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reidmania · 4 months ago

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cedar | spencer reid

summary; breaking up on good terms and remaining friends is difficult, especially when you and spencer work together, its even harder when your life is put at risk and spencer is faced the possibility that he might really lose you.

warnings; exes who cannot stay exes, angst, fluff, they flirt w each other, fem reader, mentions of being stabbed, all cm minds things, happy ending, avoidant!reader, self sabotaging reader. BUT THERES SOOO MUCH FLUFF GUYS, they flirt and banter so much, reader is sarcastic and very playful, shes lowkey lorelai gilmore coded a little idk

an; cedar is my song. i love cedar, i love gracie abrams. thank u and goodnight. not proof read bc if i read it i probably wont post it. thank u so very muchly to @gghostwriter for all the advice on this fic and letting me yap about it.

‘Breaking up is funny, I forget you aren't mine, I forget you aren't mine. It's impossible to acclimate, every time we talk, we understate, how I know we both could die, we both could die. But you told me that you felt the same, when I told you how I needed space, but I think it was a lie, it was a lie’

“You know pointing is rude.” You mumbled, crossing your arms over your chest as you leant back in your chair. The room went silent as everyone turned their gaze to look at you. Was the timing of your statement the best? No, did you care? Also no. Hotch was in the middle of going on the details of the case you had traveled out to Louisiana for, he was pointing at the screen and the thought just slipped passed your lips before you could help it.

Spencer turned his gaze to you, eyebrow rasied, “Do you ever think before you speak?” He asked. Your lips parted before shutting again, then you let out an amused huff and shook your head, lips pulling into a half teasing smile.

“If I did that I’d lose my sense of humour— you all would be miserably bored.” You sighed back, the smiling pulling further on your lips as the messy haired brunette sitting opposite you raised his eyebrow further and let out a half hearted— almost sarcastic chuckle in return.

He tilted his head slightly, “Humour? Is that what we are calling it?” He asked. You nodded instantly, a wide, half proud smile taking over your features. He hummed, clearly amused.

“Why is pointing rude?” JJ spoke up, your eyes widened in almost excitement to be able to talk about why the thought had crossed your mind in the first place.

“Well when you point you kill all the fairies.” You replied, matter-of- factually. You knew it was technically silly but it was a sweet childish thought that had been engraved in your mind since you were younger and you heard it from a distant relative, probably as a way to you from stop pointing at someone (because that was rude but explaining that to a five year old would be useless so they settled on something more interesting for an adolescent)

Spencer let out an audible laugh, “You are a child.” He said, almost teasingly.

Your head turned away from JJ’s to meet his eyes, this time you sat up a little straighter, “What does that make you?” You teased back, raising your eyebrow at him.

Seemingly, that made his lips part then close, and he resigned, yet there was still a slightly amused smile on his lips, which he bit his lip to try to hide, as he turned his attention away, making your smile only widen as you settled back in place, slumped against your chair as you turned your attention back to Hotch. who was standing arms crossed, clearly unamused by the interruption.

You however just smiled widely at him, “You may continue now. Without pointing, don’t be a fairy murder.” You huffed out. Hotch stared at you for a moment, no emotion evident over his features before he shook his head, turning his attention back to the case at hand.

Your eyes caught Spencer’s for a moment. In those moments it was increasingly difficult to remember you weren’t together, it was further difficult to remember why you had broken up in the first place. The way you interacted, the looking for one another in a crowded room, the soft touches and the teasing taunts went against every breakup ‘rule’

The breakup wasn’t messy. Not really, Not at all. It wasn’t mean, there was no big argument, no mind changer, no feelings lost, it just.. happened. It started when you had admitted to Spencer you were getting overwhelmed with the fast pace of your relationship, and he agreed he was too. You both agreed to take space, time, to reevaluate on what you both needed at this point in time.

When the conversation finally happened, you told him you thought it would be better to end things now, while everything is good so theres no chance of things going bad. You explained your reasoning by saying you didn’t want to lose your friendship with him if that feeling in your chest never went away, you didn’t want things to be awkward at work.

He had agreed, and it was mutual. You both mutually agreed to end things out of the fear of things ending.

It had been a month since the breakup, there was no awkward phase between you two. There was no tension, bitterness. It instantly fell into the same rhythm that had always been there, playfulness, teasing, lingering glances. The only difference was now he didn’t steal kisses to cut off one of your dramatic rambles, or wrap his arms around your waist at the end of the work day to signal he was ready to go.

You hadn’t decided yet, if the breakup was the right thing to do, if keeping this close knit bond with Spencer stumped any chance of you moving on — not that you planned to right now.

The breakup wasn’t messy, but everything after, everything now and everything in your head was.

“Spencer” You poked at his arm as you approached where he was standing, leaning over a desk reading over something, you weren’t sure what it was, you didn’t really care. He didn’t look at you as he let out a hum of acknowledgment, making you smile. “Spencer” You repeated, poking his arm again, and then again, until he turned his head to look at you.

His raised eyebrow and the way his lips pulled into a tight thin line showed he was unamused, not annoyed. You smiled widely at him, “You’re in my way.” You said, something you could have told him when he was half paying attention, but that took all the fun out of it.

He stared at you blankly for a moment, before crossing his arms over his chest, leaning his body against the desk further, turning towards you. Which only further blocked your path. “Thats unfortunate.” He sighed, you squinted at him slightly.

“Can you move.” You huffed. No longer amused because it was less amusing when he was amused as well. Maybe that was silly but you couldn’t help it.

He raised an eyebrow, pretending to think about it for a moment, before looking back at you. You glared at him, crossing his arms over your chest before he spoke. “Whats the magic word?” He mumbled, tone laced with faux seriousness.

A huff left your lips, as you glared up at him, squinting your eyes slightly, “Chivalry is dead?” You suggested sarcastically.

He grinned, “No. And that’s a sentence. I said magic word”

“You know what? I will just go the other way.” You decided, turning on your heels to walk away. A laugh left his lips as he reached out to grab your wrist, stopping you from getting too far, he dragged you back to stand in front of him.

“Stubborn.” He mumbled, shaking his head as he looked down at you, you returned the gaze, tilting your head slightly as you looked up at him, trying to keep the smile threatening to make way onto your face.

“You just noticed?” You replied in the same tone. Although you knew he had known this for a while, he never failed to mention how stubborn you were throughout your relationship, whether it was playful or in the middle of an argument, he constantly reminded you just how stubborn you were.

He shook his head, not bothering to hide the amusement on his face. “No, No. Trust me you make it very known.” He said, emphasising his words to make it clear that not only he, but everyone was aware of your stubbornness.

You smiled, “Being stubborn isn’t a bad thing, you know.” You mumbled, gently pulling your wrist away from his hold, not because you didn’t enjoy the touch but more-so because you felt an undying urge to cross your arms.

He hummed, looking down at you, “I didn’t say it was.”

You tilted your head, the same entertained look in your eye that mirrored his, “You inferred it.” You said, matter-of-factually, although he didn’t, not really. He actually didn’t give any hint to what he meant by his words, but you were okay with that. It kept things lighthearted, easy.

“You assumed.” He said in the same tone. “I didn’t infer anything, I simply made an observation.” He said, raising his eyebrow as if he was trying to figure out how you were going to find a way to reply — he assumed something witty, dramatic.

“Can you observe from elsewhere.. you’re still in my way”

He let out an amused laugh, “Im still waiting on that magic word” He said, clearly enjoying this and the light hearted banter between the two of you.

You rolled your eyes, in a huff of frustration you ramble, “You are creating a hostile work environment. I feel unsafe. I feel targeted and threatened. How do you feel about yourself, after treating me such a way? You are a horrible evil person. Im going to take this to corporate.” You babbled off into a dramatic tangent which only furthered Spencer’s amusement of the current situation.

“I feel pretty great actually.” He shrugged, you glared at him, staying in place for a moment to see if he would move, he didn’t, instead he continued smirking slightly. You groaned dramatically before turning on your heels and walking away. You could hear his laughter as you walked around the opposite direction to get where you wanted to go in the first place.

“I hate when my job actually requires me to do my job.” You huffed out, shaking your head as you tightened the straps of your vest. It wasn’t true, you loved your job, you loved what you did and that wasn’t a question. It was just the dramatics and the emphasis on how tired you were today, although that didn’t stop killers from killing, or kidnappers from kidnapping.

Unfortunately this case was particularly tough, it had taken an abundance of days to just figure out the victimology and connection because of how random the killings were, then it took another day to figure out the MO, then the profile was completed, then the next day, today, you had finally gotten the location of where the unsub was keeping his victims.

“Yeah, Such a struggle, poor you” Spencer mumbled out as he came up behind you, readjusting the straps on the back of your vest to make sure it was on properly, his voice was laced with tease, you just hummed in acknowledgment.

“Make sure you’re careful, and cautious.” Hotch reminded you. You didn’t think much of it at the time, it was the same reminder as always when catching an unsub, don’t do anything unnecessarily dangerous, don’t split up unless necessary, don’t put yourself in a situation that you cant get yourself out of, the words you had heard probably a million times.

You wished you paid closer attention this time.

You and Spencer walked through the house, it had an ominous feel to it, the air in the house was colder than outside, and it wasn’t a particularly warm day — but it wasn’t the temperature that made the house feel as cold as it did.

Instead it was the guttual sobs you heard from underneath the floorboards that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand, and goosebumps to line your arms. They weren’t sobs of pain, instead just ache, a cry so loud begging for someone to hear. Before that you were about to whisper a stupid joke to Spencer, now you felt as if you couldn’t breath.

“Stay here.” He whispered to you. There was something unfamiliar about the look in his eyes and any wit you could muster up was thrown out the window at the sound of his voice. It was a stupid request, you couldn’t just stay here in the hallway while he wandered around. You had a job to do.

When he turned the corner, gun pointed protectively, his movements were calculated and careful, every step he took he knew what he was doing, You thought you did too. The first step you took was quiet and your gun was pointed, your finger hovering over the trigger.

Spencer moved towards the sound of the sobs, you moved towards the living room, trying to clear the downstairs area of the house. There was a pull in your stomach for a number of seconds, a twist of anxiety you pushed to the side to focus on the matter at hand.

That didn’t last. Ignoring the feeling in your stomach turned into gasping at the feeling. A gasp of pain leaving your parted lips as you stumbled forward, the gun left your hand and hit the ground, the sound of the contact blurring as a ringing swindling sound took over your sense of hearing.

You were stabbed. You could feel the metal, more than you wanted to admit, you could feel the way it pressed into your skin, the coldness of it against the warmth of you. A sob of pain left your lips before you could help it. There was someone holding you, wrapping a tight arm around your chest and a hand over your mouth to silence your cry.

The arms weren’t comforting, in any sort of way. They were too tight, too suffocating for the lack of air you were able to breath in between the hand covering your mouth and the pain in your stomach, you wished adrenaline would kick in but it seemed to dwindle out as your head spun, then the knife was ripped away from your stomach.

That hurt.

More than it did when it first went in.

Then you were released from the mans arms and your body collapsed in pain, eyes squeezing shut as your hands scrambled to press against the open wound now bleeding out. You didn’t know where the unsub was, you didn’t hear footsteps, you didn’t really hear anything. Everything seemed blurry, not your sight so much since your eyes were squeezed shut but you could feel your mind blurring with every second that passed, any first aid training you had learnt flew out the window.

You missed it at first, the sound of the door opening, the sound of back up coming in, Derek, Emily. They were in the house now but not in the living room, not where you were lying on the floor in a helpless pool of your own blood. You wanted to yell out, or sob but every sound got stuck in your throat.

Then you felt a larger hand pressing on top of yours, placing more pressure against the wound than your tired arms had allowed, you made out frantic talking but nothing your half conscious mind could string together coherently. It didn’t matter, you could recognise the roughness of the gentle hand anywhere.

“Spencer” You gasped out, panting.

Had you been holding your breath? You didn’t remember but you knew breathing was getting more and more difficult.

His hand pressed against yours, other hand coming to brush hairs out of your face. “Im here. Can you open your eyes for me?” He almost begged, his voice gentle and reassuring and laced with panic even though he tried his hardest to remain calm for your sake.

You didn’t reply, only letting out strangled gasps for air, eyes remaining shut, squeezed tightly, as if the harder you squeezed them shut, the more your pain decreased. Unfortunately thats not how anatomy works.

“Open your eyes for me angel, look at me.” He now did beg. If you were conscious you would’ve given him a look for the use of the term of endearment in your current broken up state, but you could hardly process anything else he was saying, and you were bleeding out so there was clearly more important things.

You struggled, but after a moment peeled your eyes open to look at him. Vision was blurry and fading in and out even few seconds even when your eyes remained open, you couldn’t make out his features, you couldn’t see the tears he was trying to hold back. God you wished you could see his face.

“Good, thats good. Keep looking at me, Okay? We’re getting you help, you’re gonna be okay” He reassured but it was more of a slight reassurance for himself, trying to convince himself as such. His voice became a ringing in your ears, along with every other sound around you.

“Wh- Where- Is—“ You words came out mumbled, muffled by gasps for air and whimpers of pain. “He.” You finished, trying to keep your eyes open, trying to focus, trying to stay alive.

Spencer spluttered for a moment because he didn’t know— He had no idea. Whether the unsub was right behind him or whether they were being taken into custody by Derek or Emily, whether he was lying dead on the floor somewhere. Spencer didn’t know. He couldn’t. How could he focus on anything else?

“I don’t know” He said.

“Go away” You mumbled, eyes now fluttering closed, even in the state of half consciousness you knew Spencer was still in danger, more danger by keeping his back to his surroundings and his focus on you. That was putting himself in an unnecessarily dangerous situation.

He shook his head. “Im not going anywhere. Keep your eyes open.” He repeated.

“Spencer” You huffed out a breath of air, your eyes remaining closed because you were so tired. “Go. You- You aren’t— You aren’t my boyfriend anymore” You huffed out the words that came across way harsher than what you intended them, “Staying- With.. Me isn’t your.. Responsibilty” Your words came out laboured along with the way your chest rose and fell, the breaths that left your lips.

“Don’t say that. Open your eyes.” He shook his head as his other hand trailed down to your neck, fingers pressing against your pulse point. You couldn’t feel it, every part of you and every inch of his touch felt like a lingering sensation over the numbness of your body, your eyes remained shut.

“If i die” You huffed out, your voice quieter, more rushed as you tried to get more air in, “Please” You started before you let out a gentle sob, not of pain, you weren’t in pain, not anymore. “Please don’t let them use a bad�� photo of me.. at..- my funeral”

It was the most you things to say before you stopped replying, before your body tensed slightly. To joke, to be playful at a time like this. Spencer wondered if it was an attempt to calm him down, to relax his mind a little bit, to sooth the ache in his soul with the wit that was unforgettably you.

The cream coloured walls seemed taunting, they were warmly lit, contrasting how cold the space felt, how daunting it was. There was different people scattered around, some crying, and grieving, some reading newspapers, others celebrating. There was really no contrast of emotions quite like a hospital waiting room.

“She just got out of surgery. Shes in the ICU.” Hotch said as he stood in front of the few members of the team that were sitting by waiting. Everyone wanted to stay at the hospital and wait throughout the time of your lengthy surgery, not everybody could.

“Is she okay?” Emily asked, sitting up a little straighter as Hotch spoke, Spencer remained silent in place, every part of his body relying on the ache in his chest to keep his heart beating. He didn’t know if he could form words even if he wanted to, he didn’t know if he could speak without his voice breaking.

Hotch was silent for a moment, which caused Spencer’s head to snap towards him in nothing but pure dread. Hotch realised and shook his head. “Shes— Shes fine. Shes alive. Shes still asleep, they said it could be a few hours before she wakes up. The surgery went fine - She will be okay” Hotch sounded relived as his spoke, an unfamiliar sense of emotion in his voice.

“Can I see her?” Spencer spoke urgently before he had even fully understood what he was saying. If he had thought about it for a moment more, he wouldn’t have bothered asking. He wasn’t oblivious to the inner workings of a hospital. ICU. Family members only.

Hotch seemed to know that Spencer already knew what the answer was, “Reid..” It came out regretful, apologetic, empathetic. Spencer didn’t reply, instead re-slumped back in his seat in defeat.

There was hours. Hours before you were awake. In those hours Spencer was nothing short of a mess. He tried to work, reading over case files, trying to summarise what had happened and then the memory of your blood painting his hands came back and he was left in a state of overwhelming thought.

“You alright, pretty boy?” Derek asked, despite the playfulness of his words, his tone was serious. It wasn’t a secret how much you meant to Spencer, it wasn’t a secret how much he cared about you. Spencer looked up from the hospital seat, the room had grown more absent of life as the hours passed, families came and went, the crying stopped and started again, the celebrations happened and passed. Yet spencer never stopped feeling so lost.

He shook his head, saying he was fine would be a lost cause to the knowingness of his best friend, and his current state. He was so evidently not all right that saying so would be humorous. His cheeks were flushed, hair a mess from the amount of times he had run his hand through it, tugged on the strands stressfully.

“You know what she said to me?” Spencer mumbled out as he pulled his gaze away to look at his fiddling hands, “She was laying on the floor, dying, and she told me to go away because I wasn’t her boyfriend anymore” Spencer huffed out the memory.

Derek sighed, taking a seat next to the mess of his best friend. “I don’t think she meant it like that. The situation was still dangerous and you were putting yourself at risk.” Derek said. Spencer wanted to cry.

“I know— I know. She said ‘it’s not your responsibility to stay with me anymore’ — I don’t— I can’t—” Spencer couldn’t articulate the emotions swamping his mind. Everything was overwhelming, every time he closed his eyes he saw you on the floor in a puddle of deep red blood, anytime his fingers remained still for too long it was like he could still feel your pulse running flat against them.

“Breathe.” Derek reminded as Spencer got himself worked up.

“I lost her— I lost her.” Spencer shook his head as the words came out, his hands pulling to his face to rub over his eyes, maybe as to hide the way they’d begun to water, maybe to feel anything besides the heat of his cheeks.

Derek sat up a little straighter to rub Spencer’s shoulder, “Shes okay. They said she will be fine. They just want to look over her for a while. She was in a tough surgery, I don’t know much about hospitals but I’m pretty sure being in the ICU means shes getting all the care she needs to recover better, and faster.” Derek tried to comfort.

“Its- No- I already lost her Derek. I was an idiot and I didn’t say anything — I didn’t say anything because I was scared of losing her and i lost her anyways.” He rambled, an overwhelming force of regret lingering in every word he gasped out.

“Your breakup? I thought that was mutual?” Derek furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Spencer wanted to laugh, because technically it was. Technically they had both agreed, technically this is what he wanted as well.

He just wanted you.

“She wanted space— I thought.. I thought everything would be okay. Then she suggested we break up while things are still good enough for us to end on good terms and be friends. I just — I didn’t want to lose her; I wanted her to be happy and in my life so I didn’t say anything.. I- I settled for being friends because it meant — I thought it meant i still had her” Spencer was a mess and it was evident in the stammer of his words in the midst of his ramble.

“You don’t think you do?” Derek asked, Spencer shook his head as he brought his hand down to rub gently over his chin and bottom lip, a shaky breath leaving his lip’s. “I think you do.. I mean everyone does. You two still act like you’re together.” Derek said, furrowing his eyebrows.

Spencer sighed, “Thats just— Thats how it was before we started dating. Sometimes it feel’s like we are still together.” Spencer mumbled, Derek opened his mouth to speak, but Spencer cut him off. “Shes going to wake up, alone. Her family is in a different state and I’m not allowed to see her? I- This is bullshit.”

“Just say you’re her husband” Emily said, catching both of the boys off guard, they hadn’t heard her approaching. Spencer lifted his gaze from the ground to look at her, eyebrows furrowed. Any other time, if it was for any other person he would probably go over how that went against so many rules, but he couldn’t find himself caring.

Not when it came to you.

