#please share this it has such... low low reception

[mydearestbeloved]

Chapter 4 [Draft]

Sung Jinwoo/Trial Player!Reader

CW: All hail severely traumatized Reader, Part 2 (or is it 3? 4??)

Inspired by @circeyoru ‘s “Future Power Couple”

[Masterlist🦋✨️]

On quiet evenings, after closing the shop, you’d sit in the dim light with your butterflies swirling around you, thinking of him. Jinwoo had grown older in these passing years, but he was still in the shadow of what was yet to come, the trials he’d face, the burdens he’d bear. You’d send a butterfly to always be with him, only occasionally checking in on him, respecting his boundaries even if he didn’t know it.

Just for a moment—a quick glance into his world was enough.

When Jinwoo first registered as a hunter, you had already braced yourself for this moment. The person you had watched in glimpses through the pages, from, the safety of your domain, and later from the shadows of Seoul, was finally stepping into a life that would soon be fraught with peril. You were determined to help him, even if only in ways that were subtle, hidden beneath the surface of his everyday struggles.

As long as the system did not forbid you, you would help him however you could. And perhaps, every small act was your rebellion.

---

It started with the hospital bills. You remembered the pitiful amount of money Jinwoo would scrape together after risking his life in dungeons, just to keep his mother’s medical care afloat. You couldn’t bear to watch it unfold like it did in the story, not when you had the means to help.

You watched him in the hallway of the hospital one day, standing before the reception desk with his head bowed, his fingers trembling as he pulled out a thin stack of cash.

“I-I’m sorry, Miss. This is all the money I can scrape by…” His voice was low, filled with both hope and shame.

The receptionist, a middle-aged woman with kind eyes, was holding back a sigh when suddenly, her computer pinged with a notification. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Good news, Hunter Sung!” she exclaimed, her tone brightening. “With this amount, plus some unexpected anonymous donations, yours and your mother’s hospital bills are covered for the time being.”

“What?” Jinwoo blinked, visibly stunned. “But I didn’t—”

“Oh! And I’m glad to inform you that your mother’s complexion has improved slightly in the last few weeks.” She smiled warmly. “The specialists believe it’s a good sign.”

Jinwoo’s mouth opened and closed, clearly bewildered. “Huh? No, wait, that’s… that’s great, but—”

In your hidden corner outside the hospital, you giggled softly to yourself, covering your mouth with a hand as you watched through your butterfly’s eyes. The tiny creature perched delicately on the windowsill, relaying every flicker of emotion on Jinwoo’s face back to you.

Perched on your shoulder was another small butterfly, its tiny wings beating quietly, the faint residual glow of it, the one you’d tasked with easing his mother’s pain whenever it could, flickered beside your ear.

“I hope you can feel a bit more at ease, Jinwoo,” you whispered to yourself. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”

---

Later that week, you left another package at his door. It had become a small ritual of sorts—every now and then, you’d make a meal for him and his sister. The recipes were simple, but you took care with each one, carefully wrapping each dish to keep it warm.

“Brother, did you order takeout again?” Jinah’s voice carried through the door as she opened it, her face lighting up at the sight of the package. “Huh? No, I didn’t.”

“Whoa! This smells more delicious than the last one.” Jinah’s eyes sparkled as she inspected the food, excitement clear in her voice.

You smiled, pleased. This time, you’d made a little extra, something from your own world—a dish that you remembered from home, a comfort food you’d grown up with. For some reason, it felt right to share it with them, hoping it would bring a small sense of peace to Jinwoo’s chaotic life.

Jinwoo stepped closer, frowning slightly as he eyed the package. “Jinah, don’t open it! What if this is someone else’s—”

“Hmm? Jinwoo! Look at this!” Jinah held up the small card you’d tucked inside, her grin widening as she noticed the handwriting: For strength and courage. Keep going.

Jinwoo blinked, his eyes lingering on the card, and you felt your heart tighten. You’d also left something else this time—a pair of twin daggers, crafted with care, designed to suit his grip and his unique fighting style. You’d poured a bit of your magic into the blades, imbuing them with a subtle strength you hoped would last him longer in dungeons.

Carefully crafted, the daggers gleamed in the dim light, their handles a smooth black etched with faint traces of silver. It was subtle, but you’d placed a small sigil of protection on each blade—a silent promise to keep him safe, even from afar.

Jinah’s gaze darted between the food and the daggers, her expression one of confusion and awe. “Who keeps sending this stuff, Jinwoo? Are they some kind of guardian angel?”

Jinwoo shook his head, still staring at the daggers. “I… don’t know,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked at the card again, as if trying to piece together a puzzle that had no answer.

From where you watched, you pressed your fingers to your lips, hoping they’d never figure it out. The anonymity felt like a shield, keeping you from the vulnerability of facing him directly. It allowed you to be there for him without the risk of him ever seeing the scars that haunted you—the scars of the battles you hadn’t been able to fight for him.

---

But there were moments when you could not simply leave gifts behind. Moments where the stakes were far too high, and you found yourself breaking the rules you had set for yourself. One of those times was during a particularly dangerous raid where Jinwoo had been injured, caught off-guard by a sudden ambush.

You found him bleeding out in an abandoned corner of the dungeon, unconscious and pale, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Panic surged through you as you cloaked the area with your butterflies’ illusion magic, hiding you both from the other hunters scrambling to escape.

“Hey… Jinwoo…” Your voice trembled as you knelt beside him, your hands hovering uncertainly over his torn shirt, slick with blood. You could barely see through the tears blurring your vision. “Stay with me.”

You pressed your hands to his wound, feeling the warmth of his blood soak into your fingers. Healing him was a delicate balance; you had to hold back most of your power, keeping it just within the boundaries that the system would tolerate The warmth of your power seeped into his skin, mending the torn muscle and stitching the wounds closed.

“You’re going to be okay…” you whispered, your voice barely above a breath.

He grimaced slightly, even in his unconscious state, as though still fighting an invisible battle. His brows were furrowed, and you could see the remnants of pain etched into his expression.

Unable to stop yourself, you began to hum softly—a lullaby from your original world, a song you’d heard countless times. The sound filled the silence around you, mingling with the gentle flutter of your butterflies as they circled, their wings casting soft shadows over the two of you. You weren’t even sure if he could hear it, but you hoped it would bring some comfort. His pained expression gradually softened, his breathing steadying, his body growing still as he drifted into a peaceful sleep.

“You will be okay,” you whispered, your voice barely audible over the fluttering wings of your butterflies. Leaning forward, you pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to his forehead, ignoring the taste of sweat and blood on your lips. “I promise.”

You stayed there for as long as you dared, your butterflies encircling you both in a protective sphere. But eventually, the system's warnings began to flash, and you were forced to retreat. The moment you pulled back, you could feel the invisible barrier forcing you away, like a cruel reminder of your place. You were not meant to interfere directly, not in the way you so desperately wished.

As you vanished into the shadows, Jinwoo stirred, his eyelids fluttering open sleepily. A faint scent of flowers lingering in the air.

The soft glow of a single butterfly disappearing into the darkness.

---

You knew it was only a matter of time before Jinwoo’s sharp instincts would catch on. He had always been sharp, even before his strength grew. He had a way of noticing things, piecing together the small details others missed. Sometimes you wondered if he already suspected there was someone watching over him—a nameless guardian who left behind no trace.

For his sake, you hoped he wouldn’t. There was too much you couldn’t tell him, too many secrets that weighed heavy on your heart. You couldn’t let him find you. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. The scars left behind from your previous failures were still too fresh, too deep. You couldn't face him—not with the knowledge of everything you failed to prevent.

A red butterfly fluttered back to your shoulder, nestling close as if sensing your inner turmoil. You reached up, brushing a gentle finger over its wings, a silent promise.

For now, it was enough to watch him from afar, to slip into his life like a fleeting shadow, offering what little comfort and aid you could. For Sung Jinwoo, the lonely hero you once admired on the pages of a story, being beside him—even unseen, even in secret—was more than enough.

Because loving him like this, in silence and secrecy, was the only way you knew how.

-----

The dungeon gate loomed ominously in front of you, shrouded in an aura of terror. Every hunter that passed by gave it a wary glance, a sense of unease clinging to their skin. But for you, standing alone on the empty, desolate street outside the gate, it was more than just unease.

You knew what was happening on the other side of that barrier.

You knew exactly why Sung Jinwoo had gone in there, why he was fighting against forces he had no chance against, and, worse, you knew how the story was supposed to go.

Even if you wanted to save him, you couldn’t.

As you paced in the shadows, a biting frustration gnawed at you, tugging on your every nerve. The system had raised another invisible barrier around the gate, one specifically designed to keep you out. This was a repeat, you knew, yet you had tried pushing against it just like the first time, pounding your fists in desperation, hoping that it would somehow let you through if only you pleaded enough.

But like every single time, the system never relented. The message that flashed in front of your eyes had been clear, cold, and unyielding:

[Warning: You cannot interfere with the designated player’s progression.]

So all you could do was wait. Hours passed, the world seeming to stretch unbearably as you lingered on the edge, senses on high alert. Finally, when the gate shimmered and disappeared, you bolted forward, cloaking yourself with an illusory skill the moment you felt the barrier lift.

Without hesitation, you sprinted into the dungeon.

The first sight of the bloodstained stone walls, the broken weapons and armor littered across the ground, nearly brought bile to your throat. And at the center of it all, lying on the cold stone altar, was Jinwoo, blood pooling beneath him. His once gentle features were twisted with pain, his usually alert eyes closed, his breathing almost nonexistent.

Your heart pounded in your chest, raw terror surging through you as you stumbled forward, nearly dropping to your knees beside him. Your hands trembled as you summoned your healing power, a soft glow flickering to life in your palms as you placed them gently over his wounds.

“Jinwoo…” The name slipped from your lips, an agonized whisper.

It took every ounce of willpower not to let your emotions take control. You wanted nothing more than to pour every bit of your strength into him, to erase the pain and blood, to make him whole again. But something held you back—a quiet, persistent instinct that reminded you of your own limitations here. This was a pivotal moment in his story, the beginning of everything that was to come. If you pushed too far, you knew you’d be punished for it in ways you couldn’t predict.

Instead, you focused on his face, gently wiping away the blood from his brow as you healed the worst of his injuries. The faintest hint of warmth returned to his skin, his breathing evening out, and you felt a trickle of relief flow through you.

“You’ll be okay… Just a bit longer,” you murmured, hoping your words would somehow reach him, even in the unconsciousness of his slumber.

---

Hours later, you watched silently from afar as Jinwoo was admitted to the hospital. Nurses and doctors bustled around him, wheeling him through corridors and hooking him up to machines to monitor his vitals. You should have felt some sense of peace, of reassurance, knowing he was in good hands, but instead, a strange emptiness gnawed at you.

As soon as the doctors left his side, you sent one of your butterflies to hover just above him, invisible to any onlookers. Through its eyes, you watched him sleep, his face pale yet calm. If only he could see the world through your eyes, how much you wanted to protect him from every shadow and danger.

For days, you visited Jinwoo in the hospital, bringing supplies when the nurses weren’t looking, leaving small offerings—potions, enchanted items, all hidden from sight. You spent countless hours just sitting nearby, willing his pain away.

But after those days of endless vigil, your system did something you hadn’t expected: it simply… vanished. No messages, no reminders, no missions or updates. It was as if it had been swept away, a silent farewell. But somehow, you couldn’t believe that was all there was to it. The system you knew—the one that felt almost…alive—would have left something, some kind of parting message. But there was nothing.

Yet even as the ache in your heart grew sharper, you took comfort in the fact that your powers, and the tiny butterfly summons, your children, remained at your side. The system’s absence didn’t change the duty you felt in your heart.

---

Of course, the only thing the system left behind was the now near-permanent barrier.

You felt your own helplessness all over again when Jinwoo entered the penalty zone, struggling to survive against waves of merciless monsters. All you could do was watch, silently cheering him on as he fought his way through it, determination blazing in his eyes. You knew this was the beginning, the spark that would ignite his growth. But still, it was agonizing to stand by, unable to intervene, unable to help.

Days later, when he took on his first solo hunt in an instant dungeon, you lingered nearby. Observing every movement, every struggle, every victory. You smiled with pride as each time he struck down a monster.

And then there came the time he met Yoo Jinho. The memory of that dungeon still sent a chill down your spine. Jinwoo and Jinho, left for dead by Hwang Dongsok and his squad, and then watching the two of them nearly get slaughtered had you gripping the edges of your seat. You could feel admiration as much as your heart shatter as Jinwoo stood over the bodies, his gaze cold and unyielding. The spark of his innocence was dimming, replaced by a hardened resolve.

“Jinwoo…” You whispered his name as you watched him, clutching your chest as a wave of sadness washed over you. He was changing, evolving, becoming stronger, but at what cost? Each time Jinwoo took a life or fought in the dungeons, you felt your heart ache for him. He was growing stronger, yes, but he was also losing pieces of himself along the way.

You mourned for the innocence he left behind. Yet, you knew this was necessary. You reminded yourself of this, over and over.

---

Every time he stepped into danger, every time he took a blow, you felt the echo of his pain in your own chest. You watched him fight Kerberos, your hands clenched into fists as he took hit after hit, barely surviving. And yet, through it all, he pushed forward, as relentless as ever, Each injury he sustained sent you pacing around the Gardens, your butterflies fluttering around you, trying in vain to calm your worry.

Even when Jinwoo joined Jinho to clear various C-rank gates, you remained his unseen guardian, watching from afar with a bittersweet smile. He was getting stronger. He was closer to becoming the hero you admired—no, loved—from the pages of your old world.

---

And then, the job change quest arrived.

You watched with anticipation as he ventured into the ancient halls, his eyes sharp, his movements cautious. The moment he met Igris, you had been waiting for this moment for what felt like lifetimes. You watched him take on Igris with every ounce of power he possessed, watching with bated breath as Jinwoo faced the trials set before him.

And finally, the words you had been waiting for echoed through the temple, sending shivers down your spine.

“Arise.”

The power resonated in his voice, a command filled with strength and authority. You nearly squealed, couldn’t hold back the grin that spread across your face as you watched the first shadow rise at his command.

Watching him gain his Shadow Extraction skill felt like watching a dream come to life. This was the moment you had waited for, the turning point that would set Jinwoo on the path to becoming the Shadow Monarch. He had come so far, and you had seen every step of his journey unfold before your eyes.

As you gazed at him from afar, smile still tugging at your lips. This, you thought, is enough.

Being able to watch him grow, to see him become the hero you admired, was enough. Just knowing that he was okay—that he was stronger than ever—was all you needed.

End Note:

Unedited Draft of [010/10/2024] - Goodbye

[chronically-ghosted]

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

chapter rating: T

word count: ~25K

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

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

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

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

part ii:

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

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

crunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just by the top drawer.

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

It’ll be small. Just a latch.

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

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

Joel.

“Joel!”

“What?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Planning on getting wounded any time soon?”

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

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

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

Morphine. 

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

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

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

Would and wouldn’t.

Should and shouldn’t. 

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

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

“What else you got?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ellie!”

“Joel, look, it’s a radio!” 

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

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

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

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

“No.” 

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

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

“But I’ve got room in my pack –,”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

No other purpose at all. 

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

“Hey, Ellie, uh–,”

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

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

Luxor, the label reads. 

Hand cream. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lifts her chin, hands curled at her side.

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you make them afraid?” 

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

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

“It’s not. Not when it’s for her.” 

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

“Yeah, of course, she’s your kid.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just stares wide-eyed and inhales. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could hardly recognize the woman underneath it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever Joel gets back. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellie.

And Joel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah, are you –,”

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

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

At least crazy runs in the family. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh? What was it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It was fine. Did she mention anything?”

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

“Nothing out of the ordinary, at least.” 

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

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

“Joel? What is it?” 

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

“C’mere.” 

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

You go to him without question. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re welcome.”

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

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

You can’t deny this anymore.

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

One hand in the air.

“Yes?”

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

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

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

“Correct again.” 

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

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

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

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

Genus

Common name

Poisonous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellie merely sniffs hers. 

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, of course, I know that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s a kind of math –,”

“Advanced math,” you interject. 

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

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

“Sam? Who’s Sam?” 

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

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

Ellie, however, remains completely baffled.

“Yeah and? He’s just some guy.”

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

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

Sarah shakes her head no. 

“Not even with a group of people?”

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

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

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

“Oh – you mean like a date.”

“Who’s going on a date?” 

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

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

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

“We were talking about boys.”

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

“Oh.”

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

Joel nods, wiping his hands on his shirt. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s Sam?”

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

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

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

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

“That’s not funny, Dad.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joel’s trust makes your heart soar. 

Only to come crashing down. 

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

Nurture. It’s not what you do. 

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

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

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

  “Alright, Joel. I’ll try.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t think so.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until something sang out to it. 

