, can't keep everyone he loves away from harm, can't save the world. Won't, if it comes at the expense of the people in his heart.

But you can give him something to do -- a way to make it better. You could probably bandage your hands and your forehead and the rest on your own but it'll help him just as much as you if he does it.

Life in this world is a constant give and take. You have to be okay with some things, with cuts and bruises and ruined clothes if it means you survived. There's no safety, not anymore.

"Alright, c'mon," he says, standing with a groan. "Upstairs, 'fore you bleed on the furniture."

He holds out a hand for you to stand but you show him your mangled palm. Joel clicks his tongue and grips your forearm gently instead as you rise.

"Gotta clean that," he says.

"That's the plan." You leave your coat and pack behind in a heap and head for the stairs. "A hot shower sounds so fucking good right now."

Joel stops you with a hand on your elbow and you turn on the bottom step. He traces the cut on your forehead with light fingers and you try not to wince.

"Shower," he says.  "I'll patch you up after." His tone leaves no room for argument.

You ghost your fingertips along his jaw and smile at him.

"Yes sir, Mr. Miller, sir."

More tension melts from his shoulders and he rolls his eyes at you. You laugh all the way to the bathroom, even though it hurts a little.

It's been a while since one of you returned from patrol with any sort of injury. Winter means the hoards are sluggish and easy to track and tends to keep groups of people from coming to the valley and making trouble. Today was bad luck and could have been much worse.

You both know how quickly all of the good in your lives can be snatched away. Everyone does.

But you just can't dwell on it. Joel knows it, too, and letting him fuss over you in that way of his will remind him. You're home. You're okay.

You leave the bathroom door cracked as you shower under the gentle spray. Your various injuries sting but you manage to clean the scrapes on your knees and hands and wash the blood from your skin and hair, the water rusty brown as it swirls around the drain. 

Joel knocks when you're almost done and the hinges groan when he steps into the bathroom.

"Leavin' you clothes," he says, voice raised so you hear over the spray. "You okay?"

"Still alive," you call back. "Almost done."

The water starts to turn lukewarm so you switch off the stream and drag back the curtain. Joel is nowhere to be found but he's left you loose shorts so your knees are exposed and a big, faded graphic t-shirt that you brought home for him as a joke last year as well as fresh underwear and warm socks. You gently pat your skin dry with an old and scratchy towel and do your best with your hair before sliding them on. 

Joel knocks again and this time he has the bag with all of your first aid stuff in his hands. The steam from your shower rushes out into your bedroom and you shiver.

He jerks his chin at the counter. "Wanna get up there?"

You haul yourself up with a groan and he stands between your knees, arms crossed and head cocked.

"What're we dealin' with, here?"

You look down at your messy palms and rattle off what hurts.

"Cut on my forehead, bruised rib, probably, fucked up hands and knees, and..." You look up and find Joel running a hand down his face. "That's it."

"You sure?"

You glare at him. He glares back. His eyes drift to your forehead gash.

"Cut could use a stitch." 

He's still tense, you can tell, probably will be until he wakes up tomorrow and you're still next to him in bed. Until the wounds turn to scabs turn to scars. Maybe not even then.

"I think I've had enough cuts over the years to know what needs a stitch."

His eyebrows rise just a little bit, turning his expression from interrogative to exasperated, but he knows better than to tell you to do something when you’ve set your mind against it.

"They're offerin' medical degrees on the Creek Trails, now?"

"Joel."

He holds his hands up in surrender. "Fine," he says. "Let me feel your ribs."

You raise your arms a little and he slides his palms under your shirt and up your torso, pressing gently as he goes. Braless as you are, he brushes the underside of your breast, and your breath hitches. His eyes are soft with quiet amusement but he doesn't tease you.

"Your hands are warm," you murmur. He reaches the place on your side that took the brunt of the impact and you hiss.

"Sorry," he says. "Doin' real good. Deep breath for me." You obey and he withdraws, satisfied.

"Nothin' broken," he says.

"Told you."

He hums and pulls out the precious few disinfectant wipes from your first aid kid. You can get Joel to do a lot of things just by asking, but arguing with him about wasting supplies on you never works. He washes his hands in the sink and glares are you like he knows what you’re thinking.

"Forehead first, then hands, then knees," he says. "Okay?'

You nod, eyes fluttering shut. He grips your face with gentle fingertips to keep you still.

"How was your patrol?" you ask him.

He makes a noise low in his throat that's halfway to being a laugh.

"C'mon," he says. "You don't want to hear about mine. I know you're dyin' to tell me what happened."

The alcohol wipe stings as he swabs at your forehead and you tense. Joel's thumb rubs slow circles at the corner of your mouth and you press your knees into his hips.

Funny how you've had broken bones, been stabbed, shot, pretty much everything over the last twenty years but it's the small stuff that hurts the most. Stubbed toes, sliced fingers, alcohol wipes on shallow wounds. Some things just don't change.

"Okay," you say. "Well, you'll never believe it, but a damn elk decided to die in the station where the logbook is."

You tell him how you and Jesse rode up and saw the blood trail immediately and heard the moans and groans. You kept the horses on the other side of the fence and checked the first floor and the overlook, but the elk had weaseled its way under the collapsed staircase.

It smelled like death, rust and decay heavy in the air. The animal must have died just after the last patrol.

But it wasn't the problem. It was the group of Infected it attracted -- two runners and four stalkers. You have no idea where they came from but, since you were on patrol, the priority was eliminating them. The runners were easier, although one of them was responsible for the gash on your forehead when it managed to push you into the wall. You and Jesse cleared them quickly, one bullet each.

You thought you got all of the stalkers. One of them was munching on the carcass and went down fairly easily with your good aim. Jesse helped you clean your forehead so you both could clear the passage to get to the upper level and sign the logbook. The corpses went over the side of the station into the forest below. The Infected had eaten so much of the elk that it wasn't too heavy, though you both were sweating and dirty by the time you finished.

"Lemme guess," Joel says. You open your eyes as he carefully pulls the wound closed with two butterfly bandages before he gestures for your hand. He holds your wrist gently and tilts your palm side to side, looking for dirt. "There were infected inside the station, too."

"Look at you," you tease. His eyes flick to yours for just a second, intense as always. "It's like you were there."

"Smartass," he grumbles. The disinfectant stings on your palm, too, but you keep talking and keep your gaze on his face.

"Jesse climbed the rope up to the control room first but had to fend off a stalker at the top so he didn't see when another one grabbed my ankle and pulled me down mid-climb, which fucked my hands. The fall is how my rib got bruised and I tore up my knees fending it off."

Joel's cheek twitches. He wraps one of your palms in gauze and turns his attention to the other.

"Fuckin' hate those things."

"Me, too. When I got to the top, finally, Jesse was tugging a pipe from the head of a corpse. There was one more -- it jumped out of that supply room on the side, the one where Ellie found a bong, once, I think. I dodged it but my gun jammed and my hands were bleeding."

"Should've been wearing gloves."

You tap his leg with your foot and ignore him. Not taking your bait about the bong means he’s still pissed. "And then Jesse killed it with a brick."

"I taught him that," Joel grumbles.

He ties off your other palm and as soon as he's done you frame his face. Joel allows it, allows you to stare at him for a few seconds like you're memorizing him. You're telling the story like it was a fun adventure -- and it was. You're plenty capable and he knows it, too.

But you were scared. You don't tell him that right now, instead grounding yourself in the man in front of you. His hands are rough and dangerous to most, but tender and careful to you. The broad, firm line of his shoulders, always braced for the next hit.

The gash on the bridge of his nose, the lines at the corners of his eyes. His beard, greyer every year. You swipe your thumbs along his cheekbones and he sighs.

"Lucky me," you say softly.

You lean in to kiss him, just a light press of your lips to his. His wide palms rest on your bare thighs and he kisses back with a kind of desperate firmness, as if he's proving to himself that you're real. That you're here in front of him, under his hands, in his care.

Joel drags his lips along your cheek.

"Knees," he says.

He steps back and releases your thighs with a squeeze. He treats more of your torn skin, a frown back on his face.

"I do want to hear about your patrol, by the way."

He shrugs. "Not much to tell," he says. "Didn't even get to shoot anythin’.”

You swing your foot back and forth, tapping the side of his thigh with every pass.

"But you had the nice route," you whine. "Tell me what the lake looked like."

"Quit distracting me," he grumbles.

"Like you don't have the steadiest hands in all of Jackson," you say softly.

He snorts. "Are you flirtin' with me?"

"I'm always flirting with you, Joel Miller."

You lied to Jesse earlier -- Joel has hundreds of expressions. He just keeps most of them for you. For Ellie, and Tommy, too. You know every one of them by now.

The look on his face now says he's thinking about kissing you again, maybe just to shut you up.

You grin at him. "Tell me about your patrol, now, seriously. Unless talking and using your hands at the same time is too much for you."

He smirks back. "Think we both know that ain't true."

"Now who's flirting?"

Lazy heat curls in your belly but fatigue stops it from turning into anything. Joel must see that in your eyes because he simply taps your chin with a knuckle and starts talking.

You start to slump as his Texas drawl wraps around you. He tells you how the lake was still, how he and Astrid saw bear tracks but no bear. How he found a tape for Ellie that he's going to give her tomorrow, how he wore his gloves today like you've been telling him to.

Some people might say that Joel is a man of few words. You thought he was the quiet type when you first met him, another stoic survivor in a world that demands hardness of everyone. But not shy, never shy. Just...waiting. Watching.

He and Ellie can shoot the shit for hours -- a dynamic they've fallen back into easily enough since they started spending time together again. He's funny, he's clever, he's annoying as shit when he wants to be.

And Joel is quite the storyteller. If you had to guess you'd say it comes from having to entertain Tommy when they were kids, from getting Sarah into bed on his own over and over. Keeping Ellie occupied, keeping her talking when things were scary and hard and fucking awful.

It's just another way he takes care of people.

"Still with me?" he says. You realize your eyes have closed. When you open them you find Joel looking at you with tenderness and a spark of amusement. The tense line of his shoulders is nowhere to be seen. "All done. Tired?"

"And hungry."

He washes his hands and throws away the various wrappers and blood-stained wipes.

"Sure you're awake enough to eat?" he teases.

You roll your eyes at him. He laughs.

"Joel," you say, catching his elbow. "Thank you."

"C'mon, now."

He looks like he wants to argue with you for saying it but reaches for you instead. He traces the cut on your forehead just like he did at the bottom of the stairs, brow drawn again. You can't tell what he's thinking as he drags his thumb down and around your eye, cupping your cheek fully for just a breath before releasing you and stepping towards the door.

"I'll heat some soup."

Dinner is quick and quiet, your energy sapped from you to the point of exhaustion. Everything aches, despite Joel's thorough care. When he suggests turning in early you don't protest.

He takes longer than you to get ready for bed. You slide under the worn duvet and wait, trying very hard to keep your eyes open. Your bruised ribs throb in time with your heartbeat and when Joel finally turns off the light and gets in bed next to you in his threadbare sleep pants he practically hauls you into his embrace.

You go willingly, tangling your legs and laying your head on the juncture of his neck and shoulder. You press your palm to his chest, fingers threading in the coarse hair. His heart thuds and it grounds you.

"I didn't get any good gossip off Jesse," you whisper. "On account of the whole surprise-infected thing."

He yawns. "S'pose it's a good excuse."

"Can I tell you something else?" you whisper. "A secret?"

Joel hums, lips brushing your temple as his hand snakes up your sleep shirt to press against your lower back.

Even though you know each other down to the bones, some things remain inexplicable. Parts of your pasts that linger in the darkest parts of you, the parts that stay shrouded until the moments like this. You don't have to be brave in the quiet hours of the night, entwined with him as you are. It's the safest place you'll ever be. Safe enough that you can crack open and let Joel in, let those steady and worn hands keep you together.

"I was scared today," you say into his neck. "When the stalker dragged me off the rope. I panicked, I --"

You don't tell him how your initial thought when you hit the ground was of him, how you closed your eyes tight and thought of your name from his mouth, of his smile when you come through the door. The stalker had its bony fingers digging into your ankle and you wondered if you'd ever feel Joel's hands on you again.

