#but finding hope that in spite of the bad parts of life

[letteredlettered]

Hello there! I recently read your thoughts about By the Grace, in which you mentioned that you've never been happy with how it turned out. (I am one of the readers who love BtG, btw, I found it transformative in the sense that i loved it so much that I felt changed afterwards. my comments trace my slow disintegration 😅). I wondered if you'd be willing to share which fics of yours you like the best - which fics came out as you wanted them to, which fics make you feel understood and known? (Totally understand if this is too personal an ask btw but just thought I'd see if it's something you'd like to share).

Well, hi. You sent this ask in August of 2022. I am apparently very very behind on a lot of things. I just had a lot to say to you and didn't have the energy to say it. I'm currently dealing with some health issues so fandom is actually now one of the only things I have energy for, so here I am.

The first thing I want to say is how glad I am that you liked By the Grace. It's hard not to love something I've written, but I think it shows so much about our humanity that something I find so deeply imperfect could be something that really worked for you. Thank you so, so much for all your kind words.

The second thing I want to say is that for me, the fics I like best are the one that came out as I wanted them to, but they are not necessarily the ones that make me feel seen and known. For instance, I wrote By the Grace because I felt upset about the world, and I also felt upset about some things in fandom that felt like an ugly reflection of the world in a place where I didn't want to have to think about such things. The fact that people love BtG, in spite of its flaws, makes me feel that people understood what I was trying to say, no matter how imperfectly I said it; they care about its message and its values, even if I couldn't deliver those messages and values in the way I hoped and worked for.

Another example is The Way Down. The Way Down is one of the first Harry/Draco fics I ever wrote. I started writing it in 2007, and I was in a very difficult place at the time. It was two years after I finished college; I still wasn't doing anything with my life; I felt like a failure. I started to want to stay inside, never leave the house, never see anyone I knew, never do anything but talk to people on the internet all day long. Incidentally I felt very lonely and left out of the fandom I wanted to be a part of, which was H/D. No one was interested in my writing and I couldn't make friends in that community. I couldn't finish the fic. I got myself out of that situation, moved across the country, got a job, made new friends, and also stopped caring as much about whether my fic was popular. I was able to finish the fic because I as a person changed, and that fic reflects both parts of that journey. I don't actually think it's a good fic; some of the characterizations are too fanon for my taste; some of the scenes are a bit too silly; a lot of the deeper parts don't go deep enough. But when someone loves that fic, when it really touches someone, it's like they're loving me as I was then, loving the fact that I got myself out of it, loving a person who can struggle in that way. And that means so much to me.

Meanwhile, Away Childish Things is a perfect fic to me. It came out exactly as I wanted and said so much about both Harry and Draco that I had been wanting to say, that I felt I hadn't been seeing in fic. I knew it was good when I was writing it. Frankly, I thought people would like it, and I was right. I'm not sure that people loving it makes me feel seen and understood. It's not like ACT isn't a personal story for me--it's terribly personal! But I don't think it's saying things that make me feel bad about myself, or that I think other people or the world are struggling with. It's a sharp story that I think many people can identify with from different directions.

In terms of fics that turned out exactly as I hoped, The Eighth Tale is another such fic. It always makes the list because I had this idea for so, so long--a fic in which the war didn't go as it was "supposed" to, but instead drags on and on and on, a fic in which the canonical ending is glimpsed, but other endings are glimpsed too, a fic in which universes collide into the idea that the ending is never set, it's always the choices we make that give us our own endings. But whenever I imagined such a fic it was half a million words long, and while such a fic sounds interesting, I am so glad that @tacktigerfic would come along so many years later to write that grand epic. Meanwhile, what I had in mind was just a little paradox timey-wimey business that should take only 15-20K to get out into the world. I just didn't know how to do it. But finally, I read a fic that really inspired me with its voice (in a completely different fandom; it's Crow on the Cradle by Refur in SPN fandom if anyone is interested) and it helped me to understand I would need a very particular narrative voice to make this fic happen. Then I sat down and wrote it in about two or three sittings. It's exactly what I meant to do.

Ginny Weasley: Dragon Slayer is a similar fic in that it did exactly what I wanted to, and I wasn't sure I would get there. I think both of these fics are things I often think of as perfect because I have a habit of having rather small ideas that quickly turn huge and unwieldy. It's why BtG is a problem, imo. I love that I was able to make these fics concisely what I wanted them to be, no more, no less.

There are fics in other fandoms that are exactly what I want them to be: Sincerely Your Pal, in Captain America fandom, Say More in The Untamed (CQL) fandom. The End Resting Only on Air is the perfect end to my series of fics in The Walking Dead fandom. I still think Or Even Rearrange You has the best Tony Stark voice I've read, and that's cool because I wrote it. The Chuck Writes Story for SPN fandom is one of the cleverest and most incisive things I've written, because it's about SPN fandom more than SPN--and I happened to write it before SPN even had the mythos that it does now. But in terms of fics that make me feel seen/understood and I'm perfectly happy with how they are written, Responsible Science in MCU is always my answer to which fic I've written is my favorite fic for a reason (although it's actually a series). That Lesson Alone in Schitt's Creek fandom is probably one of the most personal things I have ever written, and I wouldn't change a word of it.

But in H/D fandom, if you want a fic of mine that I'm happy with, that came out exactly as I envisioned, and makes me feel seen and understood, only one fits the bill: The Pure and Simple Truth. I actually don't think the writing is perfect--I would tighten it up a little, maybe. But it's exactly what I wanted to write, and it was so fun to write; I still think it's fun to read. But on top of that, this fic is also trying to say something about morality that I think is really fundamental to who I am. It's trying to say things about friendship and forgiveness that I believe with my whole soul. It's trying to say things about conversation, what that means for people, what that can build, what community is and what it isn't. I've gotten a few comments over the years from people saying they didn't really understand it. I've also gotten a lot of comments yelling at me about it because there isn't a kiss at the end. I've also seen people saying that the fic is suggesting that Neville's a bad person because he struggles to forgive folks who tortured him, which is the exact opposite of what the fic is about.

But when people do get this fic, when they comment or message me to tell me what it means to them to see folks who have hurt each other, some of whom have been actual torturers and part of hate groups, come together and grow from that, discuss that, and learn to love in spite all of that...wow, that makes me feel like the things I care about aren't just mine; other people feel that way, which is a wonderful feeling.

[bhaalsdeepbat]

just to add:

Using Poe rather than any other Dark Romantic writer that was his contemporary to pull a quote from was such a good choice. Of his sotries, "The Tell-Tale Heart" was the perfect one for Astarion, but Poe very specifically believed stories should be written in a circular manner - like a snake biting its tail - which fits so perfectly with all the little ways Astarion's story and romance references itself.

Direct quote from my source:

Poe believed in “fashioning a tale like a kind of ouroboros, with its tail in its mouth, beginning with the final effect and working backwards to that the story’s beginning is a natural derivation of its conclusion.”

It's the setting up of the Romantic Astarion in act 1, finding out he's not as fine as he keeps insisting as the narrative swings into Dark Romantic territory, the paranoia starts to really come out (relating back to tell-tale heart), and then he is literally given a choice: continue the cycle or break free. The cycle of abuse is literally a circle here. He can take up Cazador's place in the ritual and step into his role entirely, reentering the ouroboros I mentioned earlier.

The "Thank you" when he first bites the player being referenced later when they see past his paranoia and how unreliable of a narrator he is about his own feelings and seeing that he doesn't want power. He wants safety in a world that he believes isn't capable of kindness or good.

I love how Astarion quotes The Tell-Tale Heart every once in a while. It's a rarer line, and initially I thought it was out of place (Neil is very well versed in theater, so I assumed it was a riff from him), but since reading an analysis of the work I think it was pretty purposeful.

The piece is all about fear and paranoia, things we know Astarion is plagued by despite how he might act. Similarly, the narrator of the story also tries to convince the reader that they are not as troubled as they seem. In the end, the narrator is consumed by the beating of the heart of the old man he killed and dismembered, the sound growing louder and louder until in a fit of rage he reveals the body to the police to absolve himself from the persistent beating.

Except the police never heard the heart beat, because it wasn't the old man's heart at all. The narrator was consumed by the sound of his own heart beating more and more rapidly in his chest from fear. He was the owner of the thing that forced him to reveal his true nature, he is the owner of the tell-tale heart.

And what happens with Astarion after you romance him? He realizes over time that, while he tried to deny his feelings and was initially only interested in manipulating you for his own means, he actually has grown to care for you. You have done something to his heart that hasn't happened in centuries, you have made it feel as if it has started beating again.

Therefore, his tell-tale heart leads him to admit his transgressions, which were committed out of fear and paranoia for his safety.

So the line is actually very, very apt. His confession during Act 2 is his own version of "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!" Except, of course, it is his own heart that he is unearthing for us (and it's not so hideous, after all).

[aylaaescar]

yet another 30 Rock joke: Zae and Bobby have broken up (yet again), Tina and/or Verda say good riddance, and Zae says “oh don’t say that, you know, he had some good moments”

and then it’s a montage of all the times Bobby got food

[nadvs]

better off (part one)

pairing rafe cameron x female reader

rating explicit 18+

summary your split with rafe left its mark. when you feel like you’re finally getting over him, he pulls you back in. you decide that break-up sex is the best way to say goodbye once and for all.

warnings substance use, smut, toxic relationship

» masterlist

You have to remind yourself of his temper. Of his need for control. Of how fucking mean he can be.

Because when you’re at a party in a beach house on the north side of the island and your phone flashes with a text from Rafe, your drunken instinct is to reply to him.

It’s been a month since your last explosive fight. That argument in his car was the final nail in the coffin, the wake-up call that whatever you were trying to put back together was unsalvageable.

It ended abruptly. Your mind has replayed your last screamed words over and over again. This isn’t working, you shouted, your throat burning. Fuck it then, he shouted louder.

And you got out of his car and haven’t spoken since.

Despite its end, it’s not like your six-month relationship was all bad. Between great dates and even greater sex, you two had formed a real friendship. Because of those good times, you’ve been holed up in your bedroom since, grieving, crying your eyes out.

But when it was bad, it was toxic. You yelled at each other. Called each other names. Played mind games.

The worst was that you were both fuelled by spite when you were angry. He purposely hit you where it hurt, validating your insecurities just to crush you.

Although you exchanged some vile words, you think you’ll always regret when you told him he’s just like his father. His face fell. He went quiet. You’d never seen someone’s eyes lose their light quite like that.

Your eyes travel over Rafe’s text. You at Dec’s?

Your mutual friend Declan is the host of the ridiculously loud party you’re standing in the middle of. This is the first time since the break-up that you’ve felt okay enough to go out. And your stomach turns with anticipation that Rafe is somewhere here in the crowd.

At first, you wanted to text back that you are. But as your mind flashes through everything he did to you, every time he called you sensitive like it was ridiculous of you to be hurt by his mistreatment, making you feel crazy, you angrily respond: why tf do you care??

Your phone buzzes within a few seconds with his message. Lol calm down

It’s downright incredible how quickly he can piss you off. With that text alone, your blood is boiling.

Calm down. It’s what he always said whenever you brought up a valid reason you were upset. You would be completely collected, but he’d still tell you to calm down. He wanted to frustrate you.

You reply: fuck you. And you want to find him simply to chew him out.

You tell your friends you’ll be right back. You leave before they can ask where you’re going. After all the venting you did about Rafe, about what a toxic asshole he is, you know they’d give you shit for seeking him out.

Rafe’s heart is racing. From the coke, from the booze, from the way that missing you is still such a heavy fucking weight on his chest that isn’t going away.

It’s been weeks and he’s still pissed off about it. Life feels unliveable. When the argument started, he thought it was just going to be another bad night. You had threatened breaking up with each other a million times before. But this time, it was real.

And every time his phone vibrates, he hopes it’s you. He looks at your photos in his camera roll, wallowing in the hole you left in his life. He still has videos of you two fucking and he watches them late at night, touching himself and letting himself pretend you’re still together.

He even puts extra care into getting ready every time he comes to these parties so you’ll think he looks good if you run into him. But you haven’t been going out. At least, not that he’s seen, and he purposely searches every crowd for you.

So, when he saw you in the distance tonight, a sight he’s been dying to see, his heart stopped. And he texted you, pretending he didn’t already know you were here, because it’d be too much of a hit to his pride if he approached you and you brushed him off.

Good thing. Because your response told him what he needs to know.

When you find Rafe in the crowd, he’s knocking back what’s left of a beer. He had told you he was hoping to slow down on the booze back when you were together, but he continued to get shit-faced at every party.

He would disappoint you time and time again, and even now, as your ex-boyfriend, he still manages to do it.

You cross your arms as you approach him. One of his friends notices you, slapping Rafe’s arm to get his attention.

At that moment, you wonder what he told his buddies about you. Probably that you were a crazy bitch. He certainly didn’t have any problem calling you that to your face.

Rafe looks at his friend in confusion. Then, his blue eyes land on you. The same eyes that used to slowly flutter open after you kissed him, as if he was waking up from a good dream. The same eyes that pierced into you when he screamed at you.

“So much for cutting back,” you shout over the music.

Rafe swallows the bitter alcohol and the shock of your sudden presence. He was certain you wouldn’t talk to him tonight.

And of course you look stunning, like an angel that came down from heaven deciding it was worth the sin to torture him.

“Why the fuck do you care?” He’s wearing a self-assured smirk, purposely saying exactly what you said in your text just a few minutes ago.

You roll your eyes, remembering why you came over here in the first place.

“Can I not come to a party without you annoying me?” you mutter.

“You’re the one who came to find me.”

“Because you texted me.”

“So, you’re here to tell me not to text you? What happened to blocking me?”

This is exactly what it was like dating him. Infuriating, petty arguments that only go in circles.

“You didn’t this time, huh?” he adds just to embarrass you.

You had him blocked so many times before, but after the break-up, you just couldn’t do it. Because you had hope he’d reach out. And now he’s making you feel like an idiot for it.

It feels like he’s winning this argument. You shouldn’t care. But you do.

One of the things he said the night of your break-up was that no other guy would deal with your bullshit. So, you decide to lie just to hurt him back.

“I have someone else dealing with my bullshit now,” you say. “Blocking some asshole isn’t a priority.”

Your words have an effect on him. You can tell from the way his jaw tightens. You sink into this feeling all over again, the sick familiarity of playing mind games with him.

Rafe feels his chest twist with anger. Is that where you’ve been lately? Not showing up to parties because you’re with someone else?

He steps closer, ducking his head so that only you can hear his words. His familiar cologne washes over you.

You realize he’s wearing a button-up you bought him and you wonder if he doesn’t remember it was a gift from you, or he does and he doesn’t care to place any sort of sentimental value on it.

“Since when?” he asks.

“Since when what, Rafe?” you say his name with a sharp coldness.

“Since when have you been with someone else?”

You decide to provoke him and let the lie build.

“A while.”

Rafe’s lips thin. He takes your hand and you should pull away, you should want to, but you let him lead you through the crowd into a dark, quieter hallway.

You’re soon against a wall, looking up at him, his eyes darting across your face as the softened music reverberates through the air.

“What’s a while?” he says. “Did it start when we were together?”

You sigh and glance away.

“Don’t look away from me,” he orders. “Answer the fucking question.”

“For the millionth goddamn time, I am not a cheater,” you say. He used to accuse you of unfaithfulness all the time. You meet his angry gaze. “I met him after.”

“Who is he?”

“You don’t know him.”

Rafe plants his hand on the wall next to your head, leaning over, his intensity burning through you.

“I know everybody,” he mutters.

“What, ‘cause you’re so popular?” you scoff.

“You’re lying,” he says. He hopes.

“Sure, whatever, I’m lying,” you reply indifferently with a shrug. “Believe what you want. I’m going now.”

You start to turn, but he boxes you in, his other hand firm on the wall. You knew he’d stop you. It’s why you pretended to leave.

You look up at him through your lashes. His pupils are blown. Your entire body is buzzing.

You miss him. Of course you do. As toxic as you were, as many times as you told yourself this relationship was unhealthy, you miss him.

“Who is he?” he rasps.

“Why?” you say through gritted teeth. “You want to ruin another thing for me?”

“What the fuck have I ruined for you?”

“I lost friends because of you,” you say.

A smile of disbelief grows on Rafe’s face.

He always loved you more. He knows that. And you accused him of isolating you from your friends when all he wanted to do was spend time with you.

It’s not his fault you don’t know how a relationship works. You should want to be with your boyfriend more than your friends. Especially when those friends try to get it in your head that your boyfriend doesn’t deserve you. That you’re too good for him.

What guy wouldn’t want his girl to stop hanging out with friends who just shit-talk him?

“Those weren’t friends,” he says. “What kind of friends want to fuck up your relationship?”

“It was already fucked up,” you respond. “They just helped me see it. But I still cut them off. For you. For nothing.”

Rafe blinks a few times before parting his lips to speak again. Nothing. That’s what he is to you?

His chest aches. He wants to return the favor. He wants to hurt you back.

“You’re so fucking weak,” he says, tapping your temple. You slap him away. “You’ll believe anything.”

It’s a slam to your heart.

“There’s something wrong with you,” you say. “Anyone who can tolerate you for as long as I did is the farthest thing from weak.”

You managed to hit him back just as hard. The way he pauses is a clear sign of it.

“That’s all it was, huh? Tolerating me?” he mutters.

You nod, your breath unsteady.

“Was it tolerating me when I bought you every single fucking thing you wanted?”

“I never asked you to do any of that,” you counter. Your voice has lost its edge. The reminder of how he used to spoil you with gifts and spa days and getaways has cracked your armor a little bit.

“You loved it, though, didn’t you?” he scoffs, shaking his head. “And you loved thanking me for it.”

Your skin pricks with the reminder. The way your lips pressed against his, limbs tangled together in his bed, kissing and fucking and breathing out dirty praise.

He’s thinking of it, too. You can tell because when he brushes up against you, he’s hard. It makes your body go even hotter.

Rafe’s been wondering what you did with all the gifts he got you. His eyes sweep over your body, half-hoping he’ll see a piece of jewelry he bought. But he comes up empty.

He fucking loved it, the way your eyes lit up whenever he got you a gift for no reason. But right now, your eyes are full of hatred.

You still haven’t said anything. Your chest is rising and falling quickly. He struck a chord and he’s going to keep pulling the string.

“Gave you that princess treatment shit, didn’t I?” he murmurs.

You bite the inside of your cheek. You said that whenever he bought you anything or did something sweet. It had become a joke between you two. It’s almost unbelievable that the man towering over you right now is capable of doing anything sweet.

“What, you can’t talk now?” Rafe taunts in his typical frustrating way.

“I hate you,” you mutter.

“Yeah?” he laughs. “You said the opposite the last time I saw you.”

You tense up. It’s true. Albeit angrily, you had said you loved him after he accused you of not giving a shit about him during your last argument.

He didn’t say it back. He hardly ever did. He used his body and his credit card to show you his love. It was always a dark cloud that hung over you, the way he couldn’t just say those three words nearly as much as you did.

Even now, he can’t even say the word. He said the opposite. Because he’s so damn emotionally stunted.

You try to regain whatever power you have left.

“Things change,” you respond. “And I’m better off now.”

Rafe leans closer, eyebrows just slightly raising as he stares at you.

His heart is pounding. His legs are weak. He’s panicked that you’ll reject him, but he can’t control the pull you have on him. The fact that you’re walking around and existing and not being with him is agony.

He feigns confidence, his nose gently nudging against yours, his lips less than an inch away now.

“Can he fuck you as good as I can?” he asks. Your core aches with a hard craving for him.

“I just said I’m better off, didn’t I?” you reply.

Rafe’s stomach curls in pain. The thought of another man tasting you, hearing you moan, being inside of you… It actually fucking hurts. You’re his. You’re not supposed to be anybody else’s.

“You need a reminder,” he says tersely, “of how good I make you feel.”

Your breath catches. You’d be stupid to do this. You just bring out the worst in each other. Having sex will undo all the healing you’ve done.

But, because of this sick effect he has on you, you listen to the voice telling you that one last time will be a proper goodbye.

“You’re wasted,” you say. You already felt his hard-on brush against you, but challenging him is too addictive not to do it. “You sure you can even get it up?”

Instead of being pissed off, Rafe does the most attractive thing he possibly can. And it’s infuriating. He smirks, grinding up against you, his hard lust pressed right between your legs.

“When have I ever had a problem with that?” he murmurs.

And finally, finally, he leans forward, pressing his warm lips on yours, and tasting him is like coming home after a trip you never wanted to go on.

You sink into his touch, letting yourself enjoy this temporary high, letting yourself give into the impulse to drag your hands up his hard torso, palms running over the expensive fabric you bought for him.

You tightly cup the sides of his neck. He pushes you by your waist, up against the wall so hard that your back tinges in pain.

This is what this will be. A hard, angry, rough goodbye. One last struggle for power.

You push him off, your lips parting with a smack.

“Find a room,” you order him.

His grip on your wrist is tight as he takes you to a guest room near the back of the house. He shuts the door and pushes you down onto the bed, chest heaving as he looks at you on your back, propped up on your elbows, watching him as he undoes his belt.

You gaze up at him as he breathes heavily, unzipping his pants and letting the buckle fall to the floor with a thud. He palms himself over his boxers, shaking his head at you.

“You can’t take your own damn clothes off?” he mutters.

The fire in you blazes hotter when he leans over you, pulling the button of your jeans out of the loop, zipping down, roughly tugging the waistband down your legs.

Part of the reason you waited for him to do it is because you’re so struck by the way he looks, angry and horny and handsome. But mostly, it’s because if he undresses you, it’s proof of how badly he wants this, how badly he wants you, and you miss that feeling.

Rafe is light-headed simply at the sight of your bare thighs. How can you make him feel like this and not be in his life anymore, just like that?

Once your pants are off, you tug him down to you by his hips, using all your strength to pull yourself up over him.

Rafe could easily withstand you, but he doesn’t want to. This was the best part of your relationship. The battle for control. It’s always been intoxicating.

He’s on his back while you’re propped up on your knees, straddling him, looking down at him, at the way your fingers look splayed on his chest.

He dreamed about seeing you on top of him again. His ex-girlfriend, the only person who’s just as fucked up as he is, the only one who challenges him in such an infuriatingly perfect way. Now, you’re just another person who’s given up on him.

“I know you missed this,” he says with a craven refusal to admit that he missed it himself.

“Feels like you missed it more.” You grind against him, but your middle is hot and wet, and you’re sure he can feel it.

You tug at his shirt, undoing buttons but eventually getting impatient enough to rip apart the last two that remain.

Rafe expels a pissed off tsk. This is his favorite thing you gave him. It’s typical, your recklessness, your refusal to care about the consequences he’s left to live with.

Some of his anger dissipates when you bend to kiss him, your tongue running over his. He grips your ass, fingers dipping under your panties as your kisses grow in roughness, starting to nip at each other’s lips, rushed and hungry.

You pull at the sleeves of his shirt, tugging so he’s left in his boxers only. He pushes your shirt up as you remain bent over him, squeezing your tits over your bra. You hate to give him the satisfaction of your moan, so you keep it in, scrambling to take your shirt off.

His fingers move expertly as he unhooks your bra just like he always did before. You hate that your mind jumps to wondering if he’s taken off any other girl’s clothing lately.

You lied about having a new boyfriend. You know he’s not above lying, either. You wouldn’t dare ask if he’s done this since your break-up. Because it’ll show you care. And because his answer, lie or not, could destroy you.

Your bra is thrown onto the floor and rough hands dip to the backs of your thighs, pushing you so that your chest is right over his face, giving him a chance to put his mouth on you as you hover over him on your hands and knees.

His tongue is hot over your nipple and this time, you can’t stifle your moan. He smirks against you, locking his lips around the peak of your breast, kneading the other, just hard enough to hurt in a good way.

You’re so mad at him for ruining things between you. It’s unfair that someone who knows your body and soul so well is so fucking cruel.

You want to drown your anger in him, in the pleasure you know he can give you. You sit up to take off your panties and shift higher this time so that your knees are pressed against his ears.

You lower and the second you feel his mouth between your legs, you shudder. It’s even better than you remembered.

Rafe looks up at the perfect sight of you sitting over him, eating you out with fast, desperate licks and sucks, tasting you, savoring you.

Your thighs start to lose their strength and you sink slightly, putting more of your weight on his chin, and the groan that escapes from his mouth onto your clit makes you lose all composure.

His hands keep your thighs pinned so you follow his lead, fully sitting on him now, grinding against his mouth. Your fingers lace in his hair, pulling at the roots, every writhe of yours getting harder.

This is a fucking dream come true to him. You’ve done this before, but you’ve never been this rough. You were always afraid to hurt him even during angry sex. This is different.

You roll your hips and the sensation of his nose bumping against your clit sends sparks of pleasure throughout your body. You’re soaked from your own arousal and his spit, sliding over his mouth.

It’s impossible to hold back your moans now. You let the groans of how good you feel spill out of your throat, mixed with the sounds of his mouth on you and the music blasting from the front of the house.

Rafe’s fingers dig into your thighs, his tongue flattened for you so you can get the pleasure you need. You look down, meeting his eyes while you ride his face, the tension and lust and frustration you share thick in the air.

You slow down, arching your back so he’ll work your clit how you want him to. You don’t even need to tell him. He knows you so damn well, his lips locking around the most sensitive part of your body, sucking and slurping so hard that you start to tremble.