He broke protocol. He wondered how many times that had happened today as he sat beside you, his hand on of yours, thumb gently running over your knuckles as you laid still unconscious on the bed. He paid attention to the beeping of the machine, the rhythm of your heartbeat, making sure it stayed consistent like his life depended on it — like your life depended on it.

You mumbled something, causing his gaze to break away from the screen to your face, watching it twist slightly. Your eyes remaining closed, then your hand twisted to interlink your fingers with his. You were evidently in pain.

“Hey- Hey don’t move too much. Do you want me to get your nurse? They can give you some different meds” Spencer ushered gently, leaning closer to the bed as you stirred awake. He wasn’t sure if your lengthy amount of time spent unconscious was purely because of the antiseptic leaving your system or also the need for sleep but he was glad you were awake.

“No” You rasped out. Whatever medicine they had been pumping you with since you got out of surgery did its job. You weren’t necessarily in pain, just uncomfortable. Even with your eyes closed you could feel the brightness of the white hospital lights. You knew where you were.

Spencer squeezed your hand gently, making you now very aware that he was holding your hand. “What the fuck happened?” You huffed out, voice groggy and full of confusion. You knew where you were, you knew it was something that happened on the case, you knew you were stabbed, but everything after the knife made contact with your abdomen was a blur in your memory.

“You were stabbed.” He stated. You opened your eyes to glare at him, “Yeah- Spencer, no shit.” You shook your head, he smiled. “I just— Is everyone else okay?” You asked.

He nodded. Derek and Emily had saved all the victims and the unsub was in custody, he explained that to you softly, mapping out every detail so you could make it out enough in your mind to satisfy your need to know what was going on.

“Next time can you tell him to do better? This bed sucks” You referenced to the unsub stabbing you, and leaving you alive and uncomfortable. It was a joke. You tried to move without causing yourself any pain over the uncomfortable thin mattress of the hospital bed. Spencer smiled and let out a breathy half hearted laugh.

“I’ll be sure to let him know” He returned your playful tone but it was heavier, quieter. It was filled with something more, something unsaid. His eyes dropped from your to back to your hands that were twined together, rubbing his thumb gently over the webbing of your own.

You tilted your head slightly, “What’s wrong?” You asked, it didn’t take a genius to read Spencer. You had memories the is and out’s of his head, or you thought you did. You knew enough.

“I thought I lost you.” He said, shaking his head slightly. His voice was so quiet and filled with guilt. “We broke up and.. because of what? Because we didn’t want to lose each other— I almost lost you.” His words held so much gravity it felt like it had all been taken from your surroundings and you were floating on everything left unsaid and unfinished.

“But you didn’t. Im alive.” You smiled playfully. He said your name, serious, showing he wasn’t playing around about this, that it went further than just this situation. You sighed, and shook your head. There were only so many jokes you could make to downplay the weight of the space between you.

“Okay. We broke up.” You mumbled, looking at him. “Because things were weird and it was too much and if things kept going then if we ended later it wouldn’t be on good terms and then we wouldn’t be able to be friends and thats horrible for everyone” You said, recapping your mutual decision to break up.

“Why do you do that?” He asked, squinting his eyes as he looked up at you.

You furrowed your eyebrows, “Do what?” There was a number of things he could pull you up on, your avoidance, your jokes, your way of downplaying everything and anything.

“Plan the end of things when they have hardly started. You were planning a breakup for a relationship that was doing perfectly fine. You needed space, I gave you space, then you decided you wanted to break up? Why?” He huffed out.

You furrowed your eyebrows further at his words, but he was right. Of course he was right. “You said you felt the same.” You mumbled, maybe if he had called you on your bullshit a month ago things would be different and you would’ve worked things out, you two would be together and maybe everything would be different. You also knew it wasn’t his responsibility to try and understand emotions you couldn’t comprehend or communicate to him.

“I didn’t want space, I didn’t want to break up — but I didn’t want to lose you all together.” He admitted. You suddenly felt the wind knock out of your chest. You wondered if the way your heart beat increased showed on the monitor, which seemed all too revealing.

“You didn’t say that.” You muttered.

He sat up a little straighter, not letting go of your hand, his fingers stayed tangled with your own. “Would it have changed anything if i did?” His voice was quiet, as if a question that didn’t need an answer.

“It was going.. too fast” You huffed. The relationship did go fast, but maybe it was because the two of you spent way too many years in this flirty banter phase before either of you actually made a move; maybe because you were both already so comfortable with one another.

“We could have slowed it down.” He said, rebutting.

“And if that didn’t work? If it was all just too much? Then we argue and we end on bad terms and then not only is it awkward for everyone at work but then we can’t even be friends” You repeated your point, the fear engraved in your mind.

“What if it did work?” He shut you up with his point, before he continued. “What if it did work and then everything was fine. What if you told me when things are getting too much or overwhelming you and we work together to fix those issues so we don’t end at all.”

“That’s optimistic.” You mumbled sarcastically. Everything he was saying made sense, everything he was saying was ideally how a relationship would go, but it wasn’t as simple as that for you. You couldn’t help the way your mind thought the worst.

Spencer huffed shaking his head, “You’re stubborn.” He said. And he never let you forget it.

“Im realistic.” You resorted, but you weren’t: You hyper fixated on everything that could go wrong and got yourself out of those situations before giving anything a chance to work out itself.

“You’re an idiot. And I love you.” Spencer exhaled. It wasn’t a crazy love confession because you knew this. He made it known everyday. Even everyday you were broken up. He didn’t need to hide it. “Can you give us a chance? A proper chance without planning our breakup before theres any actual reason for it, please.” He mumbled, half playfully and half so serious.

You considered his words. Honestly your last thought before falling unconscious was the fear that you would die without Spencer knowing how much you loved him, how much regret you lived with for the state you had got yourself into with him, the fear you had of not having him in some way, none of these thoughts you could voice aloud when dying.

“Okay.” You settled.

“Okay?” He asked, repeating it back as if he didn’t believe you. You nodded, repeating it again. He breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Okay good, because everyone on this floor thinks I’m your husband and it would’ve been really awkward if you just rejected me.”

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creepswrites · 4 months ago

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TIRED OF RUNNING | Sinclairs x Reader

YET ANOTHER REWRITE i have no idea why Tired of Running is so popular but i've always been proud of it :) the original can be read here but i will be rewriting all existing chapters to finish it!!

SINCLAIR BROTHERS x GN!READER (they/them)

SUMMARY: "We got a visitor, Vince." Bo said, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Vincent work. The latest sculpture was of a woman in a flapper dress, perfect for the House of Wax. He nodded, assuming it was just Lester. Though he didn't see a reason why Bo would bother him just for that. So, regrettably, he looked up from his work. "They got kids."

WARNING: mentioned child abuse

Sighing, you hit your head on the wheel with an exhausted groan. The Louisiana heat had been suffocating you ever since the AC sputtered to nothing a few hours ago. You'd left the windows open to prevent frying the inside of the car but it was still too hot. Even after living here for a few years, you never got used to the heat. It was fall for god's sake…

You lifted your head and tried to blink back the drowsiness aching behind your eyes. Driving for a week now had exhausted you and the heat wasn't doing you any favors. Everything felt warm and sleepy, making it difficult to focus on the road. A glance at your gas tank only made you groan. Nearly empty tank with no cell phone reception and two kids to take care of.

Speaking of kids, you glanced at the rearview mirror. Your twin boys - Peter and Michael - were passed out in their carseats and dead to the world. They were good kids, rarely fussy, and full of energy. They were why you'd been on the road for so long. You'd fled home with whatever belongings you could pack in your car and never looked back. Seeing their peaceful faces reminded you that it had been the right decision. Watching your ex husband strike Mikey for "misbehaving" had been your last straw. They were only two years old and he expected them to just simply know what behaviors were acceptable without teaching them anything.

He'd been the one who wanted kids yet showed no real interest in parenting. That had all been on you.

Which led you to where you were: off a dirt backroad in the middle of nowhere with the sun setting in an hour. If it had just been you, you would have sucked it up and walked to the nearest town in search of help. But with two toddlers, the feat seemed impossible. You didn't want them getting lost or hurt in the dark with no way of you helping them.

You got out of the car to survey your situation. The road you were on was mainly dirt and not well traveled. You hadn't even been certain they were roads if not for the signs just before you'd turned. Grass grew in wild, untamed patches and stretched out into a field to your left while the forest was close to your right. The trees offered minimal shade but were better than nothing. At least it was cooler under them instead of your hot car. But the prospect of sleeping in the dirt didn't sit well with you. Who knows what animals were even out there.

You pressed the heel of your hands to your eyes and tried not to cry. This was absolutely the worst possible thing that could have happened. If your husband was following you, which he most certainly was, then it was only a matter of time until he found you.

So you slid down the side of your car to sit against the wheel and curl in on yourself. It had been awhile since you cried since your husband would slap you for it, threatening to give you something to really cry about. You'd only withstood the abuse for so long because you didn't want Peter and Mikey to grow up in broken homes. But after you noticed they were being hit, you couldn't stay still. It had still been hard and you kept second guessing yourself all week if you were doing the right thing.

Hopefully you were.

A few hours passed before your luck changed. The sun had just begun to set, painting the skies in pinks and purples like a beautiful watercolor painting. It was finally cooler out now too, the breeze brushing your arms and face periodically. You'd just finished feeding the boys whatever food you had left in the duffle bags still and had decided to let them play in the little clearing nearby. You'd all been cooped up in your tiny car for days and you could tell they needed a break. They promised to stay close to you, running around nearby with sticks and their toys. Peter roared, running up to you with a tiny blue T-rex in hand. "'m gon' eat you!" He giggled.

You scooped him up and held him in your lap, watching his brother poking at the dirt with a stick. "Mikey, don't wander too far okay?"

Mikey didn't answer and you sighed. He always had problems listening, always content to drift off in his own world without a second thought. You'd read a book about childhood trauma and worried about Mikey sometimes. You stood up and were about to approach him when you heard the sound of a car rumbling. You'd never understood the phrase "your life flashes before your eyes" but in that moment you did. "Mikey!" You shouted, white-hot horror shooting through you. "Peter, get in the car!"

As soon as Peter squirmed out of your arms, you shot off like a rocket towards Mikey. His wide, terrified eyes were trained on the car headlights, which felt like a spotlight as you picked him up. The ground was illuminated with bright white light, making it impossible to hide from whoever this was. You practically threw Mikey into the car, slamming the door behind him and locking them inside.

The truck came to a stop and you faced it, squeezed your eyes tight, and prepared for the worst.

You heard the sound of the car door open and you turned to face the figure. When he finally stepped into the light, you nearly cried from relief. It wasn't your ex nor any of his friends. You felt your knees give out as a sob wracked your body, the adrenaline crash hitting you hard.

"Woah, woah!" The guy said, hurrying over and crouching in front of you. "Hey, it's alrigh', I ain't gon' hurt'cha." His voice was calm, the southern drawl making your eyes feel heavy. The headlights obscured a lot of your vision but you could make out his face. He was a little scruffy, covered in dirt, and looking at you with more concern than anyone had looked at you with in quite some time. "Shh, it's alrigh', you're okay…" You could tell he was scrambling, unsure how to help you but desperate to do so.

"S-sorry," you babbled through broken sobs. You didn't know what else to say and you couldn't stop the tears. "I- I thought you were- I'm sorry, my ex, he-"

He took you in his arms, hugging you to his chest. He was warm and smelt of dirt and rot but you didn't even care. You couldn't remember the last time you'd been hugged. Over the years, your ex had isolated you from your friends and most of your family so you knew it had likely been a good few years. So you wrapped your arms around his neck and sobbed.

But he didn't falter. "Shh, 's okay, you're okay. I gotcha." He rubbed slow circles in your back and smiled down at you, like an angel come to save you. "Y'ain't gotta 'pologize. I ain't mad."

You sniffed, wiping your eyes and leaning back slightly to look at him better. Definitely scruffy but charming in his own way. The look on his face was impossibly soft, so unfamiliar to you yet you craved that gentleness. "Sorry, I, um, I'm on the run. My ex, he, uh… Well, doesn't matter now. I got myself and my boys out 'n that's what matters."

The stranger's eyes widened slightly. Bright and pretty and you felt safe under his gaze, for some reason. "Your boys?"

You nodded and started to stand. He didn't hesitate to offer his arm, letting you steady yourself on him when you felt your head swim. "Yeah, they're in the car. Probably scared 'em shitless with my screaming." Your legs felt unsteady when you walked and you didn't miss the way the guy hovered, like he was braced to catch you if you fell. It was sweet.

You swung your car door open and the boys peered up at you, scrambling to try and hide their animal crackers. "Boys," you sighed, "What did I say about desserts?"

"To ask." Peter said plainly, too distracted by the stranger. "You're dirty, mister."

"Peter-!" You gasped, ready to apologize on his behalf.

But the man just laughed, clapping his hands together in his amusement. "Yeah, yeah, y'ain't wrong lil guy. Been workin' all day, hauling dead stuff 'round."

Peter looked morbidly intrigued, scooting closer to whisper like the two of them were sharing a secret. "Like… dead people?"

"Nah, nah, nothin' like that." The guy knelt down to talk with him easier, lowering his voice as well. "Animals who, uh, get hit by cars. Ain't got anyone to take care'a them, ain't like pets. So I come 'round 'n clean 'em up off the road."

Nodding slowly, Peter reached behind him and held out one of his dinosaur toys. "Have ya seen one'a these?"

The man seemed bewildered but offered him a sincere smile. "Nah, but, uh, if I do, I'll let'cha know, 'kay?"

Peter seemed satisfied with that answer and went back to his crackers. "I never got your name." You said as the man stood back up.

"Name's Lester." He gave you a gap-toothed grin, tilting his cap in a greeting. "Was headin' back home 'n saw yer car. Figured I'd come check on ya."

You smiled, hugging yourself shyly. "I, uh, ran outta gas. And with the boys, I can't exactly walk for help. No cell service either."

Lester frowned, scratching at his face as he seemed to think it over. He surveyed the three of you before looking out towards the setting sun. "Well, I ain't usually do this," he drawled slowly, "But there's a town nearby. 's called Ambrose. Could drive ya there so y'all could sleep for the night. An' in the mornin', we can swing by the gas station 'n get some gas for yer car."

"Really?" You stared at him with your mouth agape. "You- You'd help? Wh-what's the catch?" You couldn't accept he'd do this for nothing. If being with your ex taught you anything it's that no one was good for no good reason.

He smiled again, sliding his hands into his pockets. "Ain't no catch, honest. Jus' breaks my heart to see ya so freaked out."

You rubbed your arms nervously. "Sorry. I, um, thought you were my ex…"

Lester's face screwed up. "Well, whoever he is, hope he goes to hell if he'd scare ya that badly, sweetpea."

Sweetpea was new. You felt your face warm up and you looked away shyly. He seemed trustworthy and he was cute, in a scruffy boyish way. You liked him. "I- I really appreciate it, Lester."

"'Course. Got two brothers'a my own so I get it." He watched you open your trunk and shuffle the bags around. "They ain't as well behaved as yer boys though."

Shouldering two of the bags, you snorted. "Yeah, you see 'em when its bathtime, then talk to me 'bout behaving."

The two of you were able to move most of your belongings along with the boy's car seats without issue. The truck smelt of rot and you scrunched your nose up when you spotted the dead deer in the back. "Sorry," Lester said, noticing your gaze. "Was workin' when I caught'cha. I promise everythin' in the car is clean though."

"It's okay." The smile you gave him was genuine even if he seemed surprised by it. "You're helping me. I ain't gonna shame you for your work. 'sides, someone's gotta do it, y'know?"

Lester, incredibly, gave you a surprised little smile as he watched you round up the boys. "Yeah. Yeah. You get it."

"The car smells weird." Peter said bluntly as you fastened him into his seat. Mikey had gone quietly, only squirming a little to voice his discomfort at being buckled in. He never liked confined spaces.

"Be nice, Peter." You shot him a look. "Lester's being kind to us, be kind to him, yeah?"

Peter glanced over at the man and smiled, all gap toothed and sweet. "Thank you for helpin' Mr Lester."

"'Course, lil man." Lester said, climbing into the front seat and rooting around in the glovebox. "Always happy to help."

You climbed into the passenger seat beside Lester and felt the truck rumble to life. The truck was clearly old but you could tell Lester loved it dearly and took good care of it. Even if the engine shook the whole frame. The homemade charms littered with bones and feathers rattled like raindrops and he let out a little cheer. From out of the glovebox, he pulled out an old air freshener that smelt of disgustingly fake pine and strung it over the rearview mirror. "Best I got for the smell, sorry." He said with a sideways smile.

Your heart clenched. He was so kind to you for no reason and you almost teared up from the sweet gesture alone. "Thank you."

The truck rattled and the skull sitting on the dashboard unnerved you but you brushed it off. He worked with dead animals, something about it all just made sense. The boys didn't seem to care too much, happily nodding off only ten minutes into your drive.

"So how old're they?" Lester asked in a hushed voice, trying to not wake them.

"Just turned two a few months back. Twins, if you can believe it." You chuckled, sparing the boys a glance. They weren't identical in the slightest which you were slightly grateful for. You didn't want to be one of those parents who dressed their twins to look even more the same. "But, um, I guess they got to be too much for my ex. Managed to get out 'bout a week ago and we've been on the road since."

You felt Lester glance at you, giving you a once over. Unlike with most men, you didn't find yourself repulsed by his gaze. "He put his hands on ya?"

Shrugging, you turned your attention to the window to watch the trees. The sky was slowly getting darker, making them look like just black voids. At that moment, you became hyper aware of the ring still on your finger. The compulsion to throw it out the window was strong. "Yeah. A few times." You confessed quietly, closing your eyes to keep yourself from crying again. "More the boys than me, which kills me."

You didn't miss the way Lester's hands clutched the wheel tighter. "Well, there's a special place in hell for people like that. 's fuckin' repulsive." He grumbled that last part, like he didn't want the boys to hear it.

It made you laugh though. "You're right… It's just refreshing to hear." You tried to swallow around a lump in your throat. "All his friends were the only friends I had. Was allowed to have. And none of them were interested in helping me, much less believe me."

Lester scoffed. "Scumbags, the lotta'em. What happened ain't your fault, sweetpea don't let any of 'em get in your pretty lil' head that you did anythin' wrong." He paused, chewing on his lip before sighing. "My dad, he wasn't always the kindest to my brother. An' don't go telling this to nobody, ya hear? But I always hated folks who can jus' hurt their loved ones and keep goin' 'bout their damn business. Like it ain't botherin' em."

You knew he was right. It still brought tears to your eyes to have someone believe you. Someone who had no idea what your situation was and he was still defending you. Like your ex had no reason good enough for Lester to even ask about.

You definitely liked Lester.

"Town's just up this way," he said softly. The sight of streetlights was almost relieving to you after a long day of being on the road, hopping from gas station to gas station and only stopping at motels long enough to sleep. "Might get a lil' bit bumpy."

Bumpy was an understatement. You almost thought you'd crashed as you felt the wheels bounce against rocks, shaking the car so violently you felt sick. Your arm shot out to try and catch your balance against the window and you only let out a breath when the truck came to a complete stop.

You and Lester shared a wide-eyed look. "Forgot to lay the planks down."

Nothing about it was funny. But after the evening you had, you couldn't help but laugh. A genuine laugh. Something you hadn't done in a long time.

When Mikey began to cry from being woken up so violently, Lester got to him before you could. "Shh, s'alright lil' man, go back to sleep, shhh." He reached behind his seat to brush at his knee. "Sorry, almost there bud, jus' a bit further."

Eventually, Mikey settled back down, sniffling until he fell back asleep. When Lester sat back in his seat, he noticed your staring. "You have kids of your own or something? You're a natural at that."

He looked embarrassed, rubbing the back of his neck with a shy chuckle. "Nah, but, uh, used to babysit 'round here. Was always good with kids, I s'pose."