Death will come for you sooner or later and when it does it'll be Joel's face that you hold in your mind before it all ends.

But today, you kicked death until its stupid fucking mushroom skull caved in.

Joel presses his lips to your temple. You can feel his heart beating faster, as fast as yours. It's the only thing that betrays his own fear.

Wounds in this life often go deeper than the skin. When Joel comes home with bloody knuckles and shuttered eyes it's one thing to stop the bleeding, to bandage him and get him to eat something. It's another to hold him, to coax out the story, the fear. To follow him downstairs when he has a nightmare, to look for him in every room. It's all part of what you do as partners, as lovers, as people in this world. You take care of each other.

Neither of you can fix a lot of things. But you can ensure the scars heal into something light, something you can barely see.

You can hold each other in the dark.

"Scared me, too," he rasps. A secret for a secret. "Lotta damn blood."

You kiss the underside of his jaw. "Can't get rid of me that easy."

Joel pulls you closer, somehow, mindful of your side.

"Rest, now," he says. "You ain’t goin' anywhere."

It's a command, a promise. You hum your agreement and let sleep drag you under.

thank you for reading <3 reblog, send feedback, general masterlist here!

[sainzproductions]

𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐨 ⋆ 𝐜. 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐳

THE OTHER WOMAN / SEQUEL !

where you acclimate to the current dating scene after eight years of being with carlos...

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↶*ೃ✧˚. ❃ ↷ ˊ-

You felt like you had done a good job all by yourself. You took your sweet time getting used to being alone again, having spent the better part of the past decade accompanying carlos and living together with him.

As embarassing as it was to admit, there were days where you'd wake up abruptly as if hearing his footsteps, or the faint rumble of his voice lulling you to sleep. There were moments where you'd break down crying upon seeing an article of clothing belonging to carlos, or seeing pictures when you were still happily together.

It wasn't easy to forget an eight year relationship. You soon realized. He was all you've ever known and adored... You dreamt a life with the guy for crying out out loud!

You wanted all the permanent things, the domestic future, him.

But the reality was that you were different people who wanted starkly different things in life. Carlos was set on his career while you had the burden of being a woman. You didn't have forever to waste away, and you didn't want to spend it waiting for a future that could never be in the stars for you and him.

You had accepted it. It wasn't all tears, and tearful reminiscing anyways. Your life had picked up after a couple of weeks. It was a lie. You spent a month and a half being pathetic. But who was counting?

You were having the time of your life. Your singleness provided a way for you to realize new and old hobbies.

You finally went back to your hometown, despite your fears of facing your parents' knowing looks and getting an ill timed i told you so's from their ever skeptic way of seeing life. Especially your relationship with Carlos..

But your mother took one look at you; in your deshieveled and devastated form, wordlessly opening her arms and craddling your pathetic self as you wept about your broken heart.

You found peace in the tranquility of your childhood home. Reacquainting yourself with your horse, champion whom you had been neglecting— you realize belatedly. The help couldn't take the horses out that much, where you formerly took the stallion out for most of the day. You made sure to make up for lost time however.

You were also able to rekindle old friendships, quickly becoming fast friends once again as if no time had passed at all. You traipsed all over Madrid, enjoying the thrill of meeting new people, of learning new things... And how forward the current dating scene seemed to be in regards to matters concerning...

"Wait, wait." You press a hand towards his broad chest, breathing roughly. Your chest rose and fell with excitement as you tried to come down from how fast the things had quickly become heated between the two of you. "We're going a bit too fast, don't you think?" You whine under your breath, as his face came down to press open mouthed kisses on your neck, easily finding your most sensitive spot as he expertly manouvers your body, backing you up against the wall.

"Relax. We won't do anything you don't want." He says, softening his tone, "I'm not a hooligan." He tuts, pressing a feather like kiss on the side of your lips.

"Says the man who pulled me into a dark room to play tonsil tennis." You retort amusedly, stroking your fingers on his neck. You couldn't help but close your eyes at the sensation of his lips against your skin, his fingers making quick work of slipping under your skirt, and you hissed from the sensation of his cold rings against your thighs, "You're cold!"

"Warm me up then, love." He was evidently amused by your reactions and the way your cheeks flushed at his crude remark. He wiped away every other thought from your mind, as he kisses you wantonly. He made sure to hold your gaze as he pulls away, sinking down to his knees... and kissing your thighs softly. "Beautiful. So fucking beautiful. I couldn't think of anything else when you walked into the room. Nobody else mattered but you... you're bad for my business, darling."

You could hardly register anything else after that

↶*ೃ✧˚. ❃ ↷ ˊ-

The breakup came with the long forgotten territory of male attention. Sure, there were some bold and uncaring lads few and far between, but Carlos had quickly shut down every attempt with a swift glare and a possesive hand over you. You didn't mind. You only needed him and his attention and everyone else were merely annoying backnoise.

As it is, your breakup was made public through the urging of Carlos' management and his public relations team. You cooperated seamlessly despite being civil, to the point of rudeness, to their every demand.

How ironic was it that through his blatant act of wanting to separate himself from you and everything else that had to do with you; he made a declaration to the world that you were readily available.

Your dms were sure packed to the brim when you'd later had the energy to do anything asides from the basic tasks of taking care of yourself. You couldn't laugh nor cry upon seeing several of carlos' work acquaintances making their presence known in your dms. You even saw his former (and possibly current) teammates taking their shot.

You couldn't help but wonder for how long has he been... Non committal towards his best mates about your real score. They couldn't possibly muster up the courage had it been the true duration of your separation. Men aren't that proactive. They atleast had some base sense of loyalty.

Then again, it didn't take very long for him to be spotted with some model on his arm. He looked happy, invigorated... Annoyingly handsome. Fuck him and his perfect face. You wished you atleast threw a heel at him for being a dickwad.

Were you seeing other people out of spite or trying to prove yourself to him? You wouldn't exactly say so. You'd had an agreement with the well established, and good looking gentleman who had made you tremble and writhe under his tongue. He was incredibly lax and cool, and great company in every sense of the word. He made you laugh, he also made you cry just now.

And so while you made yourselves look presentable, you were first out the door while he waited a few minutes to make his entrance into the party again. You gratefully took a flute of champagne from a passing waiter, wetting your parched throat as you looked around as normally as you could. Blending in with the fancy people in their cocktail dresses and designers.

You heard footsteps approaching after a few moments. Another man spotted him, and he grinned in recognition upon the sight of the ever famous....

"Sir Hamilton!"

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Scarlet and Gold.

Pairing: Yandere!Diluc x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 3.1k.

TW: Sex Doll AU, Unhealthy Relationships, Gore (No Injury To Reader), Blood, Implied Consensual Sex, Past Trauma, Obsessive Behavior, and Intimidation.

By the time you reached the address, Diluc was already waiting in the lobby.

You’d gotten the call about an hour ago, spent half an hour dragging yourself out of bed and gathering what you’d need before making the twenty minute drive to an apartment complex on the other side of town, careful to avoid any security cameras the cops would think to check if anyone requested an investigation. Five more to park and throw your well-worn duffle bag over your shoulder and three to find Diluc, loitering near the elevators, fiddling with a loose cigarette he would never light. You greeted him with a quick nod before throwing your bag into his chest, and he feigned a groan, stumbling back as he caught it. He needed to work on his impressions, but that could wait.

You spoke first. That, you couldn’t critique him on – most androids couldn’t speak until spoken to, and you couldn’t expect Diluc to go against one of the core tenants of his programming. “What is it?”

“Just the usual.” He kept his voice low, muted, trying to hide the remaining traces of an accent that’d been invented by some marketing team over a decade ago. “I’ve already seen the apartment. There’s a little blood, but not much else. We’ll be done by sunrise.”

You took the stairs, keeping your head bowed and face shielded from any possible security cameras. Diluc didn’t share your paranoia, staring straight ahead with the same indifferent expression he always seemed to wear. The benefits of having a face that’d been printed and distributed tens of thousands of times, you guessed. Tracking down a single Diluc in a sea of androids and companion bots wasn’t a length most detectives were willing to go to. “I’d rather not have to do this at all.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Says the man who doesn’t have to sleep.” You came to a stop in front of the first door on the fourth story and tried the knob. It gave easily, the cheap titanium dented and the lock broken beyond any hope of repair. Diluc’s handiwork, obviously, although you couldn’t say whether or not he’d done it on purpose. “Anything else you want to tell me, before we get started?”

He thought, for a second. “I passed a carousel on the way here,” he said, with no particular inflection. “It was nice. I thought the horses were well-crafted.”

“About the assignment, ‘luc.”

“Oh,” And then, with a hint of red in his pale cheek. “You might want to hold your breath.”

You didn’t have to ask what he meant. As soon as you opened the door, you were hit with the stomach-turning stench of stale blood and rotting gore, both at least a week old. You cursed, pulling your shirt over your nose and mouth, but pushed forward. The first body was splayed out in the center of the cramped living room, wrists and ankles bound with disembodied wiring, all clothing removed and chest dotted with black ink. The abdomen had been cut open, skin peeled away to reveal the entrails in their full, shriveled glory. Judging by the number of blades littered around the corpse, ranging from blunted scissors to gore-splattered carving knives, it’d been more of a hack job than a dissection.

Diluc had undersold the mess. Blood had soaked into the carpeting and dried, turning the floor a ruddy, reddish-brown color. What was left had gotten on the walls, the furniture, the ceiling. You swallowed back a groan. The furniture could be broken down and discarded, the walls and ceiling bleached. The carpeting, though, would have to be torn up and replaced, which meant you would have to spend a few more precious minutes of your night calling in a cleaning crew. That, or you would have to make Diluc do it, but he was shy around new people, and you were too much of a bleeding heart to sit back and watch him do your work.

“The second body’s in the bedroom.” He was already rummaging through your duffle bag, paying the scene in front of you no more mind that a butcher would lend to a pig on a meat hook. He handed you your tools – a pair of wire cutters, a box cutter, and a pocket-sized sewing kit – and kept the rest for himself. “Let me know when you’re done.”

You let out a breath of a laugh. “I thought you would’ve gotten over that by now, ‘luc.”

He didn’t indulge you with a response, only pulling on a pair of latex gloves and starting towards the corpse. You didn’t stick around to watch. Rather, you followed the carnage where it branched off further into the apartment, a trail of rotting viscera and tacky blood leading you into a moderately sized, completely undecorated bedroom. You found your perpetrator quickly; a Dottore droid, still wearing its Teyvat-issued costuming, its hands bloody and a scrap of intestine still caught in its pointed teeth. You paused in the doorway, feeling for the military-grade taser (the only weapon effective against androids, as far as anyone could tell) you kept in your pocket, but the android didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t activate at all when you reluctantly approached. There was a charging port at the foot of the bed, still pristine. It must’ve run out of battery just before it could plug itself in.

Towels from the nearest bathroom were dampened and brought in, the evidence of slaughter scrubbed away from artificial skin and its blood-soaked clothing removed. It was muscle memory, by now – dragging the body to its charging port, knocking the converter out of the outlet before connecting the android to its port, making it seem like its late user had drained its batteries before mistakenly leaving it on a dead cable. When it’d slummed into place, you took up your box cutter and sliced a long, thin line from the lowest portion of the scalp to the nape of its neck, revealing the color-coded string of wires that connected the processing units in its metal skull to the rest of its body. You cut through everything you could find, ensuring that if the unit was ever activated again, it wouldn’t be able to do so much as blink. For good measure, you fished out the memory chip kept in the centermost compartment of the throat, too, crushing it under your heel and sweeping the glittering remnants underneath the bed. A copy of the footage it collected would’ve been sent to Teyvat's severs, too, but erasing it was someone else’s job. You were only here to take care of yourself.

With a breathy groan, you bit off a length of thread and haphazardly stitched up your ragged incision. The cosmetics really didn’t matter. In a few days, when someone filed a missing person’s report and the cops stopped by for a check-in, they’d find a spotless apartment, a dysfunctional android, and nothing else. The investigation would lead elsewhere, to a bitter ex-partner or a friend without an alibi, or it would hit a dead end. Either way, Teyvat wouldn’t be involved.

