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arlana-likes-to-write · 3 months

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Domestic Life

Summary: Glimpses of your relationship with your wives.

Warning: pregnancy and pregnancy symptoms, mission injuries, small amount of angst, fluff

Word count: 7.6k

Note: All italicized parts are flash backs

You were up when the door opened and the sound of little feet entered your room, but you pretended to be asleep. “Be quiet,” Evan whispered. We don’t want to wake mommy.” You wouldn’t classify it as a whisper, but it was quieter than your daughter, Olivia.

“Then help me up,” you heard them struggle to climb onto the bed and felt the blankets move as Olivia used it for leverage; you grabbed it so she wouldn’t fall. Opening your eyes slightly, you watched your daughter, who was the spitting image of your wife, crawl over to you. You moved quickly when she was close enough and trapped her underneath the blanket. Her squeals and laughter echoed in your quiet room. It made the loneliness disappear. “Livie, help me. Help!” It was easier for your son to climb onto the bed and hang off your back. You let go of Olivia, and she was able to free herself.

“Alright, uncle, uncle,” you laughed and lay down on your back, your kids on both sides.

“Are they coming home today?” Olivia asked. You nodded and ran your hand through her long brunette hair. It was rare for your wives to go on missions. They were only used to provide advice, but sometimes, they were needed. It never got easier, and it still filled you with anxiety. You knew it wasn’t easy for them to be away from you and the twins.

It was a slow day. Well, every day was slow, but today was unbearable. It had to be the heat. Even if people had car problems, why would you leave the air conditioner? You were surviving on lukewarm water and a hand-held fan. The guys in the back weren’t doing much better, surrounded by cars and tools.

The bell ring startled you since you weren’t expecting anyone to come through the front door. A girl around the same age as you walked over to the desk. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, and her blue eyes were striking. You noticed a few things. Right away, you knew she was not from here. You knew everyone from your small town and the surrounding area. Second, she was wealthy; her wristwatch was more than you made in a year. “Well, hello, stranger,” you said with a smile. “I don’t think I know you.” She looked down at the outfit she was wearing.

“Do I look that out of place?” You shook your head.

“I just know everyone in this small town,” your final observation was that she was attractive. “What can I do for you?” The stranger leaned against the desk.

“I’m having some car trouble, and you guys are the only mechanic,” which was true. It was good for business.

“Pull your car up to the garage, and I’ll have the guys take a look at it,” she thanked you and ran out the front door, almost tripping on the welcome mat. You chuckled and walked to the back. To your surprise, the guys were already pulling in a black BMW, and a blonde stood beside it. She offered you a small smile and turned her attention to the brunette when she approached her. It was unfair how attractive they both were. The dark-haired stranger was wearing a white linen top with faded blue jeans. Her pair of high-top Converse shoes were well-worn. Now, the Blonde wore a yellow plaid skirt and a long-sleeved shirt tucked in. You were shocked that she was wearing a long sleeve in this heat.

While the guys were looking at the car, you offered them water and a place to sit in the area with an AC. You were practicing good customer service not because you found them attractive, not at all.

Their names were Kate and Yelena, and they were passing through on a business trip. The guys said that their transmission needed to be replaced. They blamed the heat, but fixing it would take a few days. Maybe it was a little selfish that you were happy the car would take a few days to fix. You enjoyed your time with the duo every time they came in to check on the vehicle.

You liked Yelena’s dry humor, accent, and the small smile she would give Kate. Kate was cute when she stumbled over her words and was easy to fluster and blush. You knew they would be on their way once their car was fixed. Their time here was limited.

Months passed, and you still thought about the Blonde and brunette. What were they doing? Was Kate annoying Yelena with her music choice? Did they make it safely to their destination? They consumed your thoughts even in such a short time they were in your life.

On a busy day at the shop, two familiar faces walked up to the desk with your go-to coffee order and smiles that still made your heart flutter. Five months after they left, they returned to ask you on a date. It was the fastest, yes, you said.

“Mommy, I’m hungry!” Olivia wined. She had Yelena’s appetite; she was always hungry.

“Well, we can’t have that,” you smiled. I’ll start breakfast if you two take the pups out,” the twins agreed and were quick to climb out of bed. You were slower getting up, stretching when your feet touched the ground, and brushing your teeth. By the time you walked into the kitchen, Fanny and Lucky were chasing the twins outside, and their dog bowls were filled with food.

Now, it was your turn to uphold your end of the bargain. You decided on scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast with jam. A simple breakfast that you’ve prepared so many times.

Long distance took a lot of work. It consisted of video chat dates, constant text messages, phone calls, and longing to be with your partners. It was a unique balancing act, especially since you were dating two superheroes.

It lasted two months. One day after work, you stumbled into your apartment expecting to find it empty. However, Yelena was there raiding your kitchen. “You have no food,” you jumped at the sudden voice. “Do you not eat”? You stared at the Blonde, your heart pounding so hard you could hear it in your ears. “I expected you to be happier to see me,” she smirked.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, quickly dropping your bag and closing the distance. You hugged her tight, finally feeling at peace after a long day.

“I missed you,” she said simply and kissed your forehead. “And I want to talk to you about something,” a rush of anxiety passed through you. “All good, I promise. Go clean up while I figure out what to make for dinner.” As you headed to your room, you heard her mumble, “She is as bad as Kate.” That made you smile.