With the car on paved roads now, the drive up to the town was smooth. As expected of a tiny town, nobody was outside. The lights in the little shops were out and the houses were all dark. Except one house atop a hill, lit up like a lighthouse in a sea of darkness. Lester drove towards it and pulled to a stop just outside. It was a modest house, paint peeling off in places along the outside and cobwebs in high places of the awning over the door. "What's this place?" You asked as you quickly followed Lester out of the car. You were incredibly appreciative of Lester’s good deed but his car did smell like rotten meat.

Hopefully he wouldn’t be too offended.

"Family home. Inn's prolly closed for the night but I betcha my brothers'll let ya stay for the night." Lester said as he opened the backseat and began to undo the straps of Mikey's car seat.

You were struck silent. "I- Lester I can't impose on your-"

There wasn't any time to protest as the front door swung open. A large man stood there, dressed in a mechanics jumpsuit and wearing a hat over thin curly hair. "Les? The hell's this?"

Lester smiled all innocently, like this was a perfectly normal thing for him to do. "Heya Bo. Brought guests."

Bo stared you both down before running a hand over his face in exasperation. "When I toldja to come by for dinner, I ain't meaning to bring your pretty lil' girlfriend with ya."

You blushed and stammered but Lester spoke up, lifting a sleeping Mikey into his arms like he was a precious artifact. Bo took notice and his eyes widened at the sight. "I, uh," he stammered inelegantly. "What's with the, uh…"

"His name's Mikey." You mumbled, suddenly feeling unwelcome. It wasn't uncommon for people to look at you strangely for the twins, like they were some curse. Or maybe it was just your exes friends who felt like that.

Bo nodded slowly. "Mikey. Right." He looked at Lester and stepped aside, letting him pass into the house with your baby. "Well then. You folks like lasagna?"

You blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Whenever Les comes to visit for the eve, Vince always makes lasagna. Easy for him to take home 'n whatnot." Bo gave you a warm smile as he approached you slowly, like he was afraid you'd bolt. "If my lil' brother thinks you're good people… Well, I'm obliged to trust him. He ain't ever been wrong."

You watched Bo grab the bags you brought, only hesitating when he saw Peter, also fast asleep. "Sorry, um, I can-" You stuttered, reaching for the bags in Bo's hands.

He held onto them though, tilting his head towards Peter. "Don't even think 'bout it. You just bring your lil' one in. The gentlemanly thing to do is carry the bags." Bo gave you a flirtatious wink and went back inside.

You were left standing in the chilly, night air. The only light came from the inside of the house, which bathed the front porch and gravel walkway in warm, yellow light. You were cold and confused and absolutely exhausted. A part of you screamed against all instinct to accept their help, to trust these strangers. It had been so long since you'd trusted anyone, after all. You were desperate.

So you did.

Peter was already blinking awake from his short nap when you pushed the screen door open more and took in the house. It was a comfortable state of disarray. Throw pillows were propped against the couch at odd angles, family photographs decorated the walls in mismatched frames, and the room smelt of meat, cheese, and marinara sauce.

Lester and Bo's heads snapped to look at you. They'd clearly been whispering but they both smiled at you when you entered. Mikey was sitting on the couch, still a little bleary eyed, curled up against one of the velvety throw pillows that looked rustic and homemade. You sat Peter down beside him, brushing hair from their sleepy faces, and tried to ignore the brothers whispering. "Sorry," you mumbled as you approached them.

They both seemed surprised. "Why're you sorry?" Bo asked with a frown. "Y'ain't got nothin' to be sorry 'bout."

You fidgeted with the hem of your shirt, hung head low like a child being scolded. Fawn, your brain screamed. Fawn and they won't hurt you. "'m intruding with two kids, I- I know I'm not supposed to have come here, I just- Lester said the inn was closed, I didn't know where else to go, my car broke down-"

Lester cut your spiraling off by taking your hand and squeezing gently, grounding you. "Hey, hey, sweetpea," he kept his voice low and soothing, "We're happy to have ya. All three'a ya. Honest."

Bo nodded along, frowning at how quickly you retreated inwards. Lester had mentioned to him very briefly while you were outside about how your ex laid hands on you and the boys. It was what got him fully on board with offering you help. So seeing you like this broke his heart just that little bit more.

"I'm gonna go talk to Vince, let him know we got guests." Bo said as he swung open the basement door. "Les, make sure our guests are comfortable, yeah?"

Lester nodded, humming his agreement as he pulled you to his chest for a hug. You went willingly, your hands curled up in the fabric of his shirt as he hooked his arms around your shoulders. "Yeah, I got 'em." He said, shooting his brother a smile as he hugged you.

Bo nodded and descended to the basement.

Vincent hated to be disturbed while working. His brothers especially knew how entranced he'd get in a project, focused on perfecting every piece. Their mother had made him an incredible artist, which often meant he'd neglect everything, even himself, for the sake of his work. Oftentimes, Lester or Bo had to come downstairs to make sure he didn't collapse from exhaustion or dehydration. Especially when summer hit and the basement's heat was suffocating.

So Vincent didn't even lift his head when Bo came to a stop in the entryway, too focused on mending a crack in the cheek of his sculpture. "We got a visitor, Vince." Bo said, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Vincent work. The latest sculpture was of a woman in a flapper dress, perfect for the House of Wax.

He nodded, assuming it was just Lester. Though he didn't see a reason why Bo would bother him just for that. So, regrettably, he looked up from his work.

"They got kids."

And that made Vincent straighten up. "Kids?" He signed slowly, like he wasn't sure he heard him right.

"Yeah." Bo said through a sigh. "Two lil' guys. Too old for breastfeedin' but too young for preschool. Hard to say though, been awhile since any of us were that old." He chucked humorlessly.

Vincent looked towards the wax figure slowly. "We promised Lester we wouldn't hurt children."

Bo nodded, looking annoyed. "Yeah, yeah, I know. They're a pretty lil' thing too. Would be perfect for the museum, but, of course, Lester found 'em first."

"They can't see me," Vincent suddenly became frantic. "The children will be afraid."

The other man winced, hissing through his teeth. "Sorry bro, already promised your cookin' tonight." But Bo didn't seem that remorseful, even when his twin leveled him with an unimpressed look. "When's dinner, by the way?"

"What time is it?" Vincent signed, finally aware of the passage of time. It was easy to get lost in his work, though he promised himself he'd only come down for a few minutes to double check something. But it was easy for him to get lost.

"'s only quarter past 9. Why?"

Vincent finally moved, hurrying past. Bo was only able to make out "oven" before his brother was out of sight.

Thankfully, nothing was burnt. Vincent hadn't even spared you a glance yet, too focused on not burning the house down. Once the food was set atop the stove to cool down, he turned around to face you.

You were sat on the couch with Lester and the boys, who were trying their best to stay awake. "You must be Vincent," you said with a sniff. You knew your eyes were red from crying. Lester had sat with you, holding you while you wept. It was hard, feeling cared for. Especially by strangers.

Pain was familiar. This kindness overwhelmed you.

Vincent became shy when you addressed him, hiding behind long hair and doing his best to keep out of your sight. But Bo, never one to let his twin have peace, grabbed his arm to keep him from hiding. "Yep, managed to finally pull 'im outta that basement for dinner. Whaddya say, Vinny? You up for a proper meal with our guests?"

If looks could kill, Bo would have erupted into flames, reduced to ashes on the carpet. "Do I have a choice?" Vincent signed, managing to look annoyed even behind his mask.

"Nah." Bo smiled, all teeth and no kindness. "You set the table, I'll get enough chairs ready."

Lester turned to you, brushing stray tears away. His heart hurt when you'd started bawling after Bo left, babbling to him that you felt horrible for intruding and forcing his family to help you just because of the kids. He swore if he ever got his hands on your ex, they'd wish Vince or Bo had gotten to them first. "You okay?" He asked you gently, giving you what he hoped was a sincere smile.

You nodded, sniffing once. "Yeah, um, sorry for-"

"If you 'pologize to me for cryin', I'mma beat the ever lovin' shit outta your ex, sweetpea." Lester said, relishing in your chuckle. "We're happy to help ya, really."

Sniffing again, you nodded and wiped your eyes. "I really appreciate it. More than I think you know."

The look he gave you was impossibly soft. Like you were something precious. Lester's hand cupped your face as he pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of your head, making your mouth fall open in surprise. "You deserve it, sweetpea. Y'really do."

Bo coughed, making Lester roll his eyes. The two shared pointed looks before Bo turned to you. "Your lil' ones need high chairs or, uh, somethin'?"

You glanced down at the boys and sighed. "I think they're down for the count."

"You can use my room upstairs." Lester said. "I ain't sleep there much anymore so it oughta be clean." Before you could even think to protest, he tapped your nose. "And don't you get all apologetic on me. I wouldn't offer it if it weren't alright."

Honestly, you were a bit relieved to get to sleep in a real bed. So you thanked them quietly, gathered the boys up in your arms, and carried them upstairs. "Second door on the right," Bo called up after you.

As soon as your footsteps couldn't be heard on the creaky wooden stairs anymore, Lester was the first to speak. "I hope you two ain't forgotten your promise."

"Lester, I toldja to find someone for the museum-" Bo hissed, anger sharp on his face.

But the younger Sinclair didn't back down. "If Mama knew you two'd killed two lil' boys, whaddya think she'd do? She'd say somethin' 'bout how if someone took y'all from her, she'd raise hell."

"Don't bring Mama into this." Bo glared daggers at Lester.

Vincent knocked on the countertop to get their attention. "He's right. We made a promise."

"We can't fuckin' keep 'em here!" Bo said, careful to keep his voice down.

"Don't gotta." Lester said, crossing his arms over his chest defiantly. "They ran outta gas. Let 'em stay the night, drop 'em back off at their car, they'll go on. Ain't no trouble."

Bo groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. "Why do you even care so bad?"

Lester flushed, blotchy pink spots on his cheeks, and shrugged. "They're nice. 'n I feel bad. Their ex laid hands on those lil' babies an' I'd do anything to get five minutes alone with that sonuvabitch."

Vincent's eyes widened. "You didn't mention that!" He signed harshly at Bo.

"Didn't exactly have a moment to tell ya." He sighed with obvious frustration. "Fine, alright, we keep 'em for one night. They're gone in the mornin', ya hear?"

The three of them were quiet for awhile, listening to your footsteps overhead as you set the boys up in Lester's old room. "Swear on Mama," Lester said, keeping his voice low, "That I ain't gonna be seein' any lil' boy statues."

"Lester-!" Bo hissed.

"Swear!" Lester shot back. The two were up in each other's faces at this point.

Vincent, ever the peacemaker, knocked on the counter again. "We swear on Mama."

"Don't fuckin' speak for me, freak!" Bo huffed. But Vincent fixed him with a glare and he sighed in defeat. "Fine. Swear on Mama. Ain't nothin' gonna happen to those three."

The youngest seemed satisfied. At that moment, you came back down the stairs, frowning slightly when you noticed them. "Everything okay?" You asked as though sensing the tension in the room.

"Yep!" Lester said with a wide grin. "Hungry?"

"Starving." You smiled back.

Dinner was awkward at first, especially since you struggled to understand Vincent. But Bo and Lester happily translated and conversation began to flow easier, which you were grateful for.

"So, how long has it just been the three of you?" You asked as you took a bite out of the lasagna. Warm and cheesy and exactly what you needed after a week of gas station food.

Bo hummed as he swallowed. "'Bout ten years now. Went by in a blip, feels like."

"Oh," you frowned, "What happened? If, um, I can ask."

Vincent nodded, still nervously picking at his food. You'd noticed he only ate when you weren't looking so he could lift the mask, which saddened you. He seemed like a nice guy and you wondered what happened in the past to make him hide his face. But you did your best to look away periodically to give him a chance to eat and hopefully let him know it was fine. He probably got enough grief for it as is, you didn't need to add on.

Judging by the slowly disappearing food on his plate, you figured that was the right thing to do.

"Mama got sick. Real sick." Bo sighed sadly. "She was a really great artist, losing her hit the town hard."

"I'm sorry." You said gently. But Lester was the only one of the brothers who seemed sad. Something about that confused you. Why wouldn't they miss their parents?

You took a bite of the food. That wasn't your business.

Vincent began talking about his art then. Bo seemed to roll his eyes and ignored his signing, uninterested in translating. But Lester picked it up in his place, helping his brother talk about his art. He enjoyed painting in his free time but he primarily sculpted with wax.

Your eyes widened in surprise. "You sculpt?"

"Vinny's the main artist in the House of Wax down the street." Bo nodded, answering for him. "Maybe t'morrow we'll take you 'n the boys to see it."

Vincent fidgeted with the ends of his hair, clearly embarrassed. You shot him a warm smile. "I'm sure Vincent's art is great. I look forward to it."

Once dinner was over, Bo and Lester disappeared into the living room with a couple of beers so you and Vince had the chance to wash dishes. The peaceful white noise of the running water and the simple swirling of washing dishes was nice after a long day. Vincent helped, taking whatever dish you passed him and drying it, setting it aside on the nearby dishrack.

He seemed to appreciate the silence. You almost wished you knew sign language so you could talk to him beyond yes or no questions. But you tried to ignore the shock you felt when your fingers brushed sometimes.

If he noticed, he didn't bring it up.

The soft sound of crying alarmed you. You spun around and saw Mikey standing in the doorway of the kitchen, sniffing and sobbing silently. He cried for you and ran towards you, wailing for comfort. You'd barely dried your hands before you were reaching down, scooping him up into your arms. "Shhh, it's okay," you soothed him gently, Mikey had always been the more sensitive one. Waking up in a new, unfamiliar place must have startled him, you thought to yourself as you swayed with him gently.

He nodded, whimpering. "Scared."

"I can imagine." You kissed his cheek gently, rocking him like you'd done when he was an infant, needing to be settled before bed. "It's okay baby, you're alright," you repeated the mantra over and over as you heard Vincent turn off the water behind you.

Hearing his heavy footsteps behind you, you turned to face him and shifted Peter so he could see him. The tall man blinked slowly at Peter, tilting his head curiously at your son. "Mikey, this is Vincent. He and his brothers are letting us spend the night so you and Peter can sleep in a bed."

Mikey seemed to consider this before reaching up to try and touch Vincent's face. "Hi," he whispered.

Vincent flinched slightly but didn't step back. Instead, he offered his hand for the young boy to grab at. Mikey giggled as he grabbed at Vincent's fingers and hand, seemingly satisfied. "Did you wake your brother?" You asked after a moment and winced when your son nodded. "Where did he wander off to?"

"Over here," You turned your head to see Peter half asleep slumped against Bo, barely even keeping his eyes open. Neither of the men seemed bothered though. Bo even raised his beer bottle jokingly, "Seems he's ready to get drinkin' already." He teased and you snorted.

"God I wish they'd just stay small forever. I can't even imagine them starting school yet, much less drinking." You paled at the mere thought. It seemed like only yesterday they were just born and now you felt nauseous whenever you think about them starting kindergarten. Being away from your kids for extended periods of time felt terrifying.

You were pulled from your thoughts by Vincent signing something to you. Shit. Luckily, Lester translated from his seat on the couch, "He's askin' if ya want help bringin' em upstairs?"

Blinking a few times, you nodded at Vincent with a smile. "Yeah, I'd appreciate it! Here," you adjusted Mikey before passing the toddler into Vincent's arms carefully, "just support him here," you guided his arms to the right spaces and ignored the way your heart melted seeing him asleep in someone's arms. Reminded you of easier times before you and your partner split. "Lemme grab Peter and we can head upstairs." Vincent nodded to you and waited patiently by the stairs as you stole Peter back from Bo.

You felt the pair's eyes on you as you wished them goodnight from over your shoulder and headed upstairs with Vincent trailing behind. He carried Mikey like he was fragile, breakable, and you found it incredibly endearing. You set Peter down onto the bed, nestled back in the little blanket fort to prevent them from rolling off the bed, kissing him softly goodnight. Vincent mirrored your actions with Mikey and just stroked his cheek with his thumb in lieu of a kiss. "Thanks for your help. All three of you," you whispered to him. Vincent looked at you, shadows hiding his eyes from you. "It means the world to me that you're all willing to help. I know the boys appreciate it too." You smiled at him as you stood quietly. "I should get to bed," you trailed off and Vincent nodded but didn't leave the room.

Instead, he reached his hand out towards you before tilting his head, asking permission. You gave him a curious nod and felt his hand touch your cheek, stroking under your eye like he'd done to Mikey. "Night Vincent," you whispered and ignored how your face warmed up.

He shut the door as he stepped out of the room,padding down to rejoin his brothers in the living room. None of them said a word to each other but they all had the same thought: they wanted you to stay.

The next morning, Bo collected your car and brought it to the gas station to fill back up. You'd chatted about your plans to keep going west when he'd mentioned missing you. "Place jus' feels more lively with you 'round, s'all." He'd shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

You'd gestured to the empty streets before climbing into the passenger's seat. "You sure that ain't just because this town is quiet as is?"

Bo just gave you a smile.

When you tried to start your car, it seemed to spur, dead. "What the-?"

"Everythin' alright?" He asked, leaning against the window frame.

"It sounds like the battery's dead?" You frowned, trying again to start the car.

Bo jerked his head, urging you to follow him. "Lemme take a look." You followed him around to the hood of your car and he flipped it open. He hummed as he looked around, face screwing up in surprise. "Your fan belt tore."

"My what?" You blinked owlishly at him. He gave you a look of bewilderment and you just sighed. "You definitely know more about cars than me."

He snorted at you and slammed the hood closed. "I don't think I got any in the shop but I could order one for ya and have it in a few days."

That wouldn't do. "I- I need to get back on the road soon." Panic began to rise in your chest and tighten your throat. "If we're found here, then I'd have to…" You didn't want to think about it, you said to yourself as you squeezed your eyes shut. Obviously you had a plan if you got caught but you really, really, didn't want it to come to that.

Bo nudged you gently and gave you a warm smile. "Hey, we'll look out for ya. Ain't no one gonna hurt'cha here in Ambrose. Not get many tourists anywhere, doubt they'd think to look for ya here."

You sighed. You didn't exactly have much of a choice. If your car wouldn't start, you'd just have to wait.

The two of you were walking back to the house and you felt Bo kept glancing at you. Right before you were going to ask about it, he spoke up. "I know ya wanna go see the House of Wax. Which is all fine 'n good, but ya gotta know somethin' 'fore you go there."

"Sure..?" You said plainly.

Bo sighed loudly, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "So, when Mama got sick, Vince had been away at a real good art college." You nodded along to show you were listening. Bo looked guilty. "When she got worse, I needed help takin' care'a her. Lester and I were away workin' and she needed someone at home. So, uh, near her end…" He sighed again. "I called him back home. It's, uh, still a sore spot. Wasn't able to go back, since he got in on scholarships. An' we didn't have the funds anyway, her bills were too much."

The silence was deafening. "I'm sorry." You said, at a loss for words. "I- I won't bring it up then."

"I 'preciate it. He an' I don't talk 'bout it anymore. If he goes with ya, just don't ask."

You nodded, giving Bo a small smile. "I'm sure he doesn't blame you for it."

The man smiled back at you but you could see it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yeah. Maybe."

Taking a small sidestep, you bumped your shoulders together. "I know so."

Later that night, things changed.

You'd gone to bed after showering and bathing the boys, the three of you all fast asleep in the bedroom. Vincent and Bo had gone to their own rooms while Lester slept on the couch. None of you heard the two cars that pulled into the town, driving slowly down the streets looking for any sign of life. After no luck at the first few houses, a small group of people approached the Sinclair's house, heavy footfalls making the little porch staircase creak under the stress.

They knocked on the front door and a dog could be heard barking in the backyard.

Lester had stumbled awake in surprise, his brain taking a minute to catch up. No one should be at the door because nobody else was alive in Ambrose. He still went to the door, opening it with a tired yawn. "Yeah?"