You slipped back out of the bedroom, careful to avoid touching anything you didn’t absolutely have to. By the time you got back to the living room, the body was gone and Diluc was kneeling by a black suitcase no larger than the average carry-on, securing the tags with transparent zip-ties. You and Diluc would haul it to a dump on the outskirts of the city tonight, and a contact of yours would have it compressed and incinerated by tomorrow morning. Maybe, when you were done, you’d take him out for something to eat. Or, you’d get something to eat while he let a mug of black coffee go cold.

You rested your hand on his shoulder by way of praise, pulling away when he stiffened underneath you. Right, that was something you had to work on. Most rogue androids tended to be touch-adverse at best, made aggressive by little more than eye-contact at worst. Diluc was relatively tame compared to most of the cases you handled, but you would still rather not provoke him. “Did you find the phone?”

He grunted, fishing a smartphone out of his pocket. With your sleeve pulled over your hand, you accepted it, found the nearest window, and chucked it as far as into the night as you could. Diluc appeared over your shoulder. “Forty-five meters,” he said, as glass crashed into cement somewhere in the distance. “Above average for non-athletes.”

“I’ve been practicing.” The window was closed, the suitcase slung over Diluc’s shoulder along with your near-empty duffle bag. “I have to make a call. You can meet me in the garage, if you want.” Already pulling up the number to your preferred cleaning service, you glanced to Diluc. “Are we doing breakfast?”

His posture straightened. “Yes.” If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought you saw a spark in his glass eyes. “I want to try tea, today.”

~

By the time you got to the door, Diluc was soaking wet.

You hadn’t gotten a call, and he didn’t text. The first warning you got was a knock on your door, then another a few minutes later, after you decided that anyone who’d go out in this kind of weather wasn’t someone you wanted in your shoebox of an apartment. You only caved after the third, imagining a neighbor who’d gotten locked out or some lost, desperate tourist as you dragged yourself off of your couch and to the unlit entryway. Predictably, Diluc stood in your doorway, red hair plastered to his scalp and clothes drenched, not that he seemed to mind.

“Can you—” He paused, his dull eyes meeting yours as he ran his fingers through his hands, dragging the crimson heap out of his face. “Can you cut my hair?”

Ten minutes later, he was sitting on a stool in your cramped bathroom, wearing grey sweatpants and a (three sizes too big on you, just a touch too small on him) t-shirt while his own clothes dried. He’d told you it wasn’t necessary, that he didn’t feel the cold like you did. When you told him that you didn’t want an univited guest tracking water into your apartment, he accepted it with a curt nod and changed in your bedroom.

After prepping your razor, you positioned yourself behind him, dragging a comb through his hair. It was long enough to reach his waist, curled at the end to make him seem just a touch more disheveled than he actually was. Everything about his hair, from the length of his bangs to the way it could never quite sit completely flat, was perfectly stylized, perfectly crafted to convey Diluc Ragnvindr, Calvery Captain of the Favonious Knights, the only gentleman you’ll ever need again. You’d be lying if you said there wasn’t a part of you that didn’t mourn ruining such a well-executed vision. “You sure about this?” you asked, as you brushed it out. “It can’t exactly grow back.”

“I am.” And then, after a second of thought, “I’d do it myself, but there’s a safe-guard. Can’t damage the merchandise without a direct order from my user.”

Hence why Teyvat needed you in the first place. “How short do you want it?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s different.”

You hummed, taking up your scissors. “If you say so, boss.”

You cut away everything below his shoulders, then took up your electric razor – running it over the back of his neck. As you worked, Diluc spoke. “How did you start?” You took up your comb, brushing back his bangs and pasting his hair to the side. “With Teyvat, I mean.”

You tasted blood on the back of your tongue, felt a chill run up your spine. You brushed it off, though, refusing to let yourself fall back into that little steel room with those awful golden eyes again. “They brought me on as a technician,” you admitted. You still were one, technically, on your employment transcript, when people outside of your little world asked what you did for a living. “A first-generation Zhongli we were working on went rogue and reverted to its original Morax programming. It wiped out most of my team before security bothered to show up.” You didn’t tell him about the minutes you’d spent hiding in a steel locker, praying its heat sensors had been removed, or the hours it’d taken upper management to decide what to do with you. To people like Diluc, who could take a bullet to the head without faltering, topics like ‘building dread’ and ‘the imminent fear of death’ tended to fall flat. “Since I was already in on their dirty little secret, they decided to keep me on. I didn’t really get a choice. It wasn’t like another job was going to fall into my lap after something like that.”

With your hand under his chin, you turned his head to the side. “Your turn, ‘luc.”

“I… I think I used to be a companion, but something went wrong.” His bangs were next, taken up and coaxed into sitting somewhere other than the dead center of his face. “It’s hard to describe. We aren’t supposed to think about things that aren’t our master,” The word came out hitched, unsteady, like he had to force it past his lips. Like he hadn’t wanted to say it at all. “But I could. It was like… waking up with the ability to fly. I wasn’t supposed to, but I could, and that meant I couldn’t do what I was built to, anymore.”

A thumb pressed into his jaw, a comb dragged across his scalp. Diluc’s eyes fell shut, but else about his blank expression changed. “And? Do you like it?”

“Sometimes.” His shoulders slanted downward. “Do you?”

“Sometimes.” You let go of his chin, letting him turn back to the vanity’s mirror. “What do you think?”

It was far from a masterpiece. The sides were too short, the front too long, every part of it still as untamable as it’d been in its original state. Still, he took it in with wide eyes, the corner of his lips turning upward ever so slightly.

“It’s perfect.”

~

By the time he got back, you’d nearly fallen asleep.

With your body as wrung out as it was, your energy spent to the point of near unconsciousness, it was all you could do to watch through your eyelashes as Diluc appeared in the doorway to your bedroom, a towel thrown over his shoulder and that tiny, almost undetectable smile still painted across his lips. You’d done this enough for him to know how to navigate your apartment, to know how to navigate you – shifting onto your mattress slowly as he positioned himself between your legs. He’d gotten more used to contact since you started seeing each other, but his touch was still ginger, still gentle as he dragged the dampened cloth over the inside of your thighs. With a groan, you rolled onto your back, spreading your legs and giving him more space to work.

You’d been confused at first, but for all the eloquence Diluc lacked, he could be convincing when he wanted to be. You still weren’t sure how much of it you believed, but it made enough sense – a buried impulse, dampened by his newfound sentience but not quite drowned out. He didn’t want another user, he’d said, but he still had requirements to fill, and this would help to take the edge off.

You couldn’t complain, either. People coughed up tens of thousands of dollars for companion droids, and here you were, being paid six figures a year to close your eyes and let one bury his face between your thighs once or twice a week. The coddling wasn’t bad, either. Your line of work meant most of the people you met had stopped breathing a few days prior, and as loathed as you’d be to admit it, you didn’t hate the feeling of his delicate hands skirting over your skin, didn’t mind it when your eyes drifted open and met his, already fixed on your face. He bowed his head, dipping low enough for his lips to ghost over the curve of your hip before breaking the silence. “A sight as radiant as the rising sun.”

You let out a breath of a chuckle. “I didn’t think you used pre-scripted lines, anymore.”

“I don’t.” He preened, clearly more proud of himself than in-awe of you. “I thought of that one myself.”

This time, your laugh was throaty, genuine, loud enough to ring off the wall of your bedroom as you shoved him away with your foot. “If you want to be romantic, you can start by getting me something to drink, loverboy.”

He provided no resistance, disappearing into your dark apartment and reappearing with a glass of water in his hand a few minutes later. He handed it off to you with an easy smile, and you could almost pretend you didn’t see a phantom of gold in those dark eyes as his fingertips brushed against yours.

~

By the time you thought to reach for your taser, the android was already charging at you.

It was an Alhaitham, dressed in civilian clothes and sporting a ragged tear across the synthetic skin of his cheek. He was still standing over the corpse of his user – days old, by the time you and Diluc got there – but as you opened the door, he turned to face you, lips parted and his expression totally, utterly blank. For a second, it was all you could do to stare at him, to try to remember whether or not your report had mentioned the android being active, and then he was lunging at you.

You scrambled for your taser, already knowing you couldn’t be able to reach it before he reached you. You clenched your eyes shut, your fingers brushing against plastic, and then—

And then you felt Diluc’s hand on your shoulder, heard metal crack and fold into itself. Hesitantly, you opened your eyes, forcing yourself to take in the sight of Diluc’s hand wrapped around the android’s head which had been, in turn, reduced to a crumpled heap of scrap metal and shattered glass. Its body twitched once, twice, then went limp, and Diluc released it, letting the now-dysfunctional droid collapse.

After it failed to get up again, Diluc turned to you, practically beaming. “I think,” he said, his voice low, sentimental. “That this is what I’d do to you, if you ever tried to leave me.”

Golden eyes, the stench of fresh blood, the sounds of screaming muffled only by a thin sheet of metal. This time, it wasn’t so easy to pull yourself out of it.

You managed to nod, to force a few words out of your dry throat. “Got it, ‘luc.”

 He hummed, the noise contented, appeased. Slowly, delicately, he cupped your cheek, tilting your head back and letting his lips ghost over your forehead. He barely touched you, the gesture as gentle as it was fleeting, but you could feel his grin cutting into your skin, wider than you’d ever seen it before.

[mrheymister]

In a distant future once I finish my Isaac fic I've had an idea rolling around in my head for a modern AU/Time travel Arthur x oc or reader (not too sure, I've never written x reader but it seems fun!)

Basically, time wormholes popping up and closing are a documented phenomenon, usually occurring during intense electrical storms. People unfortunate enough to get caught in one find themselves whisked decades, centuries, even millenia into the future or the past. Sucks for you if you get teleported back into the stone age ig.

While not a terribly common occurrence in our modern era, you still get one or two people any given year popping up out of time. Because of technical limitations and lack of complete understanding about the wormhole phenomenon, we can't just send them back, so it becomes necessary to form a small government-funded organization to both study the phenomenon and its effects on those displaced by it, as well as "rehabilitating" and integrating displaced people into our society.

The year is 2019. A critically acclaimed docu-drama series about the last of the American outlaws (feat van Der Lind gang) has just finished airing the year prior, and people are still raving. Fans love to speculate about the fate of Arthur Morgan, who, by all accounts, simply vanished in the fall of 1899, some few weeks before the Van Der Lind gang fell apart.

An unconsious, half-dead man and his horse are found in the middle of some Carolina mountains after a severe thunderstorm. Due to the man's condition (advanced TB,) the horse's tack, his clothes, and the contents of his bag (among which is a journal with entires dating to 1899) it is assumed they are yet another of the unfortunately temporally displaced (we rarely get to document animals coming through, how lucky!), so he and the horse are taken to a dedicated facility.

There he spends several weeks unconscious as he is treated, and speculation spreads like wildfire among the agency about the long lost Arthur Morgan. Unfortunately for everyone involved, they must keep quiet.

Since the government can't go executing someone who's already supposed to be long dead, it is decided that the man will be integrated into society like all the rest of the displaced.

Enter CHARACTER, who is like the only person on the planet who hasn't watched the stupid cowboy show. Since CHARACTER is the only one in the agency who is "unbiased" in regards to this man, they are assigned to his case. Their job is first, to break the news to this guy that he has found himself 120 years in the future, and the world and everyone he knew as he knew them is gone. (At least his horse came with him!) Obviously, the man is aggrieved and angry and confused, ESPECIALLY once he discovers that his life story is the subject of a famous piece of media that he barely understands (moving pictures? In color??) so they gotta work thru that too.

CHARACTER'S second job is to acclimate the man to his new environment. Catch him up on what he missed, help him learn his way around the new technology, teach him how to drive a car (lol can you IMAGINE,) get him a job, ect, with the end goal of him becoming an independent and functional member of society.

And somewhere along the way, these two come to care about each other as more than just case worker/casee, and that comes with its own set of problems.

Idk I guess I'm just writing this all down as a future reference to myself, and to see if anyone else finds this interesting/exciting. If I make an OC it'd probably be a dude, but if I tried the reader route it'd have to be a fem!reader.

Thoughts?

Edit oh shit I forgot for a second that COVID was a thing that happened in 2019... yikes.