Yelena was able to make a pasta dish. It was better than the TV dinner you were going to heat up in the microwave. Over dinner and a bottle of wine, Yelena asked you to move to New York City. There was nothing holding you here. Your mother passed away, and your father left you when you were five years old. So you agreed. You put your two weeks in and packed up your apartment to move to the big city.

You met their dogs, which you’ve received so many videos and pictures of, started your new job while going back to school, and fell into a routine consisting of you waking up first, making breakfast and coffee, and starting on any schoolwork that needed to be done. Yelena and Kate would do their superhero duties while you went to work. You tried to routine who cooked dinner, but Yelena was the better of you three.

It was a big adjustment for you, but you enjoyed it.

While you were loading the dishwasher, the doorbell rang. You racked your brain on who it could be and dried your hands to turn on the tablet connected to the security system. Your wives were a Black Widow and the former CEO of Bishop Security, your home had the best security system. Smiling, you saw who was at your front door. “Olivia, can you get the door for me?” You called and continued to load the dishwasher. Your daughter huffed but stood up from her spot on the couch. You counted down until she figured out who was at the door.

“Auntie Nat! Auntie Ria!” she yelled, and you heard the grunt of your sister-in-law as Olivia threw herself at her.

“What is your mom feeding you?” Natasha questioned. “I feel like you are getting stronger every day.” The door closed behind them.

“Mama is teaching me how to fight!” Olivia told her aunts. You dried your hands and joined the group in the entryway.

“Against my wishes,” you smiled. Evan was already dragging his cousin, Nicholas, outside, and you had enough time to ruffle his hair as he passed. “Not that I’m thrilled to see you guys. I wasn’t expecting company,” you said, giving the couple a quick hug while Olivia dragged their youngest, Lauren, outside to join the others.

“We thought we’d surprise you,” Maria said.

“Are you hungry? I just made breakfast.” Natasha shook her head.

“We ate before we came over,” the three of you walked out to the back porch to watch the kids and dogs run around. The sight made you smile. “They are coming home today, right?” You nodded.

“I’m not sure when,” you looked at the redhead. “I got a text from Kate right before you guys came over. Things are taking longer than expected,” you rested your hands on your stomach and played with the wedding ring.

“It’s going to be okay,” Maria tried to reassure you. “They will always come home to you and the kids.” You knew that. They promised before every mission that they would come home. Natasha placed her hand on your shoulder and squeezed it.

You were jealous of Natasha and Maria. They were fully retired from active missions and spent their free time training newer agents. They would be fine and come home.

One of the hardest things about living with Kate and Yelena was seeing the effects of their job firsthand. It was easier to hide it from you when you lived miles away. No matter how late they got home, you checked over them and helped clean every cut and bruise. In the beginning, they found you on it, but they learned it was for your benefit. You needed to make sure they were okay.

You pushed Fanny and Lucky as you walked into the apartment. The dogs could smell the treats in your bag. “Guys,” you laughed. “Back up,” you managed to set your bag on the chair. They sat without a command, their tails wagging so fast they could generate wind to power a city. You pulled the treats out and handed them to them. They took off to their beds to enjoy it. Not even your phone ringing disturbed them. It was Natasha.

You remembered how terrified you were when you were introduced to the Black Widow. She was intimating and was looking after Kate and Yelena’s heart. If she needed you, Natasha would text you. She never called. Your heart leaped into your throat. Kate and Yelena were on a mission, not Avenger duties. Kate was helping the Black Widow free Widows who were still under the Red Room’s control. “Hello,” you answered.

“Don’t panic,” it sent you deeper into a panic as you sat on the couch.

“Natasha, that did not help,” the redhead laughed. “Are they okay?” She sighed.

“Bruce is looking them over now. Kate got them to the compound before she passed out,” Natasha explained. “They both haven’t woken up yet.”

“Nat, I-”

“I know,” she cut you off. “Maria is already on her way to get you and the dogs. Pack a bag, and I’ll see you soon, okay?” She nodded.

“Okay, I’ll see you soon,” you hung up and stayed frozen on the couch. You knew you needed to get stuff together—clothes for you, your schoolwork, and food for the dogs. But you couldn’t move. You reran the last conversation you had with them in your head. It was quick, maybe five minutes, because you had to walk the dogs before going to work. You didn’t tell them you loved them, and maybe it was too late.

Luckily, Natasha wasn’t in the mood to converse as she led you down to Med Bay. Your mind was spiraling, and you were barely holding it together. “They look a lot worse than they are,” she warned you before opening the door. Honestly, you felt nothing. It was like a calmness washed over you. They lay motionless in the beds next to each other with wires connected to machines. You locked all your emotions into a small box and tucked it away. Because if you felt anything, you would break. Maybe Natasha was talking. Perhaps she explained the list of injuries that Bruce and Helen had to fix. It was all white noise to you. “Come find me if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay,” the door closed behind you. This world wasn’t normal to you. That the girls you loved with all your being put their lives on the line for strangers. It made no sense to you. You slumped in the chair between their beds and grabbed their hands. You hated how cold their hands felt; they usually would be so warm against yours. “Hi, my loves,” you whispered. “I’m here. I’m right here and not going anywhere.”