A man smiled at him, an acidic look that made bile burn the back of Lester's throat. "I'm looking for someone. Do you happen to know if there's been someone visiting your town?"

Freezing, Lester immediately recognized the man. Even though they'd never met face to face, he knew everything about this man. All child abusers look the same, Lester thought as he recalled his father. They all look like scum.

"Well, I ain't too sure. I work the night shift, I jus' got home. But my brother Bo might'a seen 'em. He works down at the autoshop." He said through a yawn.

"I'd hope so. Considering their car is in his shop." The man smiled, trying to force his way into the door, calling your name.

Lester shoved him back, slamming the door and locking it with a loud thud. He ignored your ex's screaming as he ran up the stairs.

Bo was opening his door before Lester could even knock. "The hell're you-?!"

"Guests." Lester panted, frozen in place as he kept an ear out in case your door opened. "Their ex is here."

His brother's eyes widened and he stormed to Vincent's door, knocking once before opening. He tore the blankets off Vincent and shook him viciously. "Get up, get the knives, we got intruders."

Vincent snapped awake, blinking through sleep-mussed hair. "Mm?" He said around his exhausted yawn.

"Intruders! Vince! Now!" Bo snapped. "I'll get my shotgun. You helpin' out, Les?"

Lester huffed, thinking it over. "Y'know I ain't a killer, right?"

Bo didn't have time for this. "You helpin' or NOT, Les?"

The younger brother sighed. "Does dad still keep a spare gun in his office?"

"Did he ever stop?" Bo said with a smirk, pulling his boots on his feet.

Vincent stumbled to his feet, putting his own boots on to sneak back down into the basement. If he went down and through the House of Wax, they could pin the group down. Bo'd meet them head on while Lester slipped around the side of the house to catch the strays. They vowed to make quick work of all of them but save your ex for last.

The Sinclair brothers were going to protect you. No matter what.

#🔪 creeps writes #slasher x reader #slasher fanfiction #slasher x s/o #house of wax #bo sinclair #vincent sinclair #lester sinclair #bo sinclair x reader #vincent sinclair x reader #lester sinclair x reader #bo sinclair x y/n #vincent sinclair x y/n #tired of running

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rhys-writes-some-shit · 11 months ago

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"Sing to Me?"

Alastor x Reader (QP)

Yawning, you trudged out of the bathroom, drying your hair loosely with a towel. You were warm from your shower and the filling meal you'd had a little while earlier. Alastor was probably the best chef you knew, a fact you were extremely proud of. Even if your preferred form of protein was banned from the hotel premises, Alastor was always able to make do with what he had.

Despite it being late at night, you grabbed your laptop (a very rare, not VoxTech one) to work on some paperwork. You'd promised your boss to get these spreadsheets done, and you weren't one to shirk on your promises. Yawning again, you tuned your old-fashioned radio before settling down with your laptop. The radio had been a gift from Alastor. Many late nights had been spent listening to his broadcasts. They'd always been a comfort, even before you'd signed a contract with him.

Some light jazz filtered through the static, one of your favorite songs. Alastor knew you were listening. Smiling lightly, you started typing away.

The music was occasionally interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream or a sharp whimper. Your smile never left, humming along while Alastor had his fun. Part of you was vaguely aware that the radio show was now being broadcast all throughout Hell, that you didn't even need the radio, but you liked it, so it stayed on.

The spreadsheets were simple enough. With the radio in the background, you were able to focus just enough that the job came naturally. In the back of your mind, you started going over the next day’s schedule.

You'd ended up zoning out while you typed, not even noticing how the radio switched to static and then turned off by itself.

A single knock preceded Alastor's entrance, enough to break you from your thoughts. You were quick to notice the faint blood splatter on the sole of Alastor’s shoes, the only evidence of his previous activities.

“My dear, you know how I abhor those vile machines,” Alastor reprimanded, walking and starting to subconsciously organize your room. A chair was pushed in, a painting adjusted so it was even, the bottom drawer of your dresser lightly closed.

“Yeah, yeah.” You grinned to yourself. “I need it to do my job, Al. Besides, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a piece of electronic equipment that's not created by VoxTech?”

“All the more reason to get rid of it.” Alastor walked over to the window and stared out at it. He was a little lost in thought himself, it would seem.

Typing a line, you said, “I liked your broadcast.”

“I'm glad.”

He was quiet. Something was wrong. Your grin died down, pushing your laptop to the side. Alastor’s smile was still there, but dimmer. Sadder.

“Al? You okay?”

“Nothing to concern yourself with, dearest,” Alastor replied, a slight edge in his voice.

You wanted to push. To get him to talk to you. But you knew it wouldn't be worth it. If anything, he'd just get upset or shut down more.

“You know, sometimes I wonder what would've happened if we'd met while we were alive,” You said nonchalantly. “I mean, obviously that would've been impossible in the first place, considering I wasn't even born when you died, but I just wonder about it.”

“What a ridiculous thing to wonder about!” Alastor laughed a little. “As you said, it would have been impossible. And why think about being alive when we have all of death to enjoy?” His tone lightened a bit. “There is so much entertainment to be had! Life was quite dull, comparably.”

You wondered for a moment, trying to figure out where to lead the conversation. “Where did you live, when you were alive? You already know where I lived when I was alive, it's only fair I know where you lived.”

Alastor’s grin softened a bit, still sad, but with a hint of happiness in there. Nostalgia, if you had to guess. “New Orleans, Louisiana. I lived there with my mother. I had a delightful job as a radio host.”

“You're still a radio host,” you teased playfully. “What was it like, back then?”

“Ah, it was… entertaining.” He didn't say anything more, lost in thought as he leaned on his cane. You were vaguely aware that you were the only person who ever saw him like this. Alastor wore his smile like armor, guarding himself with a nonchalant facade, but very rarely, behind closed doors, the guard would fall, just for a little while.

Just as you were about to open your mouth to ask another question, Alastor spoke, “You seem quite tired, my dear. Maybe it is time we part ways for the evening.”

Pressing your lips together, you knew he was right. You really should be getting to bed, but you were worried about Alastor. You hadn't seen him like this before, so it was impossible to guess what he'd do once he was alone.

“You really should learn to hide your emotions better.” Alastor turned suddenly, chucking to himself. “There is nothing to worry about, darling. I am perfectly fine.”

“Yeah, you say that, but for some reason I don't believe you.” Stifling a yawn, you gave Alastor a look.

“Now, now, don't be like that.” Alastor came and sat on the edge of the bed, using his magic to set the laptop on top of the dresser. “What can I do to convince you to sleep?”

Leaning back, you thought for a moment. When the idea hit you, your face flushed with embarrassment for a moment, but you swallowed the anxiety. He did ask, after all.

“Sing to me?”

Alastor laughed, causing you to glare. “Again with the ridiculous ideas!” When your face fell subconsciously, Alastor hesitated.

When he didn't say anything, you accepted the fact that it was a ridiculous request. Assuming he'd leave the room on his own accord, you used your magic to turn out the lights as you slid under the covers of your bed. You never did get all those spreadsheets done like you'd wanted.

“Parlez-moi d’amour.”

Alastor’s slightly-static-filled voice was quiet. His eyes faintly glowed in the dark and you watched him with wide eyes.

“Redites-moi des choses tendres.”

Smiling softly, you sank into the bed, closing your eyes and allowing Alastor’s comforting voice to wash over you.

“Votre beau discours /

“Mon cœur n'est pas las de l'entendre /

“Pourvu que toujours /

“Vous répétiez ces mots suprêmes /

“Je vous aime.”

((The song))

#hazbin hotel #alastor #alastor the radio demon #alastor x reader #hazbin hotel fanfiction #plz don't come after me for the french #I just copy/pasted off google T-T #rhys-writes #alastor x reader queerplatonic

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readyforevolution · 4 months ago

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On February 17, 1942, Dr. Huey P Newton, founding member of the revolutionary socialist Black Panther Party (BPP), was born in Monroe, Louisiana.

Newton described his early activism in the Party, which involved conducting armed patrols to protect Black people from police harassment: “I always carried lawbooks in my car. Sometimes, when a policeman was harassing a citizen, I would stand off a little and read the relevant portions of the penal code in a loud voice to all within hearing distance… If the policeman arrested the citizen and took him to the station, we would follow and immediately post bail. Many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.”

Newton himself was shot by the police after being racially abused, and he was then jailed for killing a police officer in the ensuing shootout. But following a global campaign for his release, his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was tried twice more, but after the district attorney failed to get a conviction on either occasion he gave up and dismissed the charges.

Later the BPP developed survival programs like free breakfast for children and health clinics while Newton continued to develop Porton revolutionary theories. He developed the concept of revolutionary intercommunalism for the Party, as opposed to Black nationalism, and was a fierce critic of sexism and homophobia within radical movements, arguing that when people organise “revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women’s liberation movement.”

#huey p newton #blacktumblr #black history #black liberation #african history #black panther party #co founder

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emmersed-360 · 8 months ago

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#louisiana proud #great migration #trail of tears #tik tok #american indians #Instagram

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sil-te-plait-tue-moi · 2 months ago

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My heart is a bloodhound!

PART 1 ★ PART 2

Quick summary: It happens again, when the year festers into August again and leaves the two of you raw and vulnerable like open wounds.

Word count: 15K… 🤓

Warnings: canon-typical mentions of death, violence and injury (there is mention of like eating people but idk); grief; misogyny; Rust's personality; semi-public SMUTT T-T (MINORS DNI); same level of pretentiousness, maybe a little more, as the first part.

A/N: Holy fuck this sucked the soul out of me (wish Rust Cohle would suck the soul out of I MEAN WHAT), i am super proud of this though!! Went through many iterations and this was the least shit! 🎀🎀🎀 This is technically part two to The idler wheel but can be read by itself too. May or may not write other things for this guy but for the time being, I need a cleanse 😭 BUT please please enjoy and please please interact, i love reading comments and so many lovely people commented on the first part, im gonna do my best to respond to any/all this time 🤘MWAH MWAH

***

It’s difficult to differentiate between the thrill of being left alone here with him and the slow-sinking dread of the implications of that.

With the return of the musk of the summer, those three ruthless, windless, unrelenting months that would seem to drag on for several lifetimes when I was a kid, the memory of where I was last year—and the year before that, and the one before that—hangs brightly in my mind. Stale, not quite dead – so bright. Crawling with mildew.

Stepping into the bar had felt like entering another dimension. Maybe it was the suits that gave it away – every single God-haunted patron—the truckers, the farmers, even the old dog lying at a man’s feet—had turned, sensing foreigners as acutely as the immune system registers a bodily threat. I knew Johansson felt it: that dark pull over the back of the neck. But under Marty’s overconfident, swaggering lead, that winning smile, we soon assimilated. Skin swallowing a bullet.

God forbid you ever leave the town you grew up in. Shame on you if you don’t, though. How sanctimonious of me to change my mind and return after earning a spot amongst the lucky few escapees.

Something in this place still irks me.

At least, in Brooklyn, there was always noise: cries of a baby in the apartment over, the discord of traffic bursting through the streets below, the rush of a crowd, the overlap and slur of private conversations. At least the badness would stare you right in the face; at least people were evil to be evil. At least there were corners where things could hide, where it made sense for shadows to exist: all to explain the paranoia that stalked me.

But here?—it seems so open. Like, if a rare, hot wind would blow through a Louisiana town, it could do so in one straight path, through walls, through people, without ever getting disrupted. Everything is so light in the blazing sun, you can practically hear it: the hum of rays passing over every surface. Nothing should be able to hide. And, at night, with no sun, no rays, there is no noise. Maybe a dog. And ghosts. But perhaps it’s just the area in which I live.

When Marty started drinking, flirting with the twenty-one-year-old barkeep, Johansson’s face had stiffened. He himself had never even touched a bottle of beer – devil stuff. We shared a look once the blond detective started gabbin’ like an idiot.

“Know what Maggie thinks?” he had laughed, slumping over the sticky table of the booth, big, sweaty palm choking out his drink. “She thinks you might be pissed at me.”

Johansson blinked hard to keep his nose from wrinkling, but, even then, he couldn’t keep from physically cringing away. “Who?” he asked, confused by those hazy, unfocused eyes.

Marty cracked a toothy grin – there was that slight gap between those front two, which had been charming at first and only managed to thoroughly disgust me now in moments like these – and pointed his finger right at me, accusing. “You.”

My stomach churned dangerously at the sight of him.

“Marty,” his partner had drawled, a low warning.

Waved away like a fly.

“Naw, it’s like—you’re on your high fuckin’ horse or somethin’.”

The words were spoken through a laugh, but I knew there was meat behind that so-called good mood. He was one of those people that tended to overcompensate. A mistake, an ill feeling. He liked to point out how I was alone, and often, too, poorly disguised as a passing joke, complete with one of those shit-eating grins that seemed to come so easy to him.

Shouldn’t he have been happy? Not only had he gotten our case, by then, but we’d handed it over with smiles on our damn faces. Nice enough to walk them through the original crime scene, introduce them to the key witnesses. Complicated. We didn’t have to do shit for ‘em, but we did. Hell, even that beer he was clutching to his chest was paid for out of the goodness of my own fuckin’ heart. Who was he to moan about the situation? He was the one who insisted on staying in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, brushing off any and all pointed questions on whether his family would be missing him at dinner.

“You know, I’d rather you were pissed,” he continued, where, really, I should have just smothered him into silence.

Rust was staring into the side of his flushed face, iron-grey eyes like a drill, like he was thinking the same thing.

“Look, you’re smilin’ at me now, but I sure as hell don’t trust it, buck. You wanna bite my head off, don’t ye?”

Like I ever could have done that.

Though the familiar weight of rage curdled in my chest, I would never admit it to the likes of Martin Hart. When he got like this—jealous, insecure, whiny—I wondered whether it was just a temporary lapse, or if this him, this true him, just lay under the surface all the time.

It wasn’t that fucking hard to plaster on a smile and take what you fucking got – I did it all the time. He could dream of a different life, but this was the one we were dealt. Fact that his grown ass hadn’t accepted that by now twisted violently in my gut. Between the two of us, I was the one that knew this – so why did he get myfucking case?

In my head, I’d let Salter have it, too. How could I ever admit I had an ego? How could I ever admit I had a mind to wrench the teeth out of the sheriff’s fucking gums?

But I have plenty of practice acting like things don’t bother me, which is why it was so easy to plaster on my amiable smile and laugh, “C’mon, man, you know it’s only ‘cause o’ the workload.” Not that you could comprehend that, lazy fuck. To Marty, my kind’s natural state was amiable—anything otherwise would be a defect—so I’d expected to convince him. “You’ll do right by it, ‘m sure.”

If he were sober, I know he would’ve bought it – he could convince himself that the way of the world was right and I was only being sweet to be sweet, because he deserved it.

But Marty was drunk. Piss-drunk, loud drunk. His mind was clumsier than usual, unable to muster the energy to jump points, ignore the evidence, like he did daily. I hoped I had the power—if I had to let the case go, I wanted to at least retain an into its goings-on—but there was only one way to really have power over men like Marty when they were drunk, and I had had no interest in being one of his girls.

My partner twitched beside me, picking at some spongy, yellow fluff protruding from a thin split in the chocolate-brown fake leather of the booth. He was just as furious as I was beneath his fort of calm.

Marty took a swig of his beer. “She wants you over soon. Maggie. Barbecue or some shit.”

“Maybe you should go home,” Johansson interjected, sharper than intended. If I were him, with his body, with his life, I’d have hit the fucker—long time ago, too. I couldn’t, but Johansson wouldn’t. He didn’t lack the temperament for brutality—I’m not sure anybody does—but, rather, couldn’t justify it to a necessary degree in his head. “I’m going home,” he’d reasoned kindly – he made it sound so easy. “Just let me take you. It’s on my way.”

Itching to leave, to return to the comfort of his wife and his little daughter. Marty had always found Johansson’s fondness of them disingenuous, had disliked my partner as long as they’d worked in the same office. He complained to me once that none of his stories seemed complete. When I asked him what he meant by that, he couldn’t answer—but I knew.

Breath short in my chest, I had half-expected Marty to lunge over the table, scratch Johansson’s eyes out. Only, Rust leaned over, dipping his head down to mutter something quietly into his partner’s ear, which was all flushed red.

And then he went willingly into Johansson’s car, stumbling through the still, open night into the backseat.

My partner had squeezed my shoulder goodbye – I’m not sure why I didn’t leave with him. Now, I was doomed to leave with Rust.

There, he sits across from me, smearing the ashy tar of his half-smoked, flaking cigarette over the mottled glass ashtray dragged over to his side of the table, little circles, waves, absent-minded art. Has me transfixed, some hypnotist.

If I look down like this, if I sacrifice the opportunity to look at him, I earn his careful attention: this sits in the back of my idle mind. I’ve been taking advantage of it more and more since summer broke through the sweetness of spring, which has since curdled like milk, sour. His stare drags over my face like fingers – I can almost feel his touch pressing into the softness of my cheek, dragging over the ridge of the orbital bone.

“You’re okay?” he asks after a couple slowed heartbeats, pulling me out of the honey-pit of my thoughts.

I dart my eyes up, breaking the spell – his observation retreats, clouds, and drifts away to fix on the broken clock on the wall, the one that reads one forty-five at eleven o’ clock.

Primarily, his question irritates me. Nobody asks “are you alright?” imploringly, not unless it concerns themselves and their own wants. Salter had asked me that, right after telling me he was pulling me from my case, and, then, I had thought about crying, just to unsettle him. But what good would that have done? He’d only asked “are you alright?” to test the waters, to see if there was a future possibility of letting him pull the rug out from under me with zero consequences. Again. I couldn’t win.

But Rust doesn’t want much from me. He doesn’t even want the case, really, which just twists the knife even further.

“You—you know I’m good in there, right? In the box.” I carve a jagged thumbnail into this message in the table, twisting the characters wider, or taller, risking splinters.

Why should I have to give it up? And to a fucking idiot? Marty wasn’t the one who stayed all those late nights alone at the office, wasn’t the one scoured over heaps of files under low light, wasn’t the one who took the fucking beating when the suspect fought against arrest. Marty was not the one who conducted an interview like that.

My mouth thins into a hard line, but I know the words will come out whether I let them voluntarily or not. Around Rust, it’s that way. I should’ve left when I could.

“It’s just that—it was so weird,” I continue, my head pulsing with the unwanted memory of that cabin. Marty didn’t have to experience it, Rust didn’t have to experience it—but I did. “Not jus’ wrong, or sad. Makes me feel strange, thinking about it.”

Often, the suspects underestimate me. Johansson’s broad shoulders and tough-set jaw come off as offensive—nothing like my voice, low and gentle, and my eyes, sympathetic and warm. I’m the mother who will never judge, who is spilling over with unconditional love.

Beneath this, though, I am good at the maths of the job, the connections. Though all detectives technically develop the same constituent skills—close attention to body language tells and other biological betrayals—I ain’t sure most understand the sensitivity and strength required to confront shit like this head-on. To not avert your eyes at the mutilated woman on the bed. To inspect her eunuched boyfriend’s severed appendage, to have steady hands when photographing the scene—with flash, of course, to highlight every detail with sufficient clarity—for evidence, which must be returned to and examined again and again, each time with greater fervour still.

I could name a few who’d joke about a thing like that, to ease the burn of that image in their heads, to sleep better at night, to leave behind the uninvited, vicarious sensation of a knife teasing over the meat of their dick.

But the boyfriend’s corpse, we eventually located separately in a cabin in the woods, laid into the basement freezer, so peaceful, such a brutal image. Pretty parts of him preserved for mauling.

And Salter has the fucking audacity to take it away. He wasn’t the one to see something like that, to feel sick to his very stomach, to gag and have to turn away, to cringe and writhe like his skin suddenly wasn’t his, like he ought to pick himself out. I’ve been reeling with that image for weeks, living with motion sickness, and have been denied the relief of vomiting.

“So, you need me to get that confession.”

Rust comes back into focus, perfectly still.