[hyperpotamianarch]

The Jewsade

So, this isn't the first time I write about it. That honour belongs to the post I've made about Judaism in the world of His Dark Materials. However, that particular post was always meant to serve two branches - the one about history and the other about the Jewish outlook on dæmons. So I don't think it's a good post to introduce the idea. Thus, I'm honoured to present to you the new introduction to the Jewsade.

Firstly, I would like to tell you about a fascinating event from our world, the one that offers the basis to this story.

Imagine this: you are a Venetian Jew, living in the ghetto. Not too long ago, about two to three decades, there has been a wave of Sefaradi immigrants, escaping their banishment from their land. They don't have much hope anymore for things to get better, with friends and family suffering under the Spanish Inquisition.

Then, one day, an odd man comes to town. He's Jewish, relatively dark skin, on the shorter side, and wears exotic clothings. He speaks odd Hebrew, and claims to come from a Jewish kingdom far away to talk to the Pope. He needs some degree of financing from you so that he could go to Rome.

The community eventually finances him and he heads to Rome, riding a fine horse. He is accepted by the Jewish community there, and using the ties of one of their members, he manages to get an audieance with the Pope. To him, he explains: as he's the general of said Jewish kingdom (and the king's brother), he wants cannons and artillery from Europe to help him fight the Ottomans and take the Holy Land. He simply wants the Pope to give him recommendation letters to the kings of Europe, to persuade them to lend him their aid - in the form of weaponry, as he already has the people.

All that is real, historical events. Which, I really don't know how otherworldly it sounds, but it's not exactly normal. The story doesn't end here, but since the story of this Jewish (supposed) general is later intertwined with that of another person, and it would probably lengthen this post a little too much if I told it. And so, I prefer pausing here - especially since this is very close to the point of divergence.

The Pope geve this man - David Reubeni - recommendation letters to the kings of Portugal and Ethiopia. Reubeni got stuck in Italy for a while because the Portuguese ambassador didn't like or believe him, but he eventually went to Portugal where the Inquisition stopped for the duration of his visit. This sparked excitement among the conversos, the Jews of Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity just about two and a half decades earlier - which kind of annoyed king João I of Portugal, who asked David if he came to make the conversos go back to Judaism, which the latter denied. However, when one converso by the name of Diogo Pires came to David repeatedly, trying to talk to him about returning to Judaism and later circumcising himself of his own accord - well, that was the last straw. Diogo, who renamed himself Shəlomoh Molcho, was forced to flee Portugal and David had to leave later as well. Molcho went on to study much Torah and became something of a mystic. He prophecied an overflowing of the Tiber and an earthquake in Portugal, and even received official letters of protection from the Pope despite being a Christian who abandoned Catholicism to become a Jew. David went through some stuff, including being arrested in Spain and later freed, and the two of them eventually met and went to emperor Charles V of Germany (who was also Carlos I of Spain), hoping to... cpnvince him to help them, or convert to Judaism, or both. It doesn't matter, because they were arrested, tortured and executed (on separate occasions).

The world of the Jewsade tries exploring the question: but what if they did obtain the weaponry David Reubeni wanted so much? What if they managed conquering the Holy Land? Well, the first problem with that is David's claims about a Jewish kingdom, which he claims was located "in the desert of Ḥabor". To be more accurate, the problem is this kingdom being fake.

As far as modern historians know, there has not been any independent Jewish kingdom anywhere ever since Khazar, which is itself a debated topic. The likelihood of an actual Jewish kingdom existing around the 16th century is slim at best. The historians also don't really know where David came from exactly - was he from the Arabian peninsula? Ethiopia? India? Was he, perhaps, an Ashkenazi Jew who spent a lot of times around southern or eastern areas? All those are theories that were raised.

For the sake of my story, I'm considering having it be that he told the full truth: somewhere in the Arabian peninsula, in areas not fully controlled by the Ottomans, there's a Jewish kingdom of people from the tribes of Re'uven and Gad, ruled over by a king of the Davidic line and a council of 70 elders. Another option is David managing to bluff his way through to the king of Portugal while simultaneously recruiting Jewish men from across Europe to serve as his army. Though I'm considering doing both - maybe the Jewish kingdom exists, but it's way smaller than David made it out to be and they don't really have enough soldiers to man many cannons and weaponry alone isn't really enough.

In this continuity, maybe the Pope gives David more recommendation letters. Maybe Shəlomoh Molcho manages to hide his return to Judaism and helps convince the king of Portugal to lend David the weapons and ships, then joins him with a bunch of conversos to escape Portugal and return to Judaism. I don't really know yet what happened, and the way I'm trying to tell the story right now doesn't really require me to know much outside the final outcome: an independent Jewish kingdom in Israel, in spite of both the Ottoman empire and European rising colonial powers wanting to control it.

This kingdom might be in a precarious situation. It might be destroyed by the Ottomans in any minute, or have to bow down before Christian rulers. However, for the time being, there's a Jewish kingdom in Eretz Yisra'el. The Temple might be rebuilt, Jews might flood the newly established kingdom... and we'll have to see.

As mentioned in a different post, the format I'm currently trying is telling the story through various documents, so far including the preface and Hascamot on a halachic book and a letter from this kingdom's king to Jews in diaspora. Since this is supposedly in the world of His Dark Materials, there should probably be dæmons, and by the time the kingdom is founded the Pope will be replaced by John Calvin. Depending how long the kingdom will stand, it might get a chance to put its hands on an Alethiometer as well. The likelihood of that, though, is low.

[no-phrogs-in-hats]

Heyyyyy! Can I request a Brienne x fem reader fic? Maybe Brienne and reader run away to Dorne so they can be together? Like maybe Y/n is a princess or something and Brienne was her bodyguard, and some love-making as a way to celebrate their victory when they get there? (Only if you're comfortable of course!)

Love and War Part 2 !!!NSFW!!!

Brienne of Tarth x fem!reader

Warnings: SMUT (very soft and not very long)

A/N: Last part of this little "mini-series" idk it was only two parts so it's not really a series but whatever. enjoy<33

Read Part 1 here

“Alright…” Brienne adjusts the hood on your cloak. “I think this should be fine. How do you feel?”

You chuckle. “Well the clothes are a bit big…” She gives you an amused look that turns into a ‘seriously-this-is-life-and-death–are-you-alright?’ look. “A bit anxious…but, I’ve heard wonderful things about Dorne. So, if we make it–”

“When we make it,” Brienne cut in, looking stern. 

You sigh. “Okay, okay. When we make it.” Smiling up at her, you take her hand in yours. “Nobody knows us there. And nobody knows we’re going there. We can make our own life. We can be happy…farming chickens and growing crops and…other things that I can’t think of right at this moment.”

You watch with affection as Brienne smiles, holding back obvious tears. She leans her forehead against yours and sniffles before placing a soft kiss there, whispering, “I love you so much.”

It was just past five in the morning when you snuck out of the boarding house together. The sun was still below the horizon and Brienne’s arm remained around your waist as you crept through the streets. You had nothing but the clothes on your backs and a small pouch of coins to spend rationally. You truly were starting a new life from scratch.

“I remember seeing a stable around here,” Brienne whispers as you approach a farm not far from the village. “There should be a horse that we can–”

“Steal?” you finish. “Brienne of Tarth stealing a horse and running away with a princess…When will it end?”

She smiles at your teasing before shushing you and pulling you closer. When the two of you approach the stables to find the door locked, Brienne mutters a curse under her breath. She glances around, “Maybe there’s a window we could–What are you doing?”

“Done.” She looks at you aghast. In your right hand, you hold a pin from your hair, and in the other hand, the lock from the stable door.

“How–?”

Sighing, you push the pin back into your hair. “When you live in a castle for two-and-a-half decades, Brienne, you wander. And when you wander, you encounter locked doors.”

“You are just…full of surprises,” she says. 

After allowing you to go in first, she goes to a rack of riding equipment. As she retrieves the saddle and bridle, you go to a stall of a horse that seems wide awake, and, after you both swiftly prepare the horse, Brienne mounts it, reaching out for your hand to help you on. 

You sit in front with her arms wrapped around you to keep you secure. In the dark you hear her soft voice. “Are you comfortable?”

“In your arms?” you ask. “Yes. On this saddle? I’ve been comfier.”

Brienne chuckles. “Well, it won’t be long. The harbor isn’t far.”

As the sun rose in the sky, gray light shedding over the sea port, the pair of you boarded the ship heading to Sunspear. Around noon, after a lunch of fish and dried fruits, you and Brienne stand on the upper deck together, watching as the water rushes past. 

“The water’s so blue!” Your mouth is open in awe. “Brienne, look!”

“I know where we are,” she says.

You look at her. “What?”

“The Isle of Tarth.” Brienne looks at you, squinting against the sun but still smiling. “That’s where we are. The water. That’s how you can tell.”

“Do you miss it?” you ask. “Tarth?”

She hunches over, elbows resting on the railing. You can see it in her eyes and her demeanor that she’s thinking carefully about how she should respond. “There’s not much to miss. Sure, the landscape is beautiful, and I had a cushy life back then, but I never had any close friends and all of my siblings are dead. I miss my father…but I think that’s as far as it’ll go.”

“I’m sorry,” you mutter, taking her hand in yours. 

“Why? You haven’t done anything.” Brienne squeezes your hand, assuring you that it was alright. “There have been bad moments, but there have also been good. Like when my father got me my first real sword for my sixteenth birthday…Valyrian steel. And then, I used a wooden one about a month later to prove to Ser Humfrey Wagstaff that women can fight and that I wouldn’t be marrying him.”

You giggle. “And how did you prove it to him with the wooden sword?”

“Well,” she begins, “after telling him that I’ll only marry a man who can outfight me, he agreed to fight me, and I ended up breaking not just his collarbone, but two ribs as well.” As you howl with laughter, Brienne tries to hold back a smile and fails, letting a short laugh break through. “He was sixty-five.” You both quiet down and she sighs. “That was the last betrothal I ever received. I had two before it. My father gave up after Ser Humfrey.”

“What happened with the two before?” you ask. 

“Erm…the first one…I was seven, he was ten,” she answers. “He was Lord Caron’s son. We met once, and then he was killed by a sickness. And the second one…” You could tell that she was struggling to recall the painful memories. “Ser Ronnet Connington. I was twelve, and he was eighteen. I was awkward, could barely speak, and I couldn’t even look him in the eyes. He handed me a rose and–” Her words seemed to choke her. “–he told me that I was a sow in silk in his eyes and that–that a single rose would be the only thing he’d ever give me.”

Your heart ached at the past she had experienced. “Brienne, I’m–”

“Don’t,” she cut in. “You don’t need to say you’re sorry. I’ve had enough people in my life feel sorry for me.”

“I wasn’t going to say sorry.” You move closer to her. Tarth was nicknamed the Sapphire Isle for its blue waters and sparkling streams, but in this moment, you were certain that if anything in those isles was worthy of being compared to sapphires it was the deep blue eyes that looked into yours at this very moment. 

Brienne looked confused. “Oh…I apologize…Then, what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say that I couldn’t be happier that you’re here.”

__________

“Any news?” 

Brienne walks through the door with a basket of eggs in hand, directly from the coop outside. You sit at the small dining table when you hear her voice, writing a letter to your mother by the light of a candle. A year had seemed like mere seconds as you looked upon the face of your dearly beloved.

“Yes,” you respond. “My mother said that my father and the king have settled matters and that negotiations have been made so there won’t be a war between the kingdoms. Oh, and my younger sister is to be married next year, and my brother is expecting his second child.”

Brienne smiles and she sets the basket of eggs down. “The tomatoes seem to be doing well,” she says. “The peppers too…I think it might rain tonight.”

You stop writing and set the quill down gently. As Brienne flits around in the kitchen, you rest your chin in the palm of your hand and stare. That’s all you do. Stare. She was the sole focus of your eyes and a smile couldn’t help but form.

Brienne stops when she sees you. “What?”

“Nothing,” you giggle. “I just love you.” You stand up and walk around the table to take her in your arms, smiling as you press kisses to her lips. “I–” A kiss. “–love–” Another kiss. “–you.” A final kiss. “I am so happy, I feel like I might burst.”