Natasha made sure you spent only some of your time by their side. You had to take breaks, and you were not in the position to say no to the Black Widow. So you took care of yourself because you knew Kate and Yelena would give you an earful if they found out otherwise. It was rare you were at the compound, so it was nice to get closer with the other members of the team. They helped keep your sanity as each day passed, and their condition was the same.

You were outside with Wanda, sitting on a picnic blanket and reading a book. Sometimes Lucky or Fanny would bring a ball over, and the witch would use her powers to throw it. “I’m jealous,” you told her. “My hand would be covered with drool.” Wanda laughed.

“How are you?” She asked. “Has Helen figured out why they haven’t woken up yet?” You shoved your bookmark into the spine of your book and closed it.

“I’m okay?” you questioned. There was this numbness that surrounded you. It felt unreal that they were hurt. With all the stories they told you, they seemed untouchable. “I just miss their hugs.” You missed a lot of things—their touch, the sound of their voice. Wanda smiled.

“They’ll come back to you,” she said. “It’s gross how much they talk about you.” You felt your body heat up but rolled your eyes. They always promised they would come home.

For the past few days, you slept in their bed. Now, it seemed lonely and cold. You walked down to the med bay and sat down in the chair. “I hope you know I will wait forever,” you whispered. “And I love your teammates, but it’s kind of lonely with you two. The world seems a little too quiet.” You felt a few tears finally fall down your cheeks. “Just come back to me whenever you are ready.”

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“Do you think we should wake her?” The voice was muffled.

“That can not be comfortable,” that was Kate. So, the first voice must have been Yelena’s. “We know she can be moody when she sleeps in a weird position.”

“Not moody,” you grumbled, but Kate was right. Your neck was already starting to hurt. You heard laughter.

“Are you sure about that, Princess?” Slowly, your eyes opened, and you blinked a few times to see your girlfriends awake. They were awake—alive and awake. Kate chuckled. “She has that same dazed look on her face like when we asked if she wanted to be our girlfriend,” you thought they were messing you up at first.

“You’re up,” you said. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah-” you didn’t give Yelena time to finish before flinging yourself at the Blonde. She grunted at the impact. The dam broke. The feeling of her heart beating against yours caused a sob to escape. “Sh, dorogoy, sh,” Yelena cooed and kissed your temple. “I know, I know.”

“Thought I’d lost you both,” you heard Kate climb out of bed and sit beside Yelena. Her hand rubbed circles on your back to help calm you down.

“We’ll always come back to you, sweetheart,” Kate said. “You are stuck with us. Forever.”

Forever. That sounded nice.

It was Maria’s and your job to make lunch while Natasha distracted the little ones outside. You decided on something simple: a ham and cheese sandwich, slices of watermelon, and chips. It was also a meal that could make you nauseous. “Yelena told Natasha you were getting another dog,” Maria said while cutting into the watermelon. You groaned and threw your head back.

“I told her she could get another dog when she fully retires. I am not taking care of three dogs and three to two kids,” you wondered if Maria caught your mistake. She laughed.

“Have they said when they’ll be done?” You shook your head. They loved the lifestyle. You wondered if they loved it more than the family they had back here. You caused a lot of fights. But you couldn’t dwell on it or answer Maria’s question; you heard the distinct sound of Olivia’s squeals and hurried footsteps.

“Mommy! Mommy!” She ran into the back of your legs. “Auntie Nat said she would eat me,” you laughed.

“Oh yeah,” you said, continuing to make sandwiches. “Why is she going to eat you?”

“Because she’s hungry!” She answered like it was the most obvious thing. “And she said you were taking too long to make lunch,” that bitch! Maria laughed at her wife’s antics.

“Go tell Auntie Nat that if she eats you, she won’t get any lunch.”

“Okay! I love you!” She cheered and ran back outside. You shook your head, smiling fondly. You loved your little family and couldn’t wait to add to it.

You always wanted to be a mother and experience the feeling of bringing life into the world. Maybe it was your good relationship with your mother before she passed. However, you were scared to bring it up to your girlfriends. Their relationship with their own mother was complicated; one was in jail because she was working with the tracksuit Mafia, while the other was responsible for controlling her and other Black Widows. So, it was a little complicated.

You wanted to bring it up to them, and if they hated the idea, you would make peace with that. Yelena put the finishing touches on dinner while you poured some wine and set the table. You were going to ask them tonight. Someone brought in a baby at work today, and your mind began to create fantasies of Yelena and Kate with their children. You knew they would get mothers with how they interacted with the Barton kids, and Morgan made your ovaries explode.

“Princess,” you felt Kate’s arms around your waist. “Where did you go just now? I’ve been calling your name.”

“Sorry,” you smiled. “Long day at work.” She kissed your neck.

“You know you could always quit,” you rolled your eyes and pulled away from her embrace. You grabbed two glasses. “You’d make a sexy housewife,” you chuckled.

“You’d have to make me your wife first, Bishop,” you sent a wink over your shoulder and walked over to the table. If they knew you were distracted, they didn’t bring it up. They talked about their day and filled in the empty silence. You felt Yelena’s hand on your thigh, feeling the cool metal of her rings on your skin.

“Alright,” the Blonde said. “What’s going on?” You sighed and swirled the wine around in your glass.

