#reference fo christina rossetti

[jomiddlemarch]

on the cold earth under the cold sky

“Your feet are cold,” Joel said.

“You said you hated it when I wore socks to bed,” Grace replied. “And I don’t love it either. My feet get too hot.”

“It wasn’t a complaint, darlin’, just an observation,” Joel said.

“It seemed like a complaint,” Grace said. She wiggled her toes, which were cold, and let out a breath, which floated above her in a brief cloud. It was frigid in Jackson far earlier than expected, either a cold snap or the beginning of a long, hard winter, which reminded Grace of the Little House on the Prairie book where they spent the snowed-in winter grinding wheat in a coffee-grinder and she’d skipped to the end because it was so boring. Maria had asked everyone to conserve resources, bundling up instead of stoking fires. It worked okay during the day, but the nights were difficult.

“C’mere,” Joel said, pulling her even tighter to him.

“You don’t—sorry,” Grace mumbled. “Sorry for being a cold bitch.”

He laughed, a rich, warm sound like the Kenyan coffee she desperately missed though she’d never admit it, and jostled her into putting her feet between his shins. He was wearing a set of faded Black Watch tartan flannel pajamas over a white tee shirt and she should have found it hilarious when she saw him or almost homely, as close to sexy as Neptune, but should didn’t seem to apply since she’d left Before for Now.

“Never met anyone who’s less of a cold bitch than you, Gracie,” he said.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” she asked. She would have used all her willpower to keep from rolling her eyes if Ellie had said something similar, but she’d slept poorly since it got cold. It reminded her too much of the first winter after Kian was killed. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone ran through her mind on a loop, the loop preferable to any other memory.

“It’s the truth. You can take it however you want it,” he said, completely unoffended by the sound of his voice and the gentleness of his embrace.

“No matter what I say, I’m wrong and you’re right,” she snapped. I think you’re a cold bitch and kind of mean at the moment, if that’s worth anything, dead-Lauren offered. Grace was well aware she was being surly and rude and why? Because she was tired of going to bed with cold feet and waking in the night with her nose and cheeks feeling half-frozen, because there wasn’t much she could do when people came in with frost-nip and fucking Dickensian chilblains, because she’d once tried to go back to where she’d buried Kian that brutal winter and she couldn’t find his grave, couldn’t remember where she’d first pressed the shovel into the barely yielding earth, putting all her weight on the metal, in a hurry, too full of cortisol to shed a tear?

Because however awful she was, Joel was kind and calm, steady, putting a cup of something hot into her hand when she came through the door, helping unbutton her wool peacoat, even inviting Ted and Beard, Tommy and Maria to come over and sit by the fireplace, Joel with his guitar on his lap, playing when they asked, playing “Father and Son” for Ted without a request, without looking up from the guitar’s belly.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Joel answered.

“I’m tired,” she said. She wouldn’t explain, didn’t need to; let him draw his own conclusions.

“I think bears have the right idea,” Joel said. “Find a den, hibernate. Wait ‘til spring comes. Sounds good, now, for all that Ted has his winter wonderland plans cookin’.”

“They starve,” Grace said. “All winter, the bears use up their own bodies to stay alive.”

“That’s nothin’ new,” he replied.

“I already feel used up,” Grace said. It was an admission—of guilt? Weakness that he wouldn’t be able to stomach or respect? Ellie had started telling stories about Tess, how indomitable the woman had been, how determined. The admiration in her voice had been unmistakable. If Joel was around when Ellie talked, he nodded along, and there was sometimes something in his dark eyes, a gleam not unlike tears.

“I know. You just need a rest. Sarah’s mother could get like that,” Joel said.

It was a shock to hear him speak of her and so easily. Grace didn’t even know the woman’s name, whether they’d been married, together, exes who got along for the sake of the child, who hadn’t loved each other enough to break each other. Joel knew little more about Kian and not at all about the perpetual background conversation Grace had going with dead-Lauren. She supposed they were even.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t whisk her away to Aruba either,” he said.

Grace made a conscious choice she might later deeply regret not to pursue the her in favor of  Aruba.

“That’s where you’d take me? Where we’d go?” In another life, Before or the Before when cordyceps never happened, the mutation milder, stronger, ruining the grain before it could be consumed by anyone, Chicxulub taking a left turn. In a world of planes and flying coach but never standby, fluted red paper umbrellas, lemons, buying Joel a fancy white guayabera, glaring at the woman on the lounger with her crocheted bikini top untied at the back who was staring at him too long, too obviously.

“Yeah. Or the Keys. Somewhere your feet couldn’t get cold,” he said.

It would be easy to tell him she loved him there. To feel it, think it and speak, to leap without looking behind her or beyond him, a world crazed with a tiny thousand cracks, without the devastating fracture they’d somehow survived. She didn’t have to look at him to know grey he was getting at the temples and scattered throughout his beard. She didn’t have to reach up under his tee-shirt to feel the scar on his belly.

“They’re better,” she said. “My feet. They’re not cold anymore.”

She started to move away or tried to. Joel held on.

“Stay,” he said. “Keepin’ you warm keeps me warm.”

Another fic for @pedrostories​ 1K celebration, using AU, hurt/comfort and the quote “Yeah, I don’t think so.”