“Just like that,” you whimper. His jaw was starting to get sore, but your praise spurs him to keep going. You adjust your grip on his hair, throwing your head back as his suction grows even harder.

Your thighs press against his cheeks as you start to dissolve into your orgasm. Rafe’s not letting that happen. You’re not getting yours until he gets his.

He pushes your hips up and a frustrated whine tumbles from your mouth. He’s so hard it hurts, roughly guiding you onto your back, the mattress bouncing with how hard he throws you down.

Rafe stares at you with hard eyes as he pulls off his boxers, his cock springing out, holding himself at his base as he guides himself against your entrance.

His exhale is short and sharp as he plunges into you. It feels so damn right to have him inside you, on top of you. The way he sounds, the way he smells. It’s just right.

“You like that?” he mutters, thrusting hard with no build-up to his fast pace.

“Yeah,” you whisper. He revels in the feeling of your heat wrapped around him. Inside you is his favorite place to be. That’s never changed.

“Where’s that attitude now, huh?”

“I don’t have an attitude,” you argue breathily, your body jolting with his thrashes.

“Not when I’m eating you out,” he says. “Not when I’m fucking you.”

“I don’t have an attitude,” you repeat.

He grips your jaw aggressively, fucking you in a frenzy, fingers squeezing your cheeks so hard that your lips jut out into a pout.

“Yes, you fucking do,” Rafe says, panting. “You think you’re so fucking perfect, don’t you?”

“I’m better than you,” you reply.

“You’re insufferable,” he murmurs. “Fucking insufferable.”

The pressure of him thrusting into you, the way he’s holding you and breathing and groaning, pushes you into a mind-blowing orgasm, your entire body tensing.

You’re in a daze, knowing he’s close by the way his movements are starting to grow sloppier.

“Then why were you with me?” The words are out of your mouth before you can even think about if you should say them.

Rafe’s wet mouth is on yours, tasting like himself and like you, a combination of two people who never should have met. You’re sure that you’d both be better off.

He comes hard, going still on top of you, groaning against your lips. Once he pulls back, his breaths hot on your neck, he finally answers, echoing what you’ve said to him so many times. But this time, you’re the victim of the insult.

“Because there’s something wrong with me,” he says.

Your throat thickens with tears. It’s the truth. And the truth is painful.

“Get the fuck off of me,” you mutter, pushing him off. You promise yourself that tonight is the last time that you’ll ever feel him on top of you, feel him pulling out of you.

You can’t get your clothes on fast enough. Even though this is an old flame, it has the same amount of power to scald you.

“Thought you weren’t a cheater,” he grumbles behind you as you slide on your panties.

“This was a mistake,” you say. “And it’s the last time I’m making it.”

Your words sting. He thought this was make-up sex. That you had a little bit more fight in you for him, and then you’d walk out of this room on his arm. But you really are done.

You pull on your bra next, fingers trembling, knowing you’ll regret it if he hears you cry. You put your shirt on as he remains lying behind you, surely relaxed now that he got what he wanted.

You stand to pull up your jeans, finally meeting his eyes again.

“Why did you even text me?” you mutter. You loathe that a tiny part of you hopes he says it’s because he misses you.

But you’re glad he doesn’t. Because you two just start each other’s fires and douse them in gasoline, burning each other over and over. He simply says, “I wanted to fuck and I knew you’d let me.”

Rafe said it just to hurt you because you called this a mistake. The way you look down as you pretend to focus on buttoning your jeans tells him it worked.

“Don’t text me again,” you say. “Don’t call me. Don’t contact me at all.”

“You scared your new boyfriend’s gonna see?” he says, pretending to be unaffected, pushing past the hurt.

You cross the room and look at him one last time as you turn the door handle. You decide to say the most honest thing you’ve said to him tonight.

“I’m scared I’ll fall for your bullshit again,” you admit. “We’re bad for each other. If there’s any part of you that has a heart, you’ll realize that and you’ll leave me alone.”

For once, Rafe is rendered speechless. He gave you his whole damn heart and for you to insinuate he might not even have one is the last dig he needs to shatter him.

Just like the night this ended in his car, you leave. But you mean it this time.

Because something that was actually meant to be would not hurt this much.

(part two)

inspired by this ask and this ask by @diorjadore

[revelboo]

Hello:33 I hope you're fine and well you always give your best in your writing and they are sooo fine Damn 😩🤌🏻✨ you're cooking🗣️💥😝 so if you're in the mood and have free time BC I know you're busy asf, here's my request BC I miss my husband (wifey) ratchet 😭✨🤌🏻😩😝

REVEL FEED ME ANOTHER CHAPTER OF RATCHET AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!

Please (⁠づ⁠｡⁠◕⁠‿⁠‿⁠◕⁠｡⁠)⁠づ

Sure

The Weakends Pt 11

TFP Ratchet x Reader

• Coming up for air when he rests his helm against your forehead, you’re dimly aware of his optics sliding sideways when Fowler mutters about you stretching the definition of human-Cybertronian relations with that as he stalks off. Of Ratchet making a low, rumbling sound that’s almost a growl as his head turns to track the other human and you reach to tip his face back toward you. “I don’t care what he thinks, but we probably shouldn’t be making out right here. It’s about time for the kids to get out of school,” you say, lips brushing his as you speak. And his big frame shudders against you, his hands gripping your butt to lift you off your feet and then your back hits the wall as his mouth comes down on yours as if just to spite Fowler.

• Pinning you, his servos tighten on your hip as his other hand reaches up to cup your face, tipping it up. Knows you’re right, that he should take this somewhere private, but he’s almost afraid you might come to your senses and put a stop to this if he lets up. And he needs this, you, so bad it hurts. To find out you care about him that way, that you see him? See anything besides the gruff team medic? It means everything. “Ah, Doc. Ew.” Feels you press your face against his neck, trying not to laugh as he glares over his shoulder at Smokescreen. “Get out,” he growls, now sure you’re laughing as you hook your legs around his waist and he smacks his palm against the wall behind you because you’re wiggling against him, hot breath on the mesh of his neck.

• “I told you,” you whisper, brushing your mouth against his neck because it makes him vent raggedly when you do. And then he’s tipping your head up, servos on your chin. Those lovely blue optics staring down at you in frustration and need. Tempting you to see where this goes. His thumb is against your bottom lip and you tilt your head to nip at him with your teeth, sucking on the tip and his hips rock against you as he makes a noise. Encouraging you to be wicked as you hear Smokescreen leaving, still rambling about fragging in the common area. The doc’s lips are slightly parted as you suck on his thumb, tongue sliding against him. Teasing. “We could make our own definition of human-Cybertronian relations,” you say before nipping him again. Face heating, you’re aware that you’ve never been good at this. At seduction or flirting, but you want this. Want him and need him to know it.

• “Primus,” he growls as you stare up at him with those eyes and suck on his servo again, the wet heat and suction of your mouth, the feel of your tongue sliding against him going straight to his spike. Imagining you doing that to his spike. “You’re trying to kill me.” Giving in to impulse and rocking himself against you, hating the layers of clothing and his plating between you. Had never been an exhibitionist before, still isn’t, but he’s tempted to take you right there. The kids, though. Groaning, he grips your butt in his hands ignoring your little noise of protest before you occupy that soft mouth by stroking over the mesh of his neck as he tries to walk you back to his quarters. Hearing the musical sound of your laughter again at his awkward shuffle.

• Your back hits the door to the quarters and you arch to find his mouth again when he tries to get the door open. Distracting him as the big medic growls at you and pins you more firmly. Legs tightening around him as he moves against you, rocking himself when you wiggle in his grip, chasing that friction and heat. Feeling like a teenager fooling around for the first time, groping and grinding through your clothes. “Please, doc,” you moan against his lips, knowing he hates the nickname and he takes advantage, glossa stealing inside. Clinging to him, hips bucking as he claims your mouth with all that pent up frustration, servos almost bruising on your hips.

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[demiesworld]

jjk men and how they show their love for you

☆ characters: satoru gojo, suguru geto, toji fushiguro, kento nanami, + choso

☆ genre: fluff, romantic, domestic

☆ contents: mentions of abuse & death in toji's part, but nothing graphic

☆ notes: reader is a female and uses she/her pronouns. ages are not mentioned in this, but the reader is of legal age. curse spirits, sorcerers, etc. do not exist. everything is purely fictional.

— satoru gojo: cuddling

he likes it when you two are alone together in the privacy of your home, cuddling together underneath a warm blanket while watching a really bad (in his opinion) movie that you picked out. and even though he really wants to critique the writer's script of the characters, and the actors acting performance, satoru doesn't say not a word to you about it. he just holds you around your waist tighter and nuzzles his nose into your neck. he likes the smell of you after a shower because you smell fresh and it's comforting to him.

— suguru geto: quality time

to suguru, there's no better way to keep your attention on him than taking you out somewhere or just spending time together. when he takes you out on a date, he encourages you to silence your phone (or better yet turn it off) to avoid any distractions. same goes for when you two are being intimate. he's a man that wants eyes on him and for you to listen to him. he does the same thing for you. you want to tell suguru about the nosy bitch at work? he's listening and giving you advice. you want to go to the netherlands? he's buying a plane ticket in business class for you two. whatever it is, suguru loves to spend time with you as long as you are on the same page as him.

— toji fushiguro: acts of service

growing up in the zenin family and being abused by them sculpted toji into the cold, callous man he is today. followed by the sudden and tragic death of his previous wife he didn't think he could find love ever again. not until he met you. you warmed this man's heart at the first time he saw you. he likes to show you that he loves you by doing things that makes your life easier. he'll pay and put gas in your car. he will help you with cleaning the dishes after a meal that you've cooked for. if you're running short on money for you rent, he'll even cover it for you and doesn't expect for you to pay him back. just the thought of you being comfortable is a good enough reward.

— kento nanami: words of affirmation

with kento, you would wake up in the mornings to a good morning text followed by him reminding you of your beauty, your excellence, and telling you not to let menial things get you in a bad mood. in your lunches you would find a hand-written note from kento complimenting you. in spite of being a full-time salaryman, kento would call you during his lunch break to talk to you and listen as you complain about your coworkers. he loves hearing your voice. at night, just before your head hits the pillow he would kiss your forehead and wish you a good night's rest. kento can be quite the charming man when it comes to you.

— choso: gift giving

choso... precious choso. he likes to shower you with gifts as a way to show his undying love and appreciation for you. if you mention that you like something, but you couldn't get it, best believe it will be either on your doorstep or in your hand within the next day. when he sees you eyeing something in the store for even a second, choso will buy it for you. he won't take any "no's", "stops", or returning the item back. choso bought it FOR you. if you return any of his gifts it will hurt his feelings and he'll think you don't love him. so be careful when you are trying to let choso know not to get you gifts.

letter from demi: i have adopted a new style of how i do... idk what you call these blurbs? headcanons? idk. anyways im changing some things up with how my posts are... styled. i hope the work and the way it is made looks good! lmk what you think babes!

[chronically-ghosted]

and in their falling, rise again (lover, share your road - part ii) series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

chapter rating: T

word count: ~25K

chapter summary: You and Ellie have adjusted to the Miller homestead in your own ways. Much to Sarah's delight, these roots you've planted have grown a bit deeper than any of you initially expected. But figuring out how Joel is feeling about all of these changes is a complicated dance you worry you're stumbling through — except when he takes the lead.

chapter warnings/tags: reader is described as skeletal early on but that is due to food scarcity not her natural body type, psychological/mental effects of domestic abuse, allusions to domestic abuse, underground spaces, one dead body, brief moment of gore, guns, aggressive behavior, father/daughter relationship dynamics, slow burn, praise kink in a trojan horse of "making friends"

a/n: this would have taken months longer (or not at all) without the support and guidance of @toomanytookas. everyone please say thank you! please note the update to the series parts on the masterlist - we're doing four (you have @toomanytookas to thank for that as well!)

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine - Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

part ii:

Dawn comes slowly to Dalhart, a place hardly anyone knows about, the last stop on the railway line where the forgetful or the sleepy end up because they’ve missed their stop somewhere else. The wheat boom made this place swell with life, with the blood of eager men, with the sickness of greed, and now the boom has burst, the guts and blood of hopes and dreams splattered up and down the dusty streets. Still, the next year people believe they can conquer the elements, conquer nature, their own hubris leading the way in the dark, following the guidance of a false sun. So they who came have stayed, mostly — mostly because they follow promises like fireflies, winking in the night with just enough light to convince themselves the darkness won’t last.

It’s for this reason, these stragglers with misbegotten illusions of grandeur, that he moves without light, embracing the dark. The lock on the back door was rusted from the wind and dust storms, easily broken against the butt of his gun, but he moves, low and fast, as fast as his knees will allow, relieved to find the windows still boarded up and threads of curtains still covering the dirt-smeared glass. The office in the back is windowless, which will make rifling through it, checking for false bottoms and loose walls, easier. This building is technically abandoned but getting caught will mean he has to answer questions he’d rather not answer – to himself or anyone else. Which means moving quick through the front reception room and maintaining the utmost silence is paramount to –

crunch

Joel whips around, the grip around his Colt tightening briefly, and locks eyes with the fourteen-year-old behind him, crouched as low as he is. 

A red handkerchief around her neck, she scrunches her nose up in a grimace, teeth stacked in her mouth. Oops. Sorry. My bad. 

Dropping the barrel of his gun lower, he points to her other foot, frozen in the air, inches above another cracked plate of glass. He indicates it with the jerk of his gaze and she nods, hands raised, slowly backing up and off another potential alarm. Shaking his head, he eases forward on protesting knees, his own thick boots shuffling flat against the floor. He feels eyes on the back of him, watching how he navigates the shards littering the ground. 

Briefly listening for movement, he knocks back the office door with his shoulder, rising slowly in spite his screaming thighs, scanning the darkness before flicking on the light. The girl behind him shuffles in and shuts the door after her. 

He sees Ellie blink rapidly against the light, scowling behind her raised hand, before she takes a look around. 

“Shit, man, did a fucking bomb go off in here or something?”

People, like most pack animals, tend to react instead of think in moments of fear. Fear, like when their town’s only doctor takes off in the middle of the night with no warning. A bad omen, an egg forgotten until it starts to stink. 

“Dalhart got all pissed off when Eldelstein split. Came here to either ransack the place or take what they thought they were owed.” Joel moves to slides his gun into his waistband, but the muzzle keeps getting stuck on his belt. 

“Guess they thought they were owed a lot,” Ellie muses as she kicks over a broken plank of wood, adding to the debris that litters the dust-covered floors. She watches him struggle tugging his shirt out. “I can carry the gun, if you want. You know, if you need a hand free.” 

He responds with that glare, the glare that he often reserved only for her. Disapproving, unamused, but . . . Ellie smirks, hands up in the air. 

“Sorry I asked, man, just trying to help.” 

Joel nods sternly. “You heard what your aunt said. Help, but don’t touch. D’you need the list again?” 

She waves him off, wandering over to the overturned couch. “Nah, I know what I’m looking for. And you know she’s no fun anyway.”

He watches her, hesitant, as she crouches down by what used to be a consulting couch and peels back the wood planks and torn wallpaper. This isn’t the first time she’s done something like this – scavenging for supplies – and he is reminded again of the bits and pieces of Ellie’s old life he has picked up on over the past few months. Every time, it knots his stomach. 

Jaw tight in his head, grasping at that relentless focus that seems to be eluding him as of late, Joel overturns what used to be a desk to look for the latch you told him might be there. 

Just by the top drawer.

Your shoulder, then the crease of your arm had touched his as you leaned in towards the rough sketch you make of a doctor’s desk. You smelled like lilac and sunlight. There was a curl of hair on the back of your neck, loose as it curled down your throat, by your pulse. 

It’ll be small. Just a latch.

Your fingers had brushed his wrist, eyes downcast, lashes soft against the curve of your cheek. There was a smear of something green on the sleeve of your dress. Fresh grass, maybe? Herbs from the garden? The light behind you illuminated the thin skin of your ear, the supple drop of your earlobe.

You won’t need much pressure. Just a flick. It should open up under your thumb. You can’t miss it, Joel.

Joel.

“Joel!”

“What?” 

Ellie rolls her eyes at his nearly-bared teeth. “I’m gonna have my aunt look at your hearing, ‘cause there’s definitely something wrong with you.”

With a grunt, Joel kneels down and reaches into the far back of the desk where it is still held together in the corner, resolutely smothering the high flutter in his chest. His fingers touch something metal, something other than that green felt and split wood. He gets his thumb around it and it clicks.

“I found gauze and iodine,” Ellie says, holding up half a bottle and some dirty wrapping. “That wasn’t on the list she put together, but we probably need it, right?” 

He feels something give way, but it isn’t clear where. He eases the desk back further to try and lift it to the light. 

“Iodine is meant for keeping infections out. Wounds clean n’ all that.”

Ellie huffs, more exasperated this time. “I know that. That’s why I was asking.”

“Planning on getting wounded any time soon?”

“Fine, you jackass, I’ll just throw them out –,”

“Put ‘em in your pack if you’ve got room. Otherwise, we only take what we came here for.” 

With a light press, a small drawer eases open. Just a crack and barely enough to get his fingers inside, but he can see the bottle. Clear, made of glass, and filled with little white pills. 

Morphine. 

It had been his first idea when Sarah’s condition started to deteriorate, but the papers and medical journals he ordered in at the supply store about addiction kept him from ever really considering it as an option.  But with you here – and you had already done so much for her recovery – with you here –

I can manage it, Joel. They’ve done wonderful things with rehabilitation and comfort. I promise I will monitor her closely.

He knows a line should exist about what he would and wouldn’t allow for Sarah’s treatment, but as of late, that line has become so blurred he sometimes has to scramble to find it. 

Would and wouldn’t.

Should and shouldn’t. 

His feet are starting to sting from balancing on that knife’s edge these past few months.

He hears the pills rattle as he drops the bottle into the bottom of his canvas rucksack. Ellie’s buckling hers as Joel stands and joins her search of a knocked-over cabinet. Not much there either but cough syrup and penicillin. 

“What else you got?” 

“Some bandaids, a handful of calcidin tablets, and a busted hot water bottle that I think we could melt shut.” She adjusts the straps, her face serious. “Maybe he kept the good stuff for himself upstairs.” 

He nods to the fourteen-year-old with a knife in her sock and a hard scowl on her face. “Yeah, maybe.”

He objectively can see the absurdity of supply stealing with a girl barely older than a child, but in this world, in Dalhart, at the end of the line, there is always more innocence to be lost. He knew Sarah’s own childhood was not a normal one, not one that any fussy school marm would deem appropriate for a young girl, and so if he isn’t working himself to the bone in the fields, he is working himself tirelessly to shelter whatever is left of her youth. But, like so many other things, it feels gone already, passed on in a cloud of dust. 

He thinks, had her life been different – that look in her eyes only comes from being exposed to violence – Ellie might have been a bit softer at the edges, no different from any other teenager. He wonders, briefly, what happened to her that made her believe she has to carry a knife with her everywhere.

“We’ll go check but you’re gonna follow the rules, right?” 

Ellie’s shoulder slouch forward, buffeting air between her lips. “Stay behind you, stay low, and stay quiet. Oh, and help but don’t touch. I got it, I got it. ” 

“And here I thought it was physically impossible for you to listen,” he mutters as he flicks off the light and opens the door again. He crouches low again, easing out into the front hallway as bruised morning sunlight peaks in between the boarded windows. 

“Only one of us is deaf, old man,” she mutters gruffly over his shoulder. 

Across from the reception hall is where Eldelstein would receive and treat patients. Most likely the first place that was ransacked, but there might be things missed. He makes a note to circle back after checking the apartment upstairs, but now with it getting light out, he knows their time is limited. 

The Colt at his side, Joel shuffles up the wooden staircase, dirt and dust sitting heavy between the crevices. Without much surprise, he realizes he can barely hear Ellie behind him at all, as if she took to his flat-footed approach. 

In the few months that have passed, he’s come to learn that Ellie is a very quick learner. 

The second story is almost the exact layout as the office arrangement downstairs. A brief hallway with two doors. He glances over his shoulder, rewarding her trust with an opportunity to lead, and Ellie’s eyes widen in understanding. She frowns at the two closed doors, thoughtful, and then she shrugs. 

“I’ve always felt good about being a righty.”

With a shallow huff, he moves forward towards the right door, hand gently twisting the knob, finger hovering over the Colt’s trigger. The door squeaks open as it swings back, Joel against the doorframe until he can give the space one quick sweep of his gaze. Then he’s opening the door wider and pocketing the gun.

Here the damage is less. Less rage and more morbid curiosity. The few narrow beds are shoved haphazardly around the room as if someone went about kicking them aside. Old gray sheets lay in tangled bundles on the floor and the mattresses. Beat-up infusion stands are rusted and broken in the corner, one halfway stuck in a torn-up chunk of wall. A thin door at the far end of the room shielding a dark bathroom is missing its handle. Drawers are torn open, left hanging like loose teeth, violence as enjoyment. A patient recovery room, most likely, for those needing overnight care and –

She gasps sharply behind him before sprinting across the room, the floorboards shrieking.

“Ellie!”

“Joel, look, it’s a radio!” 

It’s about the size of her head, turned away and tilted on the back of a long shelf below the window, but she drags it forward, setting it in front of her and her fingers immediately fly to the knobs.

“I’m gonna shit a brick if this works–”

A faint crackle and her own gasp of delight. It’s not much, it’s hardly music, but there’s something there. She spins the dial, moving across radio waves, the faint yellow light flickering behind the numbered notches. Just as a voice breaks through the dusty speakers, the box hisses and the radio goes silent. 

“Okay, but you saw that, right? It worked for, like, ten whole seconds! If we take it home, I bet–,”

“No.” 

“Aw – what?” She frowns. “Why? C’mon. It’s one radio.”

“It’s too big and we can’t travel light with it.” 

“But I’ve got room in my pack –,”

“No.”

“Fine!” She flicks one of the broken dials off, scowling. “Whatever.” 

Her back turned to him, Ellie yanks open a nearby cabinet door, the lines of her shoulders tight. Joel watches her rummage around, a heavy weight in his gut, before he rights a fallen bedside table to get to the counter behind it. 

He finds scissors, a stitch kit, and saline solution. Behind him, he hears Ellie load her pack. 

The silence stretches, a handful of conversations pressing up to the back of his teeth before fading on his tongue. Sarah is rarely ever this annoyed with him – especially not as often as Ellie seems to be – and it doesn’t sit well with him, knowing Ellie is over there, stewing. 

He doesn’t want her angry with him, for no other purpose than she made Sarah happy. 

No other purpose at all. 

He’s reaching up, checking above a tall wooden wardrobe, when his hand bumps into something, a jar, and he remembers those comics she told Sarah about. Maybe some of them are around here somewhere. 

“Hey, Ellie, uh–,”

“Why hasn’t anyone found out about your homestead yet?” Ellie asks suddenly, her arm digging around behind a chipped bureau. “Or raided it? It’s just you and Sarah out there and people could . . . how do you keep it a secret?” 

His fingers close around the cool jar and he pulls it down. 

Luxor, the label reads. 

Hand cream. 

His dirty thumb smears brown over the lip of the jar. He thinks of delicate skin, raw pink, a painful pink. The thing he has in his hands would soothe that ache. He thinks this might form the words I thought of you when his own mouth fucking can’t. The muscle between his shoulder blades twinges painfully as he takes off his pack and slips the jar inside. 

The radio really would be too much weight, but . . .

“It’s complicated.” He tells Ellie. Across the room, she stills, turns around and looks at him straight on. This is the niece of someone who almost shot two Texas Rangers, who at fourteen carries a knife in her sock and won’t hesitate to use it. There is something wild in her eyes. 

“I don’t think it is.” Her tone edges the line between curiosity and taunt. Her eyebrows ride high on her forehead and her lips slightly purse, mouth centimeters from a smirk. She speaks quietly, honorifically. “I think it has something to do with why those ranger guys were so fucking scared of you they nearly shit themselves. I think it also has to do with Sarah.”

Eyes narrowed, locked across the recovery room. Careful. Be very careful. The jar offsets the distributed weight of his bag. 

“I don’t think anyone actually knows about her condition or how well the homestead is doing. And I think you’d fuck up a whole squad of those assholes to keep it that way.” The silence stretches but it’s sticky now. Ellie grins up at him, the secret she plucked from him sitting in her smile. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

She smirks with the confidence of youth, a spark of naive innocence.

Joel scuffs his shoe on the ground, his hands going to his hips. “You’re right. I’d do anything to protect Sarah. To protect what’s mine.”

That smile drips off her face when he lifts his gaze. He lets it grow hard, weary – a warning. 

“I have done a lot of things – things I never want her to know about – to keep her safe. Those men, this town – they’re right to be afraid of me.” 

Ellie swallows around the weight of the room, her gaze metallic, bright and sharp. Her mouth is a straight line of barely contained victory. I knew it. 

She lifts her chin, hands curled at her side.

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you make them afraid?” 

He can see a flash of bone between her lips – teeth, eagerness. And then in a blink, it’s gone. Wiped clean from a youthfully smooth face. Ellie drops his gaze, deflates, and stares at the floor. 

“I mean – it just seems like a lot – keeping it all a secret.” 

“It’s not. Not when it’s for her.” 

And it’s like he’s pressed roughly on a fresh bruise; she curls further into herself for protection, almost wincing. He suddenly remembers her half-snarl when he said there’d be twice as many mouths to feed if he took them in. A burden, twice as heavy. 