“Do you guys want kids?” Yelena’s hands tightened her hold on your thigh. “If you don’t, that’s fine. I will completely respect that, but I’ve been wondering and thinking and-”

“Princess,” Kate cut you off. “Breathe,” you nodded, and you felt Yelena’s thumb dig into your skin to help you calm down. “Do you want kids?” She asked when you calmed down slightly.

“I want whatever you want,” Yelena said, shaking her head.

“That’s not what she asked, detka,” you sighed and leaned back. You placed your hand on top of Yelena’s.

“I love the life we have right now,” you admitted. “But I’ve always seen myself as a mom,” you glanced at the dogs who were eating their own dinner. “To children who walk on two legs instead of four,” your joke got a laugh out of two girlfriends. The two heroes looked at each other; they could always talk to each other without using words.

“We’ve been wondering when you’d bring it up,” Kate smiled.

“You are not very subtle when you watch us with the Barton kids,” your face flushed at Yelena’s teasing tone.

“Answer mine,” you whispered. “Do you guys want kids?” Kate took your free hand and played with the ring on your finger.

“I think we are ready to expand our family,” you looked at the archer and then at the Blonde, who nodded.

“I need to hear you say it, dorogoy.” Your Russian wasn’t good, but you loved the smile on Yelena’s face when you tried to speak it.

“I would love to start a family with you two.”

You decided to carry since it was impossible for Yelena, and Kate was actively training and going on missions. For the first try, you agreed to use Kate’s eggs and a sperm donor who matched Yelena’s features. The hardest part was keeping it from your friends and family. You went to a private doctor in the city. Each day during the process, you became more and more grateful for Yelena and Kate.

In the first round, you had your hopes up, and it broke your heart when you got your period. The second round hurt, but it didn’t sting as much as the first one. Yelena and Kate were tempted to call it off by the third attempt. They sat the emotional toll it was taking on you. You blamed yourself. You were the problem on why you couldn’t get pregnant. You asked for one more try.

It was Wednesday. Yelena met with Sonya, and Kate had lunch with Fanny and Greer. You were walking home after your manager told you to take a half day. All day, you felt off, like a nagging voice was in the back of your head. It made you second-guess everything. Luckily, your boss knew what you were going and allowed you to go home. Before you entered the apartment, you stopped at the corner store and bought two pregnancy tests.

The dogs greeted you when you came home and sniffed the brown bag to see if you had anything for them. You apologized and promised to get them something next time you went out. Walking into the bathroom, your stomach twisted with anxiety and fear. Should you have waited for Yelena and Kate? What if it was positive? Or worse, negative. Your heart couldn’t take it. Still, that uneasy feeling crawled in your stomach. So you opened both boxes and read the instructions. It was easy: pee on a stick, place on a flat surface, and wait 5 minutes. Easy. When you were done, you placed them on the counter and washed your hands.

It was a mistake to take them. You were being silly and dramatic. As you were about to throw away the tests, you heard the front door open, followed by the dogs greeting your partners. “Princess?” Kate called out. “Are you home?” You thought about staying quiet, but you left your bag downstairs.

“Bathroom,” you said. “Upstairs.” You closed the door and leaned on the wooden door, keeping the results locked away. You heard the footsteps of both Yelena and Kate as they walked up the stairs and into the bedroom. “Hi,” you forced a smile, but they looked at you with concern.

“What’s wrong, data?” Yelena asked. You sighed.

“I got sent home because I wasn’t feeling right, and I stopped at the corner store to get two pregnancy tests,” their eyes widened.

“What did the test say?” Kate asked. You shrugged.

“I panicked and left them on the counter,” Yelena chuckled. “Don’t laugh at me,” you frowned. The Blonde took your hand and led you to the bed.

“I’m not laughing at you,” Yelena reassured you with a kiss. “Tell us why you panicked.” Kate knelt in front of you.

“If it’s negative, I don’t think my heart can take it,” you sighed. “I want this to work so bad, but what if it’s me? Maybe I’m the problem,” the archer shook her head.

“This is not your fault,” she said. “We knew this was going to be difficult.” Yes, you knew it would be challenging, but it felt impossible.

“I just want to give you both a family,” you felt tears form in your eyes. Yelena pushed your head down on her shoulder and kissed your head.

“We are a family, baby. You, me, and Kate.”

“And Fanny and Lucky. We can’t forget our favorite troublemakers,” Kate teased. You smiled and whipped away your tears. “Do you want me to go check the tests?” You hesitated but nodded. You were too anxious to move, but also you felt very comfortable against Yelena. Kate stood up and kissed you softly. “No matter what it says. We love you,”

“Love you too,” you whispered and watched Kate enter the bathroom. Yelena played with the hair at the base of your neck and hummed a simple tone. It was soothing, and you slumped into her. For the first time all day, you felt that nagging presence disappear. It was impossible for you to notice it with Yelena so close to you.

“Do you think she got lost?” Yelena mumbled in your ear. You giggled and slapped her softly on her leg. Finally, Kate came out with the tests in her hand.

“Positive,” she said. You stood up quickly, looking at the tests in her hand. She was right. Both read positive.

“I’m pregnant,” you said in disbelief. Suddenly, you were engulfed in the arms of your girlfriends. You felt their tears on your skin. You were going to be a mom. Finally.

“Thank you for stopping by,” you said and hugged Natasha. “I appreciate the distraction.” You separated from the redhead and watched Maria strap in their very sleepy kids in the car. Carefully, she closed the car door and joined you and her wife on the front steps.