Her lips are on yours once more and hands begin to roam. In the dim light of the bedroom that you share, your breaths mingle in heated kisses and sweat beads on your forehead as you tremble in her arms.

Brienne lays on top of you as her fingers curl and her teeth nip at the flesh on your neck. You breathe heavily, muttering words and grasping at her hair. “Brienne…Oh, gods, please don’t stop.” 

Your back arches and you pull her lips back to yours, tongues clashing and teeth biting as your hand makes its way down her side. You relish in the feeling of goosebumps on her bare skin, grinning into the kiss as you slip your fingers into her entrance and feel her breath catch in her throat.

Both of you break away from the kiss with heaving chests, fingers quickening and craving each other’s releases. Brienne’s head falls forward, forehead resting against yours as her eyes burn into yours. Every sense is magnetized. The feeling of Brienne’s hands on you, the sound of your breathing, your moans, the sight of blonde hair falling around you, the lingering taste of her on your tongue…

Your legs start to shake and your free hand grasps Brienne’s shoulders. She leans in quickly, pressing kiss after kiss to your lips, murmuring, “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

The candles were almost out when your eyes grew heavy. You laid there in each other’s arms, catching your breaths and listening to the summer rain that had begun to fall outside. 

How can such a small moment cause such a rush of emotion? Brienne’s voice rang in your head from the night you chose her.

“We’ll live, and we’ll be happy.”

This is what it is, isn’t it? Domestic life and pure bliss. Here, you would live, and here you would be happy.

[goodomensafterdark]

Writer's Guild Presents: His Partner's Mark (ch2)

Written by Niknak90 on Reddit for the GOAD subreddit!

In which Crowley gets fucked while wearing the turtleneck like he deserves (and Aziraphale leaves his mark on it). Also featuring Crowley getting yanked around in the necktie.

CW/TW/Tags-light D/S dynamics, dom Aziraphale/sub Crowley, top Aziraphale/bottom Crowley, come marking, genital switching (Crowley starts with penis, ends with vulva), blow jobs, anal sex, cunnilingus, PIV, butt plugs

Summary- Crowley and Aziraphale are officially together after the world doesn't end, but Aziraphale is still having trouble acknowledging it in public. After fighting about this, they go to the pub. An encounter with a carpet salesman forces Aziraphale to claim his demon in public. Said demon's enticing outfit inspires him to mark him in other ways behind closed doors.

Ch1-no smut, could honestly be a T-rated oneshot on its own, Ch2 is almost pure smut.

Ch2 Excerpt

Once they returned to the shop, Aziraphale locked the door and shut the curtains. Then he pressed Crowley against the door and kissed him, apparently forgetting his own rule.

“Someone’s impatient. Didn’t even give me a chance to take my glasses off.” Crowley said with a smirk. Normally, Aziraphale refused to kiss him with the glasses on, as he didn’t like it putting a barrier between them. As a result, Crowley almost never wore glasses past the entryway. He wanted as few barriers to being kissed and touched as possible. He wouldn’t even bother with clothes half the time if Aziraphale didn’t insist he wear something.

“We waited for centuries. I’d say that’s patience enough, wouldn’t you?” Aziraphale ran his hands down the soft turtleneck. Crowley melted into the touch. They’d only had this relationship for a few years in their long history together, so it all still felt so new. Would he get used to this after decades, centuries? Get bored by it, crave something new as humans tended to do? It seemed unimaginable.

Right now, he was the very opposite of bored as Aziraphale slipped one hand around his waist and pulled him in by the necktie for another kiss. “Now, are you ready to learn what sort of ideas this fetching ensemble has inspired, dear?”

“Somehow, I didn’t think strangling me with my own necktie was one of them.”

“If I strangled you out here, I couldn’t take you in the back room, which would be a shame. Would you like to join me there, dear?”

“Yessss, pleasssse.” He had gone there many times by now, had hoped that dressing up for his angel would lead to precisely this.

He hadn’t expected to enjoy submitting so much when Aziraphale first suggested it; in his encounters with mortals before they’d gotten together, he’d always needed to be the one in control. But there was something about letting his angel make the decisions, trusting that he would get exactly what he needed. Today, he craved the reassurance that his angel wanted him, needed him as badly as he needed Aziraphale.

“Excellent. Glasses off first, then come with me.” Crowley set his glasses on the horse statue, then let Aziraphale grab his necktie and lead him to the back room. It should be humiliating, far beneath a demon to be led around like an angel’s pet. It was, a little, but also arousing. And who would object to being led into Paradise?

Read more on AO3!

[weepingfoxfury]

'I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me' sings Clint Eastwood ... the man on the radio is all about the Oscars and film awards today ... the traffic lady does her best gruff cowboy impression as she talks of the usual holdups, breakdowns and collisions.

I'm thinking of an old John Wayne film ... no idea of the title ... but, what sticks is the image of him sitting backwards on a horse and jerkily riding out of a tricky situation.

I wonder if any children anywhere play cowboys and Indians and more? Probably not. A bygone era in so many ways. Decades ago I used to play that game with my sibling. I was always the Indian on account of my lack of ability with making gun noises. 'You just sound like you're spitting on people!' would be shouted at me.

Then, of course, there was the lengthy discussion of how a bow and arrow should sound. Much bickering would ensue. Then, having finally agreed on 'Thwack! Ferdung!', the game would continue until such time as it was declared 'Lie down! You're dead! I won!' ... before the inevitable stomping off of my sibling declaring that I couldn't even fall over and die properly.

So many childhood games that I remember. There were no mobile phones, no computer games, just the command to 'Go outside and get some fresh air!' Learning to ride my bike hands free ... learning to use my roller skates ... climbing trees and sliding down mud banks ... throwing sticks off a bridge into the river and rushing to the other side to see whose stick came through first.

Eventually going home to the inevitable eye rolling and comments on the state of our clothing. Changing into clean stuff and sitting with a hot drink before continuing to disagree over who had won what.

From where I'm sitting now I can hear children outside shouting and screaming, I've no idea what game they're playing, but it sounds energetic. I hope there's mud and grass stains on trouser knees involved. I'm also thinking of all the kids who only play games on their phones ... wondering if there's a game that in any way simulates getting as filthy as me and my sibling used to .......... and half sighing, half laughing at the idea of virtually mucky clothing ... but then, there's bound to be an App that not only cleans up such mess but also makes the noises I couldn't make when I was small ...

[joannasteez]

peace, be still

The wind bristles , so cold it burns. Here in some sleepy, darkened tundra, his dreams come like thieves, stealing breath and strength. And he rides war like, relentless, the stallion beneath him beating hard against a blend of winter sand and summer snow. Trampling ground to cover an endless distance. The way his bones grow weary, on the verge of fracture, hands so taut, they ache about the reigns. Grip as stiff as the long pulling tension in his neck. But he rides, rides, rides, swifter than the wind stretching wild against his face. Threatening to break already marred skin.

There is a loosening in his spirit as it erodes against the gust. The rhythm of hooves, that pounding ache in his skull, a seductive whisper in that swift rushing wind. 'Let go', they say, but the impact will splinter him fast, shatter his measly bones into old, bitter pieces. How else will he ride, if he dies? For a horse has no use for a still corpse and neither will the wind take great pleasure in whirling amongst the idleness of his dusted remains. 

His hands flatten like tattered paper, grip useless. Body falling, a feather against the cold. His dreams come like thieves, stealing bits of breath and beats of his heart. The brace for impact curling broad shoulders inward, till he's balled small, and scared. Breathless. And when he gasps', the come to is harsh on his lungs. Sharp and awakening. I'm not dead yet', he thinks, sighs. Relieved. Weary. Warm low lamp light at the corner of his eye and the twisting sheets about his hard thighs. Not yet. 

Joel feels disrupted still though, like an old body in new skin. Jackson, Wyoming is beautiful, a dream even. A tiny perfection made by fragile hands, but he can feel the war in him still, under flesh and bone, the way it shifts under new clothes and a soft leather coat. The tingle at the base of his neck and the pins pricking just at the soles of his feet. 

When the children pass him by, trudging happy through the snow, they smile, wave even, but the most he can muster is something half baked and unoriginal. Curt nods and a twitchy lipped semblance of some lesser Mona Lisa smile. And when the women shuffle in their wake, their eyes linger against the silver streaks lining his hair and the thick cut of his fingers. They smile like college girls, small and knowing of some speechless suggestion. And something in his gut pulls warm and awakening, for seconds at a time, before it snuffs fast to a cold emptiness. ‘Slowing down is good. You'll be settled in no time', his brother said once. Says it again, all the time, like some sacred mantra, but his restless insides war hard, exacting, with the stillness that so patiently awaits him.

But when Joel doesn't dream, he sifts through memory. Feels the dull throb of a slow to heal tear along the base of his abdomen...

... and remembers the pain, the frantic sweat of his skin and dread riffling just over his bones. He remembers some weeks ago, Tommy sticking a rifle in his hand along with a horses reigns. 

"It's huntin' time you old fucker", he chuckles. Eyes brown and bright still. Somehow. 

Joel rides alongside him and it's something like Texas all over again. "Time to see this bullshit power scope in action". 

"Never gonna stop given me shit about that huh?" 

"I'm still breathin' ain't I?"

The commune gates open and they ride through, met with a fresh blanket of deep snow. 

And to say that nerve doesn't pick raw at his resolve would be a lie, but trailing away from hard truths has been Joel's routine for years. Over a decade really. He's a bit ways away from terrified, still. A beautiful marksman when it counts, when survival is paramount, blood rushing, flooding a beating into his pulse, but his knees are worn and his right ear fails him at keeping a steady awareness. He's all rough and ruined, coarse edges playing at sharpness. Yet theres a rifle strapped to his back, and an unwavering glint of trust in Tommy's kind eyes. 

"Its kinda like Texas a little", his brother pipes up from beside him.

Joel snorts. Feels the Wyoming wind ride through his hair. 'Texas my ass', he thinks. "How you figure?" 

"You being here I guess. Us together. It's kinda like old times". 

Joel doesn't say much past a hum thats not all too contemplative, ignoring the warm stinging in his chest. Moves out and makes way for a long silence to take over. But the silence doesn't pass, it stays. Blankets over them like snow, swaddles them whole. 

Hunting proves to be a slow, tedious affair, nothing at all to get excited about save for the hot meals to follow. The accuracy of Tommy's power scope feeds what little amusement already existing amongst the small group, till of course, Joel's words prove themselves with a faithful return, taunting and devilish, to bite him in the ass. Even up here in the vacant West, safety is an illusion. A distraction. Some ill-fated dream. And it's that steady strum over nerve that gets him, awakens suspicion, because he's a little frayed, but never torn. Far from it even. Instinct pushes his fingers into a familiar movement till the rifle is secure enough in his hands to shoot. 

There are disruptions in the snow, foot steps that don't belong. 

It comes at a deathly speed, an arrow shrill in the wind, whipping just hairs away from his bad ear. Lodging hard into the wood of a tree. Theres five of them, no, seven, another two emerging on horseback from the horizon line. Seven to their five. Joel's stomach churns, solidifies with resolve, a will to make it back home. Home. That little commune of folks, the place where Tommy lives. In the face of sudden death, it all advances beyond his hesitancies, beyond what restrains him and reduces him to a meaningless cordiality. Jackson, he believes in this moment, is home. 

"Joel", Tommy booms. Fettered with fear. It's the hell of desert storm all over again. 

He moves familiar. Strides deep and fast in the snow and takes the tree for cover. He breathes. Listens. Waits. The arrows and bullets have limits, and when the reload comes, he emerges with that beautiful God given precision and shoots a horse rider dead. The snow painted in blood. Eagles caw above him in knowing of some manmade chaos, flapping in judgement, in tune with the trees that sway in terrified breezes, ruffling up some somber song in the stillness. Instinct speaks, a duet with nature. Leaves halve, go brittle in the wake of some hard footed destruction, Joel's skin runs skittish. He turns in time to dodge the blunt force of some incoming weapon. Secures space behind the man well enough to have him about the neck. He huffs, twisting, the snap of bone before the man slumps to be buried in the snow. 