“Yeah, of course, she’s your kid.” 

Her rough voice is as physical and real as she is as she pushes past him, marching out of the room and twisting the handle of the closed door across the hall.

“It’s not much of a choice then, is it?” She says, loudly, the door squeaking as it opens. 

Behind him, over his shoulder, the door to the bathroom slams shut – a draft. His heart pitches in his chest – he’s seen how you and Ellie have reacted before at loud noises and certainly slammed doors before – he hears her soft gasp, her narrow back tight in the frame of the door, but it’s different from one from the one he expects, one of learned skittishness. It’s a boneless sort of horror, wet, sudden, cold – he fights the urge to tug her out of the room by her collar. But she’s already seen it. There’s no taking it back.

The smell is horrendous. The blockage by the door must have masked the stench because with the door open, there is no denying the scent of rotten flesh. 

Someone who was unlucky enough to get caught up in the crazed fervor of the lynch mob meant for Eldelstein? Someone who deserved it, maybe? Whatever and whoever they were, they make up a mutilated shadow beneath the far window, the soft bits of their flesh a home for flies and maggots. The room is dark, drained of sunlight and the sense that anything living ever existed inside its walls. Boarded up and stale, it stinks of a graveyard, but one without coffins, where the bodies are left to ooze and decay and spill out into the wet soil. It stinks of putrefaction, of tainted earth and poisoned air.

But Ellie doesn’t scream. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t run. Doesn’t cry. 

Just stares wide-eyed and inhales. 

Joel watches and waits for her. Watches because he recognizes that hard, blank look on her face, one that is familiar to him and far too old for her. Waits because he doesn’t know how to react because this activation is so unlike Sarah. 

There are not many fourteen year olds who would barely flinch when eye-to-eye with death.

He stands behind her, a physical presence larger than herself, something bigger and scarier than all the flies and maggots in the world. 

“Is this your first time seeing somethin’ like this?”

Her answer doesn’t entirely surprise him: she shakes her head. 

He nods and takes the handle from her. He gently shuts the door, inches in front of Ellie’s face. “I think we got all we needed. Ready to go?”

She nods, then heads for the stairs, not taking another second to look back at the room with the radio.

The metal teeth of the cultivator catch and drag over a large dirt clod and with a grunt, you shatter it with a few good thwaps. When you stand, sweat races down the back of your neck and between the cotton straps of your bra, cooling the heat of your skin. Your muscles throb pleasantly beneath sunlight. It’s a sensation you’d never had before coming here, to Joel’s homestead, but one you had quickly gotten used to. 

You are not the same girl who came here all those months ago.

You first noticed it when stepping out of the bath one summer morning and your eyes caught yourself in the mirror. 

There are no divots in your hips any more. The deflated skin around your ribs has filled in. Your body – a thing that had merely housed you and sometimes betrayed you to slow down and eat, and ached when you didn’t – had changed. Without you knowing, seemingly overnight, your clay sculpture had been remade. Rebuilt and reborn. For the first time in what felt like years, you wondered how you appeared to another person. 

Thin and skeletal, you had offered nothing to anyone because there was nothing for you to give. But, at the homestead, around Joel with Sarah and a kitchen and abundant food, that had changed. Things swelled here, near him, made ripe and sweet. A vitality returned, flooded in, and you, with your thin petals and wilted spine, blossomed. There’s now the inkling of a person in the mirror, one that hadn’t existed with your husband and now you wondered who she might be. 

And yet, while you flourished with regular meals and the stability of Ellie’s safety, the vitality of the land itself had seemingly dried up to a trickle. The last rain was days ago, the downpour offering even less than the previous one. 

You squat to your ankles, balancing the cultivator against your weight, and press your fingers into the ground. Dry. Delicate. An absence, and an unusual one at that. The dirt trickles off your fingers like sand. The sun’s heat prickles your entire back, oppressive and stifling. A drop of sweat slips off your nose, a finger wagging at you: you can’t deny this anymore. 

This is the same baked and dry earth that had been found on the southwest edge of the property, beneath the waves of dust that had blown in, covering the crops and grass in a gnarly, heavy film. Joel decided to cut his losses there and replant what he could, closer north, nearer to the river. But the look in his eyes was beyond frustration or annoyance. He moved with quick, long strides covering the fields with his tools and the horse. Agitated, maybe – a shark rechecking and double checking the edges of its territory. 

And then the next morning, in the blue of dawn, with the smell of fresh coffee drawing him out of his room and down the stairs where you stood trying to decide whether or not you liked the taste, he asked if you knew how to rake crop stripes.

No, you told him honestly. That didn’t seem to surprise him, but he postponed the lesson you had for Ellie and Sarah that day to diligently walk you through the tools that hung on the wall of the barn. He wasn’t satisfied until you knew them all by name, what their purpose was, and how to properly maintain them. Then, he broke down the pieces of the plow – what they’re called, how they connect, and what to check for before loading up the plow onto the horse.

Sarah and Ellie gleefully watched from the porch that following morning– their chores mysteriously done faster than a blink of an eye – as he had you strip down the tack, clean the leather, and reassemble it. Then he made you haul the plow onto Everrett, never once offering to help. But by the set of his jaw, you knew it wasn’t out of cruelty or distaste. By the time sweat was pouring down your back, the afternoon sun beating down on your exposed ears and neck, you realized he wanted to make sure you could do it all on your own.

By the end of the week, you knew as much as any farm hand. In practice at least. 

But another week went by and Joel never mentioned the lesson, or any further ones. 

Until the morning you came downstairs to find a man’s work shirt and pants waiting for you on the kitchen table. 

Your thin dresses wouldn’t protect you from the sun, he posited, his broad back to you as he poured himself a cup of coffee. The hat he left you was a little too big, as were the clothes. You’d never seen him wear them, but you kept your questions about the original owner to yourself. He didn’t seem to mind when you altered the pant’s hemline and brought in the waist of the shirt. 

Who’s Annie Oakley now? Sarah giggled when you tried on the hat for the first time. 

You could hardly recognize the woman underneath it. 

From there your lessons became about crop rotation, polyculture, and agrochemicals. He had you walk beside him in the rows of crops as he pushed Everrett along with the plow, identifying out loud any signs of vascular wilting, necrosis, and soft rot or tumors. Bacterial diseases were particularly devastating to crops, he said, eyes forward and sweat rolling down his temples, the muscles of his shoulders straining beneath the tight straps of the suspenders hooked into his belt loops. The heat of the sun spreading to your cheeks, you were grateful for the excuse to keep your eyes trained on the ground. 

Leaf blight, he warned, was also very common in young crops – caused by the fungus Cercospora carotae. You asked him then if Sarah had been taught any Latin. His cheeks were flushed pink, but that was probably due to the heat more than anything else. 

Over time and at Joel’s side, you eventually felt confident in your new knowledge. Memorization had never been a problem for you and witnessing the theoretical application of the knowledge in real time helped significantly. However, it was the physical application where things got difficult. 

The day he let you push the plow, he wore a familiar expression all morning. Jaw clenched, Jaw tight, nostrils flared, it was the same look he wore when you approached Sarah during her first fit. He was helpless when you angled the share into the dirt and tore the ground apart. The sight of his furrowed brow knotted your stomach, but you pressed on. You pushed forward, one step after another, just as you had seen him do more than a dozen times. You could almost retrace his steps in your mind’s eye.

With him a hair’s breadth behind you, quickly barking out commands if you strayed a centimeter out of a straight line, something occurred to you.This was no longer a job for you. This was living proof you could take something in your hands and make it better. All your life you had been subservient to someone; a doctor at the hospital, your manager at the diner, your husband in that goddamned dug out – they all held power over you and your choices. But you knew this was different. You knew if you could eventually prove to Joel that you were worthy of being trusted with his land, then he would treat you as an equal. So you pressed on. You pushed yourself until your skin baked in the sun, until sweat dripped from your neck, until blood spilled from your cracked hands. 

Under Joel’s supervision, you fed the land with your blood. 

And six weeks later, the blisters on your hands had calcified, proof and reward of your dedication. You had muscles, hard and lean, strengthened joints and flexible tendons. The molten steel of your body, your form, had finally solidified. 

Your days started alongside Joel’s now, instead of divided by domestic spaces. Some days, he lingered inside even longer than you, polarized positions of where you stood weeks ago: you unlocking the barn, loading the horse and driving out into the fields while he stood at the window, a mug of coffee in his hands. He never made you wait for long, usually offering you a full canteen of water for the day, a single nod before you worked opposite ends to meet in late afternoon. 

But there were times – instances, occasions – that you think, you wonder, if, from the window, he still was watching you. 

Thoughts of his face, all lines and dark eyes, as he held your palm up to the heavens that night in Sarah’s room trickle in when you rest idly, in the seconds before you sleep. When you let your unconscious awareness drift. Which, fortunately, didn’t often happen out in the fields, especially not when Joel had told you about another threat to the crops; what to look for and where to find it. 

And worrisomely, you had – again: dry, inhospitable earth. 

You frown at it beneath your hat, the sun’s touch hot around your shoulders and spine, a low skirting wind by your ankles. An infection spreading. Joel won’t like this, not at all, but he’ll know of some way to shelter the crops. An alteration with the irrigation system, maybe? 

Flora huffs at you, eyeing you with a twitching tail. How much longer are we gonna be out here?

“It’s hot, girl, I know, I’m sorry.” You pat her speckled rump. “We’ll be done soon.” 

Whenever Joel gets back. 

Dusting your knees off, you stand and take a small stake with a white flag from the cart. 

Beneath the bag of staked flags sits your handgun. It hasn’t been used once in these past months, but Joel never lets you go into the fields without it. More often than not, he makes you keep it physically on your person – in a pocket, in your socks, somewhere within reach – but the sight of it sickens you, the horror of what you almost had to do that night you met Joel. How easily you were willing to do it for Ellie. How easily you’d do it again, to keep her safe. 

But now he expects you to do the same for Sarah and this homestead in his absence: protect at the cost of violence. 

The longer the gun sits out in the open, glinting sharply in the sun, the guiltier you feel. 

The breeze comes not a moment too soon. It breathes across your clavicle, the muscles of your throat. It draws your gaze up, outward, to the line of white flags peeking out of the ground. Soldiers in a row, surrender fluttering in the wind. Grave markers of failed crops. You forget the gun as your stomach turns at the sight of the fields full of little white flags.

The land is ill. You can’t deny this anymore.

The breeze thickens to a harsh blow and you grab your hat to keep it steady. Under the rush by your ears, you hear your name. By the house, under the wired row of drying clothes, Sarah waves to you – too far away to hear anything distinct, but she’s pointing and waving to the road and a cloud of smoke barreling down it. 

No, not smoke. Dust. Two figures atop a white horse racing through the chalk of the earth. 

Ellie.

And Joel.

Flora lets out an audible groan of relief when you take her reins and pull her back towards the house, the cart of flags clicking behind you. You wonder if he’ll see the line of flags from the road.

The barn is quiet in the late afternoon heat. You hear june bugs chitter in the rafters as you unclip Flora from the wagon and lead her to a stable. Fauna’s big ears flap towards her sister, brown eyes sparkling, almost bragging.

Ha, ha, you had to be in the fields today.

“None of that,” you scold, as you loosen the leather cord around your jaw and let your hat fall back against your shoulders. “You’ll be getting it soon enough, missy.” 

“You know, talking to animals is the first sign of going crazy.” 

Sarah slides silently through the side door and offers you a towel. She smells of soap, her bouncy hair pulled back today, her smile soft and warm, and you take it, rubbing it up behind your neck. 

“Well, at least I get a warning,” you grin. Sarah was no longer the same plagued girl you met those months ago. 

The ground had shifted in more ways than one the morning of Sarah’s recovery. Of course, there was still pain and soreness, but for the first time in months, she felt strong enough to walk around without her braces. She couldn’t run, couldn’t move fast, but standing next to Ellie, there was nothing that would suggest them any different. She seemed taller, hair bouncier, a focused glint in her eye that wasn’t there before, as if she alone had decided something rather vital. 

Her treatments of warm compresses and exercises went from daily to weekly to now every other week. Once she’d seen you walk through the steps of her therapy, she started to do it on her own in her room. Preventative and calculating. 

The days she can now spend outside doing laundry and planting fresh herbs have done her good. Her healthy skin glows. 

But there’s something delicate about the way she does, or rather, does not look at you now in the barn. An energy you can’t quite place, one that seems to hum louder as the months pass. She watches you, a placid smile on her face, her shoulders halfway turned to the barn door as if she wants to be the first one to see them open. 

“Has Ellie come by yet?” She asks breezily, her fingers lightly running against the edge of the stack of towels tucked up under arm. “I saw my dad walk off to the house, but she wasn’t with him.”

“No, I haven’t. But if they’re back, she should be around here somewhere. Is there something wrong? Are you alright?”

Sarah inhales, round eyes widening – caught – but she shakes her head. “No, of course not. I just . . . I’m just wondering if they had a successful trip.” 

If you knew her better than only for six weeks, you’d think she might be anxious. She goes quiet as she watches the barn doors. The arch in her neck belies tension. You realize she has one of your dresses folded over her arm. 

“Sarah, are you –,”

Everett’s irritated whinny cuts you short and the barn door is thrown back as a short figure tugs the off-white horse into the cool half-light. 

“Yeah, I know I smell. It’s not like you’re a bucket of roses either, pal.” 

At least crazy runs in the family. 

“How was the run?” Sarah asks immediately as Everett clops by dramatically, the weight of the world seemingly on his hooves. The kerchief around Ellie’s neck is crusted over with dirt. 

“Good. Really good, actually. Got a shit load of supplies.” 

Ellie, another changed casualty in all of this. Except, instead of shedding an old skin, she’s grown a new one. The original. Something that, perhaps, always was there. 

She removes the saddle with practiced ease, despite it being nearly twice her size, and puts it on the stock post, just as Joel had shown her. She returns to Everett with a brush and a blanket, because the sun is going down soon and the night will be cold – just like Joel had told her. She banters a bit with Sarah, the work almost mindless with her confidence.

She has taken to this life like a fish takes to water, as Anna would have said. 

But what would your sister think of this life you had rushed her daughter into? Are calloused hands and thick, ruddy skin – supply runs into ghost towns – all that she wanted for her only child?

This, among threads of Joel, keeps you up at night. 

But these are the least of Sarah’s concerns about Ellie. Her fingers dig into your dress as if to physically stop herself from lunging forward. 

“What’s the town like? Are there people still there? Has anyone new come in?”

Ellie shrugs as she unhooks Everett’s bridle. “Boring, like four, and I probably wouldn’t know.” Ellie’s eyes widen, a small smile unfurling across her lips. “But we found a radio. Joel said we couldn’t keep it but – oh, wait, Joel said he was looking for you. Had something he wanted to show you.” 

You blink as Ellie and Sarah, in twin movements, glance to you.

“Oh? What was it?”

“I dunno. But he’s up in the kitchen unpacking the supplies if you wanna go ask.” 

“Was there–,” The corners of Sarah’s mouth goes red as she is suddenly seized by a violent, hacking cough. Both you and Ellie move towards her, but she waves you off. She steps back, turning her mouth into her elbow, her back shuddering as she gasps in air only to choke on it again. 

“Must’ve – breathed wrong–,” her eyes are watery. “I’m – fine.” 

In recent weeks, despite the rest of her body prospering, Sarah’s cough had turned rather rough. But every time you check her airways, she’s clear. Still, the concern lingers – you see it in Ellie’s eyes too. It’s not the kind of cough that comes from polio, you know this. You self-soothe with this. But you think of the white flags in the fields and something sour rolls down your spine.

You meet Ellie’s gaze while Sarah’s back is turned. Excitement, agitation, they had been bringing on more and more coughing spells – whenever Sarah tried to breathe too deeply. Ellie shakes her head at you, jerking her head back towards the house. I got this. In a low tone, she offers Sarah some water who drinks it gratefully. 

 It’s not the kind of cough that comes from polio.

The last bit of sunlight drips down below the horizon, lazy and pungent. A quick glance out to the fields, you can barely see the flags in the periwinkle distance. The air is warm, buzzing with a lingering heat from the escaping sun. You inhale, closing your eyes just for a moment, as you slope up the creaking wooden steps to the porch, and exhale, a chaff of tension sliding off your shoulders. 

When you first came here, you could barely stand the thought of being alone in the same room as him, just like with any other man. But eventually you learned that Joel Miller is unlike any other man in the world, unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. The foreign alchemy of his quiet nature, his diligence over the land, and his deep, endless well of love for Sarah was all at once confusing and – strangely – exciting. 

Earning Joel’s trust precipitated a steady climb or thundering fall – you just weren’t sure which yet. 

Despite the lateness of the hour, Joel hasn’t turned on the kitchen lights, coating the kitchen in a film of purple, blurring edges, and spreading shadows. His broad back greets you first, arm still deep in his pack at the table, when you shut the back door and move for the sink. 

“Ellie says the supply run went well. I hope that means you didn’t run into any trouble.” The rushing of the faucet saves him from having to answer, but you feel his eyes on your back, your shoulders, the flat seat of your hat between your shoulder blades. Brown muck runs down the drain. 

“It was fine. Did she mention anything?”

“No.” You shake your head, digging at the dirt under your nails with another hand. “Why? What did you find?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary, at least.” 

Joel never rushes unless he means to. He holds everything in before he speaks, each word as deliberate as the sway of his shoulders, the crunch of his knuckles. But this – how he talks now as if the words he says are chosen at the very last second – it feels like he’s hiding something.

In the failing light, you face him, eyebrows tugged down. 

“Joel? What is it?” 

At the table, he’s no longer digging around in the pack. With one hand on the table, fingers lightly pressing into the wood surface, he stands as if bracing for impact. He works his jaw back and forth, eating letter after letter, word after word, until –

“C’mere.” 

The deep timber of his voice strokes the back of your neck, releasing a quiver down your spine, heart suddenly up in your throat. It’s not fear you’re feeling, not exactly, but it makes you break out in goosebumps all the same. 

You go to him without question. 

But like a magnet repelled, he steps back the closer you get. With his gaze, he points to the array of supplies. On the table, in almost a sterile, clinical order, is the cache of medical items you requested. Medicine for Sarah, potential treatments for burns or cuts. The bigger items like splints or canes aren’t there, you didn’t expect them anyway, but you could treat the four of you for months with what they’ve found. You open your mouth, praise and appreciation on the tip of your tongue, but he still hasn’t looked up, hasn’t looked at you. He stares at the pack on the table with trepidation.

Wordlessly compelled, you reach into the nearly empty pack until your hand closes around one single item.

You draw it out, the jar cool against your overheated skin.

Luxor. You can’t tear your eyes away from the glass jar. 

His voice is so rough it barely makes it out of his mouth.

“For burns.” His gaze drops to your hands, which have since healed after the night of Sarah’s fit. Weeks ago, in fact. “It wasn’t on the list, but –,”

Oh, Joel. Your throat is sealed shut. You have to nearly wrench your jaw open to push words out of your mouth.

“No, no, that’s fine – that’s –,” you press the glass to the spread of your clavicle to ease your pounding heart. 

This wasn’t on the list. And yet he . . .

Your choice was either to look at him or shatter apart. 

How can a man almost fifty years old look so boyishly uncomfortable? 

“This . . . I . . . this is wonderful. Thank you, Joel. I mean it. Thank you so much. ”

You can already smell the rose water. You wonder if Joel likes the smell of rose water. His jaw unclenches enough, relieved, and his lips almost form – a memory, a dream, an aspiration of – a smile, and he says: 

“You’re welcome.”

In the half-light, you stare at him far longer than you ever have before – and he stares right back. 

In the half-light, you hear it, louder and more cruel than before:

You can’t deny this anymore.

“Okay, who can tell me the difference between genus and family in biological classification?”

One hand in the air.

“Yes?”

“A genus contains one or more species. A family contains one or more genera.”

“Correct. And how does this relate to our lesson last week?”

“We were identifying different species of crops, but how they often overlap in genera.” 

“Correct again.” 

You bend over and pick up the basket at your feet. In the motion, you can feel your dress unstick itself from the warm dampness clinging to your skin beneath your armpit. The summer day is hot, scorchingly so, and only made worse by the lack of a breeze and the immobile stench of cow in the barn air. It’s a different kind of smell than the one that soaked your husband’s dugout – burnt cow chips –  but it is still gut-churningly familiar. You wonder if Ellie remembers that smell as intensely as you do. 

But if she does, she doesn’t show it. Ellie always could hide her emotions better than you. Head down, she draws circles on the wooden table with her finger, side-by-side with Sarah. The girls’ chairs come from the dining room and the table is an old woodworking mount that Joel repurposed for your classroom. It’s uneven and heavy, but the wood is as smooth as butter. After the harvest, he promised a new one, but you don’t think you could bear getting rid of it.

Ellie jumps when you drop the basket in front of her. You return to the back of the barn, gather up another basket, and leave this one with Sarah, whose eyes grow wide when she catches a glimpse of the contents inside. 

With the single square of chalkboard, made from paint and grout, and a rapidly-dwindling nugget of chalk, you write three words:

Genus

Common name

Poisonous

The chalk clicks as you press a small circle beneath the question mark. 

“You have ten minutes to identify the genus of each of the mushrooms within your basket, as well as its common name and whether or not it’s poisonous.” 

Sarah sits up even further in her chair, eyes bright and mouth a sharp line. She loves pop quizzes. 

You had thought of Ellie’s strokes with her knife outside at sunset, her physicality with the animals, and her near abhorrence for traditional learning when designing this particular test. Despite her resistance to any sort of structure, Ellie had been quick to follow directions and provide support as Anna got sicker and sicker. Ellie would make a good nurse – a good anything – but that potential only simmers, never indulged. Anna would have known how to bring it out in her, you often think. The best you can do is try and adjust your lesson to make this at least partially entertaining for her. 

Her forehead shining, her gaze brushes each mushroom in the basket with slow intention.

“Licking them probably won’t help, right?” She smirks at you as she plucks one out and spins it with her fingers. Smartass, as always, but for once – engaged. You try to muffle the spark of excitement in your fingertips.

“That’s one way to determine if they’re poisonous or not,” you reply just as flippantly. “But you’d better be sure.” 

Ellie’s smirk lightens to a grin, her head tucking down as she starts to rifle through her basket. Sarah already has her basket empty and is sorting her mushrooms into the corners of her table. She hasn’t once looked up from her task since you set the timer. Head down, eyes bright, lips tucked tightly between her teeth, you can almost hear her reviewing her notes in her head as she carefully picks up each mushroom, testing the spongy flesh with her thumbnail, watching if any flakes fall off, and glancing at your handmade chart of the animal classifications every few touches. 

Ellie merely sniffs hers. 

You turn, hiding your grin to catch a glimpse of the outside blue sky.

The timer goes off and Flora groans at the loud noise. Sarah correctly identifies all the mushrooms, while Ellie only knows the poisonous kinds. Close enough and perhaps most practical. 

“Just so you know,” Ellie begins to Sarah, head again in the cradle of her palm, her eyes watching you as you swipe the mushrooms back into the basket, “most pop quizzes aren’t fun like that at a real school. Usually it’s just math and the clock makes an annoying little ticking noise the entire time.”

Sarah’s eyes brighten, I love math clearly on the tip of her tongue, before she settles a bit and she scoffs, sophomorically indignant. 

“Yeah, of course, I know that.”

“So you better hope they keep the school shut down for a long, long time.” Ellie leans back in her seat and presses the soles of her sneakers to the edge of the table. “That place is the worst.” 

Sarah shrugs, practicing some of Ellie’s casual indifference. “You’re probably right. It’s definitely lame. Just . . . it would be kinda cool for a change of scenery or whatever.”

“Um, you’re not gonna get a better change of scenery than this.” Ellie bats her eyelashes with her eyes crossed, tongue out, and Sarah giggles. 

“Oh, whatever,” she swats Ellie across her shin, “like you wouldn’t go crawling up the walls if you had to live here every single day, day in and day out.”

You slow in your collection of your supplies, something she said the day of the supply run scuttling up the banks of your memory to prod you in the back of your head. Ellie concedes by crossing her arms, contemplative. “Still better than school.” 

“How long did you go to the school in Dalhart?” You ask as you erase the white chalk on the board. 

“Since it opened,” Sarah replies. “I hadn’t gotten sick yet and it wasn't anything special. It was kinda far from here, but Dad always made sure I got there on time. He always wanted me to get an education, focus on school and studying. He never wanted me to be a farmer like him.”

That sends the front leg’s of Ellie’s chair to the hard, packed dirt. “Really? Why?”

“I dunno. But I guess it all worked out. I’m better at memorization and trig than I am at carrying a saddle.”

“What’s trig?” Ellie asks, head tilted. 

“It’s a kind of math –,”

“Advanced math,” you interject. 

“Yeah, I guess. But my teacher at school really made it fun! She’d stay after class and show me things that weren’t in the textbooks, or even in the syllabus. And Sam, he’d –,” 

All at once, Sarah’s mouth snaps shut, her eyes diving to the floor. She tugs a bouncy curl behind her ear as Ellie’s frown deepens.

“Sam? Who’s Sam?” 

“No one. He was just – this boy – in my grade and he was really good at trig too and he lived right outside Dalhart for years and sometimes he’d help me when I got stuck on certain problems,” Sarah rambles, her voice a tick higher. “His family left the year they shut the school down.”