“So, when are you going to tell them?” You titled your head at Maria’s question.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” you said. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“You do realize you are trying to lie to two former Avengers,” you rolled your eyes. You managed to keep your first pregnancy a secret from them. You wondered if they were still a little bitter about that.

“When they get home,” you gave in. “I took the test two nights ago,” Maria was the first to pull you into a hug, carefully, and whispered congratulations into your ear. Once Maria was one, Natasha took her wife’s spot.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For loving her and giving her a family.” You felt overcome with emotions, so all you could do was nod. You watched the couple get into their car and leave. Walking back into your house, Evan and Olivia were asleep on the couch. You loved it when they came over because they made nap time easier. Carefully, you picked up Olivia and Evan and carried them into their room.

What Natasha said to you wasn’t the first time she’s said it. The first time was when you told her about your pregnancy. The second was when she met her niece and nephew. Then at the wedding and now again. Still, it made you emotional.

You felt honored to love Yelena and be loved by her. It was your greatest accomplishment.

Yelena and Kate were more nervous than you as you lay on the medical bed waiting for the doctor. “I love you both,” you started. But you need to calm down, or you will go wait in the waiting room.”

“Sorry, Princess,” Kate kissed your forehead. Yelena’s leg was still shaking as the doctor came in to perform the ultrasound. It was a big day, so you understood where the anxiety was coming from. It would be your first time seeing your son and/or daughter.

“Alright, are you ready?” The doctor asked. With your consent, she lifted your shirt and put the cold gel on your skin. You shivered, which caused Kate to laugh at you. You glared at the archer. “Looks like we have a healthy baby,” she showed you and your girlfriends that was developing.

“It looks like a little alien,” Kate commented. Yelena scuffed, hitting the archer on the arm.

“Do not call your son or daughter an alien,” you smiled at the Black Widow.

“That leads me to the next question: do you want to know the genders, or will it be a surprise?” You planned on having a gender reveal party planned by Laura once you told her. Wait. Pause. Genders?

“Genders?” You questioned. The doctor smiled.

“Congratulations,” she smiled. “You are pregnant with twins.” Twins. Twins?! You weren’t having one baby but two. The doctor explained that twins were common throughout the IVF process and that you looked at your partners to see their reactions. The news shocked them, but you could see the excitement and relief on their faces. You were healthy. The babies were healthy. That was what mattered to them.

Keeping a secret was hard, especially one as big as this. Since Clint was fully retired, you saw the man less than Natasha and Maria. However, the Bartons liked to take trips to the city, which resulted in big family dinners. This time, Natasha and Maria were hosting. You walked up the front steps with a salad in your arms. “Are you excited?” Kate asked.

“Nervous,” you said. You were going to tell all of them today. It wasn’t going to be a big deal. Yelena was going to tell her sister and Maria, Kate had Clint, and you would tell Laura.

“We have to do it as soon as possible,” Yelena rang the doorbell. “Natasha already suspects something.” She was a Black Widow; that was not surprising. Nathaniel opened the door and hugged Kate and Yelena tight. You were in charge of the salad, which was tactical. The youngest Barton liked to show his affection with tight hugs, and your girlfriends were highly protective of you. You ruffled the boy’s hair and walked into the house.

Laura was in the kitchen while Clint, Natasha, and Maria prepared drinks at the bar. “Good luck,” Kate mumbled and kissed your temple. Your girlfriends said hello to Laura before joining the others. You placed the salad in the fridge.

“How can I help?” You asked.

“Can you measure out some flour and grab the baking soda?” Laura smiled. You nodded and got the ingredients she requested. You worked in silence, but your eyes kept glancing at your girlfriends. Kate gave you a thumbs-up.

“So, I was wondering if you have any leftover baby stuff?” You asked as you mixed up the dry ingredients. Laura thought for a moment, held tilted to the side.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “We may have donated a bunch. Is your job doing a donation?” You smiled and shook your head.

“No, I was asking for us,” you shrugged. Laura froze while mixing the wet ingredients with the dry as if her brain was trying to piece together what you said. Before she could say anything, you heard footsteps rushing over to you.

“You’re pregnant?” Natasha questioned. You nodded. It surprised you when the redhead pulled you into her arms and hugged you. “I can’t believe you kept it from me, you bitch.” You laughed at her comment.

“Careful, sestra,” Yelena warned. You rolled your eyes at her protective nature. “She’s got two in there.”

“Twins?!” Laura exclaimed.

“Twins,” you repeated. The day was filled with congratulations, celebrations, and so much love.

Sighing, you stood in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open. You were hungry, but you had no idea what you wanted. The twins wanted the strangest combination of foods. Kate and Yelena were saints through it all - the morning sickness, the odd late-night cravings that required them to leave bed and go to the store. “Oh,” you touched your stomach as you felt a kick. “Well, hello there,” you smiled. “I was wondering when I would start feeling you.” It was the part you were the most excited about feeling your little ones. It made it feel so real. However, seeing some of the videos of hand prints on people’s stomachs did scare you.

“Princess, who are you talking to?” Kate asked, walking downstairs.

“Come here,” you held your hand and closed the fridge. You took Kate’s hand and placed it on your stomach. “Just wait,” you smiled. It took a second, but soon, you felt a kick. Kate’s face lit up in surprise.