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you see the world?” 

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

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

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

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

“But I can’t leave him.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah, do you know what rouge is?” 

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

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

“Have you ever worn it?” 

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

“Would you like to?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hard to believe, right?”

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

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

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

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

“How so?”

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

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

“Have you seen him since he left?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Yes, please.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?” Small. Hesitant. Hopeful. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah’s face nearly shines with joy.

Cool. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. Oh, Joel. 

“Tell me you want this.”

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

“I won’t stop.”

Don’t. Please. 

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

His hands are gone, his warmth evaporated. 

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

Pick it up. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re surprised.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A soft, barely intimate gesture. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You unplug the drain, your movements slow, hesitant.

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

“Of course she does. I know that.”

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

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

“That is not your decision to make.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What else are you to me? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, goddamn it, I don’t!” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shit, what the hell did he know?

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

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

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

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

“Um, yeah, that’ll be fine.”

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

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks.

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

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

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

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

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

“Wanna talk about it?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did he do?”

You blink. “What?”

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

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

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

“Sarah, don’t –,”

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

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

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

He’s angry. He’s still angry.

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

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

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

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

And yet he hadn’t. 

He’d let someone in. 

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

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

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

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

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

For coming here and upsetting everything. 

Fuck. 

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

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

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

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

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

Now, what does he do with –

“Dad!” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah . . .” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you’re mad about somethin’?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know, baby. You have to go.” 

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

But instead –

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

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

“No, not right now. But some day.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s nerves. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you haven’t been able to focus since. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vanilla beans.

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

“Thanks.” 

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

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

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

Grateful, was the expression he remembers. 

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

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

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

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

“Like a Hank Williams kinda something?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dinner’s ready.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Holy shit!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You used it for my birthday?” 

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

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

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

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

“Um, thanks, guys. I guess.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less of him to share. 

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

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

Heat warms him up his arm, down into his chest – and it keeps going. The smell of you, of sweat and sugar and honey and sunlight, invades his head like a dirty wind and the fire inside scorches him as it flushes down his ribs, through his stomach, and right into his groin.

You all but drop the plate into his hand, pulling your fingers away from his touch, gaze diving away. But he can see your nervous swallow, the way your hand shakes when you pick up the knife to cut the cake. 

“Let’s eat.” You smile at the girls, but it’s as weak as your voice, crackling, trembling, overwhelmed. As if you too had been consumed by years of dormant want out of nowhere and now couldn’t possibly put those feelings back into hiding even if you wanted to.

Even if you begged.

The cake is gone in a matter of minutes. 

Ellie lets out a groan, leaning back in her chair, her hands resting over her full stomach. “That was so goddamn good.” 

“It’s inappropriate to lick the plate, right?” Sarah asked, sponging up crumbs with her finger. 

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” Ellie grins. She snatches up her plate and with her tongue flat against her chin, licks up every last morsel. Sarah snorts, laughter bursting out of her, before doing the exact same thing. It’s not long until both of them are making grotesque noises. 

“You girls act like you haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.” Joel sits across from you, his arms folded across his chest, a faint glint in his eye as he glances back and forth between them. He sits low in his chair and his shoulders look especially broad across the back of it. “Y’all are gonna eat me out of house and home.” 

Sarah giggles and wipes her spit-covered chin. “Ellie said she found a really good spot out back to look at the Milky Way. Can we go look?” 

You expect him to ask that they clean up the table first, at least put the dishes in the sink, and not to stay too far into the dark. He’s watching Sarah for a beat too long before he opens his mouth again.

“But then when will Ellie get her present?”

His eyes lock onto you.

“THERE’S MORE?!” Ellie screeches.

The heat in his gaze sends a tangible shock down your throat, across every single one of your ribs, right into your nipples. Your faint gasp is overshadowed by Sarah and Ellie’s yelling – oh my god you didn’t tell me about this what’s wrong with you – please please please can I see it I’ll clean the bathrooms if you just lemme have it please –  but the look is gone a second later when he stands up and jerks his chin over his shoulder to the living room. The girls sprint into the room before he can take his first step. He doesn’t look at you as he follows them, slow, confident, teasing them just a bit.

“What is it?!”

“Is it more comics?”

“More marbles?”

“New clothes?”

“Ew, that would suck.” 

As if deaf to their pleas, Joel slowly walks over to the chest in the corner of the room and just as the girls are about to burst from excitement, he bends down and picks something up from behind it.

A radio. 

The radio.

The same one they had found in town. 

Ellie and Sarah’s eyes widen to the size of the dinner plates sitting on the kitchen table, covered in spit and cake crumbs. They drop to their knees, fingers outstretched like they approached a feral kitten.

“Now, it doesn’t work right.” Joel says, his arms crossed again. “But I thought it might be a good project for you girls. Something to work on together. Maybe learn about magnets and electricity n’shit.” 

His eyes fall on you again, as if you knew all about “magnets and electricity n’shit.” Joel grins again, this time just for you, and something inside of you snaps in half, melts, sparks open; some great weight, one you didn’t even know was there, has been lifted off your shoulders, your heart, and you can breathe properly again. You sink into the blue sofa, hands in your lap to keep them from trembling. 

The idea that you would ever willingly leave this place is laughable.

The idea that you would take Ellie away from this, from Sarah, is agonizing. 

They’re both fiddling with the buttons and twisting the jobs, the novelty of it perhaps the most fascinating. They are silent, more reverent than if they are on hallowed ground. 

“I’ve got some pliers and a screwdriver if you wanna –,”

Perhaps it was the witchcraft of the sisterhood. 

Perhaps they had managed to work out some secret code.

Perhaps they were just lucky. 

The radio lights up and the tear of a trumpet whines out of the speakers. Their yelp of delight is muffled beneath the white-hot music of a jazz band. 

Joel watches with what can only be considered bemusement as the girls leap to their feet and start dancing like no one had ever taught them about rhythm. 

The sofa squeaks, the cushion under your butt tilting up, as he sits down next to you. 

“Not likely to win any competitions any time soon,” he mutters quietly, presumably to you, as you both watch Ellie’s jerky knees and Sarah’s dizzying twirls. You sit, hands in your lap, perched on the edge of the cushion, while he leans into the sofa, arms back in place over his chest. With the way you are positioned towards the radio and him facing straight on, your knees almost touch. 

You wonder if he’s as aware of that chance as you are. 

“Listen, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” His voice is deep enough to be heard over the music. He glances at your hands, and then your face. The sincere regret in his eyes makes the blood in your wrists pound. “You didn’t deserve all of those things I said to you this morning. Both you and Ellie have been . . .” he struggles for the word, his bottom lip moving with the swipe of his tongue, “a good change in our lives, and I regret saying the contrary.” His gaze falls back to your hands, your thumb tucked into the hole made by your other fingers. You wouldn’t look away from his face if it was the sun itself. “The fields have been well taken care of . . . and I know Sarah’s grateful for everything you’ve done for her. You’ve changed her life for the better. You’ve changed m–,”

It’s like his voice crumbles and slips off a cliff. His broad shoulders sag forward and then he looks up at you, a desperate sort of hope in eyes. Hope that you understand what he’s trying to say, and hope that you don’t make him say it. 

Oh, but you want him to say it. You want it so badly. 

You nod, this crumb sweeter than anything on the kitchen plates. On some heady sugar high, you smile at him.

“Well, I meant what I said.” He frowns and your grin widens, but then teeters and topples over. Your wrists ache. You have to lose his gaze for what you’re going to say next. “We are very, very grateful you took us in. I know it wasn’t a decision you made lightly, risking so much of you and Sarah for two complete strangers.” You shake your head with disbelief. “I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that you made the right choice, if I have to.”

You glance up at him – and immediately wish you hadn’t. 

It’s that same look he gave you when you handed him his plate over the kitchen table. Lips pursed, brow slightly furrowed, with a wary uneasiness in his eyes. Like he’s finally figured out what kind of woman you are, and he can’t quite tell what to do with you.

“C’mon you two!” Sarah yells and that hazy bubble that envelopes you bursts. He blinks, as if not remembering where he is. “You gotta dance!”

“Yeah, you old farts!” Ellie pants, red-faced and nearly out of breath. “It’s my birthday so you have to do what I say and I say, let’s boogie!”

You lunge at the chance to be distracted; you turn away from Joel and arch your eyebrow.

“Oh, you’re dancing? Is that what you’re doing? Can hardly tell.” 

Ellie sticks out her tongue while Sarah starts kicking with one foot then bounces to the other, flicking her wrists. “I saw this move on the school’s television!”

Ellie immediately stops the flailing of her limbs and watches her moves. “Teach me!”

Sarah slows it down until Ellie gets the hang of the bounce. Sarah looks much more natural in the rhythm, but at least Ellie is partially on beat. 

“And then I think you do this–,”

Her foot dangling in the air, she loops her ankle around Ellie’s and starts hopping in a circle. Ellie lets out a giggle.

“No way this is a real thing!”

“It is, I swear!”

“You got any moves like that?” Joel asks quietly, but still ensnaring your attention completely. He sunken completely into the sofa, hips low, legs wide. His thumb taps the beat on his thigh. Something about the way he has completely relaxed allows you to unclench your fists and loosen your foot tucked behind your ankle.

“Me?” You chuckle, leaning back on the arm rest. “I never had the time to go to the dancehalls, much less learn complicated moves such as the – Sarah, what is that dance called?”

“Hell if I know!” They’ve switched feet, trying to go counterclockwise this time.

“Complicated moves such as The Hell-if-I-know.” He rewards your terrible joke with a low chuckle. 

“Me neither. I can’t dance for shit.” 

As though he had called her name, Sarah stamps down her foot and rolls her eyes at her father, Ellie trying to follow along with the instructions the singer is giving over the speakers.

“Yes, you can. You taught me The Dip.” 

“That’s not a real move, Sarah–,”

“You can teach her!” Sarah’s brilliant smile extends to her eyes as if she had just announced the best idea in the history of ideas. “Then she’ll know at least one!”

Your fingers return to their fists. Joel stiffens beside you.

“Yeah, you should.” Ellie yells over her shoulder distractedly, one arm raised and the other leg straight out – in complete opposition to what the lyrics said. “Can’t have her embarrassing me in public.”

“C’mon, Dad, just one dance!” Her brown eyes flicker to Ellie and sweat-damp shirt. “It’s Ellie’s birthday!” 

“And for the party, we – must – dance!” Ellie strikes a dramatic pose and Sarah, giggling, swishes her dress with a flourish. With a brief glance at you, she rejoins Ellie, her skirt twirling.

The sofa squeaks as if he’s moving, a soft hand comes to rest high on your back, and panic leaps into your throat.

“Mr. Miller – Joel – you don’t have to – Sarah is just being silly –,”

“Well, it's not like I’m going up there by myself.” 

That rough palm slides over your scapula, then your shoulders, and down your arm. Tugging gently, a soft pinch around the bone of your elbow nearly pulls you to your feet, but sense-memory has you folding your arm back up towards your chest, your knees locked and heels heavy. Immediately he senses your rejection and stops. 

The warm light above threads gold through strands of his silver hair, the ends of his curls long enough to disappear into nothingness, into the halo around him. 

Joel Miller would never, ever hurt you.

Joel Miller is not your husband.

Joel Miller could be your friend.

His light touch releases and just as his fingers drop from your sleeve, your arm unfurls towards him, taking him by the bicep. His eyebrows lift slowly, watching as your fingers curl around his arm. Drawn towards his light like a sunflower, you stand, closer to him than ever before, and smile up at him. Friends go dancing together all the time, right? 

But all the standards and regulations of propriety and social mores were flung out the window the second you, an unmarried woman, stepped foot onto the land of an unmarried man. Nothing about this, about any of this, could be considered conventional.

A step or two away from the sofa, he holds your waist in one hand and yours aloft in the other, fingers interconnected. Respectful. Decent. A good man. No boundary crossing here. 

“Ready for your next lesson?” he asks, a little breathless. Maybe he forgot the steps and he is simply nervous to perform – hm, teach. He does a bit of adjusting, watches his own feet adjust as you stand still in front of him, waiting to be moved.

So, you open your stupid mouth and say,

“See, teaching isn’t so easy, is it?”

You grin and finally his eyes meet yours. Soft as leather, warm as a saddle in sunlight. It’s your turn for necessary air to be drained from your lungs and he decides then to move.

“Gotta lead up to it,” he grumbles, the corner of his mouth lifted. “Can’t just dive right in.” The way he leads is completely out of sync with the music, but you see that it’s intentional, a choice to slow things down. Not quite what you’d expect at the Boston dancehalls, but something far more precious and memorable. He sways with you, as supple as a blade of prairie grass in a warm wind. 

The curve of his shoulder is warm beneath your fingers, your thumb inches from his collar. He is more solid than any other person you’ve ever touched – including Anna. He could stand at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and never be washed away. You cannot imagine what that stability feels like, but you crave it all the same. 

There’s a respectable distance between your hips and his, but you can still smell the sweetness of the cake on his breath, the hot earth he tends to so lovingly, and the tang of sweat. 

“I know you’re a fast learner.” You turn your head towards him, but he gazes straight on. For a moment his face is so stoic you start to wonder if he actually said anything, but then a smile, a small one, flickers across his face. He turns his head towards you, his nose brushing yours, and suddenly you are too close together. Instinctively you pull away – your head, your shoulders, your hands – then find yourself frustrated that this is how you still react. You don’t even mean it. You don’t even want it, this temporary separation. But still Joel stands. He waits for you and sure enough, you sink back into his arms, your palms separating for only a second. “We made a regular farmhand out of you in a handful of weeks. Could get you to a full Dip in days.” 

He’s talking too softly to be easily heard over the banging percussion, the scream of trumpets, the boozy warble of the singer, so you bend closer. Over his shoulder, Ellie and Sarah take turns curtseying and bowing and then locking their elbows together and spinning each other in circles, giggling. 

“They’re alright.” The words hum in your ear, heat warming the air after a flash of lightning, and you fight a full body shudder. You tear your gaze back to him and his smile. His hand hasn’t moved an inch on your back. You worry your palm is getting sweaty. “Just focus on me.” You nod. 

From the radio, the song ends and the band slows to a discordant crash, as exhausted as the ones who danced to their rhythms. Men raucously laugh over the airwaves at their own created chaos and the two girls collapse onto the couch, red-faced and sweaty and laughing. 

“You trust me?” His eyes are brown and dark and smoky, firewood kindling. He really intends to teach you something. You nod slowly. The memory of his hand smacking into the counter breaks apart when his palm slips further down your back, his leg shifting in between yours, and he leans forward to lean you back. Back, back, back, off the edge of the earth. Hair slips off your shoulders as you hang, suspended above the floorboards, cradled by his hand and his thigh, the other hand holding yours to his chest. The world is upside down – in more ways than one. 

When you lift your head, he blocks out the light above for just a moment. Joel, for a moment, is all you can see. He holds you like you weigh nothing, gravity a suggestion to a force of nature like him — and a moment later, he pulls you both upright. 

Your cheeks are burning, your heart roars in your chest, in your ears, and there is no other way this would have ended: you glance at his mouth. He looks at yours. The fingers entwined with yours tighten. 

And then the radio dies. No preamble. No warning. Just ringing silence.

“Welp, it was fun while it lasted.” Ellie huffs, out of breath, smacking her hands against her thighs. 

Sarah wipes away sweat from her forehead with her arm. “Nah, we’ll get it back. I know we can fix it. Right, Dad?”

Joel Miller is still staring at your mouth. 

He’s quiet too long before he drops his gaze and clears his throat. Caught in a daze, you blink and suddenly his warmth is gone. Your hand floats in the air, empty. Joel pulls on the waistline of his pants and turns back to the sofa, nodding.

“Course, we can fix it. But not tonight. Get to bed, both of you.” The gravel of his voice makes his words harsher than they need to be, but Ellie just rolls her eyes and Sarah throws herself onto her feet. 

“C’mon, teenie bopper, I found a mouse skull the other day I forgot to show you.”

Ellie’s eyes widen as she follows Sarah up the stairs. “Like a skull skull? No meat, just bones? Was the rest of the skeleton there?”

Her interrogation continues as they move around the second floor and you can almost hear every word of it. A stark and abrupt reminder that this house echoes – any noises or sounds made can be heard anywhere, in any room, by anyone. 

Your gaze drops to Joel like a stone and with the added weight of whatever he was thinking, it all becomes too much for him. He turns away, denim shoulders nearly up to his ears.

“I’ll clean up.” He waves his hand vaguely to the kitchen. Cake. Plates. Flour on the counter. Oh, that’s right. “You cooked.”

A trade, a sharing of responsibilities between two equal partners. There’s some part of you that knows you should argue, cleaning was what he hired you for, but this is not him telling you as your employer. 

This is . . .