You stifle a grin. A crush. Sarah Miller has a crush on a boy. Even at the end of the line, at the end of hope. 

Ellie, however, remains completely baffled.

“Yeah and? He’s just some guy.”

Sarah blanches at the suggestion that she might have to defend him past being “just some guy” while trying to keep her secret of him being “the guy” all at once, so you step in and save her.

“Did you ever spend time with Sam outside of school?”

Sarah shakes her head no. 

“Not even with a group of people?”

At that, she bites the corner of her mouth, the heel of her brown boot circling in the dirt. You know her cheeks are fire-hot.

“No. My dad totally would have found out.” 

Ellie stares at both of you as if you had started speaking gibberish. And then she blinks.

“Oh – you mean like a date.”

“Who’s going on a date?” 

The three of you jump at the masculine voice that breaks out from the back of the barn. Those thick brows furrow in as Joel visibly wonders if he walked into something he shouldn’t have. On the days you have class, he spends his time repairing things around the farm, often taking stock of the cellar in preparation for the harvest and then the winter. Whatever he had been working on has a wet flush peeking out from under his collar – not the heated lather that comes from the fields, but a run-off of the hot summer day. He wipes his brow, mouth parted slightly.

You stand upright, as if the headmaster had just strolled in. Well, to a certain point, he had. 

Ellie, with the least amount of skin in the game, rolls her eyes.

“We were talking about boys.”

One of those dark eyebrows twitch up as his gaze roams from Ellie to you to Sarah, who you think you see sink a fraction of an inch in her chair. 

“Oh.”

“We were learning about poisonous fungi as part of the curriculum on important flora,” you say pointedly to Ellie. “That particular topic came up at the end of the lesson. Both girls scored very well on their pop quiz.”

Joel nods, wiping his hands on his shirt. 

This Joel, the By-the-Light-of-Day Joel, is different from the Joel that meets you on the purple, blurry edge of night and day. The shadows that soften the world soften him too, the hidden planes of his face affording you delusions of further softness regarding his own feelings towards you – feelings of, if not companionship, at least respect. There were times you were righteously sure of how and where you stood in Joel Miller’s eyes – he appreciated you enough to watch over his land and his daughter – and then there were times you could have been on entirely different planets. A twisted Space Family Robinson, alone and lost in the cold vacuum. 

The Joel that gave you the cream for your burned palms is not the same Joel that stands before you. He fidgets with the rag in his hand, weight shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. Sweat leaks into your hairline, and you are suddenly overcome by the desire for him to look at you. 

“Given how close it is to the harvest, I thought having some extra hands who know what we’re looking for might help. Might be useful to you.”

“Yeah.” He nods slowly, as his gaze falls to Sarah. “But I don’t want you overworking anything.” 

Her eyelashes flutter as she rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “I’m not overworking myself. I’ve been studying, like you asked.” 

“And it shows in your work.” You smile. Sarah pins you with her own vulnerable gaze. “You’re an excellent student, Sarah.” 

The tension in her shoulders eases and she sits up straighter, grinning. 

Something flashes across Ellie’s face out of the corner of your eye and she leans forward, mouth twisted with a thick smirk.

“Bet you were a lot better student with Saaam around!”

“Ellie, shut up!” She springs up in agitation, her eyes wide, her jaw tight as she rounds on the other girl.

“Who’s Sam?”

“The boy Sarah’s going on a date with–,”

“I am not!” Sarah snaps, her voice wavering at the end. 

Those dry lips curl up, a smile hidden somewhere beneath that wiry beard, and Joel puts his hands on his hips. “I know that’s right. No dating ‘til you’re thirty.” 

Sarah’s grip tightens around the back of her chair, her mouth tipped down, eyes blazing. 

“That’s not funny, Dad.”

“I’m not tryin’ to be funny,” he replies, very seriously. “Just want you to know the rules.”

Whether or not Joel actually has any rules around Sarah’s dating life, it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point.

The point is that he very clearly, unintentionally or not, brushed up against something that, for Sarah, was very, very tender. 

She stands, awkwardly lurching out of her chair as it catches on the dirt floor. Her delicate fingers clenched into fists, she darts off for the back door.

“It’s not like anything’d ever happen anyway,” and she’s out into the sunlight. 

By the shocked look on Joel’s face, that might be the first teen tantrum he’s ever witnessed. Instinctively, he takes a step forward, an apology in the curve of his lips, but you reach out with a hand, even though he’s several feet from you.

“Joel –,” your fingers flutter close, politely rejecting the implication they know what his skin feels like. “Just give her some time.” You glance at Ellie, whose expression is dark, confused. “Both of you. She needs some time to cool down.”

Joel frowns at you, more at your words, evidently just as confused as Ellie. Of course a man could not fathom why it would feel so ridiculously cruel to a girl to be teased about a boy by her father. You smile at Joel’s instinct, your own father never possessing such a level of concern. A girl could be such a fragile thing after all.

“Would you talk to her? After she, hm, has some space?” 

His thumb anxiously edges the ridges of his forefinger, then his palm. He looks at you, uncomfortable, as if his request is particularly unwieldy, too much for anyone but him to bear. But, to you, this gift is lighter than air.

Joel’s trust makes your heart soar. 

Only to come crashing down. 

You are not capable of this kindness, this nurturing, guiding hand that some women and men ingratiate on instinct alone. You’ve failed Ellie, you know – you feel it in the distance between you and your niece – the best you can offer is a teacher, a thoughtful friend whose insular life is a world away entirely. No more, even when she needs it the most.

Nurture. It’s not what you do. 

“I – I can’t – I don’t know what – would she even listen to me because I don’t think –,”

There’s a conviction in his eyes as he looks at you that wasn’t there when you first set foot on the homestead, an acquired belief that had grown over the past few weeks with you as you learned and serviced the land under his guiding hands. 

That ping of his steel gaze against the porcelain of your skin. It makes something within you sing. 

  “Alright, Joel. I’ll try.” 

Quietly, without much conjecture or fanfare, Sarah has taken over doing the laundry for the whole house.

She rises with the sun. Not the blurry violet light smearing shadows, but the dawn – bold, bright, loud and full of thunderous color. She rises in the gold morning and, arms full of sweaty, dirt-thick clothes, she gathers them all into a white wicker basket and takes them out into the backyard near the spigot and the wide, low-set wooden basin. From the time you see the screen door shutter open until the moment you and Joel guide the heat-lathered animals back into the barn, she scrubs the dirt loose on the metal washboard then pinches the clothes high in the white, dry air.

And then, in the falling darkness, she carries her wicker basket, attached to her hip, around the house, laying out towels in the proper cupboards, and folded shirts smelling of sun-drenched air inside heavy dresser drawers. She tucks her dresses inside the line-thin wardrobe and, occasionally, she lays yours out on the bed. 

So it’s not entirely surprising to find her in the room you share with Ellie – the room that used to hold storage, old suitcases, and paintings, things of Joel’s foremothers and forefathers, where Ellie has now started to store her collection of unearthed arrowheads and snake skins – standing at the foot of your bed, with your yellow dress between her fingers. 

What is surprising, however, is the reverent, almost-delicate way she touches the buttons, strokes the faded lace, pinches the thin fabric between her fingers, like it’s made of threaded gold. Like it’s so much more than just a dress.

You watch her for a moment, from the shadows of the hallway. With Ellie, you never had to pick apart her feelings – either she made them known or would snap and snarl at anyone who dared to coax them out. Anna had eventually stopped coming to you for advice as you both got older, deciding to handle her personal problems all on her own because everything you said turned out wrong. You worked so well with your hands because your mouth couldn’t be trusted to be of any help.

And yet, looking at a girl who is brave and curious, but perhaps as lonely as you are – maybe you could just speak from the heart instead. As you get closer, under the sloshing anxiety, curiosity tugs on you: why did she come here – to your room? 

“My mother gave me that.” Sarah jumps at your voice, the late afternoon sun through the window coaxing the russet out of her curls and her large brown eyes. She drops your dress as if she had been snooping around in your things as opposed to simply doing her self-assigned chores and steps back. 

“I’m sorry – I-I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just . . . it’s pretty.” 

“She made it by hand,” you say. “But you have dresses just as pretty, Sarah.” 

You slide away from the door frame to touch the dress on the bed. It had been your mother’s. You always hated it. You thought, briefly, when she first tossed it to you, that it might be cursed. Might bring down your father’s eye towards you, away from her for once. And you had been right – sort of. He came for you all the same, the dress nothing but a waving flag that to him signaled your own complicity. But Sarah stares at it with a certain fascination, roused into alertfulness by something awakening inside her. 

The conditions of the farm, of being field hand, barely lent itself to the constriction of being beautiful, of being lovely and soft. You, like every other challenge that had been placed in front of you, swallowed that fact whole; an acceptance that Joel didn’t seem to care what you wore because he didn’t care to look at you at all. 

You sit on the bed, watching the young girl in front of you. She’s made improvements, her health not the underlying current in every room for weeks now, but now, sitting so close to her, you can see the weight of that disease. The weight of an unconscious consumption in a conscious body. Sarah’s hand trembles as she touches the dress again. 

“I don’t have anything of my mother’s,” she says simply. “I don’t have anything I didn’t make or my dad bought in Dalhart.” 

The dress means so much to her precisely because it’s your mother’s. Sarah doesn’t know how she fell apart, just that she raised you. Staring at your mother’s dress, you are quite confident that she would hiss and spit at the hard woman you’ve become. For once, and gratefully, this dress no longer feels like hers, or yours because you had avoided the same fate that befell her while entombed in this dress. And you weren’t about to subject Sarah to your family’s curse. 

You stand and pull out a blue pin-striped dress from your drawer, one that you’d had since you were her age, but one that never seemed quite right and over the years had grown too short on your calves and too small around the waist. You take it out and hold it over her shoulders.

“I think this is about your size.” You inspect it thoughtfully. “Have it. Wear it for the next school year. Or, one day, on your first day as a freshman in college.” 

She peels the dress away from her body like it sticks uncomfortably to her skin and laughs – a huff, a sharp release between tight ribs. 

“I don’t think so.” 

“You don’t like it?” Your heart seizes – did you say the wrong thing?

“Oh, no, no, no – I do – it’s beautiful, I’m sorry, I mean – but school – college – I don’t think it’s for me.” 

The dress bunches in her fists as she holds it in her lap. She hasn’t drawn it towards her but hasn’t set it on the bed. You frown. She is capable enough to pass the entrance exams and she knows it too. This is something else, something you could see she didn’t want to address directly, or simply couldn’t. 

Your mother’s yellow dress was a signal for you too: a blazing icon, a silent voice screaming –  you don’t belong with these people with whom you share only blood. You do not belong to them.

The silence stretches thin, lean and taught. You don’t know how to pick up the threads of her denials, so you simply march forward, into the crux of things.

“I was wondering if we could talk about today.” You start over. “An outburst like that isn’t all like you at all, Sarah, and your father and I are concerned. You know he was just teasing you.”

Her hands tighten their grip around the folds of your dress. “I know.” She squeezes her eyes shut. The silence lingers, sitting down heavy on the mattress underneath you. What do you say to a fourteen year old whose girlhood was vastly different from yours? Who has a father that loves her and a safe place to sleep at night – how could you possibly compare? As dozens, if not hundreds, of compassionate but meaningless comforting cliches race through your head, you take her hand and squeeze it and you decide to tell her what you at fourteen always dreamed of hearing.

“It’s okay if he doesn’t understand you, Sarah, but he loves you. He’d do anything for you.”

“I know. “ She repeats in a voice that says she doesn’t. The back of her free hand pressed against her lips, she lets out a sound like a hiccup and sob. Sarah closes her eyes with a sigh. “You’re right. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it. And even though Ellie and I have gotten really close . . . she doesn’t get it either.” 

You scoot closer to her and squeeze her hand again. “Doesn’t get what, darling?” 

Sarah lifts her gaze and you see hope in her shiny gaze. A flame, small, but bright – flickering, building as if swelling under music, a tune that existed without shape or ears to hear it until this moment. 

Until something sang out to it. 

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you see the world?” 

You sit back and she leans forward, the blue dress tighter in her hands than ever before, that spark in her eyes burning.

“I want to be like you and go to Boston. I . . . I wanna see skyscrapers and ride in taxis and take elevators as high as they can go. I wanna ride across the country on a train and eat in beautiful restaurants. I want to go to college, to learn, and carry textbooks, and go to a giant stadium and watch football – and I –,”

She swallows down a gulp of air, hands shaking from the tension in her knuckles, and in the pause, you touch her shoulder, like you would Flora if she were agitated. That completely derails her train of thought and she lets out the air in her lungs with a sigh so fast, it’s almost a hiss.

“Sarah, darling, why do you think you won’t ever have those things? Your dad wants you to be happy, to follow any dream you have –,”

“But I can’t leave him.” 

Sarah’s thumb rubs the thin fabric almost mournfully. When she speaks, her voice is tight, cramped with grief. 

“He’s given everything he has to keep me healthy and safe, especially because it’s just been the two of us for so long. More than anything, I want to make him proud, and so I study, and I study, and I work hard the only way I can –,” she swallows, her long lashes fluttering against her skin. “I can’t abandon him. I won’t. Not for something this . . . silly.”

Calmly, she puts the dress on the bed and stands, her hand and shoulder slipping out of your grasp, the wicker laundry basket still at her feet. 

“Thank you for the dress. But I think it'd be better if we just . . . forget about this.”

There is so much of you in her, it hurts to accept she is not yours, in any capacity.

“Sarah, do you know what rouge is?” 

The resignation melts from her face, those curls twisting towards you in curiosity. 

“I think so? It’s what women wear on their faces, right? To make their lips . . . um, redder?”

“Have you ever worn it?” 

Eyes go wide; a dawning and the enforcement of protection for a vulnerable thing all at once. “No?”

“Would you like to?”

You stand and go to the tan, leather trunk. It’s old, out of time, bears the marks of the frontier before it was settled and it keeps the last few talismans you’ve dragged to the ends of the earth. Your hand goes to a small cloth bag at the bottom.

Sarah is like you in many ways, but then again, she is nothing like you.

The day you and Anna ran away from home was the best day of your life. So much so, it became your escape strategy for everything. Run and hide for cover until the storm has passed. Staring up at you, her brown eyes blazing with hope as you gesture for her to come back into the room, you know Sarah has never run away from anything in her life. So, in this moment, you decide to bring everything else to her. 

“My sister and I lived next to an old woman when we were kids. Our parents were always out working, so we stayed with her a lot. And she always let us play around in her cosmetics.” You sit, the click of blush compacts and mascara loud as you dig through the bag“A girl in school must always look her best.” You pause and pull out what you were looking for. “This is real rouge from Lancome. Would you like to wear it?”

Eyes wider still, she drops onto your bed as if her knees suddenly gave out, her head nodding vigorously. She watchest the small tail of the brush twist in your fingers, around and around the pot, gathering the paste like dust on a wet cloth. 

“Open your mouth. Just a little bit, soften your lips. Yep, just like that.” 

She jerks back, half her mouth as pink as a sunset and curled up into a giggle. “Sorry, that tickled. It’s cold.”

“Feels weird, right?” You wrinkle your nose at her with a smile. She nods, grinning.

“Sorry, I’ll be still, I promise. Keep going, please.” 

You finish her lips and return to your cosmetics clutch. The metal lining is cold, as if it had been left in the dark. With care, you push the realization that you haven’t touched this bag in weeks out of your head. 

“You know, my sister loved getting all dolled up like this. Tilt your head to the window.” 

“Really?” Sarah murmurs. “From how Ellie talks about her . . .”

“Hard to believe, right?”

She doesn’t want to move again, but the eye contact she makes with you is all the sheepish nod you need. 

“By the time Ellie came around, there really wasn’t much time to spoil ourselves like this.” You smile softly, adding a few more strokes of blush against her high cheekbones. “But, a long time ago, Anna was an artist.” 

Sarah hums noncommittally, her gaze hovering around the edges of the window sill. When the blush kit clicks close, she looks at you. 

“My uncle Tommy was – is – that way too.”

“How so?”

“He liked writing stories, which I guess is a different kind of artist. But he’d come up with these crazy fairytales and I always thought he got them from books, but he said he made them up, off the top of his head.” She quiets when you take out the small palette of eyeshadow and tell her to close her eyes. “I think that’s why he left in the first place. He didn’t want to stay on this farm his whole life.” 

Her skin is soft, forgiving, as you dust the powder over her eyelids with your ring finger, the lightest touch you can offer. 

“Have you seen him since he left?”

“No,” she says, staying as still as possible. “Dad says if he wanted to see us, he’d make the effort . . . or he wouldn’t have moved out there at all.” 

Her words slide a stint up into the crevices of your heart, the reasoning behind her hesitancy to leave all the more apparent, but you close the two-color palette without saying anything else. With a few flicks, you finish her glamor with some light mascara.

“Now,” you say as you close the black tube. “Would you like to see yourself?”

Sarah’s eyes spring open, the russet vein of that thrumming, hopeful fire bright.

“Yes. Yes, please.” 

Despite the erosion of the very core of you brought on by the sheer enormity of what it takes to survive in this world, this little tarnished gold disc is the weight of your own vanity in the palm of your hand. Yet every time you open it, you hoped for a glimpse of Anna’s beautiful blue eyes, the curve of her smile, the bounce of a dark curl the way she kept it as a child. The mirror rarely felt like a mirror, more a clear window into the murky cold fog of your past. 

To every cop and ticket-taker on a train who looked through your purse, you kept a compact mirror for vain, silly reasons because, as a woman, you are a vain and silly thing. 

But at the look in Sarah Miller’s eyes, as you reveal the great and powerful secrets of ancient sisterhood to her, this compact is a mirror, and a window, and a weapon all at once. 

“This . . . is what I look like?” Her voice is barely a whisper. She turns her head slowly back and forth slowly, the powder shimmering on her cheeks, a queen surveying her jewels. “H-h-how?” 

“Practice.” You hand her the compact and she takes it, her own hand trembling. She hasn’t looked away from the mirror for an instant. You sit beside her on the bed, her crossed knee pressing up against your thigh and you wait. You wait until she’s had her look, until she’s absorbed her image from every angle, and you slip the cosmetics bag into her lap. She stares at it, and then her eyes widen. “And the right tools. With that, you can do this anytime you want. Do anything you want.” 

“Really?” Small. Hesitant. Hopeful. 

“Really. It’s yours . . . to do what you want with it.” 

“Then I want to do it to you!” Sarah’s smile erupts across her face immediately, her fingers digging into the soft pink material. “I have to practice somehow and I think Ellie will come after me with that knife of hers if I try it on her.” 

You grin, already picturing Ellie’s hackles going straight up if she sees Sarah anywhere near her with that bag. You nod and Sarah actually squeals. You can’t help but grin as she flips through the jars and compacts in the bag.

“Okay, okay – it’s easier to start with any concealer – this one. I didn’t use any on you because you’re far too young and beautiful to need it.” 

Sarah flushes as she unscrews the pot and takes up the brush you hold out for her. With familiar diligence, Sarah’s hand is steady and her dark eyes are clear and focused. She absorbs every instruction you give her, every tip you offer. 

For a minute, there is no farm. No debt to be paid. No pain or disfigurement. Only a bond, one willingly given and one willingly taken. For once in your life, connection is wonderfully easy. 

“Did you know it’s Ellie’s birthday tomorrow?” You ask after a while, mouth stiff as she applies rouge to your lips.

Sarah stops, her eyes widening. “No! She hasn’t said anything!” But then she makes a face. “Actually, I think I’d be more shocked if she did.” 

“I know there isn’t much I can offer her all the way out here. But . . .” And maybe this is where you take it a step too far. All Joel asked of you was to make sure Sarah was alright. None of this had anything to do with the argument she had with her father. Maybe this is incredibly selfish on your part. But, whether you – or Joel – like it or not, you care for Sarah, in a way that was entirely different and exactly like how you cared for Ellie. You couldn’t help but want more than to make sure that Sarah is just alright. You pull away from the brush in her hand and hold her gaze. “I was wondering if you wanted to help me make her a cake.” 

Sarah’s face nearly shines with joy.

Cool. 

A sensation that draws heat, soothes aggravation, exhilarates that which is dry.

Water, fresh and clear, anoints your forehead and sinks into your hair. It pours off your shoulders, catching the soft skin near your hips, your calves. Droplets pepper your toes like embers from a fire. 

Another splash and the water spills over the crown of your head, through the thickness of your already damp hair, threatening to drip onto the back of your neck and send a flood of chills down your exposed skin – 

But a warm hand cups you near the base of your skull and a new sensation flutters awake, this time from within.

“Good?” His voice. You hear it more in your chest. It’s deep, rumbling. Patient. 

You can’t find enough of your body to tell him, yes, Joel, yes, feels so good.

His wide hand slides down your bare back, a warm stone against the river of your skin, and another spout of water drenches you again. 

A second hand joins the exploration of your body, massaging and squeezing all at once. Slow, steady fingers curl around the wings of your ribs, then where your skin thickens and swells, his nails scraping across the low curve of your breasts.

Oh. Oh, Joel. 

“Tell me you want this.”

That voice prickles your ears, the rough scrape of a beard nebulous on your shoulder, just as you had always hoped it would be. Water splashes you again and every inch of your shudders.

“I won’t stop.”

Don’t. Please. 

“I won’t stop. You just have to pick it up.” 

His hands are gone, his warmth evaporated. 

The water is suddenly slick, lichen-drenched, and stagnant. It lurks by your ankles.

Pick it up. 

The stone walls at the bottom of the well ring with coldness. You shiver, naked and alone. Afraid, as frozen as a block of salt. 

Don’t just stand there. You’ll never do it. Just pick it up. That voice. You hate that voice.

The barrel of the gun brushes against the edge of your foot, the head of a snake gliding in the water –

You grab wakefulness by the throat and use it to yank yourself out of the nightmare. 

The familiar silence of the early gray morning in the kitchen that had become comfortable as of late is decidedly – worryingly – not. Your shoulders are taut, straight as a board from end to end. Over the suds and the dishes your hands move mechanically, ignoring the clatter of knives and forks and the rush of water. But above everything else, it’s the expression on your face that concerns Joel the most.

Even when you’ve worked yourself to exhaustion, there’s normally a light in your eyes that settles something restless inside of him, even after hours of labor. A source of strength that he finds himself eager to chase, to let it flood him – but right now, as you stand at the kitchen sink, you’re gone. Elsewhere, disappeared into blackness where that brightness used to be. 

If he were a different man, a man capable of this sort of concern, he could ask you about it. At the very least get you to look at him. During breakfast, amidst the girls’ playful bickering, you hadn’t even noticed he, or anyone, was there. You had eaten as though your spine had been sealed to an iron rod – stiff, painful. Ellie and Sarah had run out a while ago, Sarah leaving to gather up the laundry and Ellie to let the animals out to pasture. He isn’t even sure if you noticed that he stayed behind, but that stirring behind his chest, one that’s become more insistent when you’re around, froze up to a painful knot at the thought of leaving you alone like this. Like you were caught someplace where you might not come back from. 

So, straddling this widening gap he fears slipping off of, Joel lands on the only thing he knows where there is some common ground:

“Don’t think I said anything before, but Ellie’s a pretty brave kid.” 

At her name, you blink. Slow the scrub of soap across the plate, then stop. You look at him and the darkness is not so deep in your gaze. He busies his hands with picking up a rag and beginning to dry the stack of plates to your right.

“Oh?” Recognition flickers over your face as if you’re suddenly aware of who you were talking to. A tender crease appears between your eyes. He dries off another plate and turns to face the sink, to hide the curve of his mouth from you. 

“You’re surprised.” 

You blink, glance down at his hands, and pick up the sponge again. 

“No – I’m not – I mean, I know she’s a good kid, but . . .” You swallow, brow furrowed again. “What did she say to you?”

“Hm, not so much said anything as just listened. Stayed close, kept quiet. Left no rock unturned.” The edges of his sleeves are damp. You have your dress sleeves pushed all the way up past your elbows; it’s Saturday, a brief respite from the cycle of labor in the fields. The skin over your forearm and wrist looked particularly delicate against the breakfast table, now hidden by the soap and the water. Joel dries the cup in his hand with a bit more force. “She’s smart too. Knew all about iodine and what it’s used for. Had some idea how to seal up a hot water bottle. I’s glad to have her with me.” 

You actually snort – without an ounce of respectability – and he stares at you, transfixed by a noise he’s fairly certain he’s never heard you make before. You duck your head as the small smile falls off your face, scrubbing the fork in your hand a bit rougher.

“Sorry. It’s just . . . Ellie doesn’t get along with most people, or . . . anyone for that matter. Sarah – well, Sarah could make friends with a feral cat so I’m not surprised they get along. But you . . .” You trail off and Joel shifts his weight back and forth, all the possibilities of what you meant reverberating in the spaces between his ribs. “I guess I’m just glad she didn’t piss you off.”

“Oh, it takes a lot to piss me off. ‘Cause I’m a casual and easy-going kinda guy, y’know.” 

You freeze again as if he had just tried to convince you the sky was green and you should be looking for some sort of head trauma. He lets a small grin spread over his mouth, even brighter as your eyes widen. A joke. He is teasing you. 

A soft, barely intimate gesture. 

You smile. He feels something shift in his chest. Whatever else happens today, he’ll keep that smile in his breast pocket. He clears his throat.