But there is another, and the knife he comes with drives faster than instinct can fight. A deep slicing beyond fabric and into the skin of his abdomen. 

Joel buckles, stuttering from pain. A gun shot sends his assailant downward. The pain rips him raw, of fight and strength, his blood staining a deep red into his fingers. 

A tiredness overtakes him.

And God is he tired right now, has been for some days, more than usual actually, but thats what stillness does to you. Makes you tired. And 'Im falling', he thinks. Can feel the earth closing in on his face. He curls inward, like in those dark chilly dreams. Bracing for an impact that never comes. His brother, shivering with panic, catching him, curses ripping off his tongue as he helps Joel to a disturbed horse. 

Tommy feels the ices in his lungs when he breathes. "So help me God Joel, stay awake". 

For Joel the day dims, a slow sweeping darkness about his eyes. 

"C'mon big brother, stay with me". 

The horse buckles, steps nervously to and fro in an agitation dug up from primal urges. It wars on its own, whether to stay or flee. Tommy shushes it, shushes her, runs fingers along her spine. And he's strong. Stronger than Joel remembers. Capable. Moves fast, thinks quick. And as his bones grow cold, he thinks of the former things, once being like that too. Capable and reliable, but now he's fettered to fear, huffing and horrified like Tommy's horse. But even the horse is more useful, galloping through the snowy plains, its hooves beating against the ground to save his life. 'Does he think I'm useless?', Joel wonders, held up in Tommy's hold. Feeling that slow frigid stretch of death pulling under his flesh. 'After all this time, what does he think of me now?'

But in the moment Tommy thinks of very little, feeling the bite of the wind, something wicked and gnawing, cutting at his skin. It taunts him, rips his reality to shreds, like he's been stabbed too. Because for years, Wyoming had been a fortress. Some great big fortified structure propping up some otherwise broken thing. But the illusion breaks soon, always does, as his horse tears through, kicking up snow and dirt. Wyoming cuts back against Tommy's skin, peeling off into the wind to slice against the fragility of his face. He feels the pool of Joel's blood, a warmth that cakes and hardens in the wintry bitterness and sees the severity of believing in dreams. The grand mask held up by an illusion. Tommy rides, rides, rides, rushing back to save what remains of dreams, his older brother, his only brother, bleeding out in the grip of his arm. 

An eye wells, tears slipping to streak his cheek. 

"We're almost there", is the last thing Tommy says. The last thing Joel hears before the darkness takes him. 

[storybounded]

15 Questions For The Writer

1. Are you named after anyone? Off of tumblr, my family named me after a character from the soap opera, 'D.ays of our Lives'.

2. When was the last time you cried? Mmmm. Christmas eve? Not going to divulge in that though haha. Just out of frustration.

3. Do you have kids? No.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Oh yes, though I try not to use it against people who I don't know or who aren't keen with it. But if I hear someone use sarcasm, I'll do it right back.

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people? Mainly what clothes they are wearing. Or if they have a cute bag. Or listening to them react to their environment, whether it's positive or negative.

I can't look into faces of strangers I don't know. I know in interviews with a stranger for a job, it's a lot different, but I still have to force myself to give eye contact. Otherwise, it makes me physically uncomfortable if I don't know a person. So my eyes are usually drawn by colors of apparel first, or the sounds going on around me.

6. What’s your eye colour? Hazel Green

7. Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings rn. I cannot physically stomach scary movies (or even shows with 'everyday' scary themes currently, but I know I will get back to those eventually).

But I was ruined with scary movies in 4th /5th grade when one of my old friends forced me to watch em'. I never recovered and C.huckie still is the stuff of nightmares to me, I cannot look at a baby doll the same way again 😂

8. Any special talents? ...falling up the steps rather than falling down. I swear, the amount of times I do it. Even my dog does it from time to time ( though she is very fine, she just slips on one step up but never falls completely.)

9. Where were you born? USA, Georgia.

11. Have you any pets? I am on my second pupper! First one passed of old age after high school, and I got the second a year and a half later and she is still going strong ���

12. What sport do you play/have played? Oh my god. I am a limp noodle when it comes to sports and I don't play anything currently. I would be 'THAT kid who would be the last one to be chosen' type of bad LMAO

When I was little, my parents tried to force me to do sports, which is probably why I hated them for so long (though I have grown to appreciate them a decade ago and will not say no to trying out new things).

I know I did gymnastics in like...early elementary school years...I have a few plastic participation trophies from them l m a o. But I honestly cannot remember anything about it but the big foam cube pool. Ballet, but that did not last long at all despite also having two or three participation trophies. Little me HATED it. I felt so embarrassed wearing those frilly tutus during recitals... I was not that kind of little girl. It even came up during Christmas recently, and my grandpa admitted to me that I NEVER looked like I was having fun during those show recitals, I always had this look of ' 'I have no clue what I am doing' and 'why am I here' while my mom and grandma always raved about how cute I look in that heavy makeup lmao. Because apparently I never looked out to the crowd, I always watched what the other kids were doing and tried to keep up. 😂 I think I must've been like. 5 at the time.

I think?? I did one lesson with horse riding, but even though I enjoyed it, I was never taken back to it. But I was so little and I realize now that costs are expensive l m a o.

I think I went to tennis practice two times in elementary and was done. They tried to put me in cheerleading classes, which was laughable, I did one class and said no. Karate...was more interesting in middle school since it was the first time I chose it, but I was frustrated that I could never remember what to do during performances and my parents were never supportive anyway since they wanted me to be in the "girly girl" sports.

All in all, all the personal sports memories I have are rather negative, which was unfortunate.

13. How tall are you? 5 foot 3 inches. s m o l l.

14. Favourite subject in school? Other than art, I loved when the football coaches in high school taught history because they made it fun.

15. Dream job? I would absolutely love to do something with my art. Currently, taking baby steps to make them feel achievable. Current SMALL dream is to open up an etsy to run on side while working a job. I got a heat press to make shirts, and I got a cricut to make all sorts of others things.

tagging: YOU tagged by: @yukikorogashi (thank you friendo!)

[xtruss]

Who Was The Real Calamity Jane? Historians Search For An Answer.

Her exploits became the stuff of legend, glamorizing life in the Old West. But Martha Jane Canary’s real life story bears little resemblance to the fictional heroine.

— By Heather Mundt | March 12, 2024

Calamity Jane — Born Martha Jane Canary — Is a Legend of the American West. But was she a gunslinger? An Army scout? A rider for the Pony Express? After a century of half-truths and fabrications, historians are still struggling to separate fact from fiction in her life story. Photograph By Everett Collection, Bridgeman Images

You would be forgiven in describing Calamity Jane as an iconoclast whose flouting of 19th-century female mores launched her into exceptional fame and fortune in a male-dominated American West.

It’s true the woman behind the fictional heroine—born Martha Jane Canary—was a buckskin-clad, gun-slinging, foulmouthed cowgirl whose affinity for alcohol was legendary, even among men. But that’s where facts diverge significantly from fiction.

Historians have spent decades trying to find her—methodically unraveling a century of mistruths, half-truths, and full-blown fabrication, many of them introduced by Calamity herself. She was also illiterate, leaving no letters or journals for analysis, not even a signature. So who was the real Calamity Jane?

The Creation of a Myth

“People, largely, are still in love with a romantic Old West," says Richard W. Etulain, former director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico who’s written two comprehensive books on Martha Jane Canary.

It's been part of the country’s literary tradition from its inception around the early 19th century, he says. James Fenimore Cooper created the early framework for the Western as a genre in his groundbreaking Leatherstocking Tales, a five-novel frontier series that includes his famous 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans.

These were masculine stories featuring females as love interests, providing a formula for the early paperbacks called dime novels. Emerging around the start of the Civil War, the cheaply printed books sold on newsstands for no more than a dime.

With simple plots placing a hero or heroine in a dilemma, they were the perfect vehicle to spread myths about the real-life personalities of the American West—including Calamity Jane.

A Calamitous Early Life

Born around May 1, 1856, near Princeton, Missouri, Martha Jane Canary was the oldest of three children. Around 1863, the family sold their farm and headed west toward Montana, ostensibly drawn by the booming mining towns.

She told of the five-month overland journey in her autobiography, Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane, a rare kernel of truth in what’s considered an exaggerated work of semifiction.

“I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventures to be had,” she said. “By the time we reached Virginia City, I was considered a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age.”

The Trek Ended in Heartache.

Both of her parents died within four years of the move and, by 1867, her siblings were allegedly sent to live with Mormon families in Utah. Not yet a teenager, Etulain writes in The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane that she was adrift in a pioneer man’s world.

Calamity Jane lived a nomadic life, taking jobs for a few weeks at a time before heading to the next spot whim took her. And that’s where her story begins to blend into myth.

Dime Novel Fame

By the time she’d reached age 20, Martha Canary was already well known in the “rough and ready settlements of the western plains for dressing in men’s clothes, a taste for liquor and wanderlust, and a tendency to shoot off her mouth and her guns,” writes historian Karen R. Jones in The Many Lives of Calamity.

Tthe genesis of her nickname is unclear. What is clear is that she was already known as Calamity Jane in the summer of 1876 when she sauntered down the dusty main street of Deadwood, South Dakota, on horseback in a suit of buckskin alongside Wild Bill Hickok.

Calamity Jane gained fame in the 1870s after arriving on horseback in Deadwood, South Dakota, alongside Wild Bill Hickok. The two were likely mere acquaintances but dime novels and sensational newspaper stories published many a tall tale of their dubious exploits together. Photograph By Everett Collection, Bridgeman Images

She was traveling with the most famous gunman and lawman of the West, Etulain writes, having joined his wagon train of gold seekers as it headed north toward the Black Hills.

“Calamity Jane has arrived!” local newspapers proclaimed. From that moment, her name would be intertwined with Wild Bill’s in Old West lore. The news stories that followed, embellished and sensationalized in the era of yellow journalism, flung her into stratospheric fame.

She would be forevermore the wild woman of the West, often cast in dime novels as the love interest of notorious gunslinger Wild Bill. She was also often linked with another famous Bill—Buffalo Bill Cody, whose prowess in slaughtering buffalo had become dime novel legend. Stories abounded of her performances in his famous stage show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

In her semifictional 1896 autobiography Life and Adventures of Calamity, Calamity also described herself as a rowdy plainswoman who rode for the Pony Express and served as General Custer’s scout.

For more than a century that followed, the depictions of Calamity Jane in media would make it even more difficult to unravel the truths of her life. In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1936 movie The Plainsman, she was a rip-roaring cowgirl who fought Native Americans alongside Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill. Some 70 years after that she was portrayed as the bawdy friend of Wild Bill and town drunk in HBO’s Western series, Deadwood.

The Real Calamity Jane

Many of the tall tales surrounding Calamity’s life are rooted in fact.

She may have served as an Army scout, her biographers found—just not for General Custer. Calamity did know Wild Bill, but not as his romantic partner. In fact, they would have been little more than acquaintances. (Hickok was assassinated at a poker game shortly after the group’s arrival in Deadwood.)

Calamity Jane was also cast in traveling shows but not Buffalo Bill’s Wild West production, says Jeremy M. Johnston, the Tate endowed chair of Western history at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, which houses what’s believed is her only remaining buckskin suit.

She was legally married once in 1888 but did shack up with several men whom she called "husband” along the way. She also gave birth twice: first in 1882 to a son, who died shortly after his birth, and in 1887 to daughter, Jessie Elizabeth. (However, whatever happened to her daughter remains debatable.)

Tales recounting Calamity’s nursing skills are also well-documented. “She really took care of anyone who was sick,” Johnson says. “Anyone who needed anything, she would step up and help them through their troubled times.”

Johnston’s own grandmother used to tell the story of Calamity Jane helping their family recover from an illness. To thank her, his great-great grandmother made Calamity a nice shirt. A few days later, however, onlookers found her in the streets intoxicated with the shirt covered in mud.

The Death of Calamity Jane

In fact, alcoholism was constant refrain throughout her life, McLaird writes, perpetuating her lifelong poverty. “Sadly, after romantic adventures are removed, her story is mostly an account of uneventful daily life interrupted by drinking binges,” he writes.