“Is that-” You nodded. “That is so weird,” you chuckled, and another kick. “I think they like the sound of your voice.”

“Maybe they like yours,” her eyes went to yours, then to your stomach.

“Hi, little ones,” Kate whispered. I’m your mum.” You smiled and blamed the pregnancy hormones when tears ran down your cheeks. I’m so excited to meet you and teach you how to hold a bow and arrow. Don’t cause your mom too much pain, okay?” You put your arms around her neck and pulled her into a hug.

“You are going to be a great mom,” you said. She hugged you back.

“So are you.”

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“Lena,” you called for the Blonde. You wanted to go for a walk, but you needed help putting on your shoes. “Yelena,” you said again. Kate was meeting with America at the Sanctum with Stephen. So it was you, Yelena, and the pups. The Blonde was upstairs preparing the room for the twins. The plan was to stay in the apartment until the twined turned one. Looking for a new home while pregnant and preparing for newborns was tiring. Sighing, you stood up and walked up the stairs—one hand on your belly and the other on the railing. You found Yelena on the floor of the twin’s room. She was midway through building a rocking chair. However, she was flipping through one of the parenting books she bought when the doctor confirmed you were pregnant.

She was lost in her own world, unaware that you were standing in the doorway. You let her sit there, but she stared at the same page for a few minutes. You made your presence known. “Baby,” she finally looked up.

“Dorogoy,” Yelena stood up and rushed over to you, her hands resting on your stomach. “Are you okay? Is it the babies?” You shook your head. You looked at your girlfriend, taking her face gently in your hands. There were dark bags underneath her eyes. How long has she been struggling, and you missed it?

“I’m fine,” you said. “What’s wrong, baby?” Yelena hesitated.

“Nothing,” she lied. You frowned and brought her into your arms for a hug. Her body was tense against yours, but soon she slumped into you.

“Tell me what’s going through that pretty head of yours,” you softly spoke. Yelena stayed quiet but it was okay. You would hold her as long as she needed, even if your back started to hurt. Finally, she mumbled something you missed. “What?” You questioned. She repeated herself, but still, it was hard for you to hear. “Baby, I can’t help if I can’t hear you,” you pulled away from you.

“What if I’m not good enough to be a mom?” She asked. Your heart broke. “I have done many bad things,” you knew some of those ‘bad’ things. You never saw them as bad. She was forced to be a pawn, and she was trying so hard to remove all the red. “What if I hurt them? I can not -” she shook her head. You felt the twin’s kick. They could sense Yelena’s emotions. You took her hand and placed it on your stomach.

“They are causing quite a commotion in there,” you smiled. “I think they can sense their mama is upset.” Yelena laughed, tears freely running down her cheeks. She kept her hands on your stomach.

“I love them so much already,” she admitted.

“I know you do,” Almost every night, Yelena would rest her head on your stomach and speak Russian to them. It was your favorite part of each day. She made sure to make meals that were safe for you. Whenever you needed a message, Yelena was the first to volunteer. “You take such great care of me and the babies, Lena. You are going to be a great mom,” she opened her mouth to argue, but you shook her head. “You deserve this life. You deserve to have a family and to be happy,” you wiped away her tears. “I know you will protect and love these troublemakers with your entire heart.”

“What if I mess up?”

“Then you mess up, but we will mess up together,” you kissed her softly. “Now, my back hurts. Do you think I can get a message?” Yelena chuckled, a smile finally on her face.

“Your wish is my command, my love.”

Delays were par for the course. At the beginning of the relationship, dates were missed or had to be rescheduled. You spent nights worrying sick because the mission took longer. When you received a text from Yelena that they were going to be home late, you understood, but it broke Olivia and Evan’s hearts. It was why you caved when they asked to stay up late after dinner to watch a movie. They lasted halfway through Frozen 2, and you were quick to follow them to sleep.

You woke up to your kids being moved, and you immediately grabbed them. “Easy, Princess,” it took a moment for your sleep-induced brain to see Yelena holding Olivia. “It’s just us.”

“You’re home,” you mumbled, rubbing your eyes. Kate smiled, and you couldn’t help but fall more in love with her.

“Go to bed, baby,” Yelena said. “We’ll put the little ones to bed.” You nodded and kissed your kids before heading to your room. You sat at the foot of your bed and waited for them, stretching your neck. Sleeping on the couch always put a strain on your neck. Yelena was the first in the bedroom. Her hair was wet, and she wore one of Kate’s tracksuits. They must have stopped at the compound before heading over here. “I missed you,” she admitted and kissed you softly. Kissing Yelena was your favorite. It was hard for the Black Widow to vocalize her feelings, but the way she kissed you said enough.

“I missed you too,” you smiled. “Are there any injuries?” She shook her head. “Promise?” she twirled around in a circle. You saw nothing, but she looked tired. “Do you want me to braid your hair, or do you want to go to bed?”

“Can you braid it? Kate is not good at it,” you smiled and nodded. She went into the bathroom to grab the supplies you needed. Kate came in while she was there. Before you could ask if she was okay, she kissed you. Kate was always an aggressive kisser when she came home. It took your breath away.

“Hi, baby girl,” she said. You smiled.

“Hi, Katie,” the archer rolled her eyes. The Black Widow came out of the bathroom with a hair brush and a ponytail. You moved to the center of the bed so she could sit before you. Kate kissed Yelena before going into the bathroom herself. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” You asked, sitting up on your knees and beginning to brush her hair. She hummed.