“Nah, she’s a good kid. Just needs an outlet, I think.” 

You stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him at the sink. The cream lace curtains drawn horizontally across the window block out the brightening horizon. An early morning breeze smooths across the pasture grass, the light weak with the sun still low in the sky. The silence that follows is easier, something he can stomach. In the sink, the water sloshes, silverware clatters, and the plates squeak when he dries them off. The faint curves of your mouth he sees out of the corner of his eyes embolden him further.

“She, hm, ever mentioned any interest in music?”

You shrug. “Ellie and her mother loved dancing to our neighbor’s radio in our apartment in Boston. Why do you ask?”

“She found a radio while we were in town the other day, and she was curious. But with no radio here, the best I can do is a guitar – I know’ve got one around here somewhere and I figured she might like to learn some chords. But I wanted – hm –,” that goddamn tickle in the back of his throat, “wanted to make sure it’d be alright with you if I showed her a couple of things.” 

Eyes wide, soft lips parted – he doesn’t know where to carry the look you’re giving him now. 

“Y-yeah, Joel, that’ll be fine. If you think that’ll make her happy, then . . . of course.”

He nods, slowly, the hot realization that he’ll now have to approach Ellie with an offer for guitar lessons pricking the back of his neck. Her bewildered expression probably won’t look much different from his own.

“‘Least I could do, after what you did with Sarah.” He means going to talk to her, not the immense relief you’ve provided her physically the last few months. He still hasn’t said thank you for that – or that you indulge in her every academic desire or curiosity. There’s no question too outrageous or problem too difficult that she brings to you – and curiously, you seem delighted every time. “She, uh, she’s getting older and I don’t always . . .” It’s an admission of his own shortcomings and it twists his gut. But then that radiant smile returns to your face and he thinks he feels that restrictive choke of guilt ease . . . just a bit.

“She’s very special, Joel. We had fun.” You finish laying out the last bits of damp silverware and a plate or two on the drying rack, your hands all white with soap bubbles. And then you pause. “She . . .”

He catches the brush of your gaze as you look away, shoulders suddenly rigid. You were about to say something, something you assume that he doesn’t already know about Sarah. You have something precious of Sarah’s and you don’t look willing to share.

“What?” It comes out a bit rougher than he means, but his heart rate is up a tick and the corners of his mouth are dry. “She, what?”

You unplug the drain, your movements slow, hesitant.

“She has dreams, Joel, just like every other teenage girl.” 

“Of course she does. I know that.”

The murky water swirls low with a gurgle. You follow it with your eyes, the timbre of your voice low, but firm. “If you want to go out there and ask her what they are, then by all means, go talk to her. But she trusted me to keep her confidence.” 

He swallows, as much as your words burn him – deeper and hotter than he expected – you’re right, of course. But now, for the first time, there is a visible crack between him and his daughter. A wet slippery feeling snakes around the bottom of his spine, tying a knot in his stomach and grinding his voice down to a growl. 

“That is not your decision to make.” 

Your mouth is set firm, but the brightness of your eyes has faded, more distance between you and reality. More space, on the edge of a protective cavern. You step back, about two arm lengths away. 

“Joel,” you begin. “She is entitled to her privacy.” 

The knot in his stomach expands up into his ribs. His heart beats faster, attempting to stretch away from the hot iron in his gut but he can’t escape it. “What did you two talk about?”

“School. Makeup. Clothes. Her life here. ” 

His hands sweat. “What about her life? Is she unhappy?” 

“Oh, God, no, Joel, she loves you and she loves being here with you. She just wants –,”

“What? What does she want?” You stiffly turn to put away the dishes, to close him off, but he steps closer, over the already blurring lines. “Look, I took you and Ellie in off the streets – I hired you – to come here and look out for her – act as her nurse, her teacher – to keep her safe. Not to keep secrets from me.” 

Your spine goes rigid, just like it was at breakfast, as you gingerly put the plates down on the counter. 

“And we’re enormously grateful for your kindness. You know that.” Hands pressed flat onto your hips, you turn and look at him, blank-eyed and drawn thin. You stare at him like he’s a stranger. Something completely foreign and unfamiliar – he hates that look. “Are you asking me as my employer?”

What else are you to me? 

Someone at least worth the weight of a jar of hand cream. 

He shoves back that thought as the fog of a dozen others crowd in to take its place.

“I am. I appreciate your help earlier, but this is the line. Is Sarah alright or not?”

You glance away from him, as if he might find the truth in your eyes. “What she’s experiencing is perfectly normal for a girl her age. You wouldn’t understand.” 

The ground trembles, unsteady, beneath him. Where had he gone wrong? He didn’t feel the earthquake but now can see the broken faultline, the great maw opening its jaws beneath his feet. Fear, so dark and deep – it threatens to swallow him whole, but he gets his hands around it, by the throat, and snaps it clean in two. Joel narrows his eyes. 

“Somethin’ I do understand is Ellie’s been eyein’ my gun since day one. What kind of fourteen year old girl s’after that? ” 

At that, you blanch. It’s like he can see the bile rise up in the back of your throat, sit on your tongue and stay there. You’ve gone totally still, barely breathing. Joel isn’t sure if he’s satisfied or not that the remark landed its blow so thoroughly. 

“She’s just a c-child who wants to pretend she’s an adult. Just like S-Sarah.”

His fist curls around the damp rag in his hand, desperate for something to hold onto, to squeeze until the ground feels solid, but his anger isn’t fortifying him anymore. The next words out of his mouth are disgustingly desperate. 

“Is that what this is about? Did Ellie say something to her?” 

“Ellie? What? No! No, this has n-nothing to do with Ellie.” You look at him, something tender and wounded flashing there and it chills the heat rising in his chest just for an instant. “I would tell you if it was something serious. Don’t you trust me?” 

But you can’t come between him and Sarah. Nothing should.

The black chasm that he feels compelled to claw back against breeches open again. Edges crumbling beneath his fingers. Sarah, Sarah –  is the only one who matters. 

The muzzle runs its clammy tongue up the back of his spine, releasing a landslide of heavy dread across his body. His anxiety peaks in a wave and as it crests, he slams his hand on the counter, a blown fuse. 

“No, goddamn it, I don’t!” 

Jaw locked, he whips his head up. Whatever sits sour on his tongue, when he looks at you, it turns to a block of ice.

Where it bubbles up like black tar behind his chest, a thing that possesses him, you watch him with horror. Eyes wide, lips drawn so tight they’re practically nonexistent, hand around your throat as if to protect it preventively.

The bracing skeleton of indignant rage melts from his body so fast his brain goes fuzzy. He wasn’t thinking – wasn’t thinking about how you flinched, tears in your silver-dollar eyes, at the loud sound that time he accidentally knocked a pot to the floor. He had never seen you so bewildered and terrified – until now.

“Look, I’m–I’m not . . .” he swallows, “I didn’t mean it.” 

He watches your eyes drop to his hand curled around the edge of the counter and he intentionally relaxes the muscle. He stands up right, but leans back from you, giving you space. The tension in your shoulders eases only a fraction. “She doesn’t . . . doesn’t have to tell me everything, but I just wanna make sure that she’s safe, and happy. Can you at least give me that?”

You’re breathing rapidly, eyes watching his hand at his side as if anticipating it curling into a fist. He turns his palms up in supplication – he really, really didn’t mean to lose control like that –  and he steps back until he’s up against the door leading to the cellar down below. The wood is warm against his back, but his shoulder bumps into the hinge and it pinches his skin.  

Your hands are no longer wrapped up in tight fists. With a deep inhale, you close your eyes, as if steadying yourself against a torrential wind. When you breathe out, it’s unsteady and shaky. 

“Physically and m-mentally, she’s fine. She’s j-just . . . just growing up.”

All this time, bits of you have been growing towards the light as the days and weeks pass. He’s watched you transform, can’t take his eyes off you some days, into this woman where before he had seen you as just a tool, another a rake or a trowel. Now you’ve curled back into yourself like nothing had ever happened between you and him – all it took was too-sharp a snap. Sarah always said his bark was worse than his bite. 

Joel takes a half a step forward and you take three steps back. Your hand is over your heart, fingers curling into the fabric, eyes still as wide as they had been the night in the general store, facing down those rangers entirely by yourself. Shit. 

He wants to ask you why you fear loud noises, wants to know who did this to you and why.

He’s not that kind of man who does this sort of thing, someone who scares women.

But he’s also not that kind of man who knows how to navigate the aftermath. He doesn’t know how to be anything other than a father and a worker. Hasn’t cared to be anything else for a long, long time, and the muscle has atrophied. Can’t be a friend. Not a companion. Not whatever paints his dreams with streaks the color of your eyes. 

“‘M gonna go find Sarah, talk to her, like you said,” he mutters, shuffling towards the back door. “If you – need – if you want –,”

His throat finally closes, shame making his gaze slippery and it slides away from your face. He doesn’t stay long enough to hear if your breathing has settled as he shuffles out the door and towards the barn.

The metal of the iron flares to an ugly, angry red, and you wipe your forehead before the sweat can drop onto the stove top and sizzle. With your teeth mashed together so tightly your jaw aches, you lift up the six-pound metal wedge up off the stove, shake it free of as much ash as possible, and then press it down onto Ellie’s collar shirt on the floor. Immediately you sweep up and down the length of the shirt, careful not to linger too long on any one spot, but sure to flatten the wrinkles.

Sad irons, is what Anna called them one day after taking in the laundry from the washing line outside. She had heard a few of the neighborhood bitties tittering about them and found the term hilariously apt. Sad irons because they’re more work than they’re good for. 

Truth be told, you liked ironing, only in certain instances though. Moments when you wanted physical exhaustion to serve as a numbing agent to the battle of emotions building between your ribs. Sweat drips down your neck, your knees aching from pushing into the hardwood floors, your arms and shoulders burning from lifting the hot iron up and down, as you rock back and forth to clear away every last wrinkle. 

Joel’s hand smacking against the counter echoes in your mind again and again and again, as the kitchen and the homestead and reality bends away from you as you tumble through memory after memory – distracted, the iron brushes up against your flesh and bites in.

You yelp, sucking the flat back of your thumb into your mouth to ease the sizzling burn, and you sit back onto your heels. 

Yes, the pain is bright and it stings, but not enough to draw tears to your eyes, and yet they well up all the same.

A single image breaks through the numbing barrier of pain: the jar of Luxor in your room. You want nothing more than to sink your scalded thumb into its cool gel, but instead the image alone threatens to crack a sob out of your chest. 

He wouldn’t have done anything. Nothing like your husband.

You know that, and you hate yourself a little bit that you reacted like that, even after all this time. Why couldn’t you stand your ground, even for Sarah? God, if you had cried in front of Joel – the mere thought of that embarrassment burns hotter than the sting on your thumb. 

He had gotten so close. Too close to the truth. What had Ellie told him about the gun, even by accident? Joel didn’t seem intent on calling the police, but he’d left so fast. He must have been so angry just to leave like that. 

As you open your eyes, a thought occurs to you and the strength of it nearly disconnects you from your body: what if you left?

Your gaze darts to the blue sky just outside the window, too low to see the gold ground but you know it’s there – just as wide and open as it had been that first night in Dalhart. 

What if you gathered up Ellie right now and ran? It had worked before, and this time you didn’t leave the evidence in the bottom of a well. He couldn’t prove anything, just the ramblings of a fourteen year old girl. 

Shit, what the hell did he know?

“Hiya!” Sarah skips in through the back door, arms full of fresh herbs in her basket.

“Be careful!” You snap at her, your thumb throbbing, tears and hasty decisions receding. “Don’t track in dirt – I just mopped.”

She freezes, catches sight of the iron and Elllie’s shirt. You haven’t looked up at her. Slowly she unlaces her boots at the door and steps gingerly onto the wooden floor. You can feel her eyes track you as she walks to the kitchen counter and drops off her basket. The anxiety pulsing beneath your skin ratchets up your heart rate, hot blood pounding in your ears. 

“So, um, anyway, I was wondering if we could talk about Ellie’s birthday. I know she loves chocolate, but Dalhart hasn’t had that in years. But I think we might have a bit of vanilla in the cellar. Do you want me to go look?” You don’t miss the way her eyes flit over her shoulder to you, the question posed as if she was sticking a tree branch through the bars of a tiger’s cage on a dare.

“Um, yeah, that’ll be fine.”

Ellie never had the language to find the source of your anxiety and over the years learned either to leave you to your physical work or silently help you with it. Joel evidently – obviously – was a better parent than that:

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks.

You stop, in daze, then slide the iron off the clothes and onto its side. It seems ridiculous but you can’t remember the last time anyone asked you that. Ellie, your only connection to family, knew exactly what you had to do to keep you both safe, so the question was always irrelevant. So when did you let another person in enough for them to care that much to ask?

“Just, uhm, busy. Need to get this done.” 

Sarah narrows her eyes at you. “‘Cause you don’t sound like you’re okay. In fact, you actually sound really bad. What’s wrong?”

“I’m . . . I just didn’t sleep well. Had a bad dream. That’s all.” 

The lies knot in your throat; it’s insufficient to call it bad – it’s insufficient to call it a dream, the thing that had scared you so badly, even Joel picked up on it. 

“Wanna talk about it?” 

You glance up, still on your aching hands and pinched knees. She watches you with those same endless brown eyes as her father’s but immeasurably softer, arms wrapped over themselves, eyebrows furrowed with concern. You had snapped at her when she didn’t deserve it and she just . . . moved on.

“No, Sarah, I-I don’t want to burden you . . . it’s nothing, honestly, I’m just being silly.” 

She rolls her eyes, that wise stare cracking in half. “Fine. Don’t talk to me, but you should talk to someone. Talk to my dad. I know he doesn’t look like it but he’s a really good listener.”

Your cheeks go as warm as the iron beside you, making it impossible to keep looking at her. “Sarah, please, I am his employee. That is entirely inappropriate.” 

“Oh, please.” She swats away your concern and turns back to the herbs. She pulls out canning jars from below the sink and begins to organize by food or medicine. “Fine. Don’t tell me. When do you want to start working on Ellie’s cake?” 

The iron is no longer nearly hot enough to be effective but you run it up the shirt again, to smooth the uneven threads of your own feelings.

“Maybe tomorrow morning, when she’s out with the cows.” You pause. “No, wait, we’re spraying pesticides tomorrow. I can’t.”

Again, in that flippant teenager way, she shakes her head. “Dad’ll let you have a morning off if you tell him what is for.”

Joel’s anger, the smack of his palm – they reverberate in your head again as if someone had struck you with a bell. Your chest tight, you say,

“I don’t think your father wants anything to do with me right now.”

The excited buzz that always follows after Sarah like floating dandelion seeds settles eerily. You bite your lip – why did you say anything? – and watch her back stiffen, rosemary in one hand and a jar in the other. 

She is the daughter of your employer; you cannot forget that, but you had – you had forgotten, and so easily too. She was well within her rights to –

“What did he do?”

You blink. “What?”

She lets out a frustrated groan. “God, I swear that man likes the taste of his foot in his mouth!” Sarah turns around, rosemary and jar back on the counter, her hands on her hips and you feel like you’re the one about to be scolded. “What did he say to you to make you upset?”

“Nothing, Sarah, I swear.” She raises an eyebrow. You break instantly. “We just had a disagreement. He wasn’t . . . pleased with my work, and he told me so. Which is perfectly fine, given that I am his employee.” 

She shoves her palms into her brow, groaning. “But that’s not all –,” she shakes her head. “That’s it. I’m gonna go talk to him.” 

“Sarah, don’t –,”

You struggle to your feet, your knees stiff and popping, hand outstretched after her, but she’s too fast. She opens the back door and lets it slam shut behind her, leaving you blinking on the floor. 

He’s been staring at the back wall of the wooden shed for twenty minutes. Hadn’t made a move to grab a single tool, or pick up a bag of feed. Behind him, the wind dives into the fields, scuttles apart the branches of the oak tree by the river in a soft crackle. In the barn, one of the cows lets out a loud groan.

The back of his neck is starting to grow hot from the sun. Sweat peaks at his brow. His hand on the door, the other by his side, his fingers ceaselessly twitching, taking on physical shapes of his anxiety. But he can’t move away. If he moves, he’ll make the wrong choice again.

He’s angry. He’s still angry.

But that anger is fueled by a churning ball of fear that sits right on top of his chest and lashes at his skin like steel wool. It itches like hell and he can scratch at it all he wants, but it never goes away.

This was all a mistake. He sees that now. He could have handled another season on his own. He didn’t need another farm hand – he’d done it before and could do it again. Sarah was smart enough to read the right books all on her own and if she didn’t have the ones she needed, he’d go get them – wherever they might be. 

Sarah didn’t need anyone either. She’d make friends with kids soon enough, in town or whenever the school reopened. She was smart, always had been. They’d figure it out, together. 

He could have lived the rest of his life without another living soul crossing the boundary onto the Miller lands. 

And yet he hadn’t. 

He’d let someone in. 

As a general rule, he tried not to think of you in any capacity outside of work, education, and medical treatments, but he found that he had no defenses against the presence of someone who lives in his house also taking up residence in his mind. Against someone who cooks his meals and makes his daughter laugh. Who has a fraught relationship with her niece and yet would quite literally kill for her. 

That he understood, even if you and him seemed determined to prevent yourself from relating to one another in any capacity - which was fine with him. But he saw it in you, even if he didn’t recognize it at first in that bar in Dalhart. And then he saw it again the morning you and Ellie saved Sarah. The instinct to protect, to secure. It had been years since he’d seen it on someone else, and had never seen it that strong. 

And that’s what had gotten him into trouble today. That instinct he’d had all his life suddenly butting up against a tender feeling that is so foreign to him he doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know how to hold it, carry it, so it goes everywhere, soaks him down to the bone. 

All his life, he’s only ever enjoyed the company of two people, now one. He knew that if he took care of the land, it would take care of him and his family, so he never needed anyone else. But Sarah had a caretaker and a friend and nurturer but still clearly wanted more. Something he couldn’t give her. Something that never would have come to her otherwise if he hadn’t taken in you and Ellie. 

In his hardest of hearts, he both highly praised and deeply, deeply resented you for that. 

For coming here and upsetting everything. 

Fuck. 

His thumb catches on a splinter from the doorframe, tearing his eyes away from the blank wall, the brief pain causing his anger to flare brightly, the slice of wood embedded deep in his skin. His eyes snap to the back wall, looking for pliers to yank the damn splinter out – but his gaze catches something on the back wall first. 

Your work gloves, on the shelf. As broken in and soft as his. Taking up space beside his own as if they had belonged there all along.

In direct conflict with everything he thought he wanted, everything that he understood about himself and his daughter and the land he protects, you and Ellie had become embedded in the homestead such that now he's not quite sure he could picture it without your presence. It's a permanence that, he could tell, you all had sorely needed.

You, unlike him, did need someone else to survive in this world, one that isn't built for or kind to or willing to value women like you – and yet he got the impression that you never had a soft spot for people either. Been on the receiving end of harassment and cruelty too much and too long to find anyone or anything meaningful outside your family. It was narrow-minded and perhaps selfish, but not a perspective he would ever disagree with.

Ellie, unlike Sarah, had a caretaker but lacked a friend, someone to nurture her emotionally, tenderly, despite her vocal protests. He can see in the dark well of her eyes every time she watches him out of the corner of her eye when he cocks his gun or saddles up the horse. Like you, the ability to share a burden had been beaten out of her.

Now, what does he do with –

“Dad!” 

He jumps, the bark of her voice so loud and brash it rattles his heart for a second. Christ, is that what he sounded like?

He looks over his shoulder to see Sarah striding over to him, fists clenched, eyes blazing, dark hair turned light in the harsh glare of the sun. Sometimes – oftentimes –  he was surprised that a tempest like her came from him. 

“Dad!” Sarah barks again, the smack of her boots in the dirt launching puffs of earth by her ankles. She grinds to a halt in front of him, hands on her hips. “She’s my friend! What did you say to her?” 

“I haven’t seen Ellie since breakfast –,”

“No. Not Ellie.” The pitch of anxiety plummets into his stomach. He knows what she’s going to say before she opens her mouth. “Her aunt. You said something to her that made her upset, and I want to know what it is.” 

Where her fists lock onto her hips, one hand curls onto his hip as it juts to the side. With a sigh, Joel wipes his eyes with his fingers.

“Sarah . . .” 

“Oh, don’t Sarah me! And don’t act like I’m too young to understand, either! You raised me better than that.” Her footing shifts slightly and Joel sees an opening, small, flickering. He sees her pouting at five years old, wanting to stay up past her bedtime not for the sake of being disagreeable, but merely to spend more time with him. 

He tilts his head. “I don’t think you’re too young to understand, Sarah. Come to think of it, I’ve probably let you see and hear too much. Put too much on you.”

Her boiling anger simmers and the frown on her face softens. 

“That’s not . . . that’s not it at all, Dad.” 

With half a sigh, he extends his hand towards her, a peace offering as much as he was capable of. “C’mere, let’s get outta the heat. You and I gotta talk.” 

Her eyes fall to his outstretched hand, lip bitten between her teeth, as if under some obligation not to take it. He lets it fall, as much as it stings a very delicate part of him, and turns back towards the cellar doors. Attached to the house near the water pump, they face west, spending most of the day in the shade. Where he would sit to catch his breath after laboring in the fields all day and she brought him water and they would talk – about anything and everything. 

Joel slides down into the dirt, dust clinging to his shirt, his pants. He looks up at her, waiting, holding his will silently against hers without demand, and with a huff, Sarah drops down next to him. They sit in the shade, like they’ve always done. 

This place has always been a place of safety for him. Not just this land, but this spot, this shaded seat next to her. Joel looks at her, his smile wan. “So, if that’s not it, what is it, baby? ‘Cause I clearly haven’t got a fuckin’ clue what I’m doing. I’m sorry I made you so angry. I promise you, I was just teasin’.”

She always liked it when he spoke softly to her, maybe bringing back memories of when she was small and slept for hours on his bare chest. He turns his gaze to the yellow land, the distant dirt roads, and the sprawling emptiness beyond them. This land, that is his responsibility to keep safe. 

“I know, Dad.” He listens to her scrape the heel of her boot back and forth over a pebble. She feels warm against his side. “I’m not mad about that. I mean, I was, but not anymore.”

“But you’re mad about somethin’?” 

She’s not ready to meet his eye, he knows. That’s okay. He can wait. 

He smells lavender as her hair flutters again, her gaze joining his to watch their fields, the fields held by their family for three generations. The memories of her illness –of so many nights spent in fear, in anguish nearly as painful as death itself, as she cried and cried and cried and he could do nothing to stop it – overwhelm him out of nowhere and, like a fist has settled around his throat, he can’t breathe right for a moment. His hands flex and strain where they hang over his knees.

Air returns to him when she rests her head against his shoulder, and he is suddenly more grateful to you for bringing back his little girl than he’s ever felt towards anyone in his life. But the taste of his words he said to you lingers on his tongue. He had been so terrible.

“I like learning.” Sarah says. The wind tugs on her hair, the hemline of his pants. He resists the urge to press his face into her curls and instead settles for breathing in her scent, her warmth. He closes his eyes. She is his whole world. 

The heat of the sun toasts the air around them as the wind settles. He opens his eyes to the solar star far beyond this planet. Another world entirely. It feels particularly close today.

“I know you do. You’re good at it, always make me proud.”

Sarah lifts her head and he feels the traction of her gaze. His stomach knots, but not as heavily as his heart swells. Her eyes are older than he’s ever remembered seeing when he finally looks at her, and he’s felt a lot of his years recently. Her hands curl around his elbow, like she used to do when she begged him for a new book or a new dress. Pleading with him, to make him see her.

“But I think I’ve learned all I can . . . here.”

Joel breathes through the gaping wound and surge of pride in his chest. She watches him, brown eyes wide, mouth set. The same little girl he’s always known, and nothing like her at all. How had he missed it, this fundamental and irrevocable change? Where had the time gone? 

“I know, baby. You have to go.” 

He expects something like a girlish squeal, maybe little dance, a yelp of joy – throwing her arms around his neck, making promises to be on her very best behavior – 

But instead –

“But not right now.” Her eyes fill with tears, voice small, uncertain. Vulnerable in a way only a child’s can be.

He puts his arm around her shoulder, between her and the dirt-crusted house on the land that is now his, was his father’s, and his father’s before that, and hides his own wet eyes from her by burying his face in her hair. Her arms are wrapped so tightly around his chest, his heart nearly stops.

“No, not right now. But some day.” 

They who have been alone together all their lives sit and hold their other half for a long, long time.

The sun hovers in the late afternoon sky, unwilling to let time march forward, but it always does. It always has to. 

With a gruff grunt, Joel pulls away and wipes at his eyes with the palm of his hand. Sarah sits up more, sniffing, her delicate fingers smearing away the dampness on her cheeks. He clears his throat again. 

“C’mon, enough out here. Ellie’s probably out lookin’ for you, and I need to help, um –,”

“Dad.” He drops back down the half inch he pulled himself up. Suddenly, with a grin and a mischievous light in her still-wet eyes, she looks as young as she is supposed to be. “We haven’t talked about everything yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Her dark eyes flit back to the house, a pointed look. A knowing look. He doesn’t know why but it makes his stomach churn and his heart rate speed up, ever so slightly. That grin on her lips evolves into a full fledged smirk. 