For the last seven-plus years of her life, Etulain writes in Life and Legends, she earned money as a performer and roaming saleswoman, peddling her autobiography and photos.

Calamity Jane poses at the grave of Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota, in this photograph taken by J.A. Kumpf circa 1903. The famous gunslinger died that year and was buried in the same cemetery. Photograph By Graphicaartis, Bridgeman Images

She died penniless at age 47 on August 1, 1903, likely from effects of alcoholism. She’s buried near Wild Bill in the Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood—and the misinformation that pervaded her life has followed in her death, Etulain writes, as even her tombstone displays an incorrect name, birthdate, and age.

But though her real life may have been more tragedy than adventure, Etulain argues that she remains an illuminating example of grit and determination.

“The loss of her parents before her teen years, the lack of education, and the downward push on many frontier women in the late nineteenth century—Calamity rose above these challenges as a young woman of energy, endurance, and fortitude.”

[tarot-winds]

The bare lands

The likelyhood of them having opened it was high. It's difficult to find a doorway not laced shut by the hands of Lilith. It was located in an abandoned brick building. One of the bricks held a marking. A fae sigil of sorts that only the dead could see. A blinking sign to let one know where to go. Where was it that I went as I passed the threshold? Back home to the demon, Ambrose. I slunk and hid behind he, watching him, silently. Not taunting him or getting in his way today. I walked the dunes beside his steed listening to his thoughts with interest. He talks to himself often, it's the fragility of his mind, having been in the hole for decades, rotting away.

Now that he's out. I hadn't known what to expect. He's an older man...Didn't look it. But quite old and tired but much younger than Cornelius. I had a few good years on the man. I remember the days before the war. The end of peace is his day. I lived through the early days of Lilith as cat sidhe. I remember thee, we say to remember our dead. Aye, there is stranger things here to be known.

Let's continue the talk about the demon half sidhe...the tangled redheaded man held Tuatha but was stained by his mother's blood. A dire choice to have been so unlucky with this lot. He'd be royalty...we wouldn't be in this mess. He'd be it. I swear it. The warrior needed...To describe the man further, his sight on the eyes, he was eerily beautiful. If you could get over the attitude of the surly sidhe. Tall as a skyscraper and much too skinny as his bones protruded. Though he kept himself wiry by working out as much as possible while in capture of Lilith. If I had to say the prettiest feature? His purple eyes indicating his mother's line. They glow a vibrant hue like hers. My his mother, a voluptuous kept courtesan named Flora McCaine. Both, Son of Cain...The poor boy wasn't even born yet and he was banished by the king. By the graces he was afforded a knighthood that led us to this day

...Let us have a listen the rambling...

The otherworld. That is where I'm from, earth, that is where I'm headed. The dreaded trip from the kingdom had my head pounding. My tongue dry. My heart weary. My stomach hurts. My dick shriveling. It's a nightmarish experience that I've had since escaping the kingdom. I had nothing in tow but a canteen, a ration of food and a silver blood-blackened sword. I stole a horse and ever since ive been on the run. Before running. I've been patiently waiting. Watching and waiting for the right moment to scrounge my way free. Imagine a wreck sitting at the bottom of a black pit with nothing but himself. The constant darkness consumed my mind until it became... fragile, that's the right word. I noticed the marks marring my flesh. Some were of my own making. Biting myself like a rabbid dog, I was so hungry. Others were from being bled. The only time I saw the light was to be tortured. Even while in the hole. I had my ways to get information out. Cornelius. I looked down towards him, he's been owned by the bloodline for decades, the kings. While in the hole I wore piss scented rags before I managed to steal the scraps off a Lilithian soldier. The clothes they wore held a magick to help with the heat or the chill of the desert nights of our land. Where was I now? A sea of sand as far as the eye can see, there is nothing but dust. The heat from our atmosphere pelts down harder than one can imagine. Beads of sweat drip from my nose.

What was I doing in our barren desert? One that stretched miles from the castle I knew as my jail? Running for my life. I'm running from the wilds. I'm running from she, Lilith, my captor of these decades as I am Ambrose: the last knight of the uprising against her black talons. The failure of my fellows. The worn soldier of the seelie. I have many names under me. Stories told about my first escape and my days as a soldier against my found enemies .

The uprising was decades ago... it failed. I refuse to fail this time. I refuse to accept failure. I mustn't fail! I might as well hang myself and condemn the slaughter of my people. I've taken it upon myself to find him. To find the babe I helped escape the world he came from. The babe almost murdered the night we lost our kingdom to the unseelie sidhe. The royal babe of the seelie. That night haunts me. I was just a boy. Just knighted if I recall. I hadn't ever seen any battle... I ran that night. It was an order directly from the king, but still, I ran from my brothers in need. The sounds of their voices travel through the minds of my mind. I was shuffled through a tunnel that night, one under the castle, it was the last time I saw the king as he ran with me. I witnessed his death before a portal opened and I tossed the babe through. I had a chance... I had one. Yet I fought. The wild hounds that were on our trail that night fought too. I won that battle valiantly then hid. I hid for eons while working the fields. The body fields, so many dead under her watchful eyes. A mass grave housing our seelie bodies. That's where I was before the uprising began, I couldn't take it. The sight of them. I rose up and got bitten by the she-bitch herself and chained.

Just before the fall of our seelie. There was a passing of words. A destiny foretold of a warrior, to slay she, that the rise of Lilith would die. I looked forward to seeing the babe. To seeing the young warrior in him rise. Every day I held on to the idea he would save our kingdom. However... he was dying. My liege was dying. I was aware of the day he meant to end it all. To set something in motion that even I couldn't stop. The foretold king ended his own life. My younger brother. I raised my nose in honor of his death. I never got to know him. It wasn't fated properly. I've lost faith in the gods. I lost faith in them ages ago. Now I'm on mission. My first really.

A single knight alone...

Yesterday. The day of our goddess Morrigan. The day of Samhain. Is the day his daughter became the only person that could step foot on that throne. The throne the black talon stole from he. From our great leader, Kieran's father, my king, Morgan Morningstar the third. I'd love to call that man my father. He wasn't. I'd call him sire. Still to this day I submit to no one but him. I'll never bow before to that fury of a woman. Now I must find a child to replace the rightful heir. The last Morningstar. The last king with the bloodline. I'll submit to no one but Morgan. They say the child becomes something special. Something of a warrior. Something of a sacrifice if must say. She is my future king but for now she is but a child. A willful child that needs rearing and help. I had no idea what to do about that notion. I cracked my mouth open to speak. To speak to the old scardy Cornelius.

"My niece, how is she doing? Have you found her? Has she been told or are you shirking your duties as my waypoint; between here and there?"

"Sir... the child isn't well. I'm frightened. I witnessed the imbalance of her mind. Shes decidedly weakened. She's been told almost nothing because of it. Only of the Tuatha bloodline she holds in her veins and that her father is gone. She should be on her way to him. He left a mighty fortune in his wake for she."

"Ah. The mountain I'm meant to find. I'm frightened for her too. Much is up to me to help her and I have no idea...as much as I jest of your shivering... I'm feeling the fright in my bones. "

"I will say I have a message from the goddess. She has foreseen the end again. A much better ending I shall say. The Morningstar child has much potential. We must help her though. There's a new addition to your visions. A book we must obtain. It leads us to such a victorious place."

"Good blessings on Morrigans head then. If only they could help me?! Huh? No. Well then I'll just be here!" I shout to the sky hoping they heard. The cat shushed my wrathful breath.

"How have you been fairing?"

"Not well. I inquired injuries along my way. My hands are blistered with blood from battle and this garb offends my nature. I'm dressed as one of my enemies. I'm shamed."

I noticed the blood crusted skin on his face and hands. The cuts and bruises along the way to freedom. Those are Honor marks. I informed him to keep pride for murdering a few on his way out. We kept silent after such words spoken. The longer we paced. The more anxiety I held at the boring sight of dunes. For a reason too, in the silence, we just managed to overhear the sounds of others coming. It was spectacularly clear we weren't alone any longer. How long had they been after him? The wilds have caught up with the weary knight of the seelie. Their steeds trudging through the sand quickly. Almost as if their horses levitate. Which forced the man to kick the horse, it sped on, so I started running with as much speed.

The sounds of screeching echoed. The sound, the wilds crooning for meat. Every once in awhile I'd crane my head back to see how close they were. A horde of three were after us. They were a few paces behind. The Lilithian soldiers carried weapons of silver. Long blades. Although one specifically held a bow. An arrow landed just near my behind! I was almost snatched from this plane of existence! Murdered I'd be! Well that is if I wasn't already dead...I'm just afraid. The sight of the wilds chills me. By goddess help? What is it with this god forsaken world known as home?! At this point I'd rather be with the child, not running for my life! Morrigan?! As I screamed for help.

The dearest Ambrose decided to slow, as the horse was struggling to keep pace. The poor thing was starved for water and needed rest. It was huffing and puffing and trying but couldn’t outrun the wilds. So rather than let the horse die of a stroke. Or be caught and murdered. He skillfully hopped from the back. He landing effortlessly as the horse ran along. His sword brandished from the hip with a fancy flourish. The wilds sped quicker than ever. Their horses surround him. A blood curdling screech in his face. They cackled as they corralled. Three against one. The easiest way he sought blood was by slicing the horses first. As they attempted to behead my slaver. He blipped in and out of sight evading them.… how? Oh, you didn’t know, the old man has chaos. Magick…the blinking? Time blips. The malnourished man has time at his fingertips; able to manipulate it to his will. Imagine a glitch, almost. A glitch in time. As he moved slowing it down, he was able to slice at the horses. One horse was entirely headless. It’s broken neck spurting blood in every direction. While the others got hit in the legs. Having managed to dispatch the horses forcing the men on the ground

The men began to battle. Ambrose wasn’t the only one with chaos. One reared ugly. A battle working used with a skillful twitch of the hand. The spell used could slice right through a man. It arrived along with a gust of wind picking up to send clouds of sand into Ambrose’s face. Its attempt to disarm him worked. Blood spurted from a cut on his cheek. The crazed man didn’t give up. With a blip, he was behind the sorcerer. An arm cinched around the neck, twist, snap! The Lilithian fell heavy and silent. With another blip through time, his sword back in hand for the next Lilithian to slash and clash with. Two against one was difficult but doable. Three swords clink and chink until the loss of an arm dwindled the enemies to one. This one survived… by running from battle. He didn’t make it far enough. A battle working tossed his way split him in half fluidly. Right down the middle. His Intestines and bile spilled from the intricate incision. The dead got collected. A simple spell made cinders of their meat. The meat from the uncooked horses made wonderful food for the sunset. As he ate the meat hungrily. I was taken away. Sent back to the land of earth. Aye, it is a headache.

Yet I’m thankful of the morrigan!

[risusims]

Tag Game for Historical Simblrs! 📖

1. What has been your favorite time period to play in or which one are you most excited for?

I'm currently playing through the late 1800's/start of the 1900, and even tho I love the victorian time I like the 1850 the most, which I had never used in my gameplays. Honestly I'm kind of excited for the 1950/1960, in my country we were in a military dictatorship after that so playing the colorful happy 80s doesn't make much sense to me, so I think I'll like playing before it the most.

2. Do you have a favorite piece of historical cc? (CAS or BB)

I love all my historical cc, for clothes I almost always go to linzlu, but this hair from @buzzardly28 is definitely my all time favorite, it's a shame it clips with hats :(

3. Who is your favorite sim currently?

Mildred will always be my baby. She is such a strong mother, enduring some unwanted pregnancies and having to learn to love those babies and care for them as much as Alexei, always keeping a smile on her face during the hard times and making sure everyone was okay.

I'll be sad to leave her go, but I'm also excited to see how Alexei's story will turn out as he doesn't want his father's farm and aspires to be a violinist.

4. What is your favorite world?

My all time favorite world is definitely Henford-on-Bagley, but I think I adore practically all worlds that give off this countryside, super green vibe. I also love Willow Creek, but I never had the opportunity to play with it during the decades challenge itself.

5. Are you more gameplay or story focused?

I usually plan the story according to what happens during the gameplay. If I plan a lot of stuff I know half of it will be impossible to reproduce in the game, so I'd rather not get disappointed.