I nod, the back of my neck prickling with mean goosebumps. “Campbell, his DNA was all over the bodies. He was proud of it, even.” My ribs still glow with the phantom-sensation of his brutal kick there when we located him. Stomach clenching, I struggle to remain level. “But there ain’t no way in hell she wasn’t involved. He denies it, but the house is registered under her name. Maiden name, Phelps.”

“I read,” he confirms.

I tremble in frustration – I almost wish he hadn’t.

“It’s just—this lady’s tough.”

Eyes darting over to the dim-lit bar, scouring the scuffed hardwood floor, I can feel my face growing hot with indignation. Christ, it sounds pathetic, like a whiny kid insisting on continuing a task all wrong in order to protect their damaged pride.

“You know Johansson: once she starts with the tears, he can’t see past ‘em. Southern manners ‘n’ all: a crying woman is a delicate thing not for a man to understand but to comfort. But, with me, it ain’t the same. She doesn’t respect me.”

“What d’you mean ‘respect ’? Don’t need respect in this game.”

I scoff, which would’ve been a dire mistake with anyone else. “Y’wouldn’t know what I’m on about,” I tease through an easy smile, though I’m not feeling so funny at the moment.

He inclines his head down to me, an invitation to elaborate.

My boot feverishly taps against the floor, thrumming light like a jackrabbit on the run.

I sigh, mouth twisting. “She keeps asking me if I’ve slept,” I confess. “Says I look like her daughter.”

For all my mothering, here comes a perp who’s desperate to play me at my own game.

I can see how intelligent she is: some hollow glint in her eyes with nothing behind; past that gleaming screen of kindness, something black, like a cherry pit.

Sitting across from her, it felt like looking into a mirror. Not just physically—though her skin is a similar shade to mine, her nails bitten and splitting like mine, and she looks close to what I imagine my own mother could’ve grown into. It was in the way that, when I smiled, she smiled. When I took a sip of my coffee, she would drink some tea. At times, it would even seem like she would speak in my voice: the pitch, the intonations, the phrasing all far too similar. I was reluctant to tell her my name. It reminded me of this folk tale, of these tall, dark creatures who only required your name to speak like you, to look like you, to replace you in your own life. Its victim would die—in some way or another. Wander the woods, eaten alive.

A harrowing feeling had crept over me, winter pressing against the two-way mirror – I was sure Johansson, on the other side, would pick up on it. Only, when I confessed my worries to him, he’d given me this doubtful look, and I really wasalone then.

“She’s playin’ you,�� Rust states simply, tracing his fingers over his mouth like some pseudo-cigarette.

“Yeah.” I grind my teeth together. Under the table, where he cannot see, my fingers curl into a tight fist, trembling with my secret violence. “And now Salter wants Marty to have it? Bull.”

I should’ve socked him right in his dumb, slack fuckin’ jaw. One day, I will.

“He don’t want Marty to have it,” Rust retorts smartly, a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are warm in the dark – I should’ve taken my chances, raced to meet ‘em, but I’m too late. “He wants me to have it.”

Yeah, well, I wish what was mine would stay mine.

Even if I’m inclined to be pissed off at Rust by proxy, I just can’t be. The difference between him and Marty is that he actually pays attention, real attention, not the selfish kind. Just by watching, I can tell he knows exactly what he could say, how he could act, in order to appeal to somebody—which is why I find it so odd that he chooses not to. I sacrifice my damn dignity to keep myself palatable. He does not. As a result, he is not well-liked at the office – people tend to feel caught out by him; they don’t like to feel observed, known.

When did being seen become a threat? I thought it was intimate. Though, I suppose, a piece of shit never wants to believe they’re a piece of shit.

Everyone’s the hero of their own story.

Rust slides Marty’s half-empty beer across the table to me, which I receive with a crooked smile and a quick hand.

“Sure I won’t catch whatever he had?”

He shrugs. “Y’ain’t as deadbeat as the rest of ’em. Oughta drag you down to their level.”

I snort. “What, you don’t think you’re deadbeat?”

He huffs. “I’m worse.”

Bitter, the beer washes over my tongue, leaves that funny aftertaste I never really liked, not the first time, not the last. I don’t suppose I’ll ever turn one down though, not if it was offered to me: I’d accept it if only to win points with whoever it was, points I could spend at a later date.

“Maybe,” I start, “if you were a little more deadbeat, you’d be popular. Go out with the boys.”

When he meets my eyes momentarily, smirking, I have to grip my hand over my knee, fingertips digging into bone, and consciously remind myself via mantra not to let my face freeze. He hums, voice smooth and low like liquor, “What, like youdo?”

I should be pissed off, really. Maybe I will be. Instead, though, I choke on the smart retort I had meticulously configured in my head, some quip that would’ve maybe interested him based on what caught him before.

I don’t know whether it would have been worse pretending like it never happened. That’s my strong point: pretending. It’s his, too, when he wants it to be. Maybe we could’ve outlasted it – all we needed was stamina.

But, instead, it’s this. Looking across at each other and knowing exactly what’s going on in the other’s head. I can see exactly how he thinks of me, what he wants to do. When he tilts his head ever so slightly, my neck glows with a promise, like the movement was mine in the first place. When I would bite at the pendant of my necklace, he used to narrow his eyes, like he ought to yank the chain off my neck. But now, he looks on softly, so unlike him, his own fingers at his own lips. I know what it feels like – I’ve kissed him there, too.

“Don’t give me that. At least Geraci would stop shit-talkin’ ye,” I manage, tearing myself away. “Swear he’s stuck at sixteen or somethin’. But—you don’t mind it, do you?”

He shakes his head. “‘f he was smarter, maybe I would. Jus’ likes the sound of his own voice.”

The clock has replaced me as his focal point – I can’t help but feel jealous.

“S’why I like you,” I mumble from behind my beer. “First time I met you, I thought you’d make me feel stupid.

That seems to get him.

He blinks, a barely noticeable twitch. “Do I? I don’t mean to.”

Can I spin this? I’m sure, if I were a little more awake, I’d be able to spin this.

Some evil part of me hopes to make him feel guilty, to trick him into feeling tenderness for me, though I know the pursuit of that would be in vain. The type of men I know how to work—creatures of habit that take the exact path you want them to, to believe that they’re the real seducers—Rust seems entirely separate from that. He can sniff out rehearsal and practice, that robotism, like a dog – he sees it enough in criminals, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s called in for favours across state police departments.

When I met him the first time, I shook his hand, smiled, friendly-like, only to be met with rigidity and stoicism. No trouble, of course: some people just are that way. Wild horses on the highway. But his quietness?—now, that had set alarm bells off in my head. Boys at the precinct were loud – you couldn’t pay ‘em to shut up about their weekends, their football, their college years, their fuckin’ yards. When I was first exposed to it, I thought I’d gain a lot of friends. But then I realised they weren’t so much talking with me as they were talking at me. It’s why they’re so easy to read: they just tell you everything you want to know right off the bat. Even their secrets are bursting at the seams of their fat mouths, begging to be released.

But Rust?—doesn’t talk until he finds it necessary. It’s impressive. Before that, though, the trait was enviable. I had—have—no comparable method. Even though, at first, it can seem blunt, even cold, his eloquence is refreshing. Never running in circles – only determinedly forward. So intimidating, almost like a freight train – I have to consciously keep myself from jerking back and out of the way.

How low he must really think of me then, to see me like this. And I know he does: he sees. Everything I might have done to prevent it perhaps even had the opposite effect. I hate, I burn, I curse: it’s ugly. I cry over cases I would’ve left behind in two months tops, anyways, onto the next. I obsess over just another woman in the box. I think about him almost constantly.

“You don’t,” I mumble, wondering if I ought to be wishing myself far away. “Make me feel dumb, that is. Not me. Others, I can’t speak for.”

We’ll have to leave soon – no doubt, this local bar is used to slow days and early nights, a blissful routine rudely disrupted by two outsiders who haven’t even really shown them good business. I glance over at the barkeep, slumped over the scuffed wooden counter and flatly watching the football up on the boxy TV set, and I recall my first job. Then, too, I’d let men twice my age buy me drinks, flirted with them. Was worth the tip money.

Rust hums, though I really wish he wouldn’t speak at all. “Don’t pay mind to what Marty said.”

My neck prickles.

He’s not trying to console me, is he? No, that’s not like him. Besides, it’s not like any amount of coddling could reverse the merciless truths I’m constantly reminded of in this line of work – if I’ve learned anything about sympathy, it’s that it doesn’t fix shit. If anything, it’s just another complication. It can seem beautiful, but, really, it isn’t. I can miss it, miss its warmth, miss the kind, sweet nothings my husband would whisper into my hair on the hardest nights, but it never changed the fact that I would have to get up in the morning and do it again. Rust knows this, has maybe lived this, so he’s not trying to console me.

Maybe he’s trying to defend Marty.

Sharp and sure, that anger comes lurching up in my throat, slashing and snarling.

The sensible part of me—what I hope is the larger part of me—knows this is not possible. Rust understands Marty’s faults better than anyone, even himself, even his wife.

“Thing is,” I mumble bitterly, “he really means it, don’t he? He just don’t show it.” I trace the warm, smooth rim of the bottle with a light finger, though my mind is currently toying with the idea of jamming it violently down the opening. “Maybe it means more that he does keep it hidden – at least some part of him knows it’s wrong.”

Placid in the periphery of my vision, Rust shrugs. “‘s what separates us from our killers. Feelin’ it ain’t the problem. Resistance is where strength is tested.”

“Ego,” I chuckle darkly.

He hums. “Fragile ego.”

Underneath my smile lies an uneasiness stirred by his criticism.

Rust is not gentle with his opinions – I don’t suppose that’ll ever change. Resistance is a losing game – not even he is immune to the impermanence of these things. I’m sure he said that to me once, on a night like this.

I’ve never been very good at refraining from things. Even from an early age, I just couldn’t say no. Teenage years: alcohol, drugs, sex. If it was tossed my way, I’d take it, anything I could get, hungry to experience something.

Ha!—maybe I actually am more like Marty Hart than I’d like to admit. He’s trying to be an adult, albeit really, really poorly. As long as he believes he’s a good, family man, then his reality is protected. But I know I’m rotten, really. One of the boys at the precinct will call me pretty—in that sick way somewhere between the unchecked lust of a man and his paternal right to claim—but, below, I know I’ve got sickness swimming through my veins. Not blood. Something accumulated over the years, maybe from pretending all the time.

I feel like I want to cut things, break them. Told myself to hang on until I retire, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. I’ll break. What will Rust think of me then?

Maybe I was his low point: that fault in resistance.

Some awful, gnawing feeling collects at the pit of my stomach, like black tar. Must be all those cigarettes.

“Wha’s in that head?” he probes suddenly, stealing razor-sharp, fleeting glances.

I shrug, swallowing down a bout of nausea. “I dunno.” And I really don’t. Behind the surface tension, I don’t know what I feel, only that I do, and it’s so, so much. “It kinda—makes me happy to see him like that: jealous. ‘Cause he knows I’m good, and he’s wondering why he’s finishing what I started. He knows he don’t deserve it. Not like I do.”

My confession lingers in the air like smoke – I have mind to reach a hand up and wave it all away, or suck it down, deep, erasing reality. Fuck. I’ve always been a little off when reading into Rust’s quiet – with that tightrope he seems to have mastered, I know I should avoid any step at all—it could just as easily miss its mark—but I can never seem to help myself.

I stare at him—and I think it makes him uncomfortable, though there’s nothing there, not any normal human reaction, in his face for me to draw from. That’s fine. In my gut, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it down.

“You want to be seen as competent,” he finally says, a simple-enough statement.

I scrunch my nose up distastefully. “No, I want to be competent.”

“Well, what good is bein’ somethin’ if there’s no-one there to witness it?”

Unable to press down an exasperated sigh, I close my eyes, roll them with all the subtlety I can manage.

Foul words push under my tongue, like vomit.

I don’t know if I’m in the mood for this tonight: smart conversation. What feels like debate. Maybe if he hadn’t been given my case, I’d take him up on the challenge, but I’ve already lost.

I eye him, try to figure out his game.

“I dunno, Rust,” I tell him flatly. “I think that’s called having an identity issue.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Most people do.”

My chest burns. “This isn’t a go at me, is it?”

Slow, he draws the ashtray towards him from across the table, as if the grind of the glass against the wood is a noise that ought to be savoured.

I could be deaf, but reading his lips would be easy: “And how’d this be about you exactly?”

I’m able to fight off the initial instinct to wince, the way in which he delivers the words, calm and deliberate, stinging like a slap to the face. What’s worse is the growing impression that he’s as bored of me as I am.

With a furrowed brow, I watch him, heartbeat thrumming in my ears.

“I ain’t out to get you, s’you can quit lookin’ at me like I kicked you or somethin’.”

Frowning shallowly and trying to pretend like I’m not, I glance away and commit to rearranging my face—but at the glimpse of that twitch at the corner of his mouth in my periphery, I know I’m only digging a deeper grave for myself. The noticeable heat of my embarrassment must please him.

Playing with the food.

And I’ve got nothing to say to him—not a single word or phrase up to par, nothing to measure up to Rust’s clinical detachment, let alone destabilise him. He might’ve been reciting the coroner’s report. There’s nothing I can say to scathe him—and fuck, I want to leave a mark, prove to him that I can. I scan him for weakness, but either I’m still too stunned to see it or there is none. I have no plan of attack and no line of defence.

Rust seems to soften in the knowledge of this.

“I mean,” he begins, knowing now that I’m really listening, “identity ain’t fixed – it’s not permanent. I don’t scrutinise my appearance. I don’t mind my body, and my body don’t mind me. My personality hardly feels under my control – ‘s just somethin’ that is and will be—‘n’, I guess, will change, but only against my will, never because of it. Feels pointless to feel insecure about that.”

Is this supposed to be some fucked-up attempt at advice?

My priorities changed, but this place never has, never does, never will. So, it’s all dumb and the people are dumb and this bar is dumb and the boys at the precinct are dumb and, fuck, I wish Rust were dumb, too. I feel pathetic, and he does not alleviate that feeling at all. If he were dumb, I could laugh at him and make myself feel better. I could laugh at myself for sleeping with a dumb man. Instead, I think of him religiously and crave his approval. Afflicted with the knowledge that he needs to be corrupted to want me, that I’m awful enough to want it enough to corrupt him again. Tainted waters. It would be so much more comfortable if I could look down on him.

My skin writhes and ripples, and I know the only thing that would soothe it is if he touched me. Jesus and the sick man—or some polluted version of that.

My world swings under a bout of nausea as it begins to spiral – the beer does not help.

Maybe he’s waiting it out, like I’m trying to. Forgetting is the wisest decision anyone could make, the most fortunate outcome. Though, my efforts are paradoxical: I think so, so much about not thinking about it all.

“Sure seems like y’think about yourself a good deal, too, s’don’t you criticise me,” I mumble, clumsy. It’s a mistake to even open my mouth again – he’ll use it all against me eventually.

Rust hums again, low, some muscle twitching in his jaw, like his body has no clue what to do when not blindly occupied with a cigarette. “Never said I don’t think about myself,” he rectifies, staring at the sweaty palms I’m wringing together tightly against the lip of the table.

I allow my mouth to pool with saliva, trying to combat the increasing dryness of my mouth.

“Guess the thinkin’ part is where insecurity comes from in the first place,” I add after swallowing.

When my eyes dart up to look at him, his are on my throat.

Immediately, I look away.

Maybe this is the bad kind of intimacy.

The intensity of his attention is looming, sifting through my thoughts like sand.

Sometimes, I think he has me figured out but just couldn’t care less about what he’s found. He’s feeling the power of my burning desire for him – maybe it amuses him. Maybe he’s waiting to mechanise it, letting me sit idle while a use for me finds him (if ever). Maybe I know things. Maybe I can break things open. Maybe he can take my cases from me. Maybe I can tire him out, put him to sleep.

It’s almost worse that he hasn’t put me to work yet.

Maybe it really was just something in the water. Maybe all I need is to visit somebody close to me.

“Ever heard o’ that theory? ‘bout internal monologue?” Rust asks softly, leaning in and tipping his head down like only I’m worthy of hearing this here.

My leg jerks and I can’t place why. I nod, face hot.

“I think ‘s bullshit—‘bout some not having one. Think everybody’s got that voice in their heads.” He pauses, squints. “Mm, maybe that’s a little generous.”

I laugh – I hope it makes him feel good. In truth, I know he couldn’t care less.

“What d’you think it’d be like? No voice.”

The world seems so close right now, wrapping its fuzzy arms tight around us, buzzing in my ears, shadows fur-soft over my face. What does he want me to say? I wish he’d tell me, offer me respite.

I shrug, and it’s honest, my resignation. “No voice don’t mean no thought.”

“Alrigh’. Then, what about no thought?”

I shrug again. “I like thinking.”

He huffs, angling himself back away from me. Have I disappointed him? Somewhere deep in the pit of my tummy, there’s that fleck of worry, something that tastes an awful lot like vomit.

I expect him to finally stop talking.

But “I get tired of it,” is what he says instead. “In between cases, or these—moments where I feel like I could burn a hole through myself ‘f I spent ’nough thought on it. ‘s heavy, like they weigh me down.” He pushes the ashtray away, his fingers the only part of him moving.

Swept up in the rising tide of your own life, hurting around you in some never-ending circle or spiral of which you happen to be the centre. Swimming with black-eyed angels. I know how he feels – I used to feel that way. Maybe I still do, sometimes. Clinging on to the tenderness my husband used to have for me like it could save me from the guilt I would feel when I moved on. No-one would pull me out: that much was true enough. That memory of stability, of the good times, only depressed me, moving from Brooklyn back to Louisiana. Feeling small in my own life, like a piece on a chessboard, with no semblance of control, only duty, chasing this idea of who I used to be. Hunting down the bad men, wondering what upper hand is driving them across the squares, contemplating the carpenter that fashioned the pieces. Too big of a big picture can be detrimental. The fact that I know this to be true doesn’t make me an exception.

“I think you’re tired of the things you think about,” I muse, a headache beginning to expand between my temples – perhaps the heat has finally gotten to my head. “Space better occupied by other shit.”

I’m careful not to pay attention to Rust’s reaction, if there even is one, since the weight of his interest is pressing over my face where I really wish his lips would.

“Like what?” he challenges.

His eyes glint with curiosity, a blade’s sharp edge.

I bite my tongue.

“You think you know me?” It’s more a statement than a question.

I shrug. “You think you know me, don’t ye?”

Though, he kinda does. I think he’s proud that he can read me, but maybe that’s me overcomplicating things. Maybe I’m just another person to him. I wonder if he thinks I’m predictable. Boring, negligible, painfully average. Good for one thing, and that one thing was a mistake, anyway.

Look at him, now: his eyes have dropped to elsewhere, but there’s a soft smirk that curls up on his face, the hint of a pink tongue that traces lightly over his teeth.

Geraci always talks shit about that look whenever Rust closes yet another case, securing a tough confession. “So fuckin’ up ‘imself, ain’t he? Jesus.” Sure, he pisses me off—for different reasons. I’ve long since come to the conclusion that he’s worthy of admiration.

He smiles to himself – I don’t trust it. “You’re calling me arrogant.”

“Are you?” I press, gnawing at the inside of my cheek. I’m surprised at the tepidity of my voice, considering how I’m covered in boils and burns in my head.

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, only hums in response, seemingly amused.

“Doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” I murmur. “People are scared of bein’ known, so nobody really tries no more.”

“I don’t observe people for intimacy purposes.”

Then why does he fucking look at me like that?

A year ago, I’d have put it down to my own desires warping my perception of reality. Really, he wasn’t interested; he was only paying me my due amount of scrutiny in order to keep his mental file of me up to date. Really, he didn’t want to touch me; really, he was just someone who fiddled with his own hands, maybe to remind himself that he could be his own from time to time. Lust is such a dangerous thing – any deeper than surface level, and it has the very strong potential to kill you. If you want something against your better judgement, do you really even want it? The haze of having Rust come so close to me is dampened by such doubts.