“You were a jerk. Now you have to make it up to her. How are you gonna do that?” 

Joel’s mouth twitches. “I’m out of ideas.” 

“Good. ‘Cause I’m not.” Sarah heaves herself onto her feet, then stands, and dusts the back of her skirt with a few good thwaps. “It’s Ellie’s birthday tomorrow. Me and her aunt are gonna make a cake, so you’re gonna get her a present. You’re also in charge of distracting her while we get everything ready.”

Joel chuckles lightly as he stares up at her, one eye squinting against the sunlight. “Yeah? And what am I supposed to get her?”

She extends her hand and he takes it. Together, they get him on his feet. She dusts off his sleeve, then grins up at him, her smile wide and full and loaded with secrets he knows he didn’t tell her. “I can’t give you all the answers, old man.” 

It’s nerves. 

It’s nerves and that’s why you can’t find the vanilla you know is down here. For the fourth time, you get on your toes and look at the far back of the top row of cellar shelves. Joel had organized the cellar by least perishable to most, and vanilla beans stayed intact for years if kept out of the sun or moisture. Sarah was distinctly confident that they had at least a handful, far more than enough to flavor a cake, and this was Ellie’s cake. You owed it to her and Sarah –and shit, since he’ll be eating it, Joel – to not give up the search. 

But by the time your line of sight got to the second shelf, your mind was already wandering. 

He had taken Ellie out onto the front porch for a guitar lesson. 

After the terrible things he had said to you this morning.

After you acted like he was a cruel man whose viciousness knows no bounds.

He wanted to teach Ellie something, after he had asked you first. 

Came out of the hall closet with it in his hand, and while his dark expression was distressingly unreadable, his voice was light when he offered to teach her some cords. Ellie, who was nose deep in another Space Family Robinson, nearly launched herself off the couch: “HELL YEAH!”

Standing at just an angle that allowed you to see the living room from the kitchen, you could have sworn he smiled. A muffled thing, but it drew up the corners of his cupid’s bow in a beautiful twist, the long expanse of his throat looking warm as he turned his head to give Ellie the guitar, his hair curled in reckless waves at the nape of his neck. He smiled at Ellie and offered her a lesson – 

And you haven’t been able to focus since. 

You stop halfway on your fifth search, press your forehead to the wooden post, and sigh. 

The silence in the cellar is different from other silences on the homestead. More compact, more dense. You suppose that has something to do with it being buried several feet underground, but the strength of it is comforting in a way you’ve never experienced. Since you were sixteen years old, you’ve worked a full time job, sometimes two, sometimes three, for just enough money to eat and keep your sister housed. You often have trouble sleeping because you can still hear the noise of all those people, gears in your mind churning, despite the physical exhaustion of your body, always thinking about tomorrow’s to-dos and where your next meal might come from. You’ve been going so hard and so fast – barely surviving – you forgot what true, thick silence sounded like. How much easier it was to breathe and smother that runaway train of thought. 

Despite your initial apprehension, the cellar had become your most favorite place on the entire homestead. The silence was almost friendly, protective; you could whisper your secrets to it and know they’d be safe forever. Surrounded by abundant food, lovingly grown and cared for, you too sometimes feel as if you too had been raised, had been grown to ripeness, on this earthen floor. 

For the first time in hours, your heartbeat slows. With a grin, you lean into the wooden shelf, its corner sticking into your shoulder like a hand would press into your skin. 

“I’m trying to do something nice for Ellie. You know she deserves it,” you grumble into the silence. The wood is soft, gently carved. If you try hard enough, you think you can still smell the wood grain. “Having some vanilla flavoring would really make her happy, and that kid needs a win.” You shuffle, standing up right, and the toe of your boot kicks the post. It shudders slightly. “I –,”

In the momentum, something falls off the shelf and plops into the dirt to your right.

Vanilla beans.

You grin as you pick them up, trying half-heartedly to find that watchful eye. Just before you click off the light, you affectionately rub the corner of the wall.

“Thanks.” 

If talking to animals is the first step in going crazy, talking to holes in the ground must be a pretty bad sign. 

“‘kay, it’s real easy.” He clears his throat again, shifting, and the wood panel squeaks beneath him. Crickets echo in the shadows beyond the light of the porch. “This is gonna be your C – your A – your G, and your D. There’s only twelve you really gotta know. From there you’ll get the basics and can start to –,”

“Where’d you learn to play?” Ellie asks abruptly. She sits with her back against the wooden post outlining the porch, her knees tucked up to her chest. Joel is reminded of the look Sarah once gave him after he silently helped her chop the rest of the wood before a rainstorm came – he had told her she couldn’t do all of it by herself, and she had adamantly refused, but he didn’t rub it in her face when he came to help. They narrowly avoided the downpour but had enough firewood to last them a week. 

Grateful, was the expression he remembers. 

The heat of the day still lingers in the air, the sun just beneath the horizon. Flies and gnats swarm and tangle around the exposed bulb over the porch, thickening the shadows of his hands over the neck of the guitar and beneath the porch steps. 

Joel’s fingers still, the music of fluttering wings and electrical zaps taking over. “My dad taught me. He taught me . . . and my brother.”

Maybe it was the talk with Sarah that had loosened something, at least temporarily. He doesn’t feel like he’s been torn open, spilling his guts, when he tells her about Tommy. He wonders briefly if Sarah had ever mentioned her uncle and if she didn’t, why. He can see the question build behind her eyes, thoughts shuffling, looking for a memory if he had ever mentioned a brother before. 

“We got pretty good for a time. Played at school, church. Had a guy come through town once and tell us we could really be something.”

“Like a Hank Williams kinda something?” 

Joel eyes her, impressed she knows one of the greatest artists who’s ever lived.

“I dunno what he meant,” he says. “But that’s never why I did it anyway. Just wanted something to do with my little brother. He had some good lyrics too. He was always talented that way, with his head, you know? I think sometimes that’s where Sarah gets it. ‘Cause i'snot from me.” 

Joel smiles and Ellie grins back, an inside joke they didn’t know about yet. He strums quietly.

“I think he wanted to be that Hank Williams kinda somethin'. But it’s hard when you’re no one from nowhere. And I think him leavin’ would’ve broken our mama’s heart.”

“Tommy . . . right?” Joel glances up at her, the name so foreign on someone else’s tongue she could have meant someone else entirely. “Sarah – she, um – she mentioned him, once. And that he left for California – a while ago.” 

Joel nods, again in search of that anger to wield as a weapon, but the guitar digs into the place in his chest where it hurts the most. 

“Is that why the guitar was in the trunk? ‘Cause you’re pissed at him?”

It’s almost funny, the way she needles through to the center of things. He could lie, but what’s the point?

He hums. “I stopped playing this thing long before Tommy left. No time. Even with his help, you gotta fight with this land to grow anything. Then Sarah got sick, and now there’s all this fuckin’ dust . . .” 

He puts a hand on the belly of the guitar to stop the vibrations. He looks up at the stars, blinking into existence as night falls like a dropped curtain, and shakes his head. It felt like an excavation of something haunted, when he pulled the guitar from a trunk in his bedroom closet. Truly, he hadn’t thought about this guitar in months and taking it out again was just asking for something dangerous to befall him. Maybe something already had, given how much he had started to care for the girl who carries a pocket knife in her sock. 

Joel’s gaze drops to that girl now, her wiry little fingers wrapped around her ankles as she stares right back. He had forgotten they still made people like her.

“But it’s good. It’s good to remember.” Joel slides the guitar off his lap and onto the wood step between them. This guitar is older than Ellie and he hands it to her. “Now let’s see if you’ve been paying attention.”

She stares a second after he leans in to point out the chords before she tries to match his fingers on the strings. But then Sarah opens the screen door, out of breath and the tip of her nose pink as if she’d been standing over a fire. 

“Dinner’s ready.” 

Joel stifles the urge to roll his eyes; his girl was many things, but subtle was not one of them. As she disappears back inside, Ellie hands him back the guitar and meets his eyes with a confused look on her face – what’s up with her? Joel shrugs, then tries not to groan as he stands up, his knee acting up again. Odd, given that it only used to ache when a storm was coming, like a warning. But the skies had been clear for weeks.

“Good first lesson, kid. I’ll put this up, you go see what they got cooked up.” 

“You sure?” Her gaze drops to his knee, observant as her aunt. 

“ ‘M fine. Go on.” He knows there’s more affection than gruff in his voice, but at least Ellie doesn’t seem to register that. 

He follows her inside, the air warmer in here due to the oven and a lack of a breeze. When she moves towards the kitchen, he goes to the closet beneath the stairs and opens up the trunk at the back. 

He isn’t entirely sure he can forgive Tommy for what he did, but at least he understands it. Beneath where the guitar laid, there’s a scrap of crumpled paper – a telegram he thought about tossing in the fire when it first arrived. Instead, he is glad he just wanted it out of his sight. 

It is blank except for a few letters and numbers: a forwarding address. 

He can’t pick it up and look at it, not right now, but maybe. Maybe someday, when he needs his brother.

“Holy shit!”

Joel smiles as he shuts the trunk lid and stands. Not today.

When he finally makes it to the kitchen, Ellie stands at the head of the table, her shoulders by her ears, arms out, as if preparing to be tackled to the ground. Her eyes are bigger than he’s ever seen them.

“Happy Birthday, Ellie!” Sarah yells from the other side of the table, the words bursting out of her. “Do you like it?”

“Like it? I . . .” Wordlessly, she slides into the chair, her face glowing in the light of the candle sunken deep into the top of the cake. The shadows, thick and heavy around her mouth and under her eyes, blur the emotions on her face. 

“Ellie?” You say, tentative. That crease is back between your eyes and Joel wants to press his thumb to it until it goes away. “Is this okay?”

Slowly, she lifts her eyes. The shadows cannot hide the wet shine there. Joel has to look away, something hot expanding under his ribs. 

“Uh, yea-ahh . . . this is fucking okay.” He hears the slight chuckle in her voice and he looks back. Her smile is stretched from ear to ear. “And this is dinner too, right? We get to eat cake. For dinner?”

You smile, relief and excitement giving your own face a special glow. And then, your eyes fall to him and that hot band in his chest thickens to his throat. He’ll dream of your eyes again tonight, he knows it.

“Mr. Miller has extra storages of flour in the cellar,” you say, gaze slipping away before he can hold onto it. The band in his throat hardens when you refer to him so distantly. “We used just a bit of cream and milk –”

“And sugar!” Sarah blurts out. She is practically vibrating next to you. “We have to really conserve sugar, only for special occasions, and what’s more special than a birthday?”

Ellie tears her gaze up from the candle and, for a second, she looks very small. 

“You used it for my birthday?” 

While Sarah nods vigorously next to you, he watches as your face falls. He knows that look, felt it screw up his face too – you feel like you’ve failed Ellie somehow.

“Of course, Ellie.” You say quietly, your hands knotted in front of you. He watches as the words get caught in your throat, all the right ones and the wrong ones. “You . . .”

“You’re a good kid.” Your eyes jump to him, wide, as he steps closer to the kitchen table. He puts a hand around the knot on the back of Ellie’s chair. “Is what your aunt means to say. Happy birthday, from all of us.”

Ellie’s gaze is so gentle, she looks timid. She glances between Joel, you, then Sarah, and back to you. 

“Um, thanks, guys. I guess.” 

In the soft silence, she takes a brief moment, her eyes closed, and then leans forward over the candle and promptly blows out the flame. The kitchen falls into darkness, a second before you reach for the light. 

Sarah claps her hands, the amber electrical light softening her already smooth skin. “What did you wish for?”

Ellie’s smirk returns, her hard edges returning. “Can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”

Sarah rolls her eyes as you gather the plates you and Joel had cleaned just this morning. “I always thought that rule was so stupid. It’s no fun.”

You grin at her as you hand Ellie a plate and then Sarah herself. 

“It’s the secret that gives the wish its magic. All the good things are best kept secret.”

Your hand extends a plate out towards him, but it’s your gaze that meets him first. Mouth slightly parted, you watch him from beneath your long lashes. The light that softens Sarah emboldens the curves of your cheeks, the slope of your nose, the entanglement of your hair against the nape of your neck. A table between you, he hasn’t been this close to you in what feels like days, when it had only been this morning. This morning, when he had never felt further from you, when his own fear had gotten the better of him. 

For so long, the circle of his love ended at the property lines and he had spent years of his life etching in that demarcation, digging in and digging in until the wet earth swallowed him whole. There was nothing else but Sarah and this land because he could not afford to lose either of them, so he held on tight and burrowed deep.

But this deep down, the earth he loved might as well have been a coffin. A tomb. In order to stabilize his daughter, the land, and himself, there had to be less of him. Less to carry. Less to burden. 

Less of him to share. 

He thought – maybe hoped – that those bits of him that had fallen away would always stay gone, another sacrifice in addition to his blood and his sweat into the soil. It was easier to mourn a loss if you never had it in the first place.

But, as he looked at you from across the table in the low light, as your fingers touched his beneath the plate – even for a fraction of a second – the pieces he’d left behind roared to life once again. 

Heat warms him up his arm, down into his chest – and it keeps going. The smell of you, of sweat and sugar and honey and sunlight, invades his head like a dirty wind and the fire inside scorches him as it flushes down his ribs, through his stomach, and right into his groin.

You all but drop the plate into his hand, pulling your fingers away from his touch, gaze diving away. But he can see your nervous swallow, the way your hand shakes when you pick up the knife to cut the cake. 

“Let’s eat.” You smile at the girls, but it’s as weak as your voice, crackling, trembling, overwhelmed. As if you too had been consumed by years of dormant want out of nowhere and now couldn’t possibly put those feelings back into hiding even if you wanted to.

Even if you begged.

The cake is gone in a matter of minutes. 

Ellie lets out a groan, leaning back in her chair, her hands resting over her full stomach. “That was so goddamn good.” 

“It’s inappropriate to lick the plate, right?” Sarah asked, sponging up crumbs with her finger. 

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Ellie grins. She snatches up her plate and with her tongue flat against her chin, licks up every last morsel. Sarah snorts, laughter bursting out of her, before doing the exact same thing. It’s not long until both of them are making grotesque noises. 

“You girls act like you haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.” Joel sits across from you, his arms folded across his chest, a faint glint in his eye as he glances back and forth between them. He sits low in his chair and his shoulders look especially broad across the back of it. “Y’all are gonna eat me out of house and home.” 

Sarah giggles and wipes her spit-covered chin. “Ellie said she found a really good spot out back to look at the Milky Way. Can we go look?” 

You expect him to ask that they clean up the table first, at least put the dishes in the sink, and not to stay too far into the dark. He’s watching Sarah for a beat too long before he opens his mouth again.

“But then when will Ellie get her present?”

His eyes lock onto you.

“THERE’S MORE?!” Ellie screeches.

The heat in his gaze sends a tangible shock down your throat, across every single one of your ribs, right into your nipples. Your faint gasp is overshadowed by Sarah and Ellie’s yelling – oh my god you didn’t tell me about this what’s wrong with you – please please please can I see it I’ll clean the bathrooms if you just lemme have it please –  but the look is gone a second later when he stands up and jerks his chin over his shoulder to the living room. The girls sprint into the room before he can take his first step. He doesn’t look at you as he follows them, slow, confident, teasing them just a bit.

“What is it?!”

“Is it more comics?”

“More marbles?”

“New clothes?”

“Ew, that would suck.” 

As if deaf to their pleas, Joel slowly walks over to the chest in the corner of the room and just as the girls are about to burst from excitement, he bends down and picks something up from behind it.

A radio. 

The radio.

The same one they had found in town. 

Ellie and Sarah’s eyes widen to the size of the dinner plates sitting on the kitchen table, covered in spit and cake crumbs. They drop to their knees, fingers outstretched like they approached a feral kitten.

“Now, it doesn’t work right.” Joel says, his arms crossed again. “But I thought it might be a good project for you girls. Something to work on together. Maybe learn about magnets and electricity n’shit.” 

His eyes fall on you again, as if you knew all about “magnets and electricity n’shit.” Joel grins again, this time just for you, and something inside of you snaps in half, melts, sparks open; some great weight, one you didn’t even know was there, has been lifted off your shoulders, your heart, and you can breathe properly again. You sink into the blue sofa, hands in your lap to keep them from trembling. 

The idea that you would ever willingly leave this place is laughable.

The idea that you would take Ellie away from this, from Sarah, is agonizing. 

They’re both fiddling with the buttons and twisting the jobs, the novelty of it perhaps the most fascinating. They are silent, more reverent than if they are on hallowed ground. 

“I’ve got some pliers and a screwdriver if you wanna –,”

Perhaps it was the witchcraft of the sisterhood. 

Perhaps they had managed to work out some secret code.

Perhaps they were just lucky. 

The radio lights up and the tear of a trumpet whines out of the speakers. Their yelp of delight is muffled beneath the white-hot music of a jazz band. 

Joel watches with what can only be considered bemusement as the girls leap to their feet and start dancing like no one had ever taught them about rhythm. 

The sofa squeaks, the cushion under your butt tilting up, as he sits down next to you. 

“Not likely to win any competitions any time soon,” he mutters quietly, presumably to you, as you both watch Ellie’s jerky knees and Sarah’s dizzying twirls. You sit, hands in your lap, perched on the edge of the cushion, while he leans into the sofa, arms back in place over his chest. With the way you are positioned towards the radio and him facing straight on, your knees almost touch. 

You wonder if he’s as aware of that chance as you are. 

“Listen, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” His voice is deep enough to be heard over the music. He glances at your hands, and then your face. The sincere regret in his eyes makes the blood in your wrists pound. “You didn’t deserve all of those things I said to you this morning. Both you and Ellie have been . . .” he struggles for the word, his bottom lip moving with the swipe of his tongue, “a good change in our lives, and I regret saying the contrary.” His gaze falls back to your hands, your thumb tucked into the hole made by your other fingers. You wouldn’t look away from his face if it was the sun itself. “The fields have been well taken care of . . . and I know Sarah’s grateful for everything you’ve done for her. You’ve changed her life for the better. You’ve changed m–,”

It’s like his voice crumbles and slips off a cliff. His broad shoulders sag forward and then he looks up at you, a desperate sort of hope in eyes. Hope that you understand what he’s trying to say, and hope that you don’t make him say it. 

Oh, but you want him to say it. You want it so badly. 

You nod, this crumb sweeter than anything on the kitchen plates. On some heady sugar high, you smile at him.

“Well, I meant what I said.” He frowns and your grin widens, but then teeters and topples over. Your wrists ache. You have to lose his gaze for what you’re going to say next. “We are very, very grateful you took us in. I know it wasn’t a decision you made lightly, risking so much of you and Sarah for two complete strangers.” You shake your head with disbelief. “I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that you made the right choice, if I have to.���

You glance up at him – and immediately wish you hadn’t. 

It’s that same look he gave you when you handed him his plate over the kitchen table. Lips pursed, brow slightly furrowed, with a wary uneasiness in his eyes. Like he’s finally figured out what kind of woman you are, and he can’t quite tell what to do with you.

“C’mon you two!” Sarah yells and that hazy bubble that envelopes you bursts. He blinks, as if not remembering where he is. “You gotta dance!”

“Yeah, you old farts!” Ellie pants, red-faced and nearly out of breath. “It’s my birthday so you have to do what I say and I say, let’s boogie!”

You lunge at the chance to be distracted; you turn away from Joel and arch your eyebrow.

“Oh, you’re dancing? Is that what you’re doing? Can hardly tell.” 

Ellie sticks out her tongue while Sarah starts kicking with one foot then bounces to the other, flicking her wrists. “I saw this move on the school’s television!”

Ellie immediately stops the flailing of her limbs and watches her moves. “Teach me!”

Sarah slows it down until Ellie gets the hang of the bounce. Sarah looks much more natural in the rhythm, but at least Ellie is partially on beat. 

“And then I think you do this–,”

Her foot dangling in the air, she loops her ankle around Ellie’s and starts hopping in a circle. Ellie lets out a giggle.

“No way this is a real thing!”

“It is, I swear!”

“You got any moves like that?” Joel asks quietly, but still ensnaring your attention completely. He sunken completely into the sofa, hips low, legs wide. His thumb taps the beat on his thigh. Something about the way he has completely relaxed allows you to unclench your fists and loosen your foot tucked behind your ankle.

“Me?” You chuckle, leaning back on the arm rest. “I never had the time to go to the dancehalls, much less learn complicated moves such as the – Sarah, what is that dance called?”

“Hell if I know!” They’ve switched feet, trying to go counterclockwise this time.

“Complicated moves such as The Hell-if-I-know.” He rewards your terrible joke with a low chuckle. 

“Me neither. I can’t dance for shit.” 

As though he had called her name, Sarah stamps down her foot and rolls her eyes at her father, Ellie trying to follow along with the instructions the singer is giving over the speakers.

“Yes, you can. You taught me The Dip.” 

“That’s not a real move, Sarah–,”

“You can teach her!” Sarah’s brilliant smile extends to her eyes as if she had just announced the best idea in the history of ideas. “Then she’ll know at least one!”

Your fingers return to their fists. Joel stiffens beside you.

“Yeah, you should.” Ellie yells over her shoulder distractedly, one arm raised and the other leg straight out – in complete opposition to what the lyrics said. “Can’t have her embarrassing me in public.”

“C’mon, Dad, just one dance!” Her brown eyes flicker to Ellie and sweat-damp shirt. “It’s Ellie’s birthday!” 

“And for the party, we – must – dance!” Ellie strikes a dramatic pose and Sarah, giggling, swishes her dress with a flourish. With a brief glance at you, she rejoins Ellie, her skirt twirling.

The sofa squeaks as if he’s moving, a soft hand comes to rest high on your back, and panic leaps into your throat.

“Mr. Miller – Joel – you don’t have to – Sarah is just being silly –,”

“Well, it's not like I’m going up there by myself.” 

That rough palm slides over your scapula, then your shoulders, and down your arm. Tugging gently, a soft pinch around the bone of your elbow nearly pulls you to your feet, but sense-memory has you folding your arm back up towards your chest, your knees locked and heels heavy. Immediately he senses your rejection and stops. 

The warm light above threads gold through strands of his silver hair, the ends of his curls long enough to disappear into nothingness, into the halo around him. 

Joel Miller would never, ever hurt you.

Joel Miller is not your husband.

Joel Miller could be your friend.

His light touch releases and just as his fingers drop from your sleeve, your arm unfurls towards him, taking him by the bicep. His eyebrows lift slowly, watching as your fingers curl around his arm. Drawn towards his light like a sunflower, you stand, closer to him than ever before, and smile up at him. Friends go dancing together all the time, right? 

But all the standards and regulations of propriety and social mores were flung out the window the second you, an unmarried woman, stepped foot onto the land of an unmarried man. Nothing about this, about any of this, could be considered conventional.

A step or two away from the sofa, he holds your waist in one hand and yours aloft in the other, fingers interconnected. Respectful. Decent. A good man. No boundary crossing here. 

“Ready for your next lesson?” he asks, a little breathless. Maybe he forgot the steps and he is simply nervous to perform – hm, teach. He does a bit of adjusting, watches his own feet adjust as you stand still in front of him, waiting to be moved.

So, you open your stupid mouth and say,

“See, teaching isn’t so easy, is it?”

You grin and finally his eyes meet yours. Soft as leather, warm as a saddle in sunlight. It’s your turn for necessary air to be drained from your lungs and he decides then to move.

“Gotta lead up to it,” he grumbles, the corner of his mouth lifted. “Can’t just dive right in.” The way he leads is completely out of sync with the music, but you see that it’s intentional, a choice to slow things down. Not quite what you’d expect at the Boston dancehalls, but something far more precious and memorable. He sways with you, as supple as a blade of prairie grass in a warm wind. 

The curve of his shoulder is warm beneath your fingers, your thumb inches from his collar. He is more solid than any other person you’ve ever touched – including Anna. He could stand at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and never be washed away. You cannot imagine what that stability feels like, but you crave it all the same. 

There’s a respectable distance between your hips and his, but you can still smell the sweetness of the cake on his breath, the hot earth he tends to so lovingly, and the tang of sweat. 

“I know you’re a fast learner.” You turn your head towards him, but he gazes straight on. For a moment his face is so stoic you start to wonder if he actually said anything, but then a smile, a small one, flickers across his face. He turns his head towards you, his nose brushing yours, and suddenly you are too close together. Instinctively you pull away – your head, your shoulders, your hands – then find yourself frustrated that this is how you still react. You don’t even mean it. You don’t even want it, this temporary separation. But still Joel stands. He waits for you and sure enough, you sink back into his arms, your palms separating for only a second. “We made a regular farmhand out of you in a handful of weeks. Could get you to a full Dip in days.” 

He’s talking too softly to be easily heard over the banging percussion, the scream of trumpets, the boozy warble of the singer, so you bend closer. Over his shoulder, Ellie and Sarah take turns curtseying and bowing and then locking their elbows together and spinning each other in circles, giggling. 

“They’re alright.” The words hum in your ear, heat warming the air after a flash of lightning, and you fight a full body shudder. You tear your gaze back to him and his smile. His hand hasn’t moved an inch on your back. You worry your palm is getting sweaty. “Just focus on me.” You nod. 

From the radio, the song ends and the band slows to a discordant crash, as exhausted as the ones who danced to their rhythms. Men raucously laugh over the airwaves at their own created chaos and the two girls collapse onto the couch, red-faced and sweaty and laughing. 