“Tired,” she whispered. “And I missed you and the twins,.” You wanted to say you missed her too ,and the twins were heartbroken when they were delayed. But that wasn’t going to help.

“Your sister and Maria came over,” you told her. “Someone told them we are getting another dog,” you chuckled as Yelena tensed up.

“I do not know who told them that,” she said. “Maybe it was Livie,” but it probably was Olivia. You knew she would join your wife’s agenda no matter what it was. You kissed her cheek and finished the braid.

“Princess,” you looked at Kate, and your eyes looked at the pregnancy test in her hands. “Is this real?” You wanted to say you would never joke about a positive pregnancy test after the hell you went through the first time, but you nodded.

“I took the test two days ago,” you said. Kate’s blue eyes filled with tears. Yelena stood up and took the test from Kate’s hand.

“It worked?” Yelena’s voice cracked. You nodded.

“Much easier than the first time,” your vision began to blur with your own tears. The Blonde moved to hug you, and you felt her tears against your skin.

“We are getting a new four-leg child and one with two,” she said. You pulled away from her.

“Yelena Belova,” you sternly said. “I told you we are not getting a third dog until you fully retire. I am not taking care of three dogs and three kids by myself.”

“Could be twins,” Kate said, laying behind you in bed. She placed her on your stomach underneath your shirt. Goosebumps form on your skin. You loved the feeling of Kate’s hands, warm and calloused.

“If you knocked me up with twins again, I might divorce both of you,” you teased and rested your body on Kate, melting against hers. Yelena crossed her legs and took your hand. She looked lost in thought. You squeezed her hand, and she looked at you.

“This was our last mission,” she told you. “We are missing too much here, and I do not want to fight anymore.” You were proud of how well you kept your excitement masked. Part of you believed that the only thing that was going to stop Yelena and Kate from going on mission was an injury or maybe even their death. But she was right. She deserved it. They both did.

“I guess I can make room for both of you,” your body shook from Kate’s laughter. The Blonde rolled her eyes and laid her head on your stomach. She kissed it and mumbled something in Russian. You glanced at Kate over your shoulder, and she smiled fondly at the Blonde.

“I love you both,” she said.

“Love you too,” you weren’t expecting a response from Yelena as she was fast asleep, a protective hold on your stomach.

Sometime in the future

Soft kisses on your shoulder drew you out of sleep. You tried to ignore it, but your lips traveled up your neck. “I know you are up, Princess,” you felt Kate’s breath against your neck. “We have a busy Saturday morning. Lena is starting breakfast.” You groaned and burrowed your face deeper into the pillow.

“I wouldn’t be so tired if someone wasn’t so needy last night.”

“If I remember correctly, you weren’t complaining,” you heard the smirk in her voice. You rolled your eyes and climbed out of bed, stretching your hands above your head. You felt her eyes gaze over your naked body.

“Can you keep your hands to yourself if we shower together?” It was the fastest you’ve seen her get out of bed.

“I thought I was going to have to call the Coast Guard,” Yelena teased as you entered the kitchen. You kissed her cheek.

“Don’t be jealous,” you pinched her back, and she yelped. “So,” you poured yourself a cup of coffee. “What’s the plan of attack?” You asked. Saturdays were always busy in your house. With five kids, four dogs, and a cat, it seemed everyone needed to be somewhere. Soccer bags needed to be packed, paint brushes to be washed, and pointe shoes needed new ribbons.

It was hectic, and sometimes you felt like you were pulled in a hundred and one directions, but you had your wives by your side to help. “Are you listening?” Yelena smiled.

“Yes,” you lied. She gave you a pointed look, which you ignored, and wrapped your arms around her waist.

“Incoming!” You heard Kate yell, followed by your three oldest running down the stairs. This was normal. Your home was loud, crazy, and chaotic but full of love. You burrowed your face in the crook of Yelena’s neck and kissed the skin you could reach.

“Thank you,” you whispered against her. “Thank you for loving me and giving me a family.”

#yelena belova x reader #kate bishop x reader #yelena belova x you #kate bishop x you #yelena belova x kate bishop x reader #kate bishop x yelena belova #yelena belova x kate bishop #kate bishop x yelena belova x reader #kate bishop #yelena belova

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corroded-hellfire · 4 months

Note

AYW request where Reader graduates from college so Ryan, Luke, and Eddie come to her graduation. And then Eddie gives her a little graduation gift of his own...

+ Eddie eating Reader out under her gown right after her graduation ceremony. Like, the moment she walks across the stage, he’s dragging her to the bathroom and diving in.

I am dedicating this to Dr. Bug! I'm so proud of you @munson-blurbs 💚

Warnings: smut, p in v, unprotected (wrap it up), oral f receiving, age gap

Words: 5k

[As You Wish masterlist]

The polyester robe that hangs on your shoulders sways in the breeze as you fetch your cap out of the back seat. The cerulean regalia is a beautiful shade, but it was a pain in the ass to find something to wear beneath it that didn’t clash. The white floral summer dress peeking out now from your unzipped gown was a lucky find that caught your eye while out having lunch with Max one day.

Cap with a golden tassel securely in your hand, you shut the back door to your sister’s car and walk around the backside to stand next to her.