“You did good today,” he says, quickly, his hands on his waist, a step forward, as if he remembered something mid-stride. “It meant a lot, to the both of ‘em. I know you don’t think much of it, but you’re good at this.”

Your face heats, a familiar zing from his words racing down your spine into the bowl of your hips. The next breath you take is a shaky one. “Thanks, Joel. I think I’ll turn in for the night.”

He swallows, then nods. “Night, then.”

“Good night.” 

You might have let yourself believe you had imagined the whole thing, as you walk down the long wood floor to your bedroom, the girls’ chatter now just noise in your head. You might have believed that, after half a decade of being unwanted and undesired, abandoned at the edge of civilization, you extrapolated sentimentality from the first man who looked at you. All your life you doubted yourself; doubted your ability to keep Anna safe, doubted that you’d ever be something more than a pathetic replacement for Ellie’s mother, doubted your own sanity at times when you sat in that dark, dank dug out and listened to the scratchy winds tear apart your husband’s finances. 

But this – this you did not doubt. You did not mistake, or dream up, or lie to yourself. 

Before he let you go, Joel had squeezed your hip, rubbed his thumb against the waistband of your skirt. Let his fingers snag and catch in your blouse.

Whether it was trust or companionship or something ultimately more terrifying, he felt some kind of way about you. 

What kind of way you felt about him, you couldn’t answer honestly. 

And yet for a moment, for a brief moment, you had stepped into his light and, goddamn it, you were right. 

It was warm.

END OF PART II

series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

[ghostchems]

bad idea right? - raphael x f!tav (part two)

raphael lays some ground rules for your deal and extends an invitation.

author's note: read part one here. 2.3k words. 18+, mdni please. some bickering, some groping. thigh riding. ya know, the usual. ao3 link.

“What are you writing?” 

Raphael’s quill runs off the page, a thick line of black ink staining his desk. His nostrils flare and he quickly claps his journal shut, eyeing the incubus with sheer annoyance. He clenched his jaw before giving a soft sigh, his shoulders relaxing as he tries to let the frustration roll off of him. The last thing he wants to do is give Haarlep any ammunition. 

“My recent business dealings.” Raphael answers curtly and in one fluid motion slips his journal off his desk into a drawer. His eyes flit up Haarlep’s body before settling at his eyes and scrunches his nose. “And where have you been?” He sets down his quill and leans back in his desk chair. 

“You know I like to get some air every so often.” Haarlep yawns as he slinks onto the nearby bed, laying down on his stomach with his head propped up in his hands. “Writing smut again, are we? I can smell a certain aroma from you.” His mouth curls into a sly smile, his pointed teeth poking out from his upper lip. Raphael’s gaze falls to the incubus, eyes narrowing as his lips purse. It’s difficult for him to get frustrated with Haarlep at this point — he’s grown used to his teasing after having him in his “employment” for so long but still this situation is delicate.

“Are you jealous, dear Haarlep?” Raphael’s voice drops to a low purr. He gets up from his padded armchair and saunters over to the bed only to sit beside the other. Haarlep rolls over so that he can face him, claws immediately starting to drift up along his doublet sleeve. 

“Not jealous.” The incubus huffs, his touch drawing closer to Raphael’s stomach. “It has been quite some time since a mortal got your loins in a twist, though. Seems more receptive than your other pet.” He flashes a brilliant smile while Raphael digs his nails into the palms of his own hands, giving a vicious growl — a warning. Haarlep merely scoffs in response but he does lower his head, gaze beginning to drift around the room. “If you’re going to have her over you should probably have one of your debtors clean up the place.”

“Bringing her here is not a part of my plan currently. Are you requesting something of me?” Raphael peers down at the other as he cocks a brow. Haarlep shrugs and stays quiet for a moment before giving a huff.

“I want to see what all this fuss is about.” 

Raphael considers him, his mind quickly running through a few scenarios. Why should he share? But there it is, an opportunity underneath all the show: a deal to be made.

“Perhaps I could make some changes, but what would be in it for me?”

***

You feel a violent hand over your mouth and your eyes shoot open as a gasp rips from your throat. Once your vision settles, you’re met with those caramel eyes leering over you, Raphael’s teeth-bared and gaze sharp.

“Outside. Now.” There is venom in his voice unlike that you’ve heard from him before. He disappears in a spark of ash before you’re able to say anything — and then you realize he’s cast silence on you anyway. You feel an angry growl rumble through your chest but it’s swallowed up by the time it reaches your lips, in some ways a blessing since you don’t want to wake your companions. As you get out of bed, Astarion stirs in the one in front of you, making soft snores and every so often small whimpers? Do vampires have dreams? Your mind wanders as you put on your evening robe to fight the chill of the air. One last scan over your companions and you’re out the door, heading downstairs of the tavern and out to the alleyway.

Raphael is waiting for you, his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed. You hate that the first thing you think of is how radiant he looks in the pale moonlight. The dim light makes his brown eyes sparkle and the gold details on his doublet shine. Memories of the deal you made and what happened after flood your mind, replacing your annoyance with a familiar warmth in the pit of your stomach. You open your mouth but only air tumbles out, making you clench your fists in frustration.

“No, no. You don’t get to speak yet, little mouse.” He stalks closer to you, his movements slow and deliberate. “Rumors have made their way back to me that a certain hero has been fraternizing with an infernal being.” Raphael grits his teeth as he leans in, his eyes boring into yours. “You couldn’t wait to tell your little companions, could you?” There is anger in his voice but underneath it you swear there is a hint of teasing. He awaits your response but then gives a dramatic ah! before snapping his fingers. 

“I didn’t tell them about our deal.” You’re finally able to snap back but your voice is hoarse from the silence. “Astarion noticed! He could smell you on me. Called me a freak — but not in a disgusted way, more like… he was impressed.” Too much information but the words spill out of you. Raphael’s face remains unchanged, his lips pressed into a straight line and his brows furrowed. “He’s bad at keeping secrets… but I wasn’t sure if you would care since you left me alone at Sharess’ Caress.” 

He exhales slowly through his nose and his face seems to relax, his jaw shifting back into place and his eyes softening. One of his hands reaches for yours, which is balled into a fist at your side. His fingers graze your fist, lightly trying to loosen it before he takes your hand. Raphael’s eyes stay fixed on you, his lips starting to quirk into a barely there smile. You try to keep a straight face but his warm fingers laced with your own makes an infuriating blush rise to your cheeks.

“Did I hurt your feelings, pet?” His voice drops dangerously low as he brings the back of your hand to his lips. You roll your eyes, amazed by his nerve. Did he think he could bat his lashes and you’d be wrapped around his finger? “Mmm… forgive me, for that. Please. It’s been an eternity since someone has affected me this way.” He murmurs, averting your gaze as you swear you see a flash of embarrassment cross his face. Your breath catches in your throat at the sudden candor, having only seen it once before in him. 

“You shouldn’t have left.” You remain firm but your voice is a hum, your eyes tracing over his features. “After everything we’ve been through, I thought I would have gotten special treatment.” You wriggle your hand free from his grasp as you give him a sly grin, not about to let him off the hook that easily. Raphael’shead tilts as he regards you silently for a moment, as if your playfulness caught him off guard. His lips tug into a smile and you catch his gaze fall to your mouth, then back up to meet your eyes.

“I promise I’ll make it up to you. As you know, I tend to keep my word.” He all but purrs, drifting in even closer to you. 

“Well, I’d like to get it in writing.” 

“You what?” Raphael’s charming facade immediately drops, scrunching his nose. You are delighted with the way he glared at you. “Let us discuss this later — we have more pressing matters. Your companions, I am certain they aren’t very supportive of you mingling with a devil such as myself.” He presses his hand to his chest, those caramel eyes sucking you in like they always do. 

“I wouldn’t say that they are thrilled about it.” You sigh and break your eye contact. “But it doesn’t seem like a reason for them to leave, at least for now… if this is something that will continue.” He uses one of his long fingers to gently turn your head back to his gaze. 

“I would rather that they didn’t know about us, sweetling.” Raphael sounds almost sweet as he seemingly takes in every detail of your face, his hand now cupping your cheek. “Them and the entirety of the Sword Coast, at least until the Elder Brain is defeated. We don’t want the general public to think our savior is taking orders from a devil, do we?” It’s something you haven’t thought about until now. You were never one to care for optics but he isn’t wrong. “I have an idea that will put your companion’s minds at ease and take some of the heat off of us.” 

You’re hardly paying attention to what he’s saying because of how close he is. You could easily kiss him right now. What would he do? You decide to find out. The gravel crunches beneath your feet as you quickly push yourself onto your tippy toes to kiss him, nearly cutting him off. Raphael’s body freezes in surprise before his hand moves from your cheek to tangle with your hair, his tongue desperately pushing into your mouth. It’s like a switch went off in his brain. He’s grabbing you, tugging at your waist so your bodies are flush against each other.

You nearly fall into him as he takes a few steps back, your hands slipping to hold onto his shoulders. Tasting him again was almost just as overwhelming as the first time, the heat of his mouth making me crave him more and more, deepening the kiss. Raphael moves quickly, both his hands suddenly gripping your thighs to pull you down with him into a chair you’re sure didn’t exist a moment ago. He has you straddling his waist, strong hands making sure you stay in place. You finally manage to break away from the kiss to catch your breath, hazy eyes meeting his gaze.

“Go to the Devil’s Fee when you’re ready — my contact will grant you entrance to my House of Hope.” Raphael’s nose traces along your jaw, his lips brushing along your neck as he speaks. He teases at your neck with his teeth, inching lower and lower, while drifting his hands along your robe to grope your breast through the light fabric. Your arms wrap around his shoulders and you eliminate the remaining space between you, melting into his touch. Raphael sucks on your collarbone as he opens your robe even further, fingers toying with your nipples through your shirt before pulling it down and exposing your breasts. You’re dizzy from it all, lost in him and his expert touches and that velvet voice, lips parting to give a soft whine. 

“The hammer will be in a safe in my boudoir — an easy heist for you and your companions.” His voice is ragged, breath heavy as his mouth moves down your chest to run his tongue along your sensitive flesh. Raphael dips his hands to cup your ass and guides you along his thigh. Even through the layers of fabric the friction is delicious, making your legs tremble more and more with each drag over his thigh. You forget that you’re outside where anyone could stumble by, moaning recklessly as his lips close around one of your nipples. He flicks his tongue against it, teeth nipping it only just enough to hurt before giving it a few rough sucks. 

Your fingers move to dig into the hair at the base of his neck, tilting your head back while his mouth works over your breasts with feverish need. A growl rumbles up from his chest, feeling it against yours as you start to grind against him without his help. It all feels so reckless. Raphael’s composure is completely gone, groaning against your chest as his tongue teasing your other nipple. Your eyes fall shut and you snap your hips harshly into his thigh, chasing your release. 

And as easily as he gave into you, he takes it all away.

Raphael grabs you by the chin and wrenches you down to look at him in the eyes. You’re shuddering in his grasp as his caramel gaze sharpens, fire in his eyes. The sudden shift in mood has your mind turned upside down and your body aching to be touched by him again. 

“This part is extremely important, pet, so listen closely.” He snarls, digging his nails into your cheeks. “Do not assist Hope while you are a guest. Is that understood?” Raphael yanks you so that his lips are hovering directly over yours. You quiver at his closeness and you nod before even trying to understand what he is asking of you. All you know is that you want him now. There’s a spark in his eyes once you agree and he lets go of you gently, his hands dropping to cover you up before, leaning back in the chair with a smug look on his face. “Go on — take what you need.” 

You snap your hips immediately, flinging your hands to grab for his shoulders again. Raphael can’t stop watching your face, the way your expression twists in pleasure with each thrust, the soft groans spilling from swollen lips, basking in how much you crave him. You stare into his eyes as you do as he says, taking what you need from him until it’s all too much. You give a choked sob, hip stuttering and fingers digging into his doublet as your orgasm rips through you. His arms swallow you in his embrace, pulling you tight against his chest to help guide you back down to Earth. 

“I’ll amend your contract to reflect the changes discussed this evening.” Raphael purrs into your hair, lightly brushing his fingertips along your back. “I also have something for you – perfume that should mask my scent even from those with heightened senses of smell.” You lift your head up. A present? For you? Strangely sweet for a devil, even if it was to help with sneaking around. 

“You’ll also add your promise to the amendment, right?” You ask sweetly, the picture of innocence. He dramatically rolls his eyes.

“If you insist.”

part three

[sinswithpleasure]

Addressing My Ask Box

Hey guys, Sins here.

I'm sorry if this might seem rude and/or entitled, but I feel that I have to get this off my chest.

First of all, I really appreciate the flood of asks just off today. I like that you readers are actively willing to engage me and reach out in any shape or form, but I have to set some ground rules.

Nearly every ask since my last fic in July has been the same variation of "idol and idol cuddling" and "idol x idol sex", and I'm really getting burnt out on these. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you all have put in the time to type all of it out, but I'm really not sure if you want a fic, you're just dumping random things, or...?

I've seen my fair share of "top 5 idols whose pits u wanna lick" to just, pure statements that i can't reply to, such as "i think chaewon has great tits" or "wony can't stop eating gaeul's cunt". Most of the time, I'm actively not sure what to do with this—I'm very lost on your intentions and would prefer more clarity.

I've actually said this privately to a lot of other writers: low effort ask means low effort reply. Any ask I don't understand either gets deleted or answered with one word only. I really don't want to give low effort replies because to me, being a writer is akin to being a customer service representative—my job is to serve up stuff that makes you enjoy yourself, and part of that is giving you good replies to the asks that you put time into to type into my ask box. However, there's really not much I can work on with one liners without context other than "nise" because I really don't know what to do with them, and I do not want to delete asks so readily since you have put effort into them.

I've always found how sapphics send asks to wlw blogs here, as well as on platforms like CuriousCat or Retrospring so wonderful. For example:

kmj saying on live that the other members would be different baseball positions and she would be the cheerleader...three way gang bang for mj in a tiny little skirt please

was a literal ask a friend of mine on twt got about aespa, and it's stuff like this where I can expand on and help you realise a fantasy. Not only that, it's also fun for me because there is context. I need more than sex to build up any piece of a fic for you—idea generation is not as easy as it seems. The example above at least has a setting I can imagine, characters that I can explore, and all in all has space for inspirational expansion.

Tldr—Help me help you. Give me more context, give me something more than the sex acts. This goes for a lot of suggestion-type asks—the more effort you put into an idea to suggest, the more receptive most writers will be.

Thank you.

Sins.

[0v3rcast]

Gnaw (part 1)

Contains: Body Horror, Blood, Violence

You had fallen to Teyvat some time ago, pulled down from the sky by a brilliant platinum star, the elements gently beckoning for you, all of them trying to prove their land the most suitable for your descent.

"Welcome back, Sea-shaper," Hydro murmurs, their voice the babbling of streams and the roar of the angry sea all at once. "Fontaine has such sights to show you. As you created, we have created to honor your actions. For your beauty, we have made our people beautiful. You will want for nothing-"

"COME TO US, HOLY TINDER," Pyro roars, its voice the starving crackle of flame and the churning of molten rock as volcanoes erupt. "NATLAN AWAITS YOU WITH AN OFFERING OF ENDLESS PASSION. YOU SHALL NEVER GO UNPROTECTED, UNLOVED, OR HUNGRY."

"Welcome, almighty Whirlwind of Creation," Electro purrs, speaking with the rattle-boom of echoing thunder. "Shall you grace my people with your presence?"

"Welcome home, Blessed Foundation," Geo hums, their voice the whispers of sand and the ancient growl of tectonic plates shifting. "Liyue has grown prosperous since you've last seen it. Perhaps you should come to us instead, where the riches of Teyvat could be put directly to use in pleasing you?"

"Don't listen to them, First Breath! We've waited for you the longest, like, a whole forever! We were first!" Anemo pleads, in the tones of breeze softly rustling leaves and howling tornadoes. "Even if you just stop by, that's totally fine!"

"You've finally come home, Heart of Winter? Good. We have missed you so." Cryo coos, the flurrying of snow and ancient creaking of glaciers their voice. "Snezhnaya may be a harsh land, but faith is enough to warm the bodies of my people."

"Flower of Irminsul, Root of All, please! You cannot come down! Another wears your face, please turn back if only for a few more days!" Dendro howls, desperate, voice a cacophony of falling trees and leaves rustling. "You ar-"

Dendro's voice fades as you pass the point of no return and begin to burn through the sky towards Mondstadt, Anemo ripping at the air to direct your course even as the other elements rage at them for their impudence.

As you fall, the memory of this conversation fades from your mind.

Welcome home, Maker, whispers the Abyss into the back of your mind.

Since that day, your time in Teyvat had become quite difficult. Whatever hopes you'd had for this world were soundly dashed.