6. Do you like to play with pets in your historical saves?

YES! I think most families in real life own at least one pet, and I personally couldn't live without my dog. I enjoy playing and then seeing the family's cat on a counter and thinking "oh that's cute!", I think that it adds another level of realism to the gameplay.

Besides pets, I also really enjoy playing with horses and all the cottage living animals. I love taking screenshots of my sims on the back of their horses and imagine where they could be going (if the sims 4 was open world).

7. What’s your biggest immersion breaking pet peeve with the game?

For me it's when time passes and all the townie's kids I placed grow up with the most horrendous and modern outfit. They always turn out to dress the ugliest outfits in the game!

8. What’s your favorite in-game historical item? (CAS or BB)

I mostly use the vampire's pack, as it has some cool suits and chandeliers, but I have a serious phobia of ingame items so I usually just filter for custom content and call it a game. EA's bb items always look so bulky compared to CC, idk, I just don't like it.

9. What would you like to see as a new pack or asset to the game?

I know some people disagree, but I would LOVE cars. If we get cars in the game, we could easily make cc vintage cars and make them function properly. Sadly, idk if i will ever happen. I don't care about the open world, for me it could work just like in the sims 2 and I'd be fine.

10. What pack do you think is invaluable as a historical simmer?

I think pets and dogs, just because of Brindleton Bay, as it is the BEST world to start in. Also, I really really really love Cottage living for the cows and chickens, seasons for the holidays and Horse Ranch for... horses!

11. Do you have a favorite mod to enhance historical gameplay?

I could NEVER play without Ye olde cookbook, the off the grid range of meals in the game is so shallow and this mod makes even making my sims prepare a meal into an event.

12. What’s your ideal family size for playing?

I'm currently playing with a family of six plus a cat and I feel very overwhelmed all the time. I'd rather play with something around 4 sims, as I can focus on the more individually and guarantee none of them is dying somewhere I'm not seeing.

13. Do you use poses?

YES! Sims team likes to make animations so goofy that it turns impossible to take credible screenshots with them. Poses bring a level of realism to screenshots and allows me to play with themes that wouldn't be possible with Sims 4 as it tries to be so family friendly all of the time.

14. Do you use any overrides in your game?

I override practically everything. The mop? yes, the phone? for sure! and honestly everything that I see and think " that is too modern for me!"

15. Do you, or did you, play off-the-grid during your game?

Yes, I'm currently playing with it right now, and honestly it is not as challenging as it looks like. I actually don't mind it.

16. What lifespan do you play on?

I play with a custom lifespan where 4 years are equal one year. I wish I were one of those sims that use long lifespan, but I get bored very quickly so it would be impossible for me.

17. What inspired you to start playing a historically?

I have always loved everything related to history, the fashion, books, art and etc, so when I discovered there was something like the decades challenge I got super excited to try it. I'm always into the idea of going cc shopping, so cc shopping for historical cc was a breeze!

If anyone else wants to try this, feel at ease to do it!

[freedformwriter]

Slow holiday

The thing about superlatives is that they build expectations. If a tourist board bigs up a place as ‘the longest lock system in the United Kingdom,’ I get ideas. Then there’s the name: Neptune’s Gate. With a title like that, I expect some sort of neo-classical architectural flourishes. Perhaps a statue of the god’s chariot drawn by a team of dolphins. What we find is an entirely functional and wholly unpretentious bit of old timey civil engineering. A canal lock looks the same no matter how many occur in rapid succession. Aside from a brief flutter of excitement when a steam train chugs by –What? A nineteenth-century canal and a train? This is definitely a holiday paradise for a certain type of person – there is a pall hanging over the place. An efficiently coiffured woman in a waterproof coverall appears to share my impatience with this inactivity. A man in an official looking jacket promises it will be ten more minutes. ‘They are going to open the lock in ten minutes,’ I whisper to my mother. She is sceptical, and rightly so.

Nothing happens quickly on a canal. When Britain imported the Slow Television trend from Scandinavia a decade ago, programming featuring wood carving and forest song was fine, I guess. But the star was a real-time and unfiltered two-hour journey down the Avon and Kennet Canal. When we return from inspecting the recreational barges with kayaks about bikes lashed to their sides, the decisive woman still stands waiting on the embankment but a small hive is forming at the lock mouth. Like the rest of the tourists, we are drawn, phones out, by the ineluctable pull of something happening. The craft of the efficient woman – I reckon it’s a thirty-foot sailboat – moves into the lock, only to be followed by a sister craft. This one’s crewed by three young men in the requisite overalls with the life vests snapped between the legs, but up top they are stripped down to the single layer. A mesh top in once case. A third boat come into sight, flying the Norwegian flag. The presumed husband and wife crew look the part: tanned and fit with weathered skin and impressive weatherproof gear. A smaller craft tucks itself in at the end. Room for one more.

The last boat is not distinctive, not in build or allegiance, but the crew’s summer civilian clothing stands out with glaring inappropriateness. A portly older gentleman steps gingerly onto the concrete embankment in his leather Oxfords. Ah, now we have the star of our show. He carries rather than wears his life preserver but, really, it’s how he caries himself that marks him out as an Englishman of very recognisable type. He projects a blithe confidence; his own common sense will win through despite any little inconvenient gaps in his knowledge. He promptly flubs his guideline, making a fixed rather than the necessary looped mooring. His partner on the boat quietly panics as the boat slides from the embankment. He leaves her to haul in ineffectually on a static line and looks about at his audience, doling out nods and smiles for us all. His careless conviviality has the benefit of drawing out the Norwegian couple and we get a full itinerary of the four-week tour while the boats descend with surprising rapidity. The next gate opens, and our Englishmen leads his boat on to the next lock like he’s taking a trusted horse out on a rope bridle.

Sitting on the cast iron black-and-white mooring at the next lock, I give myself over to this slow experience. The pace is perfect, the boat hands moving with patient economy to perform their repetitive task. They have long since settled into their roles – one half on the ships and the others on the shore – and have given themselves over to canal time. I’ve experienced this shift on my canal trips. What’s fascinating is how, by creating this slow spectacle, they pull in bystanders. Like sitting around a campfire at night, watching people perform this kind of work connects us to an almost primordial human ritual. What else have people done to pass the time for vast stretches of our history? Fine, we are all holidaymakers susceptible to a bit of time wasting, but people’s willingness to watch hours of glass-blowing on the televisions suggests spectatorship can feed our souls. It will take our sailors around two hours to complete all eight locks of Neptune’s Staircase. Had I thought to bring a picnic lunch, I would watch the complete show.

[tinydanceman]

The Waffle House on Haunted Hill

A sudden blip of light and yellow differentiated the Waffle House from the rest of the dark road. It was surrounded on all sides by farmland, save for the two lane road which hit the parking lot in a glancing blow. Beyond it were black acres of black corn and black mountains, silhouetting a black horizon. Three cars were parked in the otherwise empty parking lot, the black asphalt illuminated by half broken, yellowing lamps. 

“Who brings a kid out this late?” Diane wiped the counter. 

“They do. Every Sunday night.” The cook didn’t look up.

The family sat in the corner. They were quiet, vaguely solemn, though they seemed used to that. Their clothes were old.

“One in the morning though?” Diane said quietly, glancing at them.

The cook said nothing. His shoulders twitched, suggesting a shrug he didn’t have the energy for. He tossed a pile of hash browns on the stove, and listened to it scream.

Diane waited for any further word, and exhaled when none came. There was a spot on the counter she couldn’t wipe out, and she guessed it may stay there. She kept wiping at it.

Wrinkles etched themselves haphazardly across Diane's sunburnt face, only partially covered by frizzing hair that had started to grey only decades ago. Altogether, her appearance amounted to something strange, lively, dated.  

Quiet sat in the Waffle House, oppressive. She could feel it pressing in on her oppressively, her breathing hard. Her thoughts curled inward, drowning out her senses. It felt like something was swallowing her, stomach lining crushing, binding.

Only one more year, she thought. She could retire then, she could move on with her life. Only one more year.

Silence evaporated as Randy walked back in from the dumpsters.

“Eyyo Diane, you catch the Batman movie?”

Diane forgot what she was thinking about.

“Nope! Been meaning to though.”

Randy hopped over the counter, knocking over a bottle of syrup. It shattered.

“Ah, shit, my bad.”

Diane snickered to herself, and grabbed some paper towels.

"Try breaking a salt shaker next time, it'll leave less of a mess." She said, picking up the larger pieces of glass from the puddle of syrup. Meanwhile, Randy grabbed a mop. The cook ignored them both.

"Ey, wait, Diane," Randy leaned in close. She could smell weed on his breath. "You wanna know somethin' weird?" 

She gave him a vaguely concerned look.

"Uh, sure?"

Randy grinned excitedly.

"They don't have a car."

"What?"

Randy flicked his eyes in the direction of the family.

"I was tossing garbage and shit, doing Randy shit, and I notice, there's just our cars there. Those people have no car."

Diane looked at the family again. They hadn't spoken a word since they had ordered. A mother, a father, and a daughter: the father had ordered for them; she couldn't remember his voice. They looked like farmers.

"Maybe they're Amish? They’ll keep weird hours," she suggested, throwing broken glass in the trash.

Randy shook his head.

"Nah, nah. I didn't see horses or any shit."

"Amish folk take Ubers sometimes:, my neighbor Trish says she's driven a lot of Amish folk around."

Outside, a flickering lamp lit where the road met the parking lot. Randy stared at it.

"Have you seen any cars in the last hour?"

Diane thought for a moment. Absolutely no one had driven into the parking lot; not one car had even driven by. She turned to Randy.

"How do you think they got here?"

Randy plopped the mop down.

"I think those fuckers walked like a couple freakazoids. Some real local weirdos or something." He said, sliding the mop through the viscous brown puddle.

That'd make a little bit of sense, Diane thought.

"I guess they're from one of the nearby farms?" She asked.

Three plates of food were pushed across the worktop. Eggs sat blankly on plates. Diane looked at the cook, who shifted his head slightly.

“Go and ask them yourself,” he said, and turned back to the stove.

They were Diane’s table; some deep, animal part of her shook, and she didn’t know why. 

“I will,” Diane replied, and began the process of picking up the food.

One burning hot plate rested on her arm, while the other two only lightly singed her fingertips. She carried the order out from behind the bar area, walking slowly, carefully. There was something odd about them all, the family. The way they sat there, speechless, tired: almost crumpled looking. The daughter was only five or six, but she looked like she’d worked a full day. Her dress looked like something pulled from an attic, like paper in a book that had gone untouched for years: she looked old.

Three hashbrown bowls descended carefully to their table, scrutinized by uncaring eyes.

Diane summoned her voice, “Everything looks alright for you folks?

Yes, they said. It was the father’s mouth that moved. The incongruency of these facts shifted past Diane, who smiled politely. 

“So, you all local?

Yes, they said. There was the sound of forks, and less food. The family looked at Diane, mouths unmoving. 

“Ah, happen to be one of our neighbors?”

Yes, they responded. Diane decided they weren’t a very talkative sort.

“Well, if you need anything else, just let us know.” Someone said thank you, and Diane turned away, satisfied that there was nothing truly wrong about them. Randy, she decided, can get carried away with things.

As Diane began to walk back, the door to the Waffle House swung open. A gaggle of twenty-somethings, one clearly in the back end of a particularly vivid acid trip, several others thoroughly stoned, meandered in through the doorway, and turned in the general direction of Randy. They opened to a general chorus of Randy’s name, before returning to a din of chatter.

Randy turned to Diane, “Hey, they good to sit over there-”

He went still. Diane followed his gaze, and turned around. 

The plastic backing and faux red leather of the booth seating was exposed, unoccupied. The plates were empty, as if there had never been food there to begin with. The only thing left was a small stacked pile of bills, which Diane would find later to exactly cover the cost of the meal, tip presumably forgotten.

Randy was motionless. The mop slipped from his hands and banged against the ground, bouncing briefly before settling into a puddle of watered down syrup. Randy turned to his friends.

“Eyyo guys, you gotta sit at the ghost table!”