But at this point, he either wants me, or I’m crazy. Shit, maybe I’d rather be just that. I’ve seen his eyes like this—dark and bottomless—when hands were unzipping my skirt, or dragging over my skin. To deny intimacy? Now that’s arrogance. Anddelusion. Shit, and I thought he was so above all that stuff. Does he think I can’t figure him out?

Surely his opinion of me can’t be that poor.

My hand cramps up as I punch down the instinct to pinch the bridge of my nose.

“Sure you do,” I press. And I’m right. I hope I’m right.

His stare thickens into something different, what I think might be a black, molten form of gratification. Then, it hardens, cools in a split second into these tough, jaw-breaker pellets. I’d say it was confrontational, but then his eyes flutter just as he happens to swallow thickly. Is that his pulse in his throat?

I rub at my puffy eyes with a stiff set of fingers.

Rust drops his eyes, brushes his hand over the side of his blazer where his cigarettes are sitting warm and ready beneath.

“What, you—lonely again or some shit?” he asks.

I almost recoil at the sudden bitterness of his tone.

I snort good-heartedly, but, really, the comment stings just right—he knows where to press—all the breath knocked out of my chest. “O-kay, Rust. That an accusation?”

“No. ’S an observation. Thought you jus’ loved those,” he combats flatly.

Chest burning, I have to save myself, jump ship, and look away. My mouth tastes like grainy bile.

“You were lonely last summer. That’s why you came to me.”

The dim light above us flickers, his face phasing in and out of shadow before me like a candle in the wind.

I roll my jaw.

Does he look back on it with disdain?

“No,” I snap instinctively, instantly burned by the satisfaction that crosses his eyes.

My breath hitches plaintively. Every fibre of my body trembles and burns to defend myself. There’s not a single word that could repair his opinion of me.

“Or—yeah.” Shut up.

I rub at my temple, desperate for relief – do they have pills for this shit? – which does not come. If he feels any pity for me, it certainly doesn’t show.

The harsh line of my mouth trembles. “I just thought you understood me. Or made an attempt to, at least, but maybe that part was self-projection. ‘Cause nobody ‘round here’s like you. I know you think that’s stupid and I was being naïve or—” I swallow though my throat is dry as ever, “—or dumb, or somethin’, but that’s what I felt. At the time.”

His gaze is fixed on my neck.

“At the time,” he echoes. It’s a question, I realise after a couple moments.

“Yeah. Fuck y'want me to say, asshole? 'm not—I’m not gonna embarrass myself with you, Rust. That what you want me to do? Show you just how dumb I can get—?”

“Sure like to speak for me, hm?” he bites back quietly, making it so damn easy to run right over him, to feverishly stamp out that insufferable fucking softness to his voice. Shit, I wish he’d just raise it and yell at me already.

“—Yeah, whatever. You like this shit, don’t you? Y’think you deserve a fight?—well, I’ll give you one. That what you want? ‘Cause what?—what, you get to ignore me, pretend I don’t exist, act like you’re above fuckin’ me—” his eyes flit away, bringing my roiling frustration to a crest, “—No, don’t you fuckin’ look away,” I scold, a bite, jutting a crooked finger into his space.

He obeys, but that look in his pale eyes is so hollow, it almost makes me feel bad for saying anything at all. Almost.

I try to press down my anger, but it’s spilling over, now, far beyond things so trivial as control. I clasp my hands together in a prayer that they will finally listen to me and not move again.

“Fact that you feel anything at all makes you feel like shit, huh?”

His expression has glazed over, cool and smooth.

Half-expecting him to walk out and rightfully abandon me here, I stare hard at him, like I might chip into that exterior. If I managed it, I’d slip it in my pockets as proof. Silently, I beg him to prove me right.

“Sorry,” I snap. No, I’m not. I hope it cuts at him. “You do what you want, I don’t fuckin’ care. But, please, do not patronise me like that again, Rust.”

God offers no help with the silent plea I send Him. He does not care, so I shouldn’t care, and that’s the end of things. I’ve survived worse natural disasters than him. He’s just a man, and this is just what happens with them. Still, the disappointment floods like poison under my skin. I’m a stupid girl, really.

“I understand if you regret things, but you don’t have to say it out loud. It’s mean. But, fuck, I dunno, maybe you mean to be.”

I take a moment to untangle the knot in my throat. He watches it all, quiet again, his eyeline sitting heavy over where the skin shifts and stretches over my neck.

I adjust the collar of my shirt, fiddle with the gold necklace that sits hot over the contour of bone. Rust stares as I wedge the small pendant tightly in the vice of my thumb and forefinger.

“Feels like you don’t even fuckin’ like me half the time. All the time.”

Christ, I should’ve left with Johansson.

My heart is racing like a wild mustang – it’s a surprise, really, that that old hunting dog lying over by the bar hasn’t noticed, singled me out as something to chase, to kill. My belly’s exposed, soft and ripe and asking for it. I forget, sometimes, that there are things out there that kill things that kill, too.

He doesn’t plan on giving me a break; I wouldn’t deserve it, anyway. “Wha's it matter to you if I like you or not?”

My cheeks burn furiously.

I stare at that bone-bird tattoo that fledges from the nest of his sleeve. With the way my head’s spinning, it almost looks like its skeleton wings are actually moving, unfurling and ready for pilgrimage.

“It don’t.” It’s a disgrace to myself to answer that god-awful question, but what’s more pathetic is the way I shrink into myself when Rust’s attention crowds in over my face. “I jus’ thought you knew me almost as well as I did.”

“And currently?” he asks.

The moment hangs.

“Just answer. I already know – just wanna see if you’ll lie again.”

I close my eyes a second—mistake—and breathe, breathe in and then breathe out, shaky but slow. It’s no use.

“Same.”

He nods. “Not better?”

I shake my head. “No, never better.”

Furrowing his brow, Rust tilts his head down slightly, a soft curl falling gentle over his tense forehead. “But you wanted intimacy.”

So it is intimacy to him?

Maybe this should count as a win for me, but it certainly don’t feel like it. This isn’t the slow slip and slide of last summer’s end – though the heat had swallowed whole everything from here to the other side of the Mississippi, there was something so clipped about the words that left me, left him. I’m sure I was more drunk then than now, but, even so, my mind had been so level, like I’d done it all in my sleep. Now, here, I have done it in my sleep. I’ve revisited him a hundred times in my daydreams, but all that practice has left me for dead. I would’ve killed for an opportunity like this a month ago – it’s like he’s taunting me. It should be easy.

Rust is smart enough to make me wonder if he wants me to feel this way.

Intimacy is planned and eventual, whether that’s due to his power or some cosmic fate. Everyone knows the decision they’re going to make, somewhere in their brains, deep inside. People only ask for advice to condone their decisions, to spread out the responsibility, which, at the end of the day, still remains solely with them. Shit, he’s rubbing off on me: I sound like a fuckin’ asshole.

No, all this thinking won’t save him from the sensation of human feeling, emotions. No amount of planning prepares you for skin-to-skin touch. No time spent evaluating can undo it either, and I’ve tried so hard. His way doesn’t work.

“Everyone wants intimacy,” I end up rambling, voice thin and dry and brittle. “Even folks that don’t want intimacy want intimacy. ’s not love or sex, really, I don’t think, though those are good, too. It’s not a way to find yourself. It’s jus’ trust. Or companionship—”

“And that’s what you want?”

Carefully, I rake my eyes over his face. Does he ever flush from the heat?

Hopeless and too muddled to bother with concealing it, I try to assess whether he’s displeased with me. I try to memorise this moment, so I’ll be able to turn it over in my head later, just another one of my crime scene photographs.

“Dunno yet,” I confess quietly. “I’ve had partners. And partners. When I was younger, I thought I’d have this life packed chock full of amazing relationships, and these—connections.”

The soft, disappointed eyes of my husband come to mind, which haunt all my relationships. I’m so hungry for another body, for connection. Why does it seem so easy for other people?

“Truth is, it don’t happen all that much. To me, at least. You?”

Surly and bone-tired, Rust shakes his head. “Didn’t have much hope for it growin’ up,” he admits.

“But you wanted it,” I press, clumsy and clinging to the sag of his voice. Of course, he’ll pick up on the trace of hopeful, aimless, false victory that undercuts my words; he’s the only one who ever could.

For a moment, though, I second-guess myself.

It’s pathetic, really: I’d give almost anything to walk as him for a day, though, even then, I’m not sure I’d understand him any better.

Sometimes, my imagination runs away from me: in my dreams, I do. I wake under the impression that we’re one and the same, that, just maybe, he, similarly, is dreaming as me. It’s a pulsing obsession, difficult to conceal. Whenever a moment becomes still, I think about it: at night, he is transported; in his dreams, he touches with my hands, sighs with my voice, tastes with my mouth. Then, at least, that would explain these funny sensations I get in the morning: so weathered and worn, a strange ache in my muscles, like I’ve been sleepwalking.

How else could he know me so well?

Or maybe I’ve really fucking lost it. Somewhere along the way – maybe after seeing that half-eaten body swaddled in thin cotton in its freezer cradle – I think something else took the wheel. Why that thing is racing towards him, I have no idea. It’s laughable, really.

Rust blinks calmly down at his hands. “Reckon the deniers are dumb?” he murmurs.

Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I do my best to press back against the foul memory of dismembered limbs. Whoever had eaten the man—who was now beyond recognition—did they feel satisfied? Comforted with how forever close he was to them now? When I was small, I used to think sex was crawling into another person's body, like a cave, and letting all of their insides warm you, love you, wrap you tight.

I swallow thickly.

“Your words, not mine,” I reply through a tight smile. “Reckon it’s easy to find a distraction.”

"Have you given up?" he asks. “Finding a distraction?”

I don’t entertain him with a proper answer to that – I merely shrug and scratch at my scalp, tucking loose strands of sweaty hair back into the loops of my braid. Rust must be frustrated with me. To want a companion, to want the good life. Rivalling Marty in my delusion.

He slides his hands into his lap, continuing: “Distraction is the way to peace?”

I shrug again – I think it’s starting to piss him off. “For a time, I guess.”

“So, ‘s that how you’re takin’ quittin’? Think about other stuff whenever you want a smoke? Occupy yourself?”

Once I realise my leg is going dead, fuzzy from sitting still so long in this dark booth, I flex my thigh, flex my hands under the table, wide-open and then tight-shut, processing the blank slate of his gaunt face. I press my fingers into the sticky vinyl, delight in the interrupted drag of them up, up, up as they curl to fists, my shoulders up to my ears.

When he says things like that, it makes it so hard to dislike him. I almost wish he’d ignore me, like he did the first couple weeks before it became clear to the both of us that it couldn’t be undone: his back constantly to me, sending messages only through Marty, refusing to look in my direction, like I might tempt him again into being a version of him he hated. At least, before, his coldness hadn’t been directed at me specifically. Then, it was a retaliation, a wall meant to keep me out. Where were his books on philosophy then?—to tell him that attachment leads to desire leads to suffering? That kind of suffering would be better than this kind.

This is worse. This is so much worse. I’d rather not have something at all than have it toy with me like this.

It takes a considerable amount of co-ordination to fabricate the apathy in my posture, my eyes, my expression, to compensate for the unease that pulses like a new artery in my throat – though, at the silvery glint that flickers in his eyes, I know it’s all for nothing. He’s already seen the hurt that, really, I can’t pin on anyone but myself. He’s raking his eyes slowly over my face. It’s fucking mean. Do me the favour of a mercy-killing, God.

I never even told him I was trying to quit.

“What,” I begin, concentrating very hard on keeping myself from stammering and from slurring, from crying and from grasping at his hand, “like that association thing?”

I’ve heard of it, obviously. I know every trick at this point: old wives’ tales to the latest research papers at the state university library. It’s psychological: whenever you want something, instead, think of awful, gross, repulsive things, and make yourself hate it. I’ve tried it before, but it doesn’t always work. How can you convince yourself that one thing is disgusting when it’s undeniable how good it really was?

Rust nods.

“I mean, I tried it,” I tell him lowly.

Overstatement: I tried it for approximately three days and two nights before I caved, unlocking the drawer in my study with shaky, desperate hands, hungry.

“But I’m always thinkin’ about it.”

Shit. He seems to have regained a nerve: Rust stares calmly ahead at me—not through me or just past me; at me. This is what I wanted, isn’t it?

He leans his weight over his forearms upon the table, on offence. Is this how he works his suspects? Well, shit, I’ve studied his methods from the privacy of the other side of the false mirror enough times to be able to answer that, actually: this is how he works his suspects. Initially, at least, to gauge their personality, their wants, their fears, what they need him to be.

Thing is, I can’t pin down his intention with me. Is it just the satisfaction of the kill? Or maybe revenge for what I did to him last August. I broke down his walls: an unforgivable sin. I condemned him to the effort of building them back up, of shoving me out—if I ever managed to intrude in the first place. Maybe I deserve this.

With his sleeves folded back, the dark lines of Rust’s tattoo jut out, growing along his tawny, leather-tan skin like lichen. I try not to stare.

His eyes complete a pre-emptive scan of my face, and, really, I know I should not let him see any change there in my expression, though my mouth twitches to frown. I try to gather my forces. I try to prepare myself for it, for that inevitable intrusion.

“‘f you’re so desperate for it, why’re you fightin’ back?” he asks, unblinking and cruel.

My mouth twists, and I let it fall into the frown it wants. “‘Cause I wanted to feel better.”

It sounds dumb because it is dumb, even though it’s true.

Low, he hums. He straightens, softens, and finally leans away. It’s like the vacuum around me leaves with him, and, there, now, it’s easier to breathe.

He must note the way my chest rises and falls so stiffly, like there’s a weight resting over my heart.

“Withdrawal’s a breeze, ain’t it?”

“You’re not fuckin’ funny,” I scoff, digging my nails punishingly into my palm. He smokes and drinks like he welcomes cancer, or hopes for it, so I don’t think we’re on a level playing field.

He quirks his head. “Well, do you?”

“Do I what, Rusty?”

Amused, he rolls his jaw. Good – I hope I’ve provoked him.

“Do you feel better?”

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Sometimes,” I reply truthfully. “Not right now.”

He searches my face.

“I can give you a ride home,” he offers.

Fuck, and what will that be like? Ten times worse than this. I’ll come away the husk of a woman, worn down by his disapproval. My own fault for wanting anything from him in the first place, really.

Teeth gritted together, I shake my head, ready to pull a muscle in my damn neck. “Didn’t mean anythin’ by it. Sorry.”

No, I’m not. I ought to slap him, and then run away, back home, or back to my house, or to a brand new city. Or he could finally cuss me out, save me the wondering. Then, I could lick my wounds and they would finally stop reopening.

I scratch at my scalp.

Rust eyes my hand like he’d like to rip the bad habit away from my body. For a moment, I think he will—the tendons in his hand flex and writhe under the skin—but, no, he only brushes a thumb against the valley between his nose and cheek, and he holds his tongue for once.

“Wasn’t offended,” he corrects firmly. “I’ll take you home.”

Flashing with annoyance, my eyes dart up viciously to penalise him. “And what?” I hiss.

He sits back, doesn’t answer the question.

Jaw clenched, I wait to see if he’ll look away, but he doesn’t.

My irritation soon fizzles through, condenses to a low, simmering understanding, steadily tended to by the intensity of his steadfast gaze.

Oh.

My eyes soften.

Oh – I have him, don’t I?

He shows no signs of the tentativeness he had displayed last time—if Rust could ever be tentative. His eyes do not shift and scuttle around me; they meet mine, challenging my comfort. He does not tuck himself into a corner; he remains leaned over the table, just like that. How could I have known?

I stare back, brow pinched in confusion.

In the heat of last August, I’d peeled away from him knowing exactly how I’d convinced him he wanted me. Maybe I was evil for it – a good person wouldn’t use somebody’s faults against them, would they? And maybe that’s what it was: selfish. If he hates me, he’d be right to.

Which is why I’m so puzzled that he doesn’t. Or rather, indifference was the baseline. Hell. And this? I don’t know.

Swelling dangerously with the well-loved memory of his delirious mouthings over my skin, I grow rigid.

My temples throb and ache, the threat of tears still very real.

“Mind?” he asks – I watch, wide-eyed, as he pulls a pack of Camels from his pocket.

Trembling slightly, I shake my head, though saliva is already pooling over the pit of my tongue, warm and soft, just like my desire. Luckily, he’s too preoccupied with his lighter to see it: how my body ripples at the scrape of his voice.

The promise of nicotine dances like a phantom in the mouth, just from watching him place a cigarette between his lips. When he flicks open his Zippo, the sharp, shuddering candle of it taunts me, and I finally understand what they say about moths and flames.

I watch him take a long drag.

That all-consuming hunger lurches up in me again, and I swallow the warm spit that’s steadily been filling my mouth.

Oh, Christ. This can’t be real. Desire shouldn’t be this bloody. Desire shouldn’t be the thing with teeth and claws, the ugly thing that tips into violence. Or obsession. With how often my thoughts return to us in the summer, I’ve wondered obsession as a possibility. The difference between myself and those who commit crimes of passion is control. Rust is dangerous for me. What is he thinking? What’s in his head? I ache to pry it open and explore, to swim close to him, for my skin to melt into his, to consume and be consumed. Not a moment’s peace, and that’s what I’m chasing, isn’t it? Peace and quiet?

I don’t have to say anything – he can read it all, mulling over the fine changes in my expression, the softening of my body, some pre-emptive instinct. Will he touch me tonight?

With a cautious hand, ready to jolt back if met with teeth, I reach out to him and remove the cigarette from his pinched fingers—which he allows—then bringing it to my mouth, taking a drag myself, nice and slow, good and deep, a sigh, like home.

He watches me.

“Don’t say anything.”

And he doesn’t. He just watches, watches, watches as I take another drag. He shivers, and I feel it reverberate through my bones.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” I ask him softly, pressing down a quivering breath, smoking his cigarette. I’ve never mustered the courage to ask before.

For once, though, I really don’t have to: I know exactly where his head is. Where else? He’s back in that room, infected by the drowse and drunken fever of August, with me, living it again. Where I’d coaxed him into the temptation, wicked as the snake in the garden. He should’ve pushed me to leave with Johansson and Marty – of course, I would’ve stayed. I’m a rotten thing, and my heart is a bloodhound. He’s the better of the two of us. I’ll take whatever of him I can get – anything.

He meets my eyes directly, so hopeless, so raw. Is he asking? He shouldn’t be.

But what will he have me do? I’m at his disposal, really.

“And?” I ask, throat dry.

When he moves to speak, the words that leave him are low and slow: “You did something to me,” he manages.

I scoff.

“S’that a good or bad thing?” I ask.

Rust huffs like what I said was funny. More likely, though, it’s the way my eyes are so wide, the way my hand is pressed between my thighs, that amuses him. “Can’t decide.”

My mouth trembles as my eyes scrape over his neck, which I know, I remember, to be hot and alive, thick with it over the pulse. I was so high off of it: his warmth, his weight, his press.

I indulge in one last drag, using the last scraps of my energy to conjure the pungent stench of rotting flesh in the cruel sunshine, the pick of eager flies and their cacophonous buzzing, the churn of vomit in the stomach. I look at Rust and try to do the same: the months of silence, his back decidedly turned to me, him accepting my case, and his arrogance and his apathy and his severity. He is a harrowing connection that I should rather not have made.

The technique doesn’t work. I don’t know why I thought, even for a minute, that this time would be different from the last.

With him staring calmly at me, like I deserve it—the trap, the squirming sensation over my spine, the hopeless, unavoidable heat that claims my face—it’s just another arrow pointing to the same conclusion. Maybe we should just let August have its way with us again. Twin plagues.

Trembling ever so slightly, blood so warm, so thick, I flick ashes out into the tray between us.