Mondstadt 'welcomed' you with scorn and hostility for sharing the same face as their Heiliger Schöpfer, the Divine above Divines.

You were unsure as to why they hated you so, simply for your face- especially since that face is one that's otherwise looked kindly upon in this world.

You do your best to take in the sights, all the same. Though you are confused by the frosty reception, this place is so much more interesting than the game shows.

There are many more homes and people, you see (and pet) some stray animals, pick a particularly low philanemo mushroom after a couple seconds of jumping and stretching in an attempt to reach it, and generally just enjoy the (rather tense) locale.

Your confusion became fear when the Knights of Favonius begin to chase you. You'd done no crime, why would they hunt you like this, especially with such wrathful looks on their faces?!

The closest you get to meeting any of the allogenes on friendly terms comes when you breeze past Sucrose, yelping out a greeting to her. She just watches you go, incredibly confused, before a Knight accidentally bowls her over in his maddened rush after you.

Just as you exit the gate, the Knights just behind you, yelling curses and what you presume are threats-

P a i n.

Eula Lawrence just pushed a greatsword through your lungs and out your back. You have no clue how she got here so fast, where from, or how you didn't notice her.

You gag and choke as your blood quickly rushes into the space (and out of your body, simultaneously).

With a vicious yank, she tears it from you in a diagonal motion, nearly carving you in half.

A darkly satisfied look in her eyes is all you receive when you uselessly try to gasp for air and plead for help.

Your vision begins to fade, but before you can die of blood loss her boot comes down.

(Your nascent godhood activates the moment you die, and it plots a new trajectory: your misery will shape you until such a time comes that you will never feel this suffering again.)

You wake screaming in the woods, hands coming to clutch at your chest.

A massive golden scar lies just between your xiphoid process and sternum, perfectly horizontal in a way that only comes with practice.

Your clothes are covered in the brownish rusty red of old dried blood, and quite badly torn from where you were sliced nearly in two.

Breathing feels... easier, somehow. Like your lungs didn't just heal from immense trauma.

Your stomach aches badly and your mouth feels like it's full of sand. How long have you been laying here beneath the sun?

Your attempts to rise from this resting place are fruitless. You're so exhausted you can barely move your fingers.

Darkness slowly weighs your eyelids down and you fall asleep, even though you know you should not.

---

Elsewhere in the world, a being wearing your face stares up at a statue to themselves, noting with some alarm the golden scar across its chest.

The only recent news they had about an imposter was the Lawrence outcast running one through.

Now they'll have to find some way to replicate your scar and keep up the ruse.

"The original has truly descended, then... fine." They hiss, words venomous, glaring at the face of the statue. "If I can't have this place as my playground, then they won't get to have you."

---

The next time you wake, it is night, and the hunger in your belly is gnawing at you with such fervor that you feel lightheaded.

When you stand, your head twinges with pain as if to protest even this miniscule expenditure of energy.

Your body stumbles at first, briefly overcome by vertigo, but quickly adjusts.

Your mind changes its tune completely upon seeing a plump, ripe Sunsettia growing on its branch.

You desperately scramble over to pull the Sunsettia from the tree- only for it to drop into your waiting hands as soon as you reach up.

The 'how' of this doesn't quite matter to you in the moment. You bite into the ripe fruit and moan in bliss at the tart taste of the flesh and the sweetness of the juices. Within twenty seconds, you've reduced this fruit to a nubby pit, almost like a peach has.

That's kinda neat, actually. You distantly wonder what you have to crossbreed with a peach to make Sunsettias.

You pat the tree as if to thank it, not noticing that it suddenly stands a bit straighter or how its leaves are just a tiny bit greener, and go to find a nice place to put down this future Sunsettia tree.

You eventually get bored of looking for a good place and just poke a hole into the ground with a fallen branch, then stuff the remains of your first Sunsettia into the hole.

You wander off into the woods in hopes of finding a road, unaware of the golden-leaved sapling slowly growing behind you.

With a new source of energy in your system, you feel the urge to get moving- might as well make the most of this while you have it.

Your stamina is better than before, it feels like. Distances that previously felt difficult feel easier on your legs- and definitely on your lungs.

Perhaps this has something to do with your demise?

...what's that weird whistling soun-

You fall, dead, an Anemo-enriched arrow punching through the back of your head.

For a brief moment, you dream of a place deep beneath the surface of Teyvat, and a ruined statue oozing corruption into infinite darkness.

You wake with a small headache, very hungry, and more than a little pissed. Won't people just leave you the fuck alone?

Somehow, you feel sturdier. Less breakable. As nice as that is, you don't particularly feel up to testing it.

You stand.

Perhaps you should avoid civilization from now on.

[sillygoosealert]

Can you please write something cute about Bi-Han and readers first date? Like i’d assume he’d go all out and want to be extra fancy with his extra ass .

He would thinks he loojs so cool in his little like low cut tank top showing off his arms SLUT, SLUT BEHAVIOR HES VEING A WHORE A NO GOOD WHORE

Do you like it?

Bi-Han fluff and um viewer discretion advised you give him a KISS at the end

Bi-Han has asked you to accompany him tonight for a meal at Madam Bo’s

When you accepted, he knew he had to show you how respectable he is

Some would say he radiates pure power, dominance, and testosterone

But you showed patience and kindness, and you were so much softer than him

You deserved better- that much was clear to anyone

But he could be that better, could be a good partner

So before the night, he asked subtle questions to make sure he left a good impression on you

What your favorite scent Is- so he could buy that in a cologne

What your favorite flower Is, so he could leave them infront of your door the following morning

These things just come naturally to him- knowing how to court you

Perhaps he is a true charmer deep down, a lover boy of sorts

Only after he had finished his duties he assigned himself the task of thinking of things to flaunt to you

A balanced life, work, train, then leave something at your doorstep

An action some would see as cowardly, but he just doesn’t have time to stick around..

But tonight was different, he had time. he had all the time in the world

You looked so pretty, much nicer than him

Well, he looked like a strong, respectable, and dominant man

But you looked so soft- happy

You smile at him, waving

It wasn't supposed to be anything fancy, but more casual

Well maybe he made it a little fancy

But that's only maybe

He guides you throughout the restaurant

A sweet gesture he didn't even think about, but you seem to be receptive

When you talk to him you aren’t even nervous, it’s like you enjoy it- or something preposterous like that

He even makes a few jokes, it's nice

Like you both are normal, causal people on a date

Maybe the title doesn't matter outside of the Artik, the need for respect and regard may not be as important either

The only thing that really means anything right now is you- and him too, but mainly you

And you're enjoying yourself

Enjoying yourself with him, he's making you enjoy you're self

He finds your laugh to be quite satisfying

Because he is making you laugh

It is calm and favorable, even with people around

You share a slice of cake with him

Before he didn't like cake, but right now it fastest much better than he ever remembered

Sweet, but nice

Comforting perhaps?

He doesn't know

But it went well, you let him walk you to your room

No one is outside their chambers- because it is past curfew

But you two are out

A kiss is shared outside your door, a quick small one

Flowers are left outside your door the next morning

Maybe another kiss will be shared- inside your room next time

He wonders if you liked it

🎀



[eddiemunsons-missingnipple]

Eddie Munson x fem!reader

Summary: You and Eddie are guests at Joyce and Hoppers' wedding. When Eddie sees you in your dress, he can't seem to keep his hands off of you.

Warnings: slight voyeurism, fingering, squirting. Established relationship. Dirty talk, Eddie and the reader are little horny dorks in love. Also, Eddie smokes weed (not surprising for a man who carries weed in his lunchbox instead of food)

A/n18+ not proof read ignore any mistakes, please. This has been in my drafts for months now.

"Come on, babe, we're gonna be late," Eddie yelled from your shared bedroom.

He was currently trying to put his unruly curls in a low bun. He's currently wearing a black button-up shirt and black jeans with combat boots. This was your compromise since you told him no to his vest. You, on the other hand, were currently in your bathroom putting on makeup.

Usually, it takes you and Eddie both a while to get ready. You and him rushed around your trailer, trying to find something you misplaced. Your home wasn't dirty, but it could get chaotic sometimes. Eddie referred to it as "organized chaos."

"I'm going as fast as I can. ya want me looking like a clown or something? "

Today was Joyce and Hoppers' wedding day. They invited you and Eddie to come to the ceremony and reception afterward. You've known Joyce since you were a kid and would babysit for her sometimes if Jonathan couldn't. Eddie was a little too familiar with Hopper since he constantly got arrested for vandalism by spray painting his bands name on anything.

You finally finished applying your makeup, and now you hunt down to see where you hung up your dress. Rushing into your shared bedroom, you see Eddie sitting at the edge of the bed about to light up his joint. You snatch it from his lips and toss it on the bedside table. "Babe, really? Right now?"

"Don't act shocked. You know I smoke before I go anywhere." He defended and went to grab the joint from his table.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. have you seen my dress?" You asked him as he lit it up and took a puff. He immediately started coughing and choking.

Rolling your eyes, you begin to panic and search high and low for your black dress. Joyce told you it was a black tie event, and Eddie couldn't have been happier to hear that since he knew you couldn't put him in a funny little dress shirt. You ran around your home while Eddie was busy coughing up his lungs in your bedroom.

You stop and see it's been draped over the couch the entire time.

"I found it." Yelling out to Eddie. Entering the bathroom, you take your robe off and slip the little black dress over your figure.

The dress was black with spaghetti straps and a small slit up the side of your leg. Joyce helped you pick it out when all of you went dress shopping two weeks before the wedding. Eddie hasn't seen you in it yet, only seeing it on the hanger. When you emerge from the bathroom and into your room, his eyes go wide, and his mouth gapes slightly.

"Come on, we can leave now, or we'll be late." You ushered him off the bed, but Eddie immediately grabbed you from behind and nuzzled his face in your neck.

"we can be a little late." He purred in your ear.

You push yourself away from him and head to his van. The entire ride to the venue was pure torture on yours and Eddie part. With him constantly trying to rub his hand up higher and higher on your leg. You fought him off pretty good but it took everything in you to not let him pull over and fuck you in the back of his van. The way Eddie had been thinking about you when he saw you in your dress is how you have been thinking about him in his dress shirt. Especially when he decided to roll up the sleeves and expose his inked forearms. You just knew the both of you were in for a very long, long night.

His hands were roaming up and down your torso, and he stopped when he discovered your exposed thigh. He groaned and grinded into the swell of your ass. "No we gotta go."

-

Now it's time for the reception which is being held outside the venue of the wedding ceremony was at. Thankful you can finally eat and drink the night away with your friends and family. Eddie had other plans for you, apparently all day long since putting on this dress, he couldn't stop touching you. His hand ran up your thigh even during the ceremony. You had to gracefully smack it away a few times when it got just a little too high, and you could see some people starting to notice. If looks could kill, Eddie would be dead before it's time to cut the cake.

The wedding was beautiful, and Joyce and Hoppers' wedding vows were so romantic even Eddie cried a little. You've never seen Jonathan and Will look so at peace now that they knew their mother was in good hands. El looked beautiful, standing next to her new mom.

Now that you're both seated and able to eat, Eddie has been preoccupied in a conversation with Steve. "Thank God for steve," you think to yourself. Now you don't have to worry about Eddie's wondering hands on you while you try to enjoy your meal.

Unfortunately, it was too good to be true because just when you thought that, he leans over and whispers in your ear, " Either you let me finger you under this table or im not gonna let you come later."

He moved away and went back to laughing after whatever Steve just told him. Acting as if he didn't just threaten you a moment ago. Pouting at the threat and also knowing he's about to finger you with all of your close friends next to you. Carefully, you spread your legs open and scoot closer to the table. You feel Eddie's hand once again creep up your thigh, only this time he didn't stop.

Eddie squeezes it a little and brushes his finger over your covered pussy. You let out a shuttered breath as he moves the lace, keeping you two a part. You try to level your breathing and focus on your food. He runs his middle finger up your wet folds and starts softly rubbing your clit. His dips, his finger lower, collecting some of your slick and brings it back up to your clit.

You whimper a little and try to cough instead, hoping no one would notice. He doesn't stop and continues to lazily rub your clit while keep his attention on Steve. You bite your lower lip when he pushes down on your sensitive bud just a little harder and rubbed it just faster. You can feel yourself getting closer that tightness in your core getting stronger. Your breathing gets heavier, and before you come, you jump up from the table and excuse yourself. Hurrying yourself inside and to the nearest bathroom. You don't pay attention to Eddie calling after you.

You're a little embarrassed at what was happening, but you also didn't want him to stop. You knew if you came at that table, you wouldn't be able to hold back any moans escaping your mouth. Eddie knew that too he knew you couldn't be quiet even if you tried. You hear a little knock at the door and hear Eddies muffled voice behind the door.

"Baby, you okay? "

Opening the door slightly, you look up at him, and he can see your dazed face, and he frowns. He pushes his way inside and pulls you in for a hug. Kissing the top of your head as he smooths down your hair. "Want to go home?"

"I'm sorry we can go home if you like." He reassured.

Shaking your head no, that's now buried in his chest. He smells good, and it somehow brings a sense of calmness to you. He sways you back and forth as you hold onto him.

"I don't wanna go home yet." Your voice muffled. He pulls back a little and kisses you on the forehead.

"Wanna continue in here, sweet thing?" He smiles and wiggles his eyebrows.

He chuckles and slowly backs you up against the wall. The cold tile against your naked back makes you jump slightly. He kisses down your neck and hooks your leg over his hip. He grinds his cock into your core as he nips and bites the tender flesh of your neck. You let out a breathy moan and move your head back to give him more access.

You look up at him and give what he asked a second thought. You wanted to continue and never actually wanted to stop. You just know you can't keep quiet, and what if someone heard you. "I'm loud, Ed. what if someone hears me?"

"I'm gonna cover your mouth with my hand so no one can hear. Kay?" He pulls away from your throat and smiles at the little marks that are starting to blossom.

Nodding your head, he brings his large ringed hand up and covers your mouth. He brings his other hand back down to your wet folds. He pushes the lace of your panties to the side and dips a finger into your tight entrance. You moan in his hand. "I can't wait to get you home. I'm gonna fucking ruin you". He whispered harshly in your ear.

You loved it when Eddie got like this so greedy with passion and lust. Not being able to keep his hands off of you. He doesn't even care about his pleasure right now knowing he's gonna get it later. Right now, it's all about you and getting you ready for what he's gonna do when you both are home.

The thought makes your pussy flutter against his finger that's currently pumping inside you. He brings another finger to join and curves them upwards inside you. The squelching sound of your pussy as Eddie fingers you bounces off the tiled walls. His fingers are relentless inside you, and you whimper against his hand as his fingers find that sweet spot inside you.

"Or should I have you crying as you bounce on it? You'd like my dirt girl?"

"I know, baby, it feels good, huh?" His grip on your mouth tightens just a little. You close your eyes when he moves your leg up higher around his waist. His fingers deeper inside you and rubbing against the spongey spot on your velvety walls.

Your pussy clenches as your slick coats his fingers and drips a little down your leg. " You gonna come for me, baby, huh?" "Fuck you're so tight I can't wait to feel you wrapped around my cock squirming under me" He grunts out.

He's breathing heavily against your ear as he continues to whispersing dirty things to you. Your legs buck, and you move to wrap your arms his shoulders for leverage. He takes his thumb and starts rubbing your clit while his fingers relentlessly fuck you. "Fuck sweetheart you're making a mess all over my hand. "

You moan his name, but it comes out muffled against his hand. Eddie give your pussy a few more strokes of his fingers. He presses and rubs that spot on your walls, and you're coming all over his hand. Leaning your head back, you cry out as you gush all over him. Clear liquid squirting out and soaking his arm and getting on his pants. Your legs almost giving out from under your as your climax washes over you. His fingers keep pumping in and out of you as you come down from your orgasm.

You grip onto him tightly and bring him closer as you ride it out. You're trying to catch your breath and keep your balance, but your legs legs feel like jello. Your mind foggy, you don't really comprehend that Eddie has been calling your name.

"Hmm, what's wrong, Ed?" Your voice sounding so sleepy and small.

"Hey, there's my girl. I thought I lost you for a second. " He said, moving the hair from out of your face. You smile and hold onto him tightly. Eddie hooks his arm under your legs and carries you out the bathroom bridal style.

"I was gonna ask if you wanted to dance now, but it seems your legs have gone all wobbly on me." He joked as he carried you outside to the van.

"I wanna stay." You whined.

"Baby, I would love to stay, but you soaked me back there." Hiding your face in his neck as embarrassment washes over you. He laughs and helps you get in the passenger side of his van.

"Can we still dance later?" You asked as he helped buckle you in.

"Yeah baby, we can dance all night if you like." Eddie said as he closed your door. He hops in the driver's seat, leaning over to give you a quick peck.