“You trust me?” His eyes are brown and dark and smoky, firewood kindling. He really intends to teach you something. You nod slowly. The memory of his hand smacking into the counter breaks apart when his palm slips further down your back, his leg shifting in between yours, and he leans forward to lean you back. Back, back, back, off the edge of the earth. Hair slips off your shoulders as you hang, suspended above the floorboards, cradled by his hand and his thigh, the other hand holding yours to his chest. The world is upside down – in more ways than one. 

When you lift your head, he blocks out the light above for just a moment. Joel, for a moment, is all you can see. He holds you like you weigh nothing, gravity a suggestion to a force of nature like him — and a moment later, he pulls you both upright. 

Your cheeks are burning, your heart roars in your chest, in your ears, and there is no other way this would have ended: you glance at his mouth. He looks at yours. The fingers entwined with yours tighten. 

And then the radio dies. No preamble. No warning. Just ringing silence.

“Welp, it was fun while it lasted.” Ellie huffs, out of breath, smacking her hands against her thighs. 

Sarah wipes away sweat from her forehead with her arm. “Nah, we’ll get it back. I know we can fix it. Right, Dad?”

Joel Miller is still staring at your mouth. 

He’s quiet too long before he drops his gaze and clears his throat. Caught in a daze, you blink and suddenly his warmth is gone. Your hand floats in the air, empty. Joel pulls on the waistline of his pants and turns back to the sofa, nodding.

“Course, we can fix it. But not tonight. Get to bed, both of you.” The gravel of his voice makes his words harsher than they need to be, but Ellie just rolls her eyes and Sarah throws herself onto her feet. 

“C’mon, teenie bopper, I found a mouse skull the other day I forgot to show you.”

Ellie’s eyes widen as she follows Sarah up the stairs. “Like a skull skull? No meat, just bones? Was the rest of the skeleton there?”

Her interrogation continues as they move around the second floor and you can almost hear every word of it. A stark and abrupt reminder that this house echoes – any noises or sounds made can be heard anywhere, in any room, by anyone. 

Your gaze drops to Joel like a stone and with the added weight of whatever he was thinking, it all becomes too much for him. He turns away, denim shoulders nearly up to his ears.

“I’ll clean up.” He waves his hand vaguely to the kitchen. Cake. Plates. Flour on the counter. Oh, that’s right. “You cooked.”

A trade, a sharing of responsibilities between two equal partners. There’s some part of you that knows you should argue, cleaning was what he hired you for, but this is not him telling you as your employer. 

This is . . .

“You did good today,” he says, quickly, his hands on his waist, a step forward, as if he remembered something mid-stride. “It meant a lot, to the both of ‘em. I know you don’t think much of it, but you’re good at this.”

Your face heats, a familiar zing from his words racing down your spine into the bowl of your hips. The next breath you take is a shaky one. “Thanks, Joel. I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

He swallows, then nods. “Night, then.”

“Good night.” 

You might have let yourself believe you had imagined the whole thing, as you walk down the long wood floor to your bedroom, the girls’ chatter now just noise in your head. You might have believed that, after half a decade of being unwanted and undesired, abandoned at the edge of civilization, you extrapolated sentimentality from the first man who looked at you. All your life you doubted yourself; doubted your ability to keep Anna safe, doubted that you’d ever be something more than a pathetic replacement for Ellie’s mother, doubted your own sanity at times when you sat in that dark, dank dug out and listened to the scratchy winds tear apart your husband’s finances. 

But this – this you did not doubt. You did not mistake, or dream up, or lie to yourself. 

Before he let you go, Joel had squeezed your hip, rubbed his thumb against the waistband of your skirt. Let his fingers snag and catch in your blouse.

Whether it was trust or companionship or something ultimately more terrifying, he felt some kind of way about you. 

What kind of way you felt about him, you couldn’t answer honestly. 

And yet for a moment, for a brief moment, you had stepped into his light and, goddamn it, you were right. 

It was warm.

END OF PART II

series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

[vintagecandy]

My personal reimagining of Jervis Tetch, AKA: The Mad Hatter.

So I noticed that it is really common for Gotham rogues-- but almost especially Jervis Tetch-- to get redrawn and redesigned! Which I just thought was such a fun exercise, so because I'm me and predictable my brain immediately leaped at the chance to imagine my own Jervis.... set in the 1920s. Now, the drastically different time period causes a lot of interesting dynamics. For one, I'm fairly certain Jervis Tetch's character originates from a time period of comics where people wore a lot more hats, so setting him in the past is very fitting for him. It makes a lot more sense for him to literally be an artisan hat manufacturer, as in a real hatter. BUT what's interesting is that hand made "hatter" style hats were actually beginning to fade out of favor, and one of the reasons is actually partially because there was a growing moralizing around the hatting industry's overhunting of birds for their decorative feathers, and so Jervis ( as you can see ) having this big, real peacock bird feather on his hat is sort of a defiance, a subtle expression of his bad intent. And I imagine his introduction to crime will be marked with the sudden unprompted rise of vintage style hats "regaining popularity". He's very much still a hypnotist, a master illusionist, and a scientific genius, and I was thinking- to shake things up- the hat is actually what drove him insane. Originally the hat band was created to counteract nerve damage he developed from mercury poisoning some years ago, but ended up also giving him heightened focus and an incurable bout of severe insanity. Then he later repurposed it for mind control. What insanity? Ok, look at the face I drew for him. This was on accident, but I've been looking at his face...... and I cannot shake the feeling he's a dad. Like, he has peak "wacky inventor father" energy in his face, but more sickly and evil. So I was thinking.... what if for this Jervis instead of his usual romantic Alice fixation... Alice was instead his daughter. And he loved having pretend tea parties with her, acting as the hatter. Some point after he put on the hat, his behavior was a little off but not worrying yet, but he lets his daughter wander off too far in this dangerous city and he just... never sees her again. He calls the police, they're kinda apathetic- probably corrupt tbh, he puts up posters-- nothing, she's just gone. Probably dead the more time passes. A senseless tragedy in a nonsense world. This breaks his brain! And so he decides he's going to take over all of Gotham and turn it into a game of Wonderland, part out of spite, and mostly out of total denial that his daughter is gone no matter how many years pass, in hopes that the little lost girl will find her way back to him or even that more puppets means more help finding her. But with time his insanity becomes so severe he doesn't even remember Alice was his daughter and not literally the book Alice, but he is slightly more lucid when without the hat. However, he feels sick and anxious when without it.

But as it goes in Gotham, by the time they consider you Arkham levels of insane, incurably so-- a 1920s insane asylum mind you! Which practically makes him more ill-- you sort of have no choice but to stay in the crime life forever. Which is where the tommy guns come in.

[lovings4turn]

જ⁀➴  𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐎𝐎𝐋  . . .  (𝐆. 𝐑.)

— two things are definite: you like george, and george likes you. unfortunately, you two seem to be the only ones who don't see it.

+ part of my 'be my valentine' mixtape series ! love this song and i was so excited to use it for a george fic, so i hope you enjoy <3

“oh mate, you’re joking.”

“shut up!” george huffed, running the palm of his hand down his face in exasperation. “it was not that bad.”

he could defend himself all he liked, because in spite of that, george knew it really was.

this was possibly the third time this month that george had fumbled his chance to ask you out, and alex was beginning to grow tired of his friend’s constant pining and lingering stares. 

“here’s what you’re gonna do,” alex said, his voice growing more serious as he looked george dead in the eyes. “you’re gonna ring y/n, and you’re gonna tell her you forgot something at her place. a shirt, socks, anything.”

"but i haven't?"

"not the point," alex groaned. "you're gonna tell her that, so you have an excuse to turn up there. this is your chance. don't be a stupid. tell her you think she's cool, that you like her, something to charm her."

george still wasn't convinced. his brows were pinched together as he ran over alex's plan in his mind, able to find a thousand different ways it could go wrong for him.

"right. and what happens when she realises that i haven't actually left anything there, and i just look like a massive twat for showing up?"

alex wasn't sure that he could take any more.

"mate, you can't just sit around and wait for some sort of fairy tale ending to come out of nowhere for you. at some point, you're just going to have to confess to her."

though he was being assertive, alex was still trying to be supportive, laying a hand on george's shoulder and delivering a friendly pat of encouragement.

"i can promise you she's probably thinking the exact same thing right now, anyways."

george scoffed, his answer hanging in the air unspoken. as if.

unbeknownst to george, alex was a lot closer to the truth than even he may have realised.

the events of the afternoon were playing on a loop in your mind as you tried to dissect every last piece of your interaction with george, from how he'd greeted you - a brief side hug and a smile - to how he'd said goodbye - a weak effort to get you to stay and a silly, yet endearing, wave.

was this your life now? driving yourself mad over even the smallest little details, all because of some stupid feelings?

when you'd first started developing somewhat of a crush on the mercedes driver, you made a promise to yourself that it would never become a thing. and you had kept that promise for roughly four months, until you made a huge error: revealing your feelings to someone else.

ever since you had let it slip to a friend that you actually quite liked george in ways that far surpassed the platonic label, you'd been - for lack of a better phrase - absolutely fucked.

now you had people to fuel your delusions, try to convince you that george had to feel the same way, and no, of course he wasn't just being polite when he offered you his jacket, you fool. outside interference and reassurance should have made you more confident in your feelings, maybe even push you to confess, but instead they'd had the opposite effect.

the weight of the word 'hopeless' in hopeless romantic had really started to resonate with you. though you weren't allowed to dwell on your misfortunes for too long.

some may have chalked it up to fate, some may have attributed it to a divine power wanting to laugh at a poor mortal, but whatever the reason, your phone rang with an incoming call from george.

the stupid candid photo you’d taken as a contact picture flashed up on your screen, and the automatic smile that painted your lips made you want to yell in frustration.

"y/n, hi!"

pathetic was the perfect word to describe you, thanks to how utterly gone you were for george, as the mere sound of your name leaving his lips was enough to make your heart jump.

"sorry, know i only saw you a few hours ago, but i just remembered that i think i left one of my mercedes shirts at yours when i was there the other day."

you didn't even think twice about it, why would you? george had left countless items at your place in the past, and he would leave more in the future.

"no problem. y'can always come by and get it, i'll try and grab it for you."

george's chest ached at how ready to help you were.

"yeah? you're a lifesaver, y/n, really. i'll set off now, should be there in about fifteen minutes."

brief 'see you later's were exchanged, and the moment you set your phone down onto the coffee table, your hunt began.

you didn't recall seeing one of george's shirts anywhere around, but previous mishaps had enlightened you to the fact that things could turn up anywhere. you'd thought that the shoes buried right underneath your bed were odd, until a sock turned up in your bread bin a few weeks later.

nothing was off limits anymore.

yet, somehow, no matter where you looked, you couldn't find the fucking shirt. frustration slowly nibbled at your mind, the sound of a knock being the only thing to break you from your frantic search.

an annoyingly attractive george russell greeted you when you swung open the front door.

in all of the years he'd known you, george thought this was the most adorable you'd looked.

your hair was in disarray, the strands unkempt as though you'd been running your hands through it over and over again. your face shone a little, and you were clearly a little out of breath, if the small, panting gasps you took were anything to go by.

your apartment was a mess, and george quickly realised that you'd turned your entire place practically upside down to try and find a shirt that wasn't even there in the first place.

guilt began to bubble up in his throat, and george hoped that, after today, it would all be worth it. he only had one chance, and he wasn't going to fuck it up.

before he could allow doubt to creep into his mind and sow seeds of regret, george lifted a hand to cup your jaw. the feeling of your soft skin against his palm elicited a gasp to slip from his mouth. the parting of his lips provided you with the perfect opportunity to meld your lips together in a chaste, sweet kiss.

feelings went unspoken, for now. time would grant you the chance to properly word every last affection you harboured for one another at a later date.

besides, george was a firm believer that actions spoke louder than words, and this kiss was living proof.

george forced himself to pull back, his forehead resting against your own, and he believed that to die like this would be a blessed fate. because you were definitely going to kill him when you found out the truth.

"i lied, by the way. there was no shirt," he mumbled, blue eyes meeting yours with a wince.

"you fucking dick."

[barefoothighlander]

Hello how do you do! Since we see a lot of works with sunshine and sweet readers, I'd like maybe if possible to request simon with a spiteful reader..... Like the reader has a resting angry face, isn't the most cheerful either..... Just pissed at life basically lmao (am I projecting?? Perhaps) anyways I hope you have great day!!!!

hi hun! totally down for a grumpy reader, personally i have a terrible case of resting mean face so, can relate. hope this little one shot fits what you were thinking, might make a part two.

warnings: angst, death, violence, a lil smooch, gn pronouns, Ghost is bad with his words

part two

“count two top deck” Ghost calls through the comms, alerting you and Soap.

“copy LT, breaching now” Soap pushes his way through the large doors, you covering behind him. The two of you are suddenly overtaken by mass amounts of gunfire.

“steamin' jesus LT I think your math was off” Soap yells as the two of you duck for cover behind a wall.

You feel the anger boil in your lower stomach, twice now your lieutenant has miscounted enemies leading to you standing directly in the line of fire, you couldn’t figure out what was distracting him but it made you angrier, you relied on him to get you eyes inside the room and he failed.

Smoke encases the room in a thick haze as you toss a grenade toward the men shooting at you, sneaking around the room to take out 4 men with your weapon, utilizing the knife attached to your belt for the last, his blood cascading from his neck down your hands and arms.

The smoke clears and Soap stands with wide eyes staring at you as you stand trying to catch your breath.

“Rooms clear, move out” you huff over the comms.

Stepping outside the abandoned building you lock eyes with Ghost, quickly closing the gap between you two.

“What the FUCK was that” You yell, hands coming to push at his chest as he takes a small step back from your force. You continue invading his space, forcing his large form backwards.

“That’s twice, TWICE now you’ve fucked up and almost gotten me killed” you release a deep breath, “get your head on right before you get someone killed or I swear to god I will end you myself” emphasizing your point with a final shove, your heartbeat ringing in your ears as you flex your fingers trying to calm yourself.

Soap and Ghost share a glance of awe, you were often seen intimidating lower ranks but they’d never seen you have an outburst like that. The ride back to base was practically silent, no one daring to breathe too hard beside you, scared to become the next victim of your wrath.

Entering the base you make your way to the gym, shucking your vest and gear in favour of a t-shirt and shorts, choosing to channel your anger onto the nearest punching bag. You punch until your knuckles became red and swollen, a cut on the back of your hand from a previous mission opening during your assault. fuck

You step away to find a bandage, wrapping it around your hand using your teeth to tighten it. You make your way back over to the bag as you hear the heavy doors to the gym open, sparing a sharp glance at the large figure that emerged. You scoff in his direction, offended that he’d even think to be around you at that moment.

He settles himself at a safe distance as you continue your workout, his eyes roaming over your form.

“Keep staring and i’ll break your nose” You keep your focus on your hits.

“your form is off”

“it’s not”

“it is. put your weight on your front leg, you’re small, shift your weight to your advantage. you’ll never knock someone out punching with just your arms”

You stop moving, fists balled at your sides.

“wanna test that theory?”

He smirks under his mask and it just makes you angrier, he thinks you can’t take him.

You advance toward him, balling your fist before releasing it towards his head, he dodges and grabs your wrist twisting your body to pin your back to his chest.

“I told you, use your weight”

You breathe deep, bending your knee to flick back and lock behind his ankle, using your back to throw him off, tripping him as he tumbled to the mat. You scramble up his body resting your bent knee on his throat.

“that better?”

Your victory is cut short as Ghost brings his legs up to grip around your arm, throwing your body down and twisting to pin you to the mat.

“Tap out” he spits but you’re blinded by your anger, you refuse to let him win. Your body writhes under his strong grip.

“Tap out or I’ll break your arm” he threatens

You lock eyes, narrowing yours as your free palm comes into contact with the soft mat below you. He gets up releasing you as you stand, shaking your arm to try and ease the pain from his grip.

“next time -“

his words are cut short as you launch yourself at him, jumping onto him as you lock your arms around his neck. He uses his weight to try and flip you off but you keep your grip firm pulling him down with you, replacing your arms with your legs as you keep him in a triangle choke. You keep your body pressed to the mat as he plants his feet in an attempt to throw you off him.

“tap out,” you say, repeating his own words.

and he does, his large hand colliding with the floor as you release him. You stand, sweat glistening your body, hair a mess.

“work on your technique, you’re predictable”

“still took you down”

“only cause I let you”

“bullshit” you spit

he raises his eyebrow under his mask, but you can read his face.

“you’re afraid to admit that someone beat the big bad Ghost, well fuck you,” you say through heavy breaths, “we rank the same, you can’t intimidate me like I’m some new recruit”

“you’re really so worked up over the mission"

“yes! Your mistake almost cost Soap and I, what is wrong with you that you forget to count 3 people in a room”

“I was distracted”

“right, good excuse”

“I was distracted by you” he huffs

your breath catches in your throat, his eyes scanning over your form.

“I can handle my own, worry about the enemy” you say as you grab your bag and leave the room, rushing your way back to your room.

You spend a few hours in your room, showering and doing paperwork. As 7pm rolled around you figured you should eat something, so you make your way to the mess. Inching closer to the door you hear some recruits talking,

“I swear man they took down the Ghost, never seen him get beaten before”

You smirk to yourself, hiding behind the frame of the door.

“Yea but they’re a bitch, honest they doesn’t talk to anyone, always looks pissed off at something”

Your smirk fades quickly, your face returning to its usual stoic state as you breeze into the room, staring daggers at the men who had suddenly lost complete interest in their conversation, instead picking at the food on their plate.

Grabbing your food you sit at a far table away from the rest of the groups, managing to stomach most of the food you had been given. Your gaze shifts as Ghost walks into the room, sparing you a glance and stopping, almost like he wanted to say something. You avert your eyes and quickly stand from your spot, crossing the room the leave as he watches you go.

You settle yourself back into your room, trying to find something to occupy your mind when you hear a knock at your door, moving back to open it before your eyes land on that stupid mask.

“What do you need lieutenant”

“Can I come in”

“No”

He breezes past you into the room as you roll your eyes, closing the door and crossing your arms over your chest.

“I’m sorry”

“Fine”

“Can you just listen for once” he raises his voice.

You uncross your arms, eyebrows raising urging him to continue.

“I’m sorry”

“You said”

He warns you silently with a stare.

“I fucked up, I should’ve checked twice”

“I just don’t understand how you missed so many”

“I told you I was distracted”

You scoff

“I get distracted every time I’m in the field with you, I get worried about you”

You laugh at his remark, “We aren’t friends Ghost, you - you vex me”

“Simon”

you let out a small huh

“If you’re gonna yell at me at least use my name”

You throw up your arms in defeat, “What do you want me to say, Simon, I forgive you? Fine you’re forgiven”

“No, I just want you to understand”

“Understand what!”

His words don’t come, instead, he closes the space between you, lifting his mask over his mouth, grabbing your face between his hands and bringing his lips to yours. You widen your eyes confused at the abrupt action before falling into it, hands reaching up to tug at the nape of his neck. The kiss is almost violent, all tongue and teeth as the two of you pull back, catching a breath. You release him stepping back trying to gather your thoughts.

“That, understand that,” he says before moving behind you to leave. The swift movement stunning you, everything happened so quickly, did you like that? You’d never thought about Ghost Simon that way, every previous thought about him clouded in feelings of rage, but this felt different, you press your fingers to your lips trying to relieve the ache that came with the loss of contact.

Simon spent the night in his room tossing and turning in bed, why did he do that? God it probably only made you hate him more. He didn’t know, he couldn’t read you like he could other people, your gaze always cold and unforgiving, he understood the anger, he had plenty of experience with that emotion but this, this feeling he had towards you was different, he didn’t know what it was but he knew that he always wanted to be near you, even if it pissed you off.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

A) You are mean to Vaggie

B) Obligatory Complication: Emily is crushing impossibly hard on Vaggie and hangs out with Charlie as much as possible for vicarious enjoyment.

harold we have a problem?? ALL OF THEM ARE GAY AND NONE OF THEM HAVE CUSTODY OF THE BRAIN CELL!!!!

thing is tho i could totally see a version of Emily that latches onto Vaggie in some kind of emotional way

Emily's faith in heaven was shaken by Sera and the revelation of the exterminations...... Emily finds out her older sister and the head of the seraphim of heaven has known about Adam killing souls this whole time- was hiding it AND condoning it- which Emily HAS to take a stand against because it's wrong-

and then Emily finds out about Vaggie.

She sees how a lowly exorcist is living in hell now, has been for years, and is running a hotel to redeem sinners. She sees. Hope.

How frustrated was Emily at the end of season 1? The next extermination goes ahead in spite of Emily fighting against it, Sera won't listen, she's not allowed to even watch it happen, she's sitting across from Sera doing PAPERWORK while people die and then Pentious is there and presumably tells them how the fight went up until his death, probably mentions how Charlie and Vaggie worked together to prepare the hotel and were fighting in the thick of the battle- and then Lute comes back missing an arm and Adam is dead and the hotel is being rebuilt-

An angel fought alongside the sinners who she used to kill, she risked her life for them...

That could be such a point of hope for Emily to cling to.

Someone in heaven did think it was wrong. One of Adam's very own soldiers, even.

I could see her getting a bit desperate to know more about Vaggie. Wanting to find out what made her switch from killing souls to saving them, how long did it take, did anything help, why did she ever think it was okay in the first place

(Emily trying to understand Sera by proxy because it hurts less this way)

And of course Emily's easiest source of Vaggie Lore would be Charlie, Vaggie's girlfriend, the only part of the hotel running duo who is actually interested in talking about anything other than purely heaven-hell related business and who will stop glaring silently long enough to chat

Naturally, given Vaggie's bad history with heaven, Charlie would be RELIEVED to see how one high ranking angel seems to actually care about her girlfriend

So Charlie would answer the Vaggie questions eagerly, bc she loves talking Vaggie and wants her to have a powerful ally up in heaven and also maybe the whole Rosie thing showed her how helpful it is to talk with someone other than her gf about her gf and Emily is so nice and kind and they can trust her and she listens so intently and Charlie's so happy this one thing is working out and she can't stop smiling about it-

and meanwhile. Vaggie is just out of earshot. Grinding her TEETH

Romantic or not, in the same way that Charlie and Emily could bond over caring about the people under their protection so much, Emily might look at Vaggie and feel a need to get closer to her. To connect with the only other angel who really seems to GET it

heck, Vaggie being in hell running the hotel might even be a point of admiration and slight envy for Emily.

A seraphim can talk to the other high ranking angels, but what use does that feel like its serving, if they don't listen? Emily can shepherd Pentious around his new life in heaven but it's HEAVEN, what is THAT compared to helping a sinner carve out some kind of better life for themselves down in hell, where the help is really NEEDED? And while it makes sense Charlie would be down there doing that, she's princess of hell- Vaggie shows how angels could be doing it too. They could be making a real, tangible difference every day, instead of....

I could see the idea of Vaggie becoming something Emily thinks about a lot

[punkpandapatrixk]

🪷Sacred Lotus Within You ♦︎ Timeless Pick A Card

‘If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than what you are now.’

‘I don’t wanna be more! I like who I am.’

‘You don’t even know who you are.’

‘What do you— Of course I do; I’m the Dragon Warrior!’

‘And what exactly does that mean—Dragon Warrior?’

—  Po and Shifu’s conversation from Kung Fu Panda 3

SONG: Pure Imagination by Gene Wilder

MOVIE: Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016)

[PAC Masterlist] [Part 1] [Part 2]

[Patreon] [Paid Readings]

A hard Life is not always a divine punishment of sort⛈More often than not, the Universe’s most advanced Souls choose to be born—as Humans—into much sorrow and a perceived sense of limitation just for the joy of experiencing a personal breakthrough out of a cycle of—both—good and bad Karma🍄

Seen from a Soul’s perspective, all events in this mortal world are just drama. drama. drama~🎭It’s so exciting to co-Create massive stories with other Souls in this theatre of the Universe🎪This Play in itself, a spiritual evolution of sort for all beings of Love and Light🩰

This world is at best the dream of a Butterfly🦋Have fun; and have faith that in time all things bloom magnificently like a Sacred Lotus emerging from the mud🪷Ultimately, all of us, we bring with us only memories of our lifetimes when we are done playing our roles in this Grand Experiment of a Cosmic Drama💫

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 1 – Peace Maker

VIBE: Master Shifu asking Po to teach him inner peace

seeds of beauty in you – 10 of Pentacles Rx

Encoded in your DNA is the very gift of healing itself. You were born into this world of stupid carrying seeds of peace-making. Yup, you were the kid who was always able to tell when a grownup was lying. Like, OMG, so disrespectful…they think I can’t see through such obvious lies? In fact, too many things were obvious to you because you are gifted with a keen ability of observation. We’re talking superhuman-level observation, baby~

With that, the world around you was often terribly dull. You’re definitely the type that wants to travel and see the world for yourself. Wanting to see what other people of different nations and races, customs and cultures, even religions, have to share about what this Life is all about~ You had A LOT of questions!

Alas… You soon realised that most people’s perceptions, priorities, and overall ways of life are low-quality at best. Your interactions with people, your observations of them, gave you almost nothing but disdain. People…are not intelligent enough. But more disturbing still…people are not noble enough in their pursuits of a good Life.