“I should put this out,” I mumble, though my hand yearns to return it to my mouth.

“’s my cigarette,” Rust mutters.

“Sorry.” I offer my hand to him. “Want it back?”

I know what I must look like to him, pupils dark, the size of the moon, like a plate. Here, in the darkest part of the dark bar, I open myself to him, warm, molten, inviting. And God, this must be a dream—because I know what he wants, and I know that he’ll accept me. How we got here doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe he’s thought about it for some time, and only now, in a moment of stillness with him, have I even noticed. Too caught up in the fine details of a painting to think of the artist’s intention, which is always more important.

Silent, stare inexorable, he accepts the cigarette, only touching my fingers quick, like I’d burn him. Maybe I will. Serves him right: he was always going to haunt me either way. I ought to get mine while I still can.

The hunger laps at me.

I want to coax him open-wide. I want to peel away his demeanour and wrap myself close to him. Body heat is the best way to keep warm, isn’t it? I’m sure I read about that somewhere. It’s still fresh in my mind, like a cut. I can’t manage a day without playing it over at least once. I want it again: I want to breathe him in and let him sit in my chest and seep into every cell and let him be part of me that way, at least until the next breath.

He can see it in my eyes: the freneticism of my thoughts, racing like a storm, desires like bullets like rain.

“You ever think about what you want?” I try asking him, voice strained tight over my heart in my throat.

“People only ever think about what they want,” he parries, batting away any trace of diffidence. He secures his cigarette between his lips, shifting. “Let’s leave.”

At his first movement, I slide out of the booth.

Sometime during our conversation, the place emptied out. It must have been around when I finished Marty’s leftover beer that the weight of the locals’ beady stares—which had already faded to the back of my mind, in the same way that a dark alleyway can still make you uneasy though you know nothing would ever happen to you there—finally left me. There are no witnesses left to see me following after Rust like a dog, my body thrumming like the lone bug zapper out on the porch, which cracks! just as we exit.

The broken clock reads three o’clock when we leave, but I know that, really, it’s only midnight.

Fortunately, the heat has cracked for once, like old, beat-up, splitting leather. Stepping out onto that night path, the breeze is warm and fragrant, dancing over my cheeks, playing gently with the loose threads of my hair. It’s a clear, blue, never-ending night – the dirt road which accompanies us is a long, winding, indigo river that spills unseen over the far, far horizon. The neighbouring fields—one a rolling stretch of grass; the other of wheat—are alive in the wind, flung one way on exhale, drawn the other upon inhale.

Thank God for the noise of it: their rustling whispers, in a language we can’t understand; the soft whistle of a passing gust of air; the firm, crisp crunch of dry mud and dust under my boots. Thank God for the sway of things: the cradle of humidity; the press of my arm to Rust’s, which he permits only for a second, with his face angled away. Then, he slows, coming to walk just behind me, still parallel.

Flickering strands of long-grass brush my knuckles – I grab onto one, pull the seeds off it in an easy swipe, and scatter them as we go, one by one.

Briefly, I glance over my shoulder. Sure enough, his eyes are fixed on me, on my every movement, like he’s making sure I’m actually real. The corner of my mouth twitches up into a smile.

Rust’s cigarette flares between his lips.

I scratch gently at my wrist, reminded of the flowing of my blood just beneath the skin, hot and thick.

You get nowhere in life just hoping things will fall into your lap like this—and, anyway, what good is getting something that you didn’t work for? Where’s the gratification? It’s artificial, feeble as plastic. Christ, it was even a struggle to get my head around Johansson and his propensity to dole out favours. I understood a write-up – won’t pretend I’m above ass-kissing – but tidying up the office kitchen and keeping quiet about it? I thought it was stupid: letting people reap the rewards of your own effort, and for what?

So, the buzz of earning Rust’s touch that first time?—shit, nothing compared. No drug, no high; nothing. I really thought I did something. Satisfied some secret ambition I didn’t know I held. To have him like that. To be able to replay that night, swallow it like a pill. To look at him and know what was underneath his clothes and his skin, and perhaps further inside, too. Shit, I took so much from him, but the mental gymnastics of the effort justified it, right? And, now, he’s going to give it all up again. Wants it, even.

Haven’t I played this out a thousand times in my head? I’ve seen the future—a number of futures—where I’m able to argue for his affection. Fight for your love – that’s what my daddy used to tell me whenever he was feeling sentimental after yelling.

I’ve had endless conversations with him in my head, edited accordingly as time passed, as he changed, as I changed, as the air between us changed. Possible flirtation seemed silly, futile, after a week. Sex appeal would go unnoticed by him – wasn’t like he looked, anyway. Not the type to chase tail. I found myself longing for him to please linger uncomfortably in doorways to rooms I was in, to leave things near me and come and collect them just after I was gone so that, maybe, he’d still feel the warmth of my presence and understand it was only ever warm that way for him. The idea of genuine confession always sprung up during the quiet nights alone together in the bullpen, but I was always able to talk myself out of it when he wouldn’t so much as glance at me after two, three hours.

It must be a million threads of conversation up in my head, which is why I guess it’s so hard to untangle the great knot and retrieve just one, because, now, there are no words that come to mind when it matters. Or maybe it doesn’t matter: I don’t think he needs convincing at all.

“What you so quiet for?” he asks faintly.

When I look back, he’s stark against the brooding sky like some shadow-man. His outline hums like he’s pulling away into his own silhouette.

I can’t seem to smile. “Nothin’.”

He won’t push—at least, not on this—and I’m glad for it.

Rust’s beat-up semi is all lonely sat in a dip up in the road, waiting for us. Same semi he’d driven me home in from work this one week I was getting my car fixed up, in which a series of slow, mutual interrogations would take place along the light-streaked highway. In the office, you were lucky to drag a full sentence out of Rust, but, alone, it wasn’t so hard to get him to talk at all.

Maybe I had just wanted to be better than him, to learn how he worked, how he was such a good interrogator, and bleed him dry. That was why I couldn’t look away: every choice in his demeanour could help me surpass him.

Even then, I learned to be careful with my looks. I had the feeling he’d morph into something else if I stared long enough, the way the shadow in the corner of your bedroom changes shape when you’re bone-tired. Sometimes, he would. And on the Thursday night of that week, when he had pulled over and thrown up, shaking, into the dark thrush, I hadn’t uttered a word as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. But, as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, I’d stared at him with the filmy eyes of a hungry nocturnal animal.

Then, at least, the curiosity wasn’t a burden. Not like it became when I drove myself home come that morning after.

I could tell it was different the moment I shifted awake, feigning a sleep for just a couple more minutes.

Dressed again and putting on a pot of coffee, his back was to me. I had shuffled up, pulled on my clothes, and I knew the stupor of the night had faded. So, really, when I stepped past him and he closed the door behind me without a word, I shouldn’t have been upset.

When I reach the pick-up first, I twist to look at him.

Rust has slowed to finish his cigarette at a safe distance, eyeing me warily.

He crushes the stub into the dirt, then glancing out into the long night.

“Straight home?” he asks.

I shake my head, and the rigid line of him gives just a little. It’s so dangerous to be seduced by your own influence, but the realisation that I’ve had any at all is fuel enough to the plea in my wide eyes.

Rust advances haltingly. If I move, I’m sure he’ll flinch and bolt. So, I test the theory: better to weed out what’s already decayed.

I angle myself towards him, open like a door. He tosses his jacket into the bed of his pickup, stepping through.

The heat seeps back between us, slow and thick like a flood of molasses, and it becomes very clear, suddenly, that we never should’ve tried to barricade ourselves. Pretty sure Rust’s known this a while, anyways: he’s the one who leans in for me, kisses me slow.

This time, his hands are quick to curl around my body, where the tension in that tight cord all down his spine has snapped. Or just eased up on him—but that’s unlikely. And unimportant. With his firm touch petting up my spine, climbing each rung, it’s all unimportant.

A pulse of arousal strikes me like an electric current as Rust pulls the blouse out of my skirt, his face close to me.

His tongue pushes into my mouth again, and I hum over the husk of nicotine. It’s a haze in the brain, one I’ve missed. My skin tingles and my thoughts warp in this leer, like a nic rush, only I haven’t had one of those in years and years.

I can’t exactly call what I’m feeling satisfaction. There’s no win to this. My teeth sunk into him so sweet last time, and the thrill of getting him, of tripping him up with his own desire, was almost as good as the actual feeling of him inside me. But it’s different now: so obvious, it’s funny. Though my first instinct is to doubt and pry apart, maybe want is the most trustworthy thing a person can feel. It’s animal and instinctive, and it’s inevitable, so it’s always true. Ugly, sometimes, but always there. There’s no room to question his want, because I can taste it on his tongue, I can feel it pressing over my stomach, I can hear it in the way he hums at the sear of my skin.

It must be a favour to me: the blatancy of it all. For however direct he may be, I’ve always felt that Rust has these plans within plans. Nothing is as it is on the surface: you have to dig to get to the good stuff. It’s disorienting, having it all laid out for me. And I’ll take anything he gives me.

I don’t want to leave any room for doubt in his mind either.

So, I clutch at him hungrily, so drunk on his warmth, and thump my back against the door he opens for me to close it again.

I don’t ask, and I’m glad that he doesn’t make me, only presses my body flush against the cool surface of his side-door, until the only part of me free to move are the fingers that curl over his arms, as if they could sink through the fabric and then the flesh underneath. There’s only dogs and ghosts out at this hour, anyway; eyes in the long-grass. No-one but them and him to see my hips jerk against the precise hand under my skirt.

He hadn’t looked at me this much before. Even when my eyes go glassy and I have to blink hard to try and regain my smarts, to not finish too quickly, I know he’s staring at me like a scientist.

When the next needy noise is drawn from me, I bury my face into his neck to save myself the embarrassment of being seen like this, even though it’s pointless. His fingers are dragging aside the damp fabric of my underwear anyway, sliding through my silky desire. When his knee shoves between my legs to keep apart, he changes the pressure of his hand, circles tightly over where shame does not apply. Restraint is a man-made practice that never prevails over biology. I should know this. Still, though, my face is hot as I whine into his shoulder.

Rust doesn’t ask me to look at him, not yet, and I’m so grateful for it. I bite into the meat of him at the push of one finger, then keen all the way to my toes at the hook of two, rocking against his palm thoughtlessly as he fucks the both of them in deep.

The clink of his belt buckle barely processes through the smoke of sticky eyes and open mouths and the press of his body. But the absence of his hand from my hip, of it working between us?—that’s what ushers normal sensation back into me. I recover from the limp slump against him, but not quickly enough to understand or resist him guiding my hand to wrap around his swollen cock, coated with spit.

He grunts as he tightens my grip around him, coaxes my hand how he wants it. In the back of my mind, though, of course I remember. Only, his fingers are so far inside that my head is spinning, teetering on the precipice of another thought I know I’ll lose, one that dissolves at the slight scrape of nail, one that would never matter as much as the soft then firm press of him against my cervix. My eyes water, and there licking at me is only a faint, abstract impression of embarrassment when Rust grips over my jaw, calloused heel of his palm heavy on my neck, and hauls me away from the hiding spaces of his body’s crevices.

“What, you fuckin’ shy now? You wanted it, so look,” he mumbles, digging his fingers into the soft parts of my face a little more, like there’s some hidden button beneath the surface that can make my droopy eyes fly back open. There must be because, somehow, it works. He angles my face by the scruff of my neck.

I can only stand to look between us for a few jumpy heartbeats before my eyes settle on the comfort of his even face, which he seems to accept readily, breath hitching. He does not blink. The intensity of his observations hounds me, lights me up like points on a star, even when my vision smears and melts at the dizzying curl of his fingers. Lucky for my weak knees he’s got his hand over the nape of my neck, his thighs pinning my own. I shake against him, some pathetic thing, and tremble when he keeps massaging there deep inside.

“Don’t go dumb on me, girl,” Rust scolds quietly when my hand loosens around him, his own having to leave the heat of my neck and come down to correct the pressure, the pull. My head lolls without the support of his hand. “Ain’t gon’ say nothin’?”

Words spill uselessly into a pool before me, slipping through my fingers. My pulse slams in my throat, lower, too, against his touch, each beat meeting him as he works me over again.

What I manage is a choked noise, all clogged up inside. I have little to do with it: just a body, a heartbeat and a compulsion to be near, nearer, nearest to him. Half a mind that’s lagging worse than the computers at work, that realises far too late that the body is curling into itself again, so tight, so wet, and fuck, fuck.

He removes his fingers, that slow drag, and tells me to turn. When I don’t—completely without, dull and aching—Rust twists and shoves me against the window, which goes cloudy at the breathy moan pushed up from my slack stomach.

Slow-like, a cold hand snakes under my shirt, smooths up my burning spine, all the way up, all the way down, hooking in the waistband of my skirt, knuckles burrowing into the soft dimples in my back. My whole body shivers as he slides his palm over the back of my neck—a comfort for which I’m desperate to become familiar—and squeezes gently. If I keep my eyes open, all I can see of him is that black silhouette in the window, a reflection. A homogenous mass, humming at the edges, devoid of the detail of things: can’t see the way he drags his thumb up along the line of my spine, traces where it meets the skull; nor the way he steps forward, teases the air out of my lungs, enjoys it, tugs my hips closer to him by the gusset of the underwear webbed between my thighs; nor the way the cool metal buckle presses red lines into flesh.

The sight of Rust doesn’t matter so much as the understanding that it’s him behind me, that it’s his truck my cheek is being pressed into, that it’s his—fuck—that it’s him sliding through the heat of me, so close. The tip notches and makes it all the easier for my eyes to flutter shut. It helps with the vertigo that follows the rough push of him inside.

My fingers grasp for the little ridges in the door. Best place for them ends up to be under my mouth, though, to keep my head on my shoulders, to muffle the noises I was sure only animals made. My knee jerks sharply against the truck at the first white-hot pulse of pleasure – I hiss, smearing the drool at the edge of my mouth with the back of my hand, so glad he isn’t in clear enough line of sight to chastise me with his tendency to notice and never forget.

But he knows—he must fucking know by now—because the heavy hand clasped over my scruff curls around my face, and Rust forces two fingers into my parted mouth, presses over my soft tongue.

He pulls himself out just to feel the total length of me taking him again, so painfully slow. Feel the initial resistance, the spongy give, the sweet slip, the drag, all of it. So full, I feel sick with it. Overindulgence. Knocks me weak, doesn’t mind it when I bite down on his fingers to take most of the weight out of my sob. What I take from him, he takes from me—we’re even that way—so Rust, already with his nose flirting with the crook of my sweaty neck, nips over my erratic pulse, pushes his tongue over where I’m sure he can see the skin throbbing with the violence of it. Vampire. He could draw blood and I wouldn’t mind: he knows I need bloodletting.

So fucking dumb to think for a second it could be sated by just one time. I needed it again before it even ended – I knew it in the split second he touched me. The grief of closure was as adamant as a shadow. Stupid. He must think it, too, because, shit, the snap of his hips is mean. Punishment: you should’ve known.

“We ought’a be in your bed. I should be fuckin’ you through your bed,” he complains gruffly, his mouth dragging over hinge of my jaw.

I moan around the fingers in my mouth, which hook together with his thumb to pinch the fleshy inside of my cheek, challenging my lost focus. No matter. There’s nothing we can do now.

The seize of my body doesn’t take him by surprise at all, not that I expected it to, and the words that follow are easy, like he’s been thinkin’ of them as loud and clear as day as it would be to speak ‘em: “Shit, that feels good, sweet girl, huh? Tha’s it, just take it. That’s good.” And he lets the warmth gush out before stuffing it back in. “You’ll take one more.”

I stare at the endless field to the side of us, melted over the curve of his door, shivering despite the humidity that always finds you around here. I choke more on my own tongue than his fingers as Rust fucks me slow, like I deserve it.

“Need it s’bad, huh?” he drawls into the shell of my ear. “Why you gone all quiet on me, baby?—thought y’wanted it.”

He drags his fingers out of my mouth, daring me to speak. He slides his hand between my stomach and the side-door, gliding down between the thighs, smearing my dripping arousal over the skin.

My toes curl tight again as he pushes deeper than before, sits there like he knows my mind will do the rest of the work. The grate of his zipper as he shifts draws a mangled sound from the pit of me, not hidden by the brace of my trembling arm.

He zeros in on my clit, all sticky, and circles tight. I shudder.

“Give in,” he says to me in a voice so low and soft that it barely reaches me above the high frequency splitting through my skull. He rolls that bright pearl between his finger and thumb. “You feel it?”

Mindless and eyes all milky, I still manage a nod, grateful for the mean pin of his knees against my shaking thighs.

He hums. “So give in.”

Fuck, this is absurd. The mind can just about string two and two together when Rust lends a forearm beside my head for me to rest on, to grip over: so he’s pictured this, wanted this, for how long? I knew the stagnancy was a front, swallowed something else, but—my mouth goes wet and slack over his forearm at the languid roll of his hips—but it wasn’t realistic to imagine it was this. Rust struck me as someone incapable of reconciling himself with his wants. Shame over acceptance because he thinks it’s atonement. Should’ve known better than to think Rust believed in redemption.

The silhouette in the window is looking over the empty road, scanning for cars that won’t ever come—but his hand is warm under the tent of my shirt, easing over my waist, slow, as everything clamps up, trembling, again. Body and a heartbeat, he tugs my hips back to him, again and again, until he’s a hot, shuddering line all through me, face in my neck, crushing the fight out of my lungs.

His nose presses over my cheek, and his breath is coarse there, too, panting, when he lifts his heavy head. My throat goes so loose and open, greedily drinking in the sweet-sticky scent of him.

“C’mon, now,” he says to me once he’s pulled my underwear back up, dragging the cool, damp gusset against the mess of me for good measure. He pinches my hip, then over my thigh, like that might get me to quit shuddering. “Time to go.”

When I don’t move, he smooths a hand gently over my hair. Tucks a loose chunk of it back into the mess of my braid before deciding it’s best if he lets it loose completely.

Rust winds down the window as he holds open the door for me to clamber onto the bench.

“Y’can sleep ‘f you want,” he mumbles once he’s got me curled up on the seat, leaning through the frame. He tilts his head – the shadows have always hidden his eyes, but I like how the pinch in his brow has melted away at least.

If I had half a mind, I’d use it to shove his face out my goddamn way. Instead, I settle for the narrowing of my eyes and a decided huff. “Won’t.”

Lie. I fall asleep like anything, mellowed by the sweet rush of wind over marshland, the spirit of it weaving inside, and the weight of Rust’s hand tucked in the tight bend of my knee.

#rust cohle #rust cohle x reader #true detective season 1 #rust cohle x reader smut #the idler wheel td #marty hart #true detective #i want to [redacted] his [redacted] until he [redacted] all over-#who said that #female manipulator doesn’t need to manipulate in this one??? crayzay #fic is basically them talking but im hoping ive been accidentally super introspective and deep #her vibe is like mannnn i have to make this guy love me #and his is like girl you don’t have to try I literally already do #i know it’s 15K but i swear it feels shorter if you get into it #got #whatever #only took me a year 😃#fucking finally

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fraugwinska · 8 months ago

Note

What about the reader found and old radio, they thought the radio was broken but it's not, it's just antique.. when they play it at night time alastor broadcast was heard first they feel something is odd.. but they love to listen to his voice, heck they even like talking to each other, because of this encounter alastor talk about it to rosie, she was happy hearing alastor telling her stories but she feel odd when alastor mention that the person he talks to is a human, Rosie giving him advice to not fall for human because they're different species, and it will make him weak etc.

Alastor feel guilty and agree with rosie advice so he's stop contacting the reader from the radio, he thinks that the reader will be fine but no the reader take it personally.. they thought alastor don't want to talk to them anymore.. it drive them mad and lead to suicide..

So yeah angst :D

Oh Anon. What have you done.

I cried while I wrote that - it took two very good friends of mine to encourage me to post it (Thanks to @macabr3-barbi3 and @mysterypotatoink). But I think it's tragic and beautiful, and honestly - I'm kinda proud of it!