He takes off down the street, strumming softly on the steering wheel. Eventually, exhaustion from the hectic day plus the orgasm Eddie just gave you takes over. He looks over at you and smiles to himself as he makes his way back home. Eddie feels bad he'll eventually have to wake you up, but he has some promises and plans to fulfill.

[onyourhyuck]

Sip & Share. | S.JH

— Prologue: “I want this Johnny, I need this.”

— Summary: You didn’t get the job interview. Depressed and low on motivation, you went over to your favourite café but you end up sip & sharing your life to one of the co-workers who works there.

— Genre: Wholesome Smut(?) Smut smut minors dni. Johnny!barista. There’s lots of praises here. Johnny has the biggest size kink though. They have sex at the café staff room. Pinning. Protected sex. Teasing. Y/n enjoys teasing Johnny. Y/n is older than Johnny here (for spice) because older noona kink. Mention of failing interview.

— Notes: Brewing Romance — The Series Masterlist.

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The clouds oblige and rain descends in little gleam-drops of bullet drops. Walking through the heavy night fall in this dangerously cold rain, you’re bound to be hit with this wash over. The sound of the rain is a harmonic thrumming on your jacket as you run towards this café you’ve always loved. Whenever you crave their coffee you come in here. But it would be a first time you coming into the café when you’re in a gloomy mood.

Today wasn’t your day at all. You hate that your life is going downhill. You just know that even if your life feels like it’s going badly every second you’re going to do something you just know it’s not going to be like this forever right? Eventually life gets better. But you keep wondering ‘When is my life about to get better?’ Because you’ve been waiting for your life to become something great and worthy of a while now and you’re becoming impatient.

The café swings a little bell and you take a seat down at one of the chairs as you take off your wet purse bag putting it on the table. You look out the window watching the heavy rain in the darkness. It’s way too late at night but this café closes at 2am so it’s always popular with night-folks people.

You wonder who is working here. Today there wasn’t many workers but a young attractive looking guy who is gazing over at you at the counter behind with the reception cashier. He was cleaning down the counters before looking at you. He saw how gloomy you look and actually he felt kind of uncomfortable with the fact that you’re sad.

Johnny tends to be one of the workers in the café that is very laid back and always trying to make people feel happy and better, so when he saw your expression as if your day was going very bad, he just felt obliged to make to a free coffee. Even if you didn’t ask. You were a pretty beautiful woman too. In fact he second glanced at you when you entered the café but you didn’t see that.

He puts down the cloth and walks over to you with a charming smile. The young man you see walking over to your table so he can take your owner has black curly and neat styled hair. He wore this black button up shirt leaving one button open. It was a very charming expression he held. You feel nearly intimidated by how good looking he was. You never seen this man working here but he seems like a professional since he’s the only one working the night shift to take care of the café.

When you’re at the café you are always served by a young lady and a young guy called Jungwoo. You wonder if Jungwoo doesn’t do nightshifts.

“Hey there, what’s got your head in the clouds?” He said with a little chuckle in between. He was very curious what kind of situation the customer had been going through for you to be so gloomy on a rainy day. He’s sure you have many reasons for your mood, though he doesn’t want to make you feel any worse. He wanted to cheer you up in any way possible. And it was a good thing Johnny puts customers above himself.

“Oh you know, life just goes sideways and screws you right over.” You mumble with sarcasm humour as your eyes looks at the tall young man who works at the café. Your back sits up in your seat taking off your wet jacket. “May I get a hot coffee, please? In medium size.” Johnny took down your order on the small notepad that every waitress used to take every customer needs down. The jacket you took off rests against the chair.

You didn’t want to complain to the worker but it was clear when you said how much life screws you over sideways just makes him think you really had something bad happen to you. He was very curious the more you keep talking.

And he’s trying so hard not to laugh when your sarcasm was very visible. Johnny tries his hardest to hold his chuckle back before it explodes out of his face. He wants to relate to you, but he never had it rough before… at least not that he remembered. He still thought your life problems were a good reason to be upset, though he can’t relate he wanted to try helping out.

He nods, and goes into the back to make her coffee. Johnny puts the pen down closing it and the small square yellow notepad away. “Alright one medium coffee coming up.”

“I’m Johnny, by the way. What’s your name, Miss?” He smiles towards you and before he would go make your coffee he just needs your name. Small introduction never hurt anyone right?

You were slightly more stunned that the very handsome man introduced himself to you but you maybe thought it was compulsory to do that?

Your eyes stay on Johnny and you give him a short smile. “Y/n is my name.” Once your name reached his ears Johnny knew it was a very beautiful name and he wanted to say it was, but he had to get on his way to make your coffee.

He wouldn’t want his best friend and boss the owner of this café to completely scold him thinking he was flirting with a customer. But Johnny wondered a lot. You’re very beautiful that was a fact. But you look so lonely and he just felt so gravitated towards you to keep you company. On the other hand he has no other customers at this time and you’re the only one here so it was very tempting to sit down and chat away to make you feel in a better mood.

If Yuta was here Johnny knew he would’ve gotten scolded. Especially when his boss was Yuta.

Your eyes we’re gravitating back to Johnny after he has left going back to the barista counter to make the coffee. You watch him from the far distance between your table by the large café window while watching the man. You feel very sneaky as your eyes were glued on the biceps and the muscular build he seems to have. You wish you weren’t drooling at the sight but you were.

How come you never met this fine man working at your favourite café before?

Your face gives a soft whenever you look at him checking how his arms were making the coffee and his biceps. They felt so warm and the urge for you to not make scenarios up took every fight in you against your filthy mind. “So, Johnny. Are you good at making coffee?” You want to stop looking at him but you also wanted to speak a conversation up. You raised an eyebrow in hope he does since he’s making your drink right now.

The way you strike up a conversation makes him think it was a great compliment because he really wanted to chat with you. You have him the opportunity so he took it while making the coffee it was a strong aromatic flavour and smell. He managed to keep a smile on his face and his eyes bright despite being caught off guard since he didn’t expect you to want to speak to him.

He couldn't help but notice how attracted you was towards his body. Before he could answer you he comes out with a mug, with warm hot coffee, he makes sure it's perfect as he gives it to you, with a splash of milk at the top.

Johnny chuckles a bit, "I can definitely say i'm an amazing coffee maker." He smiles, and winks at you as he gives her the warm mug.

Amongst the other employees in the café Johnny would have to put himself as top three best baristas in the working staff room. He would have to say that him and Jaehyun are pretty on par. Jungwoo was amazing actually. He always gets the orders right. Johnny was pretty good though and he never leaves a customer disappointed with their coffee.

You want to have a good judgement so you try not to be biased towards him. Just because he’s got a pretty face doesn’t mean he might have the best coffee you try to think of it that way.

“I guess I’ll be the judge of that Johnny.” Your voice said with a wide smirk as he brings the drink to you on the table. Your nostrils gather the smells already from the warm aromatic coffee, it was a strong smell with a splash of milk on it drizzling with sweetness. Johnny found you to be quite charming and he enjoys how you’re going to judge him and his coffee market making.

No other customer was ever so keen on judging his coffee making skills before. Johnny won’t lie he really hopes he makes a good impression with the coffee he gave you.

Your lips press on the mug to sip the coffee while Johnny waits for your answer and reaction. You tried to keep a straight face. Johnny sat down at your table as he waits now. The arms crossed as he’s staring at you trying to read some expression but he cannot figure it out.

The café fell in silence as this was everything to Johnny he was putting on the line his life and his amazing career, If he gets a bad rating this could mean the end.

Maybe this was him being a bit dramatic but Johnny loves coffee and as a coffee lover he should be amazing at making coffee therefore this was very very important to him. This was a very big deal for him. While he was sitting down in front of you he was was left thinking in his head; Was it good? Was it bad? Was it not hot enough? Maybe it was too hot? Johnny could only hope it was great. He can’t handle rejection. The heat on his face was visible and the stress he was going through with inner conflict shown on his face.

“What’s your honest opinion on this?” His voice was a little shaky as his eyes can’t help but stare at you down as if he was searching for your soul to take.

If you’re being honest now you’re just teasing him straight up. You can’t help but find it that he can be very endearingly cute in a way. He looks like a lost puppy who doesn’t want to disappoint their owner right now. You want to laugh but you kept on a straight unreadable face.

And then you start to slowly answer him. “It’s good…” You tell him as the nervous expression on his face starts to dissolve like milk and coffee blend together. He now knew you were purposely making him nervous you could hear under his breath ‘What the…’ because he didn’t expect you to make him wait for such a short comment.

“Did I scare you?” You proudly grin. The coffee was great actually probably one of the best coffees you tasted. You weren’t sure who’s coffee you liked the most; Jungwoo’s or Johnny’s?

You definitely did more than scare the poor man. You had him hanging on a piece of thread as if he was about to fall into oblivion. His face goes a little redder as he smiles back at you and laughs as well.

"You caught me off guard is what you did." He chuckles.

He smiles while watching you drink the coffee he made for you , as he sees your face go from depressed looking to a much more cheerier face, with a smile on your face. He just wanted to see you happy. His job was complete... and he felt good...

"I'm glad you enjoy it." Johnny said to you and you smirk nodding as you’re enjoying your warm mug of coffee right now. It was very good even though you had him literally gasping for a good rating for no reason too.

There was a certain attraction between you two. There definitely was something, you both feel it. But none of you can act up on it.

He looks at you once again, though he noticed how your eyes are back to admiring his muscles and his attire. He wanted to say something, but he knows if he makes a move it could ruin the progress he made with you and he doesn’t want to mess it up.

He smiles back at you, thinking how cute you looked when you’re a little shy. He wanted to put you in a better mood, as he felt bad you wasn't feeling great in the beginning. He gets up from his chair however when work was calling him. He can’t forget about his duty right now either.

"I'll be heading back to the counter."

The minor disappointment on your face was visible but you try to hide it with a little nodding smile as you saw Johnny go back to the counter to do his work. You’re not sure why you’re left with this lingering feeling that you wanted him to stay and chat with you some more. “Okay, I’ll be here drinking my… coffee.” You reply with a smile as your lips press on the cup to drink the coffee while he goes to the counter leaving the chair.

You watched him walk over checking him from behind as he was walking away. You can’t help yourself but check him out okay? It would be a crime not to. You bite your bottom lip while smirking. Maybe you failed your interview today but you was definitely enjoying Johnny’s company right now. And maybe you were flirting with him a little bit only subtly.

The café worker definitely feels the two pair of eyes checking him up and down as if he was your mealS Johnny looks over, seeing you bite your bottom lip. He smiles as he continues to look at yo while he waits at the counter. He watches as your lips are biting tour bottom lip and it just makes him think many things he shouldn’t; very unholy things right now. He puts on a smile as it’s so obvious you are checking him out. He couldn't hold the smirk back any longer from your actions.

Johnny gets an idea to try and speak to you more. The idea essentially was just you speaking about your problems because he remembered you telling him how you didn’t have the best day. He just wants the details and maybe he can be of help to you if you open up? Maybe all you need is someone to speak to.

After a few minutes you were nearly done with your coffee but you see the man coming over again. Johnny walks over and gets a pen and paper in front of the tables. “I've got an idea to cheer you up."

You wonder what does he mean by this but when Johnny pressed the paper and pen towards you he lets out a chuckle as he saw your curious expression trying to figure this out.

He smiles as he opens the page of his notebook, as he writes something on it. Johnny looks up at her as he tries his best to keep a straight face. Though he was happy to see her smile, as he knew this would cheer her up more. He shows her what he wrote on the page. "You can vent here." He gives her the notebook and a pen.

You can’t help it but think he’s being very thoughtful of you and being mindful.

But you have a better idea. You chuckle as you look at the notepad and pen. Your hands rub the back of your neck while looking back at him now. “How about I vent to you through conversations?”

Johnny smiles looking at you as he puts his hand on your shoulder and sits back down on the chair.

"I can listen to you vent, as long as it keeps that beautiful smile on your face... but if you want to talk about it, go ahead... i'm listening." He smiles warmly as he sees you’re rubbing the back of your neck as if it was your nervous habit tick. He looks at you once again, and notices how tired you must've been.

"Tell me, what happened before you came to this rainy night today?"

You took a deep breath. You don’t want to feel like you’re burdening him of course not but he voluntarily said you can vent to him. On the other hand you feel like you might physically combust if you don’t speak to someone about this. And Johnny seems to be the only person you can speak to him about this with. You think this might be a good idea to just tell him what’s been happening in your life.

“Today I had a job interview and I failed it. I didn’t get the job.” Your voice sighs as your body slants back on the seats. “So I guess life screwed me sideways.” You tell him lowly. “I’m in my 30’s with no job…”

You had a job but you never expected it to end the way you did. At first your job was amazing. You loved it and everyone was nice at your job but then your boss turns out to be a complete nightmare.

You’re not the type of employee to stand abuse with a boss despite them being your boss with greater power. You wouldn’t stand to such things. Many people do that but you don’t and you can’t handle stress when it’s from employee abuse.

You can’t stand injustice either so you left on your own record and now you’re trying to find another job. But you’ve not been having luck yet.

The man was listening to you with an attentive eye towards you. He can tell you’ve been worrying about this for a while. It must be pressuring you to get a job already but he thinks you’re worrying for no reason because there’s bound to be a job somewhere for you surely.

Johnny sighs as well, matching your tone.

"Hey, don't be too hard on yourself." He gives you a comforting smile. "There'll be another opportunity waiting somewhere... just gotta give it some time." He chuckles as he thinks you must've been struggling to find a good job... and it took you more time than you thought it would.

He now rubs your shoulder in comfort. "Don't worry, you won't stay without a job for long." He smiles, and looks down at you with a warm smile.

You start to wonder how come he’s so nice to you? Johnny just knows how to say the right things to you in the right moments.

“I guess you’re right…” You state with now a few chuckles a bit. You feel now a bit better about your situation. You would’ve never thought this was going to make you feel so much better and lighter on your shoulders. “Thank you you’re very sweet you know that?” You said back smiling now, he even rubbed your shoulders and it makes you feel more relaxed too.

Your eyes are both connecting in this contact regarding for a while but it feels like a few seconds to you. The both of you fell for your eyes distractions. They both share the same lingering eye glance, you shift your upper body closer and smile more looking at him while your eyes open up at him some more, as if you were now admiring him up close with a warm heartfelt look.

“How can I repay you for your kindness?” Johnny heard you ask him this. He has a flirtatious smile and a charming expression, how can you repay him?

He never once needed anything from you. Johnny actually wants nothing from you at all.

With a warm bright tone he spoke enough to have you melting a little. "No need to repay me..." He smiled at his flirtatious remark. "Just seeing you smile is enough for me." Johnny looks at how your smile grew when he said that now, thinking how beautiful and stunning you are. He wondered what was going through your mind.

"So... you're in your 30's..." Johnny starts, still staring at your magnetic eyes. "You're quite the beautiful woman." He smiled, complimenting you because he was being so honest you are beautiful from head to toe. He couldn't help but notice it the moment you walked into the café.

The compliment went through the ear and out the other as if you’re flushing it out. You just didn’t believe him at first, but his genuine expression made you feel flattered. “Oh please… I’m nearly an old woman.” Your voice tone comes out as mumbles as you feel complimented by him. Lifting your head up to look back at him with another curious glint in your eyes. “How old are you, Johnny if I may ask?”

Johnny smirks when you call yourself old. He didn’t think you’re old in fact you look very young for your age and heck, thirty wasn’t even old for him. He didn’t think you was old at all, but he understood that you are calling herself old because you probably feel like it on the inside.

“How could a lovely lady such as yourself be old?” He chuckle in slight humour with a charming glance at you to have you weak for him, and whatever he was doing to you has you doing lapse

He thinks of his age when you asked him. He gives a little smirk leaning closer only a little subtly. “Well… since you asked, i’m about… 28.” Johnny smiles warmly to you.

You couldn’t really believe Johnny was twenty eight years old he looks even younger than that. You guessed in your head probably twenty four. But you must think it must be nice for him to look young especially when he works at this café. It was a popular café amongst other women. You now know why probably because of all the attractive employees. And Johnny was one of them definitely.

“You’re a young guy Johnny. You must get a lot of attention from women.” You point out now with a little smirk. “How about a relationship?” You might be getting ahead of yourself but you wanted to ask him. “You must have someone.”

There was a spark on those glistening Iris pupils of his that has you growing deeper and falling so much harder than before when you’ve asked if he was in a relationship. Johnny smiles as he sips his coffee, as he gets asked about his love life. He thinks about it and then sighs.

"Actually... i'm single." He chuckles when he surprised you greatly with his answer. "I don't really seem to have one yet." He smiles once again as he looks at you. For some reason you have unnecessary growing hope there might be something more between you both but surely that’s just you getting ahead of yourself?

"What about you, do you have a boyfriend by chance?" He smirks, as he sips more of his coffee. The question he asks you makes your heart race and you shake your head a simple no.