In your eye, most of the time, people don’t have enough integrity, character, or personality🤷🏻‍♀️

blooming in spite of muddy water – 7 of Pentacles Rx

If you’re often distressed by the state of Humanity, it is because you possess this divine ability to pierce through bullshit and reveal the true essence of all things. You’re a deep diver. You truly are a scholar. You’re the type that seeks to bridge between differences and clashes, so that people find a common ground upon which they could build a harmonious society. You most likely have a significant placement in the 7th House or blessed with a strong Libra/Venus aenergy~⚖️

Essentially, you’ve come into this world with an almost specific purpose of bridging differences between generations. All because your Oversoul was sick of watching Humans being fools amongst themselves. So you plunged into this world of illusions in the hopes of elevating people’s spiritual intelligence. Your unique gift of observation is piercing and high-vibrational and the reason it can bridge generations is that the wisdom you will develop as a person is both universal and timeless💎

You are an Ascended Master, you know. Like Po returning to the mortal world after defeating Kai. Like Gandalf the Grey returning as Gandalf the White after defeating the Balrog. All because you’ve got shit to do in this world of stupid—your wisdom is gravely needed! I’m not teaching you to be conceited or anything, but by means of technicality, you’re not here to learn anymore; you’re here to…teach🤣

tulips of happiness – Knight of Cups

No matter your age or their age, you’re here to teach the infantile Humans about inner peace and true, everlasting, sustainable, manageable, actually reasonable sense of Harmony🌷You do that by setting an example; by first bridging confusions and calming down chaos within yourself; then you talk about the walk to anybody interested enough to listen to you🌾

In this lifetime, as an Ascended Master playing Human, there’s probably a lot of heartache you’ve needed to learn to forgive. If you’re in your early or mid-20s when reading this, you’re most likely just beginning to learn it. You don’t have to act perfectly though. Healing and forgiveness are not about being or doing perfect. It’s perfectly OK, too, not to forgive—certain cruelties in this world are simply beyond absolution, ya know?🤬

What does truly matter is that you forgive yourself. Just yourself. You can forgive the situation. You can forgive the fact you fucked your way into this or that mess. Where applicable, you can give thanks to the experience and then move on to the next thing. Be glad about the fact that you’re still alive after all of the fuckery, and that you’ve enough self-awareness, and how that self-awareness has grown you as a person. It is such a beautiful thing to have grown up in the mental and spiritual~🦉

ESSENCE OF BEING HUMAN🔻💜

the script you chose – Silver Alchemist (Ramon Llull)

path of self-transcendence – Priestess of Healing

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 2 – Pink Radiance

VIBE: Master Oogway sending universe mail to Li Shan

seeds of beauty in you – III The Empress Rx

Oooh~ You’re pretty~ That much I can tell🙊You probably are blessed with some significant Aries, Aquarius, or any Cardinal aenergy in your birth chart; could also have Venus/Moon in the 1st or 11th House~ And do you know why you’re bestowed with an outer appearance that’s easily considered attractive in this realm? Because you’re meant to have an audience🎙

You’re meant to be heard; to have a platform and be some sort of a leader. And since being pretty in this world brings a lot of privileges, your Soul chose to be born with this specific setting in your birth chart wHoA~ A pretty face gets attention more effortlessly and that’s just how it is with this world~🙈

So, you see that there’s meaning in having some forms of privilege whether it’s your face or your family/economic background, or even heritage or some special lineage thing going on in your Life🎰And yet, it seems you could’ve been blind to all this ‘upper hand’ and not see much value in your existence.

None of this has felt all that special…well, because you were born with it. It’s not special; it’s normal to you; and you definitely want to feel special…not really grasping others would kill to have what you were born with…🐞

blooming in spite of muddy water – XVI The Tower

In spite of all of the privileges that seem obvious and enviable to others, you yourself have not felt all that blessed most of your Life. There is this thing that people don’t understand about you: EXPECTAFUCKINTION. Expectation could kill, depending on situation, and depending on where you are in Life. In many ways, you haven’t really ever felt FREE in your beingness. You don’t really know how FREE truly would feel like. You can imagine it, but you don’t really know if that’s even real🤷🏻‍♀️

Whether it’s status, prestige, or simply beauty, sometimes you’ve felt victimised by the very things other people wish they had. They literally don’t know how suffocating it is to be wearing your crown~ You often feel like you don’t have autonomy over your own Life. In some instances, you may even have experienced your autonomy getting violated. And it’s so heartbreaking.

At some point in Life, you will suddenly and gradually lose access to all of these beauties and privileges, maybe even some of your talents, babe. All these things that came ever so naturally to you, once you’ve lost ‘em, you will die in spirit, and be reborn with a renewed sense of appreciation for the fact you have always, ALWAYS, been extraordinary👿

tulips of happiness – King of Swords

Whether you are a girl or a boy or straight or gay or whatever, you are an ally of the world’s Divine Feminine aenergy. Do not worry about losing your glory; it will aaalll come back stronger and sparklier once you’ve graduated the University of Hell a.k.a Saturn Return🪐

It is part of your Soul’s Blueprint to experience losing privileges, perhaps money, talents, friends, freedom, hair, weight, and everything else, momentarily. This period of your Life—whether it’s your first or second Saturn Return—can be likened to a pregnant woman who’s now restricted from drinking, eating, doing, or even being near certain things. She’s not so free, but for all the right reasons; she’s protecting her foetus.

This Saturn Return period of your Life where you’re experiencing losing yourself is like a pregnancy where you’re gestating a newer, stronger, clearer, more confident version of yourself. The restrictions put around you are meant to suffocate you further, enough for you to want a breakthrough. All so you can become a pure Pink Radiance of a miracle this miserable world needs, for that is your purpose for being born🌷

Shine on, Pink Diamond~

ESSENCE OF BEING HUMAN🔻💗

the script you chose – Green Historian (Herodotus)

path of self-transcendence – Priestess of Prosperity

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

Pile 3 – Magic Worker

VIBE: Po teaching the tribe to be THEMSELVES

seeds of beauty in you – 9 of Cups Rx

Within you are seeds of a luxurious lifestyle that you ought to nurture slowly throughout the course of your Life. You may have come from a background of lack just to make this whole scenario more exciting (to us as Souls contrasts are exceedingly attractive when thinking of a spiritual breakthrough). With that, you could’ve grown up with lots of daydreaming about feeling fulfilled—emotionally fulfilled.

Though you may have daydreamed about luxurious environments and things and situations, at the core of everything, all you yearn for is a feeling of safety; stability; of having just enough…of being enough, in fact…all because you weren’t emotionally nurtured as a child. You were the kid who were neglected by everybody, both the adults and your peers.

You felt unseen most of your Life. But even those who acted like they saw you, somehow the view was inaccurate. You felt this way because you didn’t understand yourself either. Children learn about themselves through the feedback of their environment; so the ones who were mostly neglected…how could such children even begin to learn to comprehend their identity?

Because you didn’t really understand yourself, it was difficult to manifest properly. In your psyche, there are way too many threads of wishes that are tangled up, causing you to manifest clashing Realities…and then disappoint you…

blooming in spite of muddy water – XXI The World

The reason for this difficulty is that you needed to learn and discover for yourself the true Essence of being alive. You are essentially God’s messenger to help Humans overcome their addiction to material possessions. Omaigosh if you know how TikTok shopping culture is making people poorer and more miserable in the emotional, I’m sure this will ring a bell in your Soul Memory.

People who grew up poor are the main target of evil marketing because they crave that feeling of ‘having’. Sometimes, it’s a feeling of having things—trendy things; some other times, it’s a feeling of having friends—cool friends; and some tragical times, of having someone to love—which usually only translates to ONS or casual hookups without any real emotional connection.

Anyway, back to talking about material possessions though, there’s this:

‘Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.’ – George Carlin

This, is a concept, a Reality, you’ve needed to learn and fully comprehend, and then unravel by means of your personal spiritual transformation. That way you can be an example and a guide to others. Reminiscent of Uncle George himself, you’re somebody who holds an Elder Archetype aenergy about you. You’re ‘worldly’ in the sense that you’re based, well-thinking, and most of all, you can embrace perspectives that are UNIQUE. You’re able to hold a knowledge that encompasses the whole of the Universe itself.

tulips of happiness – 4 of Pentacles

In a sense, know that you are a born leader. Though I sense, you may be more interested in being a thought leader🧠You don’t seem that interested in leading an envoy or a movement of any sort hahaha You’re a loner; you like being in your own company. After all, people are stupid and it’s exhausting to have to interact with them. And that’s all fine~

In the future, when everything’s said and done, you’ll meet your Soul Tribe—people who are just as weird, misunderstood, deep, sombre (probably), wholesome, complex, and loyal such as yourself🫀Your Spirit Guides are really saying: it’s perfectly fine for you not to extend too much compassion for those who aren’t worth your while; hoping you’d calm down some clashing ideas about your personality.

It sounds cruel? No, really; not everybody is worth paying attention to or share affection with. If you do that you’re only going to be sucked dry of Life Force. It’s a similar principal with money spending. Just because you see a lot of items being displayed with attractive, persuasive DISCOUNT signs, doesn’t mean you have to give your attention, or money least of all, to ALL of that. Got it?🤪

‘Even if something is on discount, if you don’t need it, it’s too expensive.’ – Love Marie Escudero’s husband, Govt. Chiz

ESSENCE OF BEING HUMAN🔻🧡

the script you chose – Green Physician (Paracelsus)

path of self-transcendence – Priestess of Intuition

Access full reading + cards on Patreon🌸

☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・. ☆♪°・.

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[gotham-daydreams]

Chapter 3 'Sneak Peak'/Teaser 2

This is more of a teaser above all else, and the only real 'sneak peak' part of it is just a small scene that happens in the chapter, but from a different POV. Regardless, I hop you enjoy this little look, and just like the last teaser- this is all a glimpse that won't really be shown in the final chapter when I post both parts. Though more emphasis on the "you won't really see this outside of this teaser" part.

Nevertheless, enjoy :]

-----

The moment you went into the diner, he took a moment longer to watch you walk inside before quickly realizing his phone was blowing up. So, reluctantly, he turned his intercom back on, and was swiftly met with a tidal wave of voices - most of which were shouting at him. Even if he couldn't blame them too much, that didn't make the experience any less annoying or loud. So, so loud.

He tried to explain himself and calm them down like he usually did, and it did kind of work - even if a few jabs and venomous words were thrown his way in the process. Again, he couldn't really blame them, but that didn't make things better. Not really, anyway. Their words hurt, sure, but hey, on the bright side - he was still with you. No matter what they said could change that, with a little bonus being that, deep down, you were the reason why all of them kept away too, and haven't interrupted your little get-together — since there was an untold but very present fear that he himself still felt when it came to you, and that being the possibility that you hated them. That anything they did now, would only worsen whatever image you already have of them, and if it was bad already - well, they’d have to work extra hard to repair things, wouldn't they?

It's not the potential work ahead that frightened them per say – more so the thought that they had pushed you so far away that you couldn't help but despise them. That you'd refuse to come back home and have them back into your life – refuse their effort and how they were now trying, even if it may have been a month or so too late – that you'd put an end to whatever they were hoping to have now, and refuse them at every turn simply out of spite and anger. Even if it made sense, and you have all the right to be mad, the thought and possibility didn't hurt any less. They didn't want you to hate them – no matter how reasonable that reaction would be – and most of all, they don't want to know that they've hurt you to such a point. He didn't, anyway, but he didn't want a lot of things when it came to you.

It's not that he didn't want to hear you out or be made aware of his faults - for crying out loud, he basically missed out on your entire life! Of course he's bound to have hurt you, and you're bound to be mad about it, he knew that even if he still didn't like the idea. If anything, a part of him did want to know so he knew where he had to really shine. So he knew what he really needed to get done and work on when it came to you, but that wasn't the point.

He never wanted to hurt you, never. None of them really did, but he especially – in his mind – didn't mean to. So, in a way, he was almost afraid to have to face that outcome.

It wasn't the anger he was afraid of, but the pain coupled with it, since he didn't know how bad it was - none of them did. Each of them only saw pieces, some more than others, and even if he stood here knowing that, he dreaded seeing the full weight of it.

There was more, he could feel it, and he hated that more than anything. He hated not knowing, but also feared what he'd find – even if there wasn’t much he could do about that. Despite himself and the feelings he and the rest of the family seemed to share, he knew that whatever they got – they deserved it. He already knew that this wouldn't exactly go smoothly, and despite it only being a few minutes – he could already feel it. The rockiness, the edge that seemed to hang in the air whenever you spoke, the unease you felt, and the nervousness coming from you was beyond evident.

Even if there was clearly a long way to go, he still couldn't help but… hope. Sure, it was wishful thinking, and honestly not very realistic, but he couldn't help himself. As much as it hurt looking at you, it made him soft, and untangled the most messy parts of himself. He couldn't explain why even if he tried, especially because he was only beginning to feel this now, but all he knew was that it felt… good, and made him regret not trying harder sooner.

He had a lot of regrets since he saw those things in your room and learned what he did, but as time passed and the night continued on, he found those regrets growing and becoming bigger. Though this wasn’t about him – of course it wasn’t, why would it be? – it was about you, they all knew that despite themselves, and all they wanted to do to make up for lost time.

Speaking of, the shouts never truly stopped. Sure, some died down and tried to get some information out of him, and even if he did say a few things here and there to give the impression that he was paying attention, most of what he learned he sort of… kept to himself. He just couldn’t help it. There was something so… special, so good that came with knowing more about you than the others. That came with being able to pick up on these little, small things about yourself that the others didn’t have the luxury of knowing just yet.

Maybe they’d learn eventually if things go smoothly, he knew that much, but at the moment he was more than willing to take in this rare moment and opportunity. The fleetingness of it only making it more enticing, and worthy of taking.

Yet, when one of them mentions you again, and asks how you’re doing – he can’t help but look back at you through the glass of the diner, but what he sees isn’t what he expects and he pauses.

You both hold your stares for a moment, and he ends up being the first to break it as he looks away, unable to take the sight any longer. He didn’t like that look in your eyes, the look you gave him – the look of untold worries and concerns that he knew dealt with him or were about him in some way. Granted, he couldn’t read your mind, but for a moment he wished he could. For that moment, he wishes he could take even the smallest peak into your thoughts just so that he knew what made you give him such a look. So that he knew what he could do to take away that conflict in your eyes and ease whatever worries you had – so that he could try to make things better.

He doesn’t know what he did wrong, but suddenly, just from that alone, he finds himself growing antsy. Even as he talks to the others over the comm link, he finds himself becoming subconscious of everything he’s done up until this point, trying to figure out what he did to make you wear such an expression. Even if it was just a little thing, he can’t help but worry over it, especially considering what he’s here to do. The voices of the family fall into the background with automatic, lame responses leaving him as he falls deeper and deeper into his own thoughts. He’s usually so confident and sure, but with you he’s a mess and is suddenly worrying over all of the little things he didn’t think of before. Did he act too soon? Should he have tried to be more patient? Sure he was worried at the time, but if this was the consequence of those actions then they weren’t worth it at all. God, he knew he should’ve been more-

Then, suddenly, you step out of the diner, and all is right with the world. His head empties, and without even thinking about it, he turns his comm link off once again.

It’s just as he thought earlier. You made him soft, and undid even the worst parts of himself.

With you, it’s like nothing else mattered, and that the past was far behind him.

Yet, he failed to realize that it was only that. A feeling and nothing more.

[nightcolorz]

Armand could definitely 100% have prevented Claudia and Madeline’s death like obviously he is so full of shit 😭😭 he just chose not to. I dont think he was lying about being held captive, though. It seems more likely to me that he allowed himself to be imprisoned bcus the ultimate outcome would be desirable, rather then like, he was secretly orchestrating it all like a devious Master mind and was only pretending to be a prisoner to trick Louis. I think Armand was genuinely being imprisoned, but he could have easily escaped (as if the vampire Armand couldn’t win in a fight against Sam The Twink), and chose not to because it’s in his best interest for Claudia and Madeline to die 😭. While part of his betrayal I think comes from a comfort Armand takes in learned helplessness, where taking action feels less safe then leaning into victimhood, so armand chooses to accept helplessness rather then play the hero bcus helplessness is comforting, it was also definitely part “I want these two people to be gone from my life and this seems like a sure fire way to let it happen while I get to remain mostly blameless” 😭. Armand finds Claudia’s whole existence horrific and cruel. I don’t think he particularly likes or dislikes her as a person, he doesn’t seem to know her very well nor care to know her (he actually says this in tva lol), so I don’t think he considered letting her a die an act of spite.

Armand thought of Claudia as a suffering, rabid, sick and diseased animal that needed to be put down for its own well being. He considered her death an inevitable tragedy that “could not be prevented”, and bcus of his perspective on vampirism as a horrible curse that can only be spared through very specific very calculated and clean cut means, he wanted her death to come as quick and painlessly as possible. From Armand’s perspective, if he saved Claudia from death by execution, he’d only end up watching her excruciatingly loose her mind and self until she eventually killed herself or got put down by Armand or someone else Nicki style so that she wouldnt need to live in agony anymore.

Which, his whole perspective there is flawed, and fucked up, and dehumanizing of Claudia, but it makes sense why he would think that way. Armand considers vampirism to be always bad, regardless of the subject turned, and always smth he would hate to inflict on someone. So claudias turning, is not only cruel to Armand, but unforgivable and unsalvageable. He’s seen a lot of fucked up vampires in his time, a lot of botched turnings, and he knows from his experience how much of a toll vampirism takes on anyone, let alone someone in the body of a child. His whole “I will never turn someone into a vampire ever in my life” thing comes from this. So, of course he won’t save claudia from such a clean cut, blameless death 😭. He considers it an act of mercy, when he pictures the alternative as “Claudia clings to Madeline as she painfully looses her mind and eventually dies”. Which, comes into why he didn’t save Madeline either lol

Armand doesn’t particularly value life as smth to be worth preserving, he is very willing to view other ppl as commodities when it helps him. But he does value preserving peace and limiting other’s suffering (which is why he kills so gently). Armand is so horrified by Madeline being turned, partly bcus I think he saw himself in her. He sees a fledgling who he believes will inevitably loose her maker, the only person she rlly cares about, to horrible gruesome death, and he knows that once she experiences that her life as an immortal will be cruel and unbearable. So once she is turned, Armand sees another lost cause who will be better off if she is killed before it can get bad. What Armand misses when it comes to Claudia and Madeline, obviously, is that they r more resilient and self sufficient then he sees, and taking away their agency by deciding they have no hope and must die isn’t the mercy he sees it as but is actually like, fucked up and horrible. Armand is so blinded by his trauma fueled dog eat dog view of life as a vampire that he can’t see that.

I think the reason armand considers the perks of Claudia and Madeline’s death a priority over Louis’s happiness (and horrible grief that will ensue when his loved ones die), is bcus Armand considers Claudia and Madeline’s death an inevitable consequence of Louis’s unforgivably cruel actions. He doesn’t resent Louis for it I don’t think, but he definitely thinks that Louis will need to atone for what he’s done whether Armand wants him to or not. So, Armand is ok with Louis grieving (as long as it doesn’t turn to resentment of Armand), bcus it was ultimately inevitable, and comparatively less cruel then what he would have to witness alternatively. It’s a rip the Band aid off type of thing 😭😭

in conclusion uh Armand is bad but Armand has his reasons and Armand isn’t one dimensionally villainous, he has a ton of complex trauma induced reasons for the way he thinks, and his actions r more often then not coming from a warped view of “the kind thing to do” that comes from his lack of understanding of how kind the world actually is and can be (dog eat dog mindest etc), bcus of how horribly traumatized he is. thank u good night

[casanovawrites]

random sentence prompts  ━ from various tv shows, part 16

i don’t think i’ve ever been this fucking tired.

sometimes people act like one thing, even though they’re something else.

that little bit of hope, that’s the part i couldn’t bear.

i would give anything to feel like a good person again.

best way to make us suffer is to give us hope.

piecing this together is like trying to grab hold of water.

so far, i’m underwhelmed. 

i don’t want a relationship. i just want to be with you all the time.

i just wanna know why everyone always abandons me.

i can’t be around you anymore. it’s confusing, and it makes me feel insane.

you didn’t take me out of love, you took me out of spite. 

don’t let love make you out to be a fool. leave before you’re left.

you are a lonely, selfish, narcissistic asshole. 

every time i look at you, i feel so completely dismantled. 

i have people who mean more to me than you would ever understand. 

always surprised to see you so tenderhearted. 

that’s more like salvation than a simple favor.

when i think about the specifics too much, i just get sad.

i let my ego get in the way of a lot of good shit in my life.

it’s easier to lose interest than to work through things. 

it’s my life. it’s already over in the first place. 

i only wanted to leave because i’ve never felt seen here.

do you wanna be right, or do you wanna have your family?

you’re exactly like me. that’s the problem.

i just wanna feel normal. please help me feel normal.

it felt like we were changing the world.

i am so sorry i freaked out. it will not happen again.

i thought that work would distract me.

you challenged me, and in return, i made you feel small. i’m sorry.

you said that we were bad for each other.

why is my fucking point of view the one everyone’s assuming is wrong?

sometimes it feels like i’m watching other people experience things.

you know, sometimes i think you just lie for the fun of it.

i fucking love that. i love when you stoop to my level.

sometimes i just wanna feel so normal that i’m almost boring.

that’s the thing about liars. they look just like everybody else.

i don’t hate you. what good is that gonna do?

i feel angry, sad, betrayed. i don’t hate you, i feel bad for you.

i feel bad for you because you aren’t the good person you thought you were. that’s gotta hurt, knowing that.

i'm either all in or all out. i need to find a way forward.

when you are ready, this will make you stronger. better.

you either adapt, or you lose your mind.

don’t tell me you’re pretty, privileged, and humorless.

you know, at some point, we’re gonna have to start trusting each other. 

i used to be a happier person.

thank you for not being full of shit.

she was a nuisance as a child and a horror show as a teen. 

i’m so sick of hearing everybody’s opinions about me.

i don’t think you’re pathetic. i just want you to be careful.

i’m done looking like a fucking idiot, so i’m asking you to treat me with some respect from now on.

i just got you back. i’m not losing you again.

everyone was so scared, there was no time to be angry.

i believed in you. don’t you get that?

would you rather i just pick you apart and make you feel like shit?

what you want is for me to read your mind so i can say whatever you want to hear at any given time.

i was already on my fucking own.

whatever this is, it’s you and i.

i couldn’t kill you. i’d probably just cry.

if we’re gonna do this, we’re doing it together.

this seems like a really good plan to piss off my parents, so i’m in.

do things around here feel different to you?

scared people do scary things. even the good ones.

i know we don’t right now. but could we make sense again?

we keep playing with fire, and we need to stop before we burn our lives down.

i am the one who keeps people alive.

which fucking nightmare am i supposed to be afraid of?

i cant help if i’m in the dark.

every time something good happens, something bad comes to ruin it.

whatever this is, we are stronger than this.

will i ever feel normal again?

i think this is your normal now. and everyday, you’ll get a little more comfortable with it.

[hatchetmanofficial]

Why does Alan seem less supernatural than his coworkers?

Of course he’s just as dangerous but a lot of his unhinged behaviour and readiness to break the rules can be explained by the way he grew up abused, was being forced to be aggressive to defend himself, his lack of socialisation, being rebellious against a society that didn’t help him, and even an underlying mental condition (maybe inherited from his dad). With the trauma, isolation and demands of his job then turning it all up to 11. I mean, despite being axe crazy and a bit sociopathic Alan still seems mostly human. If a little animalistic. He’s very strong and fast and completely ignores the norms of society but still looks and acts basically human.

Whereas you’ve got dudes like Carver whose whole appearance has warped, and Stitches who was literally created a month ago from components and kills in a body horror way. One look and you know something is very wrong.

Alan also seems to be the only one with the wish or ability to defy the boss. Is it because he rejected the work name and mentally kept his own identity? Are names power here? Literally or symbolically.

It feels like the Boss employs vulnerable drifters, the lost souls. Does the Boss find it easier to control you if you want to reject/forget your identity, are running from your past or a bad situation, or (like Stitches) never had one?

Obviously it is a predatory Leonine contract, basically a deal with the devil. Nobody ends up like this coming from a good situation or with any better choices available. And the horrific consequences if you leave or disobey are a huge factor. But I’m covering subtleties and the differences between the coworkers.

Or is it because in spite of how cruel life and people have been to Alan he still has a tiny scrap of humanity left? Before he only had the solace of animals. Doe Eyes has reminded him how starved he is for kindness and love, maybe recalling the time before his mom died when he had a family, and Doe Eyes is human.

It makes it hard to obey the solitary rule. To stay misanthropic and emotionally shut down enough to continue indiscriminately killing people for the Boss.

(I’m the shy anon who suggested the idea of untraumatized Ranger Alan a long while back 👋 Wherever he is, whenever he is, I hope he’s happy and well adjusted.)

(I love this question and I love your username!!!)

I like to think that Alan still has a part of him, that wants to weasel his way back into society, especially after meeting his Doe-eyes. But he can never have it. It's selfish of him to want.

Boss is unpredictable and very much so picks those who believe they are someone without a cause. I'd like to think that The Beast's song "Come Wayward Souls" applies to him. However, he can still influence his employers. If he sees someone get out of line, he would simply have to put them back in place. Alan, however, never gave Boss any hassle, not even when he first found him. You could say he has a clean track record when it comes to his job. Until doe-eyes that is.

When I say that Boss kinda has favorites.

He truly does.