TW: Psychological Trauma, descend into madness, loss of self care and suicide - please take care of yourself and do not read if you aren't comfortable with any of the mentioned! MINORS DNI

Here we go.

❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️🦌❤️

Leap of Faith

You carried in the last box from you banged-up minivan. The old thing barely made it to your new home. A little cabin in the outskirts of New Orleans, a little off the grid and surrounded by the peaceful and whirring bayous of Louisiana.

A fixer-upper, just like yourself.

The online auction had intrigued you the second you found it, the photos were a bit blurry and you knew it was a risk to buy a place you've never set foot in, but something in you called you to get it. The price you paid was laughable, barely making a dent in your savings. Moving states sounded scary and impossible, but you felt oddly calm about it.

You didn't have a lot of stuff to move anyway. After all, you only lived with your late grandmother, and she never really cared for material things. Your parents left you at her doorstep, never to be seen again.

Caring for her in her last, sickness-ridden years had been a no-brainer - it felt like nothing in comparison to all she had done for you - but it also had been a bit lonely.

You had your friends, if you could even call them that, but you rarely saw them - guiding your nan through the last months of her life had been demanding and time-consuming. It had left you exhausted and emotionally unavailable, and after a while, calls and texts ceased, until it was just you and her. You felt lost, as if the world was slowly pulling away from you.

When she finally died, peacefully in her sleep, you felt sad, relieved and drained.

Detached from the city you lived in.

Lost.

So you decided to sell what little you inherited, except for a few sentimental mementos, and move away from it all. To start a new life, a happier one, finally one that was truly your own.

You took the final box inside, setting it on the coffee table and wiped the sweat from your brow. You looked around the little cabin: The roof had some spots that needed a patch, and the wood floors were a bit warped, but it was all yours. No more having to share anything with anyone.

The cabin came furnished, a lot of the stuff was old, but still usable. You figured that would change once you settled in and had a vision of what you wanted and needed to buy. The thought of thinking about no one but yourself made you nervous.

But a little excited, too.

The old furniture would do for the moment, but there was a particular piece that caught your eye: an old, vintage cathedral radio, sitting nestled in between a cracked wooden box and a tarnished, bronze candle holder in a bookcase that was a bit out of place in the tiny space. With a tilted head, you stepped closer to inspect it, drawn to it by it's unique character and beauty.

It looked as well-loved as it looked well-used, the mahogany a bit scuffed, the knobs a little worn from years of being turned. But there were golden details etched into the front, and you traced them lightly with a finger, strangely touched and intrigued.

You were certain the old thing didn't work, but when you plugged it into the nearby socket, static erupted from the speakers, making you jump back. You had to smile, though.

Tonight, you wouldn't be alone. You'd have this little device and a little music for good company.

***

"I'm home!" you announced to no one in particular, as you closed the door behind you, your hands full with overfilled grocery bags full of necessities, waiting to fill your empty cabinets.

The day had been hot, but a welcome breeze of the impending night break cooled the inside of your little cabin a bit. With a quiet grunt you set the paper bags down at the small kitchenette. Your groceries were quickly dispersed, and you put on an apron you saved from your grandmother as you got started on dinner.

You hummed as you cut vegetables and boiled water. It had been a long time since you had cooked, really cooked, your nan wasn't much for eating and had no problem living off of simple soups and toast. When you opened your fridge to get some butter, your glance fell onto the radio.

A little music would be nice, you decided, and you walked over, cleaning your hands on the red, frilly cloth around your waist before you turned the dial. The soft sound of static made you hum in contempt - yup. Still works. A little turn to the left, and the room was filled with a soft jazzy tune, the melody a bit grainy, but you didn't mind that at all. You returned to the stove, swaying your hips to the beat as you worked. The music made you feel at ease, and for a moment, the world seemed to be just right.

Just as the onions began to brown in the pan, the song faded out to a voice. You turned your head to the radio, intrigued by the unusual, eccentric accent of the host. It reminded you of the old, vintage films and recordings your grandmother had been fond of - wasn't it called 'transatlantic'?. Whatever it was, it made you smile.

"Now wasn't that a kick in the head, dearest listener? I sure hope you enjoyed the little musical interlude, but it's time to return to the real show! As usual, my name is Alastor, and you are listening to the best jazz, blues and swing music that Hell has to offer!"

You blinked, a little puzzled and yet amused. "Sure is hot as hell today, strange man in the radio.", you mumbled, chuckling as you stirred the bell peppers under the caramelized onions.

"Today we have a very special guest joining my humble broadcast, it seems. Pleasure to meet you, darling, quite the pleasure!"

"Oh who? Me?" you asked, looking theatrically over your shoulder with batted lashes, shaking your head over your own silliness. You weren't used to talking out loud to yourself, or even really thinking out loud. You were always alone, after all, but the little pretend-play was fun. You laughed a bit, waiting for the host's guest to speak.

"Of course you, little dove. Who else would I mean?"

You gasped, and nearly dropped the spoon as you whipped around, eyes glued to the humming, orange glow of the radio in the dim darkness of your living room.

"What's that? You're surprised, my dear? Don't worry, you're not the only one! This is a first for me, too. Never had a human join my program. I must say, I'm quite intrigued! Tell me, what is your name?"

Your eyes grew wide, and the hairs at the back of your neck stood up. You took a hesitant step backwards and hit the hot stove, making you curse under your breath. Was the heat finally getting to you?

"Don't be shy now, darling. I'm not gonna hurt you, cross my lil' old, blackened heart."

"I-I'm..." you began, swallowing as your fingers tightened around the wooden spoon. "My name is..."

"Yes?"

"I'm... crazy.", you mumbled, rubbing a hand over your face and chuckling a bit. You were just going insane, that's all. Must be the stress, combined with the intense heat. And lack of a companion, a tiny voice reminded you. Yes. Must be.

"Hello crazy, this is Alastor." The host laughed, together with a canned audience.

"Alastor...", you repeated, realization settling in - this wasn't a joke, or a trick of your mind.

"At your service, my dear.", the voice cooed. "Now, I believe you still owe me your name..."

***

You weren't crazy.

Or if you were, you didn't mind. Not with Alastor by your side - or, to be exact, in the radio on your bookcase.

After two weeks of ignoring the cursed radio after unplugging it in a wave of panic on your first night, your morbid curiosity got the better of you. You plugged it back in, and turned on the dial. Just once, you told yourself, then never ever again.

And that's how the two of you got in contact with each other once more. Alastor was as chipper as the first time you heard him, and after a bit of back-and-forth, he promised once again not to harm you, and you shared your name with him. The rest was history. He was very pleasant company. For a demon from hell.

You wouldn't classify the conversations you had with him as a real friendship in the beginning, but you did talk. Occasionally. Mostly in the evenings, when you cooked dinner: He'd ask you about your day and would pry eagerly for a little bit of gossip or new information about the modern New Orleans. When he let it slip that he lived in this very cabin in the 1920's, you weren't stopping with questions about what it was like back in his days, which he, in return, answered generously and enthusiastically.

The first few times he would try to coerce you into making a deal for your soul, casually sprinkling the offer into his small talk, but with enough blunt refusals and a few more days of radio silence (pun intended), he dropped the topic and seemed content on just talking. You, in return, found yourself relaxing into his charming company, your brain happily engaged with trying to wrap your head around him, or better, you tried to come to terms with it.

Weeks passed, and turning the radio on in the evenings became less of an occasional lapse of judgment but more of a routine you were looking forward to. You could tell the Alastor felt the same, his banter became less tense and acted, and a little more genuine.

It made your heart swell in happiness, that someone out there seemed to appreciate your company – even if that someone wasn't human.

Apprehension became amusement, and fascination became friendship. Oddly enough, you found common grounds in a lot of things: A love for cooking and good music. Preferring books over films. Red wine over white. A shared aversion of vulgarity, and appreciation for good manners.

Your nights were cut shorter and shorter, you would spend hours chatting on and on, until the deep darkness of night disappeared into a shade of blue on the horizon. Neither of you minded, at least that was what you thought. Alastor never ended the conversations with you. Either you had to say your goodbyes, or you would just fall asleep after hours of talking on your couch, and awake with a pained back to a shut-off radio. Then, after you'd realize that you would have a whole day ahead of you without hearing his voice, the loss would make your chest ache.

Two months into the 'thing', which was still a strange concept you could barely comprehend, the truth of the matter dawned on you: You liked him. Not just because he was a surprisingly amicable voice coming out of your vintage radio, a lively constant in the uneventful life you had made for yourself in Louisiana - he had become important to you, irreplaceable, even. An essential element to your life. You couldn't imagine how you'd gone so long without him, and yet, here you were, lost without him, scrambling through the hours until you could talk to him once more.

"Something on your mind, darling? You're awfully quiet today."

You held your fork and knife still above the salmon you had just been about to eat. It was the first meal of the evening in a long time where you weren't spending the entirety of the preparation time speaking to him, lost in thought about your blossoming feelings. He had gotten excellent at reading you like an open book - you should've gotten used to it after a couple of weeks of him catching on to every little change in your demeanor and knowing just what to say, when you were feeling happy, upset or nervous.

"Oh, um... no. It's nothing Al. Work had me in a wringer today."

"Is it your co-worker Susan again?" You could basically hear his eyes rolling, making you chuckle. "That name must be cursed, every single soul with that name is a menacing pain."

"Maybe,", you muttered, nibbling on a piece of the roasted fish. "This one is mostly just an ornery old bitch."

"Taking the words right out of my mouth, dear." he laughed.

There's was a comfortable pause, with just a gentle background noise of his ever-playing static and an easy, melodic tune coming from his program.

"Is that really all that preoccupies that pretty little head of yours?"

You blushed, picking at the food with your fork. "Bold for a guy who's never seen me to assume my head is pretty."

The radio crackled with pops and feedback. "Bold to assume I can't see you whenever I want, little dove." he said, his voice strangely deeper, tinged with something you didn't catch at the shock of his words.

"You... what?"

"And I can most assure you,", he purred out of the speakers, "pretty is a well fitting word to describe you."

He hummed in approval when your cheeks gained color, as if he knew his comment threw you off guard and made you turn a lovely shade of pink, but it didn't make it any less enticing.

***

"Alastor, if I didn't know better, I would say you have become smitten with this mysterious gal you're blabbing on and about."

Rosie giggled, hitting his shoulder in a playful, friendly swipe. "When will I meet her? Come on now, you can't hide her forever. Or are you afraid she'll like me better?"

She laughed, and Alastor forced a toothy grin. His long time friend was the only one he talked about you with, and he knew she was intrigued whenever she could smell a blooming dalliance, especially with a notoriously abstinent bachelor like himself. Normally, he would laugh at that thought with a healthy dose of mockery, but he found himself to be less and less aversed at the thought - if it would be you. Impossible, of course.

"Nonsense, Rosie dear, nonsense,", he chuckled, taking a large sip from his coffee cup, a heavy hand bringing up a plate stacked with finger sandwiches. "And I'm afraid you won't meet her for a long time, maybe never. Humans seldom traverse to hell in their lifetime, and who knows if the little darling will take on the trip downstairs?"

Rosie coughed in her tea, her blackened eyes wide in shock. "Human? It's a human girl you've been courting here? Oh, Alastor, you old fool."

Alastor scrunched his nose, "Talking, Rosie, talking is all we do. And yes, she's a human. I don't see the quandary in that. It's just a little fun."

"Well,", she huffed with a small, thoughtful frown. "I would've hoped for a little more sense in you." The tall demonesse set down her teacup with nimble fingers.

"You may not call it courting, but if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck, love." Rosie ignored the indignant look Alastor gave her. "You know as well as I do that such a connection is dangerous to entertain. Humans are fragile and fragile things tend to break. And when they do, the owner mostly follows. You need to break this connection off."

Rosie gave him a sad look as his ears flattened against his head. She would've been more than happy for her oldest and dearest friend to have a partner on his side, someone good and honest who really cared about him, maybe loved him even, as unlovable as he was. But she had to protect him from the silly idea of possibly falling for a living, breathing and supposedly untarnished soul, and the heartbreak that would surely follow. "Don't make the mistake of breaking your heart, dear friend." she smiled, a tint of melancholy hidden in the red of her lips.

"I think it's far too late for that."

She offered a handkerchief, but Alastor waved her off, his smile more faint and close to a frown than she's ever seen.

***

The first day where nothing but static noise came out of the radio, you were irritated but just thought: 'Maybe Alastor has something to do'.

The second day of static you grew concerned. 'What if something happened to Alastor? Was he okay?'.

On the third day, you were panicked. 'Maybe he doesn't want to talk to you anymore! Maybe he met someone in hell, someone that he could talk to whenever he wanted and not through an old, dusty radio?'.

"Please talk to me.", you whispered into the empty room. Your knees were pulled to your chest, and you sat on your couch, eyes fixed on the radio in the bookcase. Your eyes stung with the tears threatening to spill. "Please, Al. I miss you." You shook your head, chuckling sadly. It had only been 3 days, but they'd felt like an eternity. The world had seemed silent without Alastor's constant chatter.

When night fell for the fourth day, you were half asleep, eyes red and burning and tears still staining your cheeks. You talked for hours into the void of your house, the radio now moved to sit in front of you on the coffee table, growing more and more desperate as hours passed. Talking faded into pleading, and pleading into begging.

"Please, I'm sorry, if I did something wrong, I'm sorry...", you mumbled into the wooden furnishing, resting your cheek against the top of the machine, eyes slipping shut with fatigue and defeat. A dry sob slipped past your trembling lips, as your hands desperately grabbed the sides of the antique device.

"Alastor please, don't leave me alone here...", you whispered with the last of your strength, before your body succumbed to your exhaustion, your unconscious mind welcomed the darkness.

If you had stayed awake for just a moment more, you would've, maybe, heard the faint shuddering breath beyond the static rumble. But you didn't. So you had no chance at knowing that, Alastor, listening to every word, saw and heard you at your weakest, and all it did to him was stir the embers and give the blaze an opening for the flames of his anger at fate to rage.

Work had called, again. Susan of all people. Threats were made - either come back to work, or don't come back at all. You smashed your phone. It was useless anyway. What was the point without...

Alastor wasn't here, hadn't answered for seven days now. And you had spent the whole time talking, begging him to show himself, just show himself and tell you what you did wrong, just talk to you one last time and then you'd stop, if that was what he wanted. You became obsessed with the orange light of the illuminated screen, imagining the flickers were maybe signs from him.

You stopped eating, stopped drinking, stopped almost anything, you just sat, in front of the radio, unmoving and unwilling to miss the smallest sign of his return.

Every single minute stretched into agony, and every breath that left your lips made a fresh tear roll down your paling cheeks, until your body couldn't produce them anymore. Then, you cried wordless whimpers and moans, even started praying to an unknown entity.

It wasn't as if Alastor owed you anything. It's not as though you thought the two of you were anything other than two kindred souls, one human, one demon, talking to each other. As a result, it wasn't like you had the right to anything from him.

It was strange to consider the connection the two of you shared: Something more than acquaintances, something closer than friends, and yet never fully crossing the line beyond it. The unpenetrable boundary dividing life and death in between.

Your eyes fell on a large, old crucifix on your wall, staring back at you with pity.

For the first time in days, you left the sofa, took it from the wall and burned it on your gas stove, watching the face of the nailed figurine slowly melt in the fire.

***

It had been eight days of excruciating, one-sided silence.

Eight days Alastor cursed his cowardice as he sat, red eyed with claws digging into his scalp, as he listened to you plead for him to talk - To answer. To do anything. Anything, but leave you alone, he heard, as if the words were spoken right in his ear.

Eight days of watching you slowly detriment from the eyes of the shadows he was able to manifest above, tugging on the very fabric of the world to move you, to keep your mind from going where it shouldn't go.

He kept telling himself it was for the better. His shadows murmured persistent reminders that he should find entertainment in your growing lunacy. He was the radio demon, after all. He shouldn't care if this wisp of a human were to perish, should laugh at your wails of agony and despair.

But Alastor never felt less like laughing. Your dried sobs and pained apologies for things you never did wrong in the first place filled his head, taunting and gnawing on him with feelings he thought he was unable to feel: Guilt and Regret.

It was as Rosie had predicted - he was becoming weak. But weakness was something that should be avoided. Had to be. He knew. Being weak, being feeble, would make him vulnerable, make him into the prey his cruel from already portrayed to the world he had to inherit. He couldn't allow it. Couldn't let his feelings for you bring him down to the levels of the sinners in hell he would tear apart and laugh while he did it.

That's why he stayed silent. Endured it, all of it, every word, cry and plea. Stayed invisible and silent, waiting for you to move on, forget him, shut off and leave the radio, never to turn the dial again. For your sake and his.

When the connection broke, on that eight day, Alastor could feel your resignation, your peace with which your pale hands gripped the electrical cord at it's base to pull. And he was suddenly filled with the awareness of something horrible, like a premonition. It set his already battered, aching heart in an ice cold grasp of dread.

His room exploded in green light as he expanded into his full demonic form, his limbs threatening to pull and burst at the stitches and his smile splitting his face almost entirely in half. He had to reach out, had to reform the connection to the radio one last time, even though nearly impossible.

You were about to do something he would never be able to forgive himself for.

***

Your car broke down just where it needed to. You took the radio out of the trunk, knocking the hood two times for a goodbye, the key safely in the ignition. Maybe some other poor soul would find and repair it, make happier memories with it.

You clutched the wooden device closer and started to walk. Indigo blue faded into black as you looked up to the sky that was sprinkled with glowing, shimmering silver dust, stars blinking in the unimaginable distance. There, but out of reach.

Just like him.

Your dry sob stung in your throat, but you didn't really feel the pain. Your eyes were fixed on the path to your final destination, right in front of you.

The Crescent City Connection Bridge was mostly abandoned by traffic at this time of night and provided just enough covered spaces to hide you from some foolish saviors eyes.

You didn't need to be saved.

You didn't want to be saved.

Because you were about to save yourself.

There was nothing waiting for you in the other direction than the one you were going. So, with slow but steady steps, you walked towards the middle of the bridge, settling on a place next to a metal pillar and looked over the railing onto the shimmering waters of the Mississippi River.

Alastor had told you about the river, how he loved to watch the steam boats floating on it from the radio station where he worked at when he was alive. The station was long gone, you didn't even find out where it had been in the first place, but you liked to imagine that you were looking at the same scenery now that he had been looking at when he peered out of his booth in his radio tower.

It made you smile through the tears... You were glad the end was somehow connected to him, even if it was most likely just your naive imagination.

It felt like the device in your arms was emitting static energy, prickling over your arms, hands and fingers as you caressed the mahogany wood gently, feeling as though the radio was shaking in your hands, trying to pull you back from the fenced ledge.

A quiet sob escaped your lips, turning into a giggle and into hysterical laughter. You sat down between the railing, and hugged the radio close, trying to breathe as you closed your eyes, resting your temple on the worn, warm wood.

"It'll be okay, Al.", you said quietly, your voice unnaturally hoarse and rough from lack of use and dehydration. "I'm coming. I'm coming to you.”

With one arm around the radio, holding it tight against your chest, you turned to stand on shaky legs, gripping the railing with one arm and, with one final glance at the stars above you you smiled. You heard sirens in the distance, and some people shouting from a sparkling streamliner passing under the bridge. Time was running short, so you didn't wait to put first one foot over the fence, then the other, taking a deep breath.

"I guess doves were always meant to fly."

And, with that, your body twisted, turned and leaped, falling as the light on the radio, firmly pressed against your heart, began to glow in deepest crimson and swirls of green.

Falling like an angel would descend from grace.

Part 2 for closure

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #alastor #alastor x reader #hazbin hotel fanfiction #fraugwinskawrites #angst #trigger warnings #minors d #minors don't look #minors dont touch #yes I'm crying #you're crying too #we all cry here #no judgement #quickf #quickfic

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