You calmly state. “No boyfriend.” And your lips quiver up as you’re wondering why and how come he hasn’t had a girlfriend yet?

He looks so damn perfect to you actually. It feels crazy to know he was single. There must be a reason but you know everyone must have their own way to deal with relationships. “ You’re a young guy you should find someone to settle with. I’m in my 30’s regretting not doing that sooner.”

Johnny felt the pain in the sigh and smiles at you telling him how much you regret not dating when you were younger. He looks at you once more, as he sips the rest of his coffee and puts the mug down on the table.

"I'll meet the right one when the time is right." He smiles back, and then laughs quietly as he looks at you with a playful grin. "Besides, I'm in no rush myself right now."

You finished your coffee now too, but you turn to him when he has now raised an eyebrow as if he had something to tell you. "What about we make this day a little more pleasant for you. I got a proposition."

This could go absolutely horribly or absolutely correctly. Johnny thinks there’s no in between for what he’s about to offer you considering this was quite a personal proposition to offer someone he has just met but, he couldn’t ignore your chemistry with him. As much as he’s trying not to make a big deal out of it Johnny had to admit; there was something going on between you two. Johnny takes a bit to think about his proposition, his flirtatious demeanor taking in place again, as he sees you move a little closer to hear him more. "Well I was trying to... figure out a way to make your day more pleasant..." Johnny smiles as he continues to look in the eyes of yours, as his gaze shifts from your eyes to your lips. He feel the same heart racing so fact and you feel your trembling eyes with slight excitement. "I think i've got an idea." He smiles when seeing the excitement on your face you could not hide. “You wanna hear it?"

You give him a nod, Johnny smirks at your physical response. Johnny smirks, noticing how excited you must be about his proposition. Knowing you, you probably have an idea of your own what it could be.

“Why don’t I take you to the staff rooms? So that we can make this day more… pleasuring for you…”Johnny slowly gets closer to your side of the table, his body getting close to your body.

“I mean… since I made the coffee right?” He chuckles, slowly looking at the lips belonging to your beautiful face. He bites his bottom lip as he looks back up at your magnetic eyes always pulling him to you with your magnetic field.

It feels more like a dream to you right now to hear one of the employees asking you to join him in the staff rooms at this night hours when the café should be closing down soon, but he has other plans for you and you were more than down to do this with him. You want to just feel good tonight and forget how bad your day went. Johnny was the only thing making your night better than your day was actually for the majority so completely shit. But Johnny? He was making it so much more worth while.

“Hmm, I guess that’s fair.” You grin out with your own pride and excitement playfully.

It feels like your mind was getting so many ideas right now and you shuffled closer and Johnny stands up as you take him by the hand and he leads the both of you into the staff room. The minute you entered with him it didn’t take a moment for the both of you to calm down because neither of you wanted to do that. You wanted to feel the rush, the adrenaline, the excitement and the daredevil feeling that you’re so craving. Your gasps come out when Johnny pulls you into a steamy heated makeout. The kisses took every single breath out of the lungs. It feels so good to finally kiss each other it feels like tension releasing from your muscles.

Your gasps come out at everything, especially when Johnny pulls away now that his lips slowly kiss the side of your tempting neck. “Johnny, can i repay you for venting and the coffee to you this way?” You smirk out while asking back chuckling. It makes Johnny smirk.

He found it very much amusing so he laughs along your words as the smirk stays on his face while reaching to caress your clothed body, as his hands creep upwards to caress your cheek while your faces are only barely an inch away from one another. The kiss you broke out off only a minute ago still as your heart racing so much. “I think that’s a perfect repayment for venting and this delicious coffee.” He whispers on the sides of your ear feeling your beautiful hair strands prickle his face, while his lips touch your neck and kisses it. The arms wrap around your waist as his other hand caressing and grabs your face.

Kissing your neck with his loving lips and a smirk written on that damply handsomely face of his, he was glad to be able to help you make your night even more thrilling than your other nights.

Johnny grabbing your face to reach over while kissing your neck makes you moan softly as your hands roam up his black button up shirt. You can finally feel that muscular build he has and it makes you literally exhilarate like a running engine on a car considering you’ve been making so many scenarios up with his body it was going to be the death of you. His bare back was run by your hands going down, you feel his entire body with your palms.

“Have you ever slept with someone that’s older than you?” You questioned softly as you feel your cheeks heat up. You haven’t slept with anyone younger but this was definitely going to be a first for you. You have a feeling Johnny knows how to satisfy a woman in bed however with the way he’s kissing your neck and your lips while caressing your body. Johnny’s entire presence dominates your mind and your soul at this point.

Your voice was silvery and short. You definitely feel so overwhelmed with just these touches and it makes him want to make you feel even more than this.

The man looks over at you with darken eyes. Johnny chuckles once again, he couldn't help but notice how her hands roamed through his shirt and his back, your fingertips feel so light and airy on his body it’s driving Johnny crazy and he can’t wait to have them explore him some more.

"I must say... I have not." He smirks as he bites the soft area of your neck a little harder and then reaching over to plant kisses on your chin while looking at your eyes. "But... I've always wanted to..." He looks up at the addicting lips, and gives you a kiss on your cheek.

"How about we make this an experience?" Johnny equips in exchanged look between your eyes, with a wide flirtatious smirk.

He already had a feeling you were going into the idea even though it was a rhetorical question he asked you, you shown great deal of nodding. Johnny chuckles when you pull away from him now as your face completely changed.

You’re now facing him with your boastful eyes as you pull only a certain distance making sure he was watching you with hungry eyes.

You’re more than okay to do this with Johnny. If anything you want more of it. You pull away stripping away your shirt unbuttoning it slowly. Johnny took small glances between your beautiful mature figure it just makes him so much more impatient for you.

And you certainly were such a tease, stripping yourself in front of him while he’s standing there flabbergasted by your beauty itself.

It’s like something in Johnny’s body just snapped, and he no longer could just stand there watching you strip tease him like this in the café’s staff rooms.

Darkly gazing over at you watching your strip teasing revealing your beautiful body and those curvy figure that he was about to enjoy more intimately in the staff room of the café very soon, Johnny won’t pass up on this opportunity now.

"My... my..." He looks at her body with whispers under his breath, starting to drool. Johnny was practically crying to touch you right now but on his face all you see was deep hunger; deep hunger for you. You looked so much smaller than he admitted. Not small as in you’re short but small as in your body was very dainty compared to him. Which makes Johnny think of vile things to do to you.

He couldn’t wait to get his hands on you some more. The man starts to think if he touched you, you might break on his hand with a single hand touch.

Johnny goes from patient to complete impatient man. He takes his shirt off as well, revealing his muscular body and six-pack abs, along with his tattoos on his muscular arms. As you saw him undress you feel like you’ve done your job edging Johnny by messing with him, making him purposely impatient. Johnny then reached to go pin you to the wall of the staffing room.

When pinning you on the wall it feels so primal and near to animalistic but he still treated you softly he made sure you were not hurt in the process of being pinned. Of course he still cares for your well-being and the wall crashing on your back, you let out a gentle breath out that makes your body freeze and hitch on halt. You feel Johnny pull you into another heated kiss as he kept your body on the wall pinned with his muscular lean arms. Your hands felt so naturally warm gravitating towards his forearms and around his biceps feeling the tattoos he has on him, and the abs he has makes your imagination run wild and dry. You could go crazy for this guy.

You simply let your body breathe as the kiss took every bit of air you had in your lungs collected. “Oh… hmm you’re so, hmm…” You mumble between the kisses that are passionate and fiery. “Attractive.” You finish your sentence with a soft light laugh away from the kiss. “You have tattoos…?” Your gaze powers down to the tattoos. You whisper impressed as you feel your body shiver with contact on your skin made by him.

Johnny smirks, noticing how you’re gazing over at his physique now that you’re both so close together you’re complimenting his tattoos and muscular arms it makes him feel so much good when he heard it from you.

“Yeah… I got a couple you get to enjoy later.” He chuckled mischievously. He kisses you on your neck once again as he looks at your beautiful face softly leaning back doing that. “You’re not so bad yourself… you know.” Johnny smiles at your comment.

While you’re in your bra and underwear it won’t be long until your white bra around your chest slowly starts to be taken off. Johnny lifts your white bra, revealing your breasts for him as he looks back at them.

He bites his bottom lip as the sight of your beautiful breasts makes him even more uncontrollable in his own head. Your breasts were perfect; bouncy, perky and lifted upwards. Your nipples were a deep rosey colour. It’s almost like they the colour of your blush on your face.

Johnny’s hands groping your breasts, going down to kiss them, playing with them with his fingertips, he knew exactly how to make you feel so flustered right now because while he was fondling your round shaped breasts you were biting your lip in response as it feels so good to have two muscular hands moving them around. While playing with the nipples between the fingers twisting around the sensitive nips to have you achingly asking for more.

It’s like Johnny couldn’t get enough of you in this state. He wants to make you feel even better.

Hearing your lower voice making these soft sounds, Johnny couldn’t hold back, the look on his face tells it all. He’s ready to enjoy you in every way possible. He smiles, and looks at you with the same ole’ flirtatious look smugly. He takes you by your arm as he moves you over to the couch in the room. He makes you sit down and he sits down next to you at first. Grabbing at your thighs and he moves them over his legs. Making you sit on his lap, he kisses your neck as his nose on your neck sniffs your perfume scented skin and the natural scent of your bodily aroma.

You bring your hips tucking them close against his muscular build and the abs as you’re in nothing but your underwear now you feel exposed but so does he and you’re enjoying the view between your nude bodies. Your lower body was casually grinding occasionally you bounce a bit while Johnny held you in the position on his lap. The crotch area specifically was your target as your hips move back and forth in the grinding position, Johnny weakly groans.

Johnny’s eyes widen, as you grinding on his lap was torturous behaviour from you but also he feels so good too. It just makes him even more aroused than before.

“Feeling good?” He asks you slowly as his moves the nose to other spots on your neck taking in your scent as you smell so good and warm. Johnny always thought coffee beans were his favourite scent smell but no, you are definitely number one. He slowly grabs your arms, making you put them around him. Your arms feel very comfortable and warm for him. Johnny smiles up at you giving you a light kiss on your lips. Johnny made sure to pull you even closer to him by letting his hands grab your waist.

You feel amazing but you’re now feeling slightly more brusque you won’t lie.

“Yeah, hmm bit impatient right now.” You tell him with truthful words as you do feel a bit fretful and you can’t wait much longer. You want him so bad. Even though grinding feels nice, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the real deal you want. You lean down returning the kiss to become a steamy makeout between the two. As if this couldn’t get even more escalating with excitement you feel your body craving much more and the more he gives the more you want. It was a never ending cycle. Johnny tightens the grab around your waist as your breasts press on his own body in the steamy kiss.

You nip at the bottom lip while your breathing goes even heavier while your chest goes up and down with your heavy breath. It makes you feel so good in this hold. While nipping at his bottom lip Johnny let’s out a soft groan with your teeth brushing on the lips softly as your arms run up and down his nape behind the neck, as Johnny hardens underneath you feeling how horny he must be getting thanks to you.

You feel him smirk against the warm and sloppy messy makeout continues.

Grabbing a handful of your ass from behind as you’re sitting on the lap when you’re both focusing on the kissing you both give to one another, caressing your behind slowly. While you’re nibbling on his bottom lip he lets out a smirk. He visibly enjoys how you’re feeling at his nape while all of this was happening, and he chuckles while his hands are behind you grabbing your round perfectly shaped ass he can’t get enough of. “You want this?” Johnny smirks asking you.

You sigh out with pleasure when the kiss breaks apart leaving your faces apart for a brief moment just so he can caress your body some more, going lower caressing you in your underwear with a deep chuckle leaving his mouth seeing you sigh out. “I want this Johnny, I need this.”

He brushed his hands higher on your thighs caressing them now too, it makes you groan when his hand makes contact in between your thighs.

You sound so desperate for him, it makes him want to continue with you even more.

Johnny understands what you want and if you really need this so badly he’s going to give it to you. Johnny lifts you up going over to the nearest counter in the room that you’re in together, your body touches the cold surface and he slowly plays by the hem of your panties slipping them off down to your ankles.

The couch wasn’t doing it for him, he reckons the counter would be more comfortable and exciting for someone as eager as you. Plus he can get a higher view of you as you’re on the counter gazing down at him with your glint full eyes.

Your hips touch his when Johnny pulls your bodies closer to connect. The sight of the very round and thick tip carrying the weight on your entrance, he brushes himself inside very subtle changes in your walls and posture start to go rigid. You groan at the new sensation when Johnny makes himself fit inside your wet and very flowing eager cunt.

You’re just so dainty and small Johnny thinks that he might split you in half like a kit-kat. But at the same time you’re loving this and Johnny is more than loving this right now, it’s fuelling something inside him to drive more into you.

The length pushing in with all your strength dissolving you’re now a moaning mess as Johnny on the side place kisses on your neck and nibbling on it ever so slightly, as he can’t stop looking at you in so many ways imaginable. When your bodies are locked in the same pace back and forth on the counter top you feel Johnny’s body moving in and out of you with slow and gradual motions that will turn real quick into something else.

Your body is so soft. Your skin, your curves. His hands squeeze your thighs as he pulls you up against him closer than before on the countertop. He whispers into your ear with his mouth very close distance from your face. “Your body feels so heavenly Y/n…” Johnny smiles, moving his hands up to your hips.

“Mhhm so good,” You mumble between the kisses as you feel the squeeze he crafts on your thighs so hardly.

The rocking gets so much more intense, you’re now rocking your own body in a much faster way on the top while your breasts move along the rhythm of your body line. Johnny leans over kissing your moving beasts and occasionally sucking on the cleavage area having you breathless as you’re trying to steady your body on the countertop.

It was so intense you feel the shape inside you changing to adjust to his own large cock deeply inside you going even more, like he was digging to go back and inside you again.

“Oh god so deep, so deep… you’re going.” Your voice broke into whines.

“I know I am.” He whispers in your ear, while rocking more against you in this gruff manner with his cock practically making every space inside you his own, destroying all your insides while having you nicely stretched out.

The grinning face went over to kiss your neck, while his fingers on your skin digs into your skin. He smiles with that dominant nature he carries with him and it’s driving you crazy how a presence can be so suffocating to you in the best way possible. He is going to make sure you feel all the pleasure he can give.

You run down your nails on his back as you’re growing so much closer to your ending it’s not even going to be humanly possible for you to comprehend as your mind keeps blacking out on you, every movement he makes going into you became thrusts. It’s not long until he’s going to start ramming into your body like you’re something to be used for own self-fulfilling pleasure and purpose.

“I didn’t think I’d be here doing this with you, but here I am.” You state with your heavy breathing as your eyes are clenching at every pleasure your stomach was forming.

You made him smile now, he was hearing your words and he couldn’t help but crease open a smile on his face as his body was rutting down and up again in your body as your hips touch gracefully. Johnny loves the way you’re moaning and shaking right now it’s a sight he won’t be able to forget.

Johnny bites his bottom lip, as he leans down, closer to your nape.

“I’m so glad to be doing this with you. And you can make all the noise you want, it’s late…We got the place to ourselves.”

You feel a burning knot in your stomach, a scorching fiery ready to burst any minute now and you’re moaning endlessly, as if it’s enchanting Johnny to want to hear you more.

“Ahh me too, you’re definitely making me feel soo much better after a depressing day.” You murmur as Johnny hears your sweet words, he can’t help but think you’re such a sweetheart right now.

The more your bodies were practically like glued together you feel your stomach hitching ever so slightly more. You feel the wetness piling up and eventually Johnny thrusts once more feeling a warm sensation running down his cock that brings him over the edge as he’s gazing right at you.

Johnny seed your body flinching to the touch as you’re overwhelmed by your running orgasm, as your face becomes flushed up. He moves his fingers down your arms and smiles a bit at you.

“I see you finished,” Johnny whispers close to your face with a few series of heavy pants. Your eyes look up at him trembling from the pleasure. “Good girl, Noona.” Praising you in a low tone to you.

You let out slow whimpers, you’ve never felt so loved just from a guy you only met tonight and you won’t ever regret this. The way he calls you a good girl makes your face more and more flushed.

Your lips open apart. “Did you finish?” Catching your breath you watch the man slowly as he was still deeply buried in you barely twitching now as the movements have stopped but he was still solid hard making you want to move even more. “Where do you want to finish? In or out?” You now ask him with a little smile as you’re let him decide.

Johnny grins out with a chuckle, the idea of you finishing off aroused him even more.

He looks at you with a smug smile. “What do you think?”

“I know where I want to finish, but what about you? You haven’t told me yet.” He whispers dangerously close to your face with the same smug smile.

You softly reply as your heart race. He was so charming that it’s making your body go so mushy that you don’t know how to act with him. “I want you to finish inside, I’ll be honest.”

He stares at you, before he smiles back at you and nods. “Let’s make that a reality.”

The body moved in closer with yours as the pleasure lowly starts to rise once again, and reaching over to kissing you your tongue finds its way in his mouth with ease. Their tongues play against each other while Johnny moves in a fast pace as he knew, that you’d finish him quickly off knowing how good your body feels and you would make him feel so much more pleasure very soon.

Johnny wants to finish this once and for all, while savouring this beautiful moment with you. The many groans escape your mouth as Johnny pushed his hips down towards you repeatedly.

It wasn’t long until you feel Johnny rutting inside your cunt ready to fill it up and stuff it full of himself, and only himself. Johnny grunts deeply while the hands squeeze your hips and lower back with a final thrust into you, you gasp so desperately while you’re now having warm sensations running inside you filling up to your womb. Johnny rushed over his hands down with a few lingering pants. You felt so damn good it makes his mind go fuzzy.

Very carefully Johnny pulls out while you’re oozing out the very fine liquid dripping out of your cunt as he leaves you with a cream pie. You roll your head back and catch your breath once more. This might be the biggest cardio you’ve ever done.

Johnny was mesmerised by your oozing pussy and he leans up to kiss your lips, before he breaks the kiss once again.

“I’m so proud you could make me finish, Y/n.” He smirks a little seeing your shy expression and the exhaustion too, Johnny’s fingers caresses on your face with his fingers gazing into your eyes. “Good girl…” he whispers.

Johnny chuckles. “You look tired. Let me give you a lift home and…” He paused as you stare at him he pulls out his phone putting it on your hand palm. “And your number too.”

You chuckle. “Okay fine. Yes to both things.” You smile as you type your phone number into his phone meanwhile Johnny was watching you from the sideline admiring you.

He has literal heart eyes for you, he might be a fool for you right now.

“Perfect. I’ll be taking you out on a date.” Johnny announces. You’re definitely lucky or maybe your life is starting to get better?

Taking back the phone from your hands Johnny smirks a bit. Who would’ve known a night to your favourite café could lead to sip and share with one of the coworkers leading to this.

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@onyourhyuck please refer from translating copyrighting plagiarising my work thank youu! Please Reblog This Fic and follow me for more updates on the masterlist series!

[spinningalbinoturtle]

Fellowship Marriage and Wedding Headcanons

Aragorn + Arwen

As we see in the movies and books their wedding is a very big to-do in Gondor. Arwen has a great eye and has picked out excellent design choices. If Aragorn had his way they would have been married in a small ceremony in Rivendell outside years ago but also Elrond saw to it that didn’t happen

They very much co-lead and have a fairly equal relationship. I say fairly because ultimately Arwen always has the last say

Aragorn genuinely and intensely worships his wife and will not hesitate to bring her or her opinions up at any given time.

They fuck A LOT. Aragorn absolutely knows how to please a woman and enjoys doing so

Sam and Frodo

Yes they’re married, no he didn’t go to the undying lands, no Sam doesn’t marry Rosie what are you talking about?

I think it would be wildly funny is they got married at Bilbo’s birthday party- but realistically I think they got married in Rivendell on their way back from the quest.

When Sam becomes Mayor he appoints Frodo as his deputy so they can work together

They have a very affectionate and loving relationship to the point where other hobbits (Merry and Pippin) get annoyed by their gratuitous displays of PDA

They have sex like once a week but cuddle everyday

They’re very protective of one another

Eowyn and Faramir

I’ve said it before I’ll say it again, Faramir is a trans woman-they are lesbians

Have a very equal relationship although Eowyn appears more dominant (and kinda is)

They share political power very equally though

They both are scared to be parents but also really want kids: spoiler alert they had nothing to worry about they are excellent parents

Eowyn is very open about sex and will discuss it or go at it in semi public spaces, Faramir is more shy so Eowyn respects this but encourages her to be more confident

Pippin and Diamond

They met at the strip club where Diamond is a dancer

They instantly fell in love

They are super devoted to one another

They are ALWAYS going at it and have evidence of their sex life displayed around their living room-this makes guests very uncomfortable

Pippin takes pole dancing classes to impress Diamond. He also takes her to the male strip club so “she can enjoy it”

His parents are a little disappointed but they keep it to themselves because they’re just happy Pippin finally settled down

Merry and Estella

I hate to say this but their marriage is low-key arranged. Merry’s dad wanted him to get married and Estella’s family wanted connections

At first they kinda like eachother and get along but Estella rapidly becomes annoyed with Merry’s constant being high and having Pippin over

She eventually divorces him. He goes to crash on Pippin’s couch for an extended stay

Eventually he goes back to Buckland. Estella gets rich off the divorce

Merry is happy with his bachelor lifestyle and has plenty of various boyfriends and girlfriends over the years. He teases his friends for being “tied down”

Legolas and Gimli

Their wedding is held in Dale in an attempt at neutrality but a fight breaks out between the dwarves and elves at the reception and they sneak away

They love to travel together

They have tried everything. And I mean everything. They never run out of ideas to spice up their sex life

They do sleep in separate rooms though because Legolas kicks and Gimli snores

They do not want kids but like being the weird uncles of everyone else’s kids. They don’t want the responsibility

Credit for the Diamond is a hobbit stripper headcanon goes to @diplomatson thank you my friend for that excellent idea

[bloodyarn]

𝙻𝙴𝚃𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚂 . unprompted interactions

@bolyde :

"I didn't realize how long all of these tasks were going to take. You must feel as if you wasted your day." Rolan notes, as close to an apology as he allows himself. It's easier to assume that she's regretted the day out instead as the lanterns of the city are being lit as the sun rolls low for the night. At least sunset was pretty. They slowly approach Babette's home, and Rolan's tail begins to sag with the encroaching loss of her company. Despite his best efforts, Rolan has grown not just endeared but affectionate to Babette. Cal and Lia would helpfully point out that he's had a crush for ages now if they were here. "Thank you again for being a tour guide around the city-" Rolan bows slightly at his waist as they stop at her front door, "and making sure I didn't get lost meeting the various supply vendors." His tail perks slightly as he stands straight once more and meets Babette's eyes. All day, he's kept in mind how he wanted to thank her. To open a door for himself. Multiple times throughout the day, he's changed his mind to let sleeping dogs lie. It's not like he was a joy or treat to be around typically. It was time for him to decide. And so Rolan takes a leap of faith. Maybe, just maybe, Babette does not find him so hard to be around as others have claimed in the past. He might not be so gentlemanly as others, but he's fine enough. He snakes one of his hands (slightly sweaty) into hers as he leans down, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek. That had to be obvious enough because when he pulled away slightly from the action, everything in him tried to make him run. Instead, he found himself frozen in fear, standing dumbly in front of the seamstress awaiting his fate.

      Where  Rolan's  mind  was  busy  overthinking  basically  the  whole  day,    Babette, on  the  other  hand,  had  quite  the  great  time.  Never  did  she  take  the  role  of  a  tour  guide  in  her  own  city  ;   only  ever  having  had  to  deliver  garments  alone  when  she  was  old  enough  to  walk  the  streets  by  herself  in  the  past.  The  lady  bloomed  in  her  temporary  job,  trying  to  squeeze  as  much  useless  information  about  buildings   &   weird  sightseeing  spots  she  could  manage.  Annoying,  for  many.  However  Rolan  may  have  felt  about  it,  the  tiefling  was  polite  in  the  best  way.

Only  a  little  sad  when  they  finally  reached  her  door   —   every  nice  day  had  to  come  to  an  end  eventually.  A  sigh,  a  smile.  The  pale  one  shook  her  head,  brushing  off  his  concerns  about  her  regretting  the  time  she  spent  with  him.  The  wizard  bowed   &   Babette  stood  there  ;  hands  neatly  folded  over  her  lap,  not  able  to  gulp  down  a  tiny  giggle.    ❝  Oh,  please.  I  can't  remember  ever  having  a  more  pleasant  time  by  just  strolling  around  the  city.  Anytime  again. ❞

What  caught  her  off-guard  was  that  brush  of  lips  against  her  rosy  cheek  ;  which  ended  as  quickly  as  it  came.  And  she  shared  the  frozen  stance,  expression.  Wine-red  orbs  wide  in  flustered  shock,  an  unconscious  squeeze  of  her  hand  into  his  palm.

   Woah  .  .  .

Babette  must  have  imagined  this,  right   ?   That  was  like,  almost  a  little  hug.  Nothing  out  of  the  ordinary  (  No,  that  was  certainly  a  kiss.  Felt  the  lips,  even  feeling  the  echo  of  heat  on  her  skin  )  .  All  these  times   —   these  opportunities  today,  the  seamstress  thought  about  similar  scenarios.  Cheesy,  for  sure,  but  who  was  she  if  not  a  romantic  at  heart.  A  little  fairy  tale  princess.

Voices  in  her  head  began  to  scream  so  loudly,  every  noise  outside  of  it  seem  to  fade   &   blur   &   only  clouding  her  reception  of  things.  The  aching  burn  which  soon  spread  up  her  neck   &   painted  her  whole  face  in  hues  of  red   —   an  inevitable  thing.  No,  the  woman  did  not  think,  could  not  think  at  that  moment.  So  little  in  fact,  that  the  tailor  didn't  even  realize  herself  leaning  up,  on  her  tippy-toes,  to  offer   (  or  steal  )   a  little  kiss  for  herself.  Not  on  the  cheek,  though.  Maybe  she  wished  she  aimed  for  the  cheek.  It  was,  in  fact,  his  mouth.  Oh,  dear.

.  .  .

    ❝  A-Ah--  Sorry  I  .  .  .  You  startled  me  right  there  .  .  .  and  it  seems  now  I  startled  myself  too  (?)   (  Gods,  what  am  I  talking  right  now-  )   I,  erhm,  I  had  a  wonderful  time.  Thank  you  so  much.  Really.  I  .  .  .  enjoyed  it  greatly. ❞

   No  no  no,  we  won't  elaborate  on  that  physical  slip-up.  Proper  ladies  do  not  initiate  kisses  like  that.  Babette  should  have  waited,  like  she  always  did.  Like  she  always  had   (  Like  the  whole  day  already-  ) .    ❝  Do  you  .  .  .  do  you  want  to  stay  for  a  cup  .  .  .  ?   J-JUST--  Not  what  you  might  THINK   !   I  noticed  you  drank  very  little  today.  You  must  be  dehydrated   &   all  .  .  .  ! ❞

At  least  she  did  not  lose  all  her  manners.

[vote-gaara]

Children went to sleep, let's go with the hot questions!. Do you think Gaara has a high libido? Is he submissive or dominant? Wouldn't he keep his hands off his partner? I think that once he gains confidence he will be very affectionate wink wink

Nsfw under break

I would describe Gaara as "Polite and proper in the streets and slightly less formal in the sheets."

I don't know if I could really classify him as having a high or low libido, mostly cause I think he falls more under the ace umbrella....meaning that it's just not there. However, with the right person I think he would be really receptive to the idea and act of sex. Certainly he would never not be up for it if his SO asked.

I don't think he'd be all that good at initiating sex either, as he has a little more difficulty asserting himself in an intimate relationship. He would, however, become more open in his late 20s, early 30s and onwards.

I could just imagine him and his SO - at like 29 - sitting on the couch when all of a sudden Gaara just turns to them and says "would you like to....go to the bedroom?" And the SO would be like: 😲

I would also say that Gaara would be more dominate in bed, but not to be confused with him looking to dominate, if that makes sense.

I think he would really want to be on top, just cause it gives him control of the situation and makes him feel more secure. He would also be able to get a better feel of things while he's in control that I don't feel he would have if he were more submissive or on the bottom. I personally just don't see him being able to relax enough into it.

Now Gaara, at heart, would want to please his SO and so if they wanted to be on top, he'd let them...but when it got close to him getting where he needs to go, I think he would switch positions and give it his all.

I could see him also liking rougher sex but in a more passionate sense. Like really attentive and lustful but because of love.

Also I think he'd be a fan of angry sex, and instances where he is mad at his SO would definitely be his more dominate moments in bed. Gaara is a very physical person, and he speaks a lot through his actions, so I could imagine him getting a little more rough with his SO as a form of "sparring" or a way to say "I'm upset but I still love you enough to share this intimate act with you."

He would also be more rough if he hadn't gotten enough exercise or if he was more stressed than usual.

As for any sort of degrading, choking, hitting or demeaning acts....those would be straight off the table, through the window and into the dumpster. Gaara just couldn't bring himself to hurt his SO for pleasure, it would bring back too many bad memories. Sure, be would absolutely pin them down, tie them up and I could see him maybe doing some very light name-calling, but you would never see him slap his SO, or spit on them, or anything else like choking, biting, scratching.

If he really wanted to torture them, it would be through overstimulation or orgasm denial. But that would be as far as his "torture" would go.

To close on this...I think because Gaara is a blank slate on this topic, he's really versatile. Meaning he could be any way in bed, we just wouldn't know...I mean one thing I do know is that he would never kiss and tell. Anything else is up for debate (except for hitting or degrading stuff. He really wouldn't enjoy that at all)

[strideofpride]

I'm rewatching HOD again (such a comfort show) and thinking about george and annabeth again and how it's so perfect that annabeth was one of the very few people who was like "meh" about "golden boy" George Tucker then they fell in love :D if you have any more hcs about pre-series or pre-getting together george and annabeth please do share!! :D

Love any excuse to talk about them, thank you!

-for starters, I think they're probably the two members of the Yeehaw Six who have low key known each other the longest. Like I literally think George & AB have known each other since birth. We know both sets of parents were Auburn alums living in Bluebell - I bet even if they weren't close friends, they were still very friendly (also George's parents are THRILLED when he starts dating AB so).

-Like I bet their moms would meet up in town square once in awhile and walk them in their strollers together. I bet there were barbecue dinners where George & AB were forced to play together cause they were the same age (we know Harry is older - is AB's sister older or younger do we think?). Maybe there's even a very awkward shared toddler bath photo that Lemon somehow digs up for their (2nd) wedding reception.

-But despite the forced proximity, they are never friends. First, because they're at an age where they think boys & girls shouldn't be friends (the gender essentialism in Bluebell in the 80s must've gone crazyyyyyyyy). And later, cause they get on each other's nerves in a way only family friends can.

-Like when Lemon's all thirsting over George in high school, AB is just baffled. "Him? He's hot to you? I've seen him vomit up grape soda out of his nose while covered in barbecue sauce, trust me, he is so NOT hot". (It becomes a debate that gets the whole cheer team involved. AB sorely loses)

-Doesn't stop Lemon from trying to get them to get along though! (And now here is where I'll link my very first fic)

-I think they both probably went to Auburn (and without Lemon) and would occasionally cross paths and talk about Lemon, but again, they never became friends, this time mainly cause they had their own circles.

-AB moved back to Bluebell after college and married Jake but George went off to law school and then New York and their interactions became limited to the rare double date with Lemon when he was home.

-One of the things I think is really interesting about HoD is how disconnected the Yeehaw Six start off from each other, despite some old connections (mainly cause these old connections are kinda retcons lol). Like Wade & George are distant, AB & Lemon are distant. Lavon & Lemon are on the outs and he seems to barely know George and AB (which makes sense considering he would've been four grades ahead of them).

-So anyway my headcanon for all of that is George coming back from New York was like a bomb. Golden Boy was back. So Lemon broke things off with Lavon. AB had to contend with Lemon, who had already been distant the past six weeks (what was going on there?), becoming even more distant, as she threw herself into an engagement with George. And Wade was finally feeling settled in a way (as much as he could at that point). He got a day job at the Rammer Jammer and he moved into Lavon's gate house and things were looking up but now Golden Boy is back and he's bringing back fifteen years of Wade's resentments with him.

-Anyway, anyway, back to George & AB - one of the most important lines to me of their courtship is "I know you, George Tucker!" Because like, even though those two barely interact the entire series until their arc, AB has his number pegged from the jump. And that, to me, is evidence of some life long connection, the kind you can only have from knowing someone forever, since when they were not even really a person yet.

-So yeah, that's a very important part of why I like them, cause it's all about two people who have known each other forever finally seeing each other in a new light <3

-And, yes, AB being George's one love interest who's "meh" about the Golden Boy thing is also very important, because it allows her to see him as a person and not a saint. And that's what real love is babey!!!

[lifewtr]

i have finally caved. nanami kento has finally and fully taken over my rotting brain.. behold my first ever reader fic:

Without Question | E | 7,005w

“Ahem. Your usual table, Nanami-sama?” He asked, back to business.

“No.” Nanami replied as the kid began to scribble his name along the bottom of a list. “The night is warm for the season. I’d prefer a table on the balcony.”

Akatsushi looked up sharply from his writing, his dark eyes gaining an inquisitive glint that seemed almost solemn. The nearly rebellious look intrigued Nanami, but he offered only a blank stare of expectancy in return. The boy finished his writing, and ushered Nanami through the dark glass doors and into the reception foyer.

“Please wait here, Nanami-sama.” Akatsushi bowed and quickly disappeared into the depths of the restaurant. In moments, Nanami found himself being seated by his waitress. He requested his food swiftly—a large cut of steak, medium well, and a platter of eggplant dengaku to go with his bourbon—and only allowed himself to remove his blazer and undo his tie once his waitress bowed out with his order.

Nanami set his phone face down on the table and let his gaze roam lazily about the balcony’s other patrons. It didn’t take him long to set his sights on the true object of his curiosity.

She was sitting a single empty table away against the glass and steel railings, staring wistfully into the darkening evening sky, nursing a glass of wine and twirling a forkful of cheesecake. Blueberry and lemon, by the looks of it. A strange urge to fully smile pulled at him when he noticed her stilettos discarded haphazardly at the leg of her table; her stockinged feet were propped along the brim of the seat across from her, crossed at the ankles.

Nanami steered his gaze upward again, found himself watching with sudden rapt attention as the woman tipped her head back just so. Her unbound hair lifted away to give the perfect view of the curve of her neck and the cut of her jaw as she leisurely stuck her tongue out, and promptly curled the appendage around the bit of pie along her fork.

The woman’s soft, satisfied mm-hmm reached his ears over the din of the restaurant as she appeared to savor the bite.

He would have to tip Akatsushi for his compliance, it seemed.

You liked him, you realized.

So here you sat. Impressed, and building up the strength to ask one very attractive Nanami Kento if he’d have dinner with you again. Maybe next time around you’d feel comfortable enough to reveal the true extent of your affiliation with his friend..?

You looked up from your glass of wine at the sound of your name, and offered a raised brow instead of a verbal response as you opted to take the last sip of your drink.

Nanami’s eyes appeared to glitter at your actions. In the flickering lights of the city around them, his tawny gaze shone a bright and ardent ochre that spoke of hidden volumes.

“Why haven’t we met before?” He asked.

You laughed quietly at your companion as you sat your glass down. Even now, after all you’ve shared over your impromptu dinner, you still felt that he was such a curious man.

“I cannot say, Kento-dono.” You replied truthfully, and smiled at him. This was the chance you’d been looking for. “But we should meet again.”

An almost silent, low sound took to the air between you, strangely felt more than heard. You blinked slowly, sure that it had come from Nanami. It was gone as soon as it had started.

“I would like that very much.” Nanami said.

His voice was quiet and firm, and the hazel of his eyes seemed to deepen. His words encouraged you, and you gave him a cloying flash of teeth as you looked away and reached for your shoes.

“When would you like to see me again?” You asked lightly.

You weren't ready for his answer.

“Tonight.”

You stilled, even as you snapped your eyes to Nanami’s; your finger remained hooked into the back of one heel, and you slipped the other stiletto on as carefully as you eased into sitting ramrod straight. You sat your hands in her lap and silently returned Nanami’s fiery stare.

It was open and intense, miles more readable than any of the other small expressions that had flickered across his features over the duration of their talk. Truthfully, his gaze startled you. It startled you as much as the implication behind the single word he had uttered.

Tonight...

Full story on AO3 ♡

[mamamittens]

I was getting a little frustrated with myself for not just hammering out the next Spooktober fic before the workweek and wondered if I was going to do the same thing to myself for Christmas/Winter season.

Mainly giving myself deadlines for writing when it kinda requires my Utmost Focus Only On Words And Maybe Lofi Mix, which is great when im in the Zone but not so much when I get that... Weird squirmy feeling where I wanna do some unspecified Other Activity.

It's dumb. I do these events cause I love it but it's like the dog meme of "No Write! Only Fic!" And unfortunately I don't have boundless time during the week to Get Shit Done.

Anyway, I was thinking of what I'm going to do for Christmas season since I know it'll be so much worse at work lmao. And how I could instead do pinups again. Those are fun. Maybe write fics if I'm feeling it. And I had...

An idea.

For Christmas.

In October.

(please don't kill me lmao, I don't know why I'm like this either)

But! Basically! It's Izou and Thatch (separately) having lost the Spirit of Christmas and Togetherness. They both keep skipping out at spending the holidays with family and each other because they're super busy and mutually pissy about it (hence why they've been On Break).

Anyway, both of them end up setting up sad little trees cause they're sappy dumbasses too prideful to admit they were wrong (for separate but similar reasons) and find that, suddenly, there's an angel topper on them? That they didn't buy themselves?

It'll be hard to bounce between them so maybe they share a place but keep "giving the other distance" or whatever.

Anyway, this angel topper is pretty fancy and cute so they mostly just think it's weird.

Until Hallmark Bullshit Shenanigans ensue and the damn thing comes to life to bully them into fixing their personal issues before Christmas.

Nikia is like, a very low-key guardian angel of the season meant to bring back the spirit of the holiday in those that need it but aren't like, Scrooge or whatever and require three whole ass ghosts.

Anyway, neither one realizes the other sees her as she goes about her bullshit until near the end. It's very Shenanigans and shit as she pulls their heads out of their asses in time to spend the holiday together with family.

Mayhaps, after they've learned their lessons, she disappears and they're super depressed about it. Until they spot her (not as an angel, maybe it's a part-time gig lmao) and collectively decide they could hardly let HER spend the holiday alone either!

Super cheesy Hallmark Fluff.

Anyway, it sounds like a nice thing to brighten up what I KNOW will be a gruelling holiday season since I work online retail.

Hopefully I get my shit together and smash out those fics before I wind up doing them in November or all in one week (which I nearly did last year but it was literally Get home->write->eat->shower-> bed with no break)

Yeah.

I... Really do this to myself lol, but it's better this year cause I'm not doing 13! So there's that! And so far the reception has been great so it's not like I'm doing a little solo party for no one! Here's to hoping the rest of the fics hit well too!

[shrimplymoray]

about my last request, could you get Yumi to talk about her family, who comes from a family of spies and assassins and is the current leader, that kind of thing please

This is the first time I ever got requested for a continuation omg dghsgdhsgah!! I'm glad you enjoyed it enough, and I hope you proceed to enjoy this one! (BTW thanks for sending me the stuff of the Yozakura family to read, it really helped me!)

CW: Talks of violence and crimes, low-key bad childhood(?)

Jamil Viper x Yumi Yozakura - Lunchbreak talk

After a restless night for Yumi and Jamil, albeit for different reasons, the sun arose. Grim was especially insistent this morning on going early to class... for some reason. When Yumi arrived, though, it was made obvious. They had a shared class with Jack, and Grim wanted to hide behind him to sleep. With Professor Trein's voice in the background, Yumi made a plan on how to explain everything she needed to Jamil. She would be lying if she said it didn't eat her inside keeping such a big secret from the one she loved the most, but she also was afraid of him avoiding her. Hopefully, he would not do that.

It would be an understatement to say that the rest of the classes were boring. Besides potionology, in which Yumi had a laugh at Jack having to wear a net to not get fur on any recipe, everything was plain. As much as a magical world was interesting, school is still school. But soon, the bell rang, and the last class of the morning was over, which meant the time had come.

Ace and Deuce invited Yumi to sit with them, but she only put Grim sitting with them and told them to not let him break any chandelier again. Grim was not happy to not be with his henchhuman, but Deuce fed him to keep him from causing trouble.

And then... there she was. Sitting by Jamil's side, while he unpacked the food for Kalim, who was happily chatting with other Scarabia students across the table.

"Jamil? I... er... oh shit how do I begin this..." "Is it what we discussed yesterday?" "Yes." "Well, in that case, you can talk at your own pace. I didn't literally mean to talk to me everything, you know?" His tone had the slightest bit of a tease, and he had the faintest of smiles. so faint, in fact, that if you saw him from afar, you wouldn't notice it. "I'm... I'm not a normal girl." "That I already was aware." "Wow, thanks for the comforting affirmations..." Yumi said in a playful banter but continued "I mean, like, not even in my world. I'm not a normal girl, at all." "I would like to think that is a good thing, but from your expressions, I can already tell it is not." "... I'm from a family of spies and assassins"

Jamil choked on his words and had everyone at the table looking at him. Not what he needed, truly.

"what do you mean by that? Why didn't you tell me beforehand?" The boy seemed much more defensive, and way less receptible to whatever she was about to say. "Jamil, please calm down, okay? This was exactly why I didn't want to tell you, or anyone for that matter. I don't... I don't want to be left alone. I don't want people leaving me because of all my family has done, does, and probably will continue to do." after a pause, she muttered in a whispery tone "Especially you..." "... what type of spies and assassins?" "The type that doesn't let bad people crawl into power." "That's why you know how to fight?" "I, um, actually know more than that. That's self-defense, I also know another 4 martial arts. And how to deal with weapons. And know 5 languages. And also-" "Okay, okay, I got it. But... for how long has this been going on?" "I'm from the... uhm... 10th? generation of the family that does this. I'm actually supposed to be the leader, for uhm... how do I explain this... You know how you all have a unique spell? yeah, people in my family also have one. but in each generation, a girl will be born without it, and that girl is supposed to keep the lineage going, and be the leader." "Okay, that is important information but not what I meant. For how long do you know all that stuff?" "my whole life? I guess... I mean, I knew I was gonna be the leader at 8, and have been preparing since then. Y'know... small quantity of poison, to build immunity. physical and mental training... the sorts."

Jamil paused, staring at the girl. It felt... almost familiar. Seeing someone who didn't manage to have a normal life, albeit for different reasons than his. It was a mix of feelings in his chest. He felt like he was not alone in his life experiences, but also sad that Yumi had to go through all that.

The silence was broken by Yumi holding Jamil's hands in hers. A never felt before roughness in them.

"Are you leaving me?" Although it was mean, Jamil didn't help but let a small chuckle leave his lips. "No. I'm not." "What are the love birds talking about? Oh! Will Yumi teach me those cool moves? Hyah, Huah, Psh Pow!" "We already talked about this, Kalim. She will not."

Yumi felt a sense of relief fill her body, as she giggled at the two boys. She felt so happy around Jamil... And she was happy he was not letting whatever her family is or does interfere with what he feels, although she didn't know the true reasoning behind it. That being he felt not alone in what he lived.

Maybe soulmates do exist, even if from another world. And maybe, just maybe, this was the Happily Ever After they deserved.

Hope you enjoyed it! Tried a more slow start and dialogue-heavy, compared to the last one. They complete each other so well, don't they? Have a great Day/Night!

[harrisongslimited]

George Chapter of the Day March 13, 2024

I Saw Her Standing There

Please read Chapter 1 for trigger warnings and other notices about this story.

‐‐--‐----‐-‐-------------------‐---

Chapter 2

At 14, Jordan Armagh was too young to take part in the audition. But her only sister Joie, at 20, was just the right age. Jordan's room was filled with pictures of the Beatles and their music played constantly. She proudly displayed her official fan club card signed by their personal secretary, Freda Kelly, on her bedroom mirror.

She was waiting for Joie anxiously when she finally arrived home.

"Well?......" she piped up as soon as Joie walked in the door.

"Nightmare," was all she answered as she threw her purse on the chair by the door. "Although one of dad's partners, Mr. Watson, was there."

"Did you see them? Did you actually see them up close? Did you see talk to them? What happened....???"

Joie plopped down on the sofa, enjoying the air conditioned air.

"I'm afraid I didn't see much."

Jordan sat across from her. "Well, what DID you see?"

"I......got a little mad.....and Mr. Watson came....."

"Mad?" Jordan questioned incredulously. "MAD? Are you insane? It was the Beatles for god's sake... What could you possibly get mad about? Did you see Paul? Is he gorgeous or what?"

"I don't know. He said something. John said something. I don't know. It was hot...I lost my temper. Their manager..."

"Brian..."

"Yeah...I think that was his name...he finally got the line moving so the girls could see them and then someone was going to pick the girls for the movie."

"You didn't get picked?"

Joie looked at her younger sister. "No. Not quite. Mr. Watson had to walk me out."

Jordan jumped up. "I can't believe it. My own sister. A HUGE chance like this and your mouth has to..."

"Hey," Joie stood up. "Watch it pipsqueak. If I hadn't gotten those girls out of the heat, they would have had a run on heatstroke at Cedars. And that wouldn't have been good publicity at all."

"Well, it wasn't the Beatles' faults...."

Joie wrinkled her nose. "How long have you lived here? When celebrity can be blamed, they will."

Joie walked into the kitchen. "Are you hungry?"

Jordan threw up her hands. "How can you eat at a time like this? You were inches from John, Paul, George and Ringo. And you haven't told me a thing..."

"That's because nothing happened," she answered, pulling pans out of the cabinet. "Did Dad call?"

"No....and tell me what they looked like, what they said, what they did."

Jordan stared at Joie from behind the kitchen table.

Joie suddenly smiled, looking at the hunger for information written all over her sister's face and softened.

"OK. Set the table and I'll tell you all about how I made an ass of myself."

Their lives consisted of car rides, hotel rooms and screaming girls. But this is what they thought they wanted when they met as young boys in Liverpool. But Beatlemania had become nothing but isolation and loneliness.

John contemplated this as he was escorted around a room, meeting reporters, more Hollywood big shots who meant nothing to him and their offspring who meant less.

He thought about how they all met, how this came to be and he still didn't believe it. Searching around the hotel reception room, he spotted Brian pumping hands and smiling his proper British smile. John eyed Paul, George and Ringo immediately and nodded toward the exit. They raised their eyes in agreement. Slowly they exited as the reporters gorged themselves on food and drink...none of which made it to the growling stomachs of the 4 boys from Liverpool.

"Hello?" Joie answered the phone as she cleaned up the dishes from the dinner she and Jordan shared. She made a plate of spaghetti for her dad and placed it in the refrigerator.

"Miss Armagh?" Came a low but light voice.

"Yes?"

"My name is Mal. I work for the Beatles. They asked me to call and apologize for all the problems today at the audition."

"Yes?" Joie was skeptical.

"Mr. Epstein, the Beatles manager, would like to let you know that you have been chosen to appear in the movie."

Joie thought it was a joke. A good joke....but a joke nonetheless. Whomever was jerking her around had pulled off a rather decent English accent.

"Thanks, but no thanks." Joie answered flatly and hung up the phone.

One minute later the phone rang again.

"Miss Armagh? It's Mal again. I think something happened to the phone line."

"Nothing happened to the phone line. I said 'no thanks' and hung up. I don't appreciate the joke."

Mal laughed slightly. "Yea, I guess I'd think it was a joke too. But I'm for real. I was at the audition. You left with the police officer after causing a rowdy about the girls in the heat."

Joie remained silent. Maybe this wasn't a joke. But she was so over it already. She rubbed her forehead and just a pinch of interest clustered in her heart. Then she shook her head and wished she never would have gone in the first place. "Look, thanks for the offer, but I think there are other girls who want this more than I do. I'm too busy anyway. But thanks...and good luck..."

She hung up again before he could speak.

Jordan heard the conversation and came out of her room. "Are you out of your mind? You could have worked with the Beatles! Do you know what I would do to be in your shoes? God, Joie...."

Joie was tired...she closed her eyes and sighed. Joie hadn't even started her physics homework. "Look, Jordan, it was probably a joke anyway. I'd have to take off from school....and besides, there are other girls who would want this more than me. Let them have it. I've got you and Dad to take care of and that's more important than anything to me."

"I'm gonna be 15 years old. Dad is a cop. Nothing is going to happen to me if you spend 4 weeks in England," she answered.

Joie smiled. "Well, it's water under the bridge now. So go get your homework done and get to bed. School tomorrow for both of us."

"No?" John Lennon asked Mal.

"She said 'no thanks'. That other girls would want it more than she does."

"She said no?" John asked again.

Mal nodded and waited.

George looked up from his guitar. "Well, that's that." Internally, he thought, "Atta girl." A funny murmur seemed to come up from his spine and land right in his heart. "Fuck that," he said to himself.

"What's the big deal?" Paul chimed in as he sat at the piano placed in their hotel suite.

"You know what the big deal is...." Ringo looked up from his magazine and ran a hand through his hair.

"You fancy her?" Paul questioned.

"She said 'no,'" John repeated, then gave a short laugh and looked at Paul. "Haven't heard that word in awhile...considering."

Paul laughed and dismissed him. She was just a girl after all. They could have their pick of anyone they wanted. Joie seemed bright and smart...and part of Paul was glad the little bird said no. He looked around the suite and wished they were able to get out and see the city. He knew it was futile and watched as George went back to picking at his guitar. Ringo returned to his magazine and he went to the phone to call for more scotch and coke from room service.

Suddenly from the back of the room, Mal stepped forward. "I've got an idea...." he offered. "I mean if it's all the same to you, Johnny."