“I can’t wait to meet your boyfriend,” your sister teases, as if you’re twelve and not twenty-two.

You roll your eyes as you lift a hand to shade your face from the blazing sun above. It’s not even officially summer yet but Indiana is coming in hot with those high temperatures this year.

“Don’t be weird,” you say.

An exaggerated gasp leaves your older sister’s lips, and she presses a hand to her heart, fresh yellow nail polish glinting in the sunlight.

“Me? I’m never weird.”

“When I was fourteen you told Connor Donald–”

“But you were going to the bathroom!”

“You don’t tell that to a boy when he calls!” Somehow you feel like that teenage girl all over again.

“I just had this feeling about him,” she says with a shrug. Your sister crosses her arms over her chest. “And I was right.”

“Yeah, he was a creep,” you admit.

The smug smile on her pretty face is annoying enough to have you turning away from her. At the other end of the parking lot, you see a familiar group of men headed your way, and the littlest one breaks away from the herd and races your way, yelling your name. As he gets closer, you spy the hat perched atop his chocolate curls and the cuteness devastates you.

With a gleeful chuckle, you catch Luke as he flings himself into your arms. Using the momentum, you swoop the almost-seven-year-old up and hold him against your hip. Your back and arm muscles protest the effort, but you do your best to ignore them. Truthfully, Luke’s getting heavier and too big for this now, but you can’t bear to stop picking him up—he’s still that baby boy to you.

“Hey, you,” you greet him.

“You look so pretty!” he tells you as you begrudgingly set him down.

“Thank you!” you say. “You look pretty handsome yourself in that snazzy fedora.”

Luke giggles and adjusts the brim of the hat so he can see you better.

By now, the rest of the gang has made their way to you and Ryan is the next one to launch himself towards you for a hug. Wayne goes next and you can tell your boyfriend is purposefully waiting to be the last one. Indeed he was as he brings you into his arms and presses a soft, sweet kiss to your lips. His hands slip below the graduation robe and rest on the soft cotton of the dress that hugs your lower back.

“Hi,” he whispers against your lips.

“Hi,” you reply just as softly.

If it weren’t for your sister clearing her throat, you very well might have forgotten that you were at your graduation, let alone there were other people standing around you right now. Such is the power of Eddie and his touch.

“Oh,” you say, face heating up as you take a step back from your boyfriend. “Right. Um, everyone, this is my big sister, Gin. Gin, this is Eddie, Wayne, and the little monsters Luke and Ryan.”

Both boys make silly faces at you in retaliation for their introduction, which you have no problem doing right back to them.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Eddie says, extending his hand.

“Likewise,” Gin replies as she shakes it.

“Nice to meet you, sweetheart,” Wayne greets your sister. They shake hands as Eddie comes closer to you again, standing behind you and resting his hands on your hips.

“Heard that if it weren’t for you, these two wouldn’t even know each other,” Wayne says, nodding to you and Eddie.

Ryan’s nose scrunches up in confusion. “Huh?”

“It’s true,” Gin tells the boy with a smile. “My old roommate is friends with your mom. One day I overheard something about someone needing a babysitter and I knew my little sister was available.”

Luke walks over and wraps his arms around your sister’s hips, giving her a big squeeze.

“Thank you for hearing that!”

The adults chuckle and you lean back into Eddie as he rests his chin on your shoulder.

“I don’t wanna go in,” you say with a sigh.

“Where are you going?” Ryan asks.

“I have to go inside with everyone else who’s graduating,” you explain as Eddie’s arms wind their way around your waist. He isn’t making this any easier. “That way you guys get to watch me when I walk across the stage.”

“Ed, would you let the poor girl go?” Wayne says with a sigh, making Gin let out a tittering laugh.

“Don’t wanna,” he says like a petulant child. He presses a kiss to your shoulder before whispering in your ear. “I like your dress.”

“Thank you,” you hum softly.

Silently, Eddie presses his body flush up against yours and you feel his half-hard cock pressing up against the top of your ass. A strangled gasp leaves your lips and Eddie has to bury his face in your neck to hide his smirk.

“I really like it,” he mumbles against your skin.

Sitting in the small arena, in dark green retractable seats that are usually reserved for someone watching a school basketball or hockey game, Ryan and Luke start to grow restless as they wait for the graduation ceremony to begin. Eddie knows they won’t exactly be captivated once it starts either, but he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

“Luke, can you please sit down? I don’t want to ask you again.”

“When is she coming out?” Luke asks, craning his neck to look around at the stage as he does as his father asked.

“When everybody else does,” Ryan says, also bored, but annoyed by his little brother as well.

“But when’s that?” the six-year-old whines.

“You know,” Gin says with a smile that looks suspiciously like one of Luke’s or Ryan’s when they’re up to something, “I have some pretty funny stories I could tell you about her.”

Eddie is also clearly intrigued by this, a spark of mischief gleaming in his own eyes.

“Ooh, like what?” Luke asks, already engrossed even though your sister hasn’t begun yet.

“Well, one time,” Gin starts, “she thought she could be like Mary Poppins and fly. She grabbed an umbrella and wanted to climb up to the roof. Our dad followed her into the garage and asked what she was looking for. When she said a ladder so she could go up to the roof, he put an end to her plan. She cried the whole day because she wasn’t allowed to try and fly like Mary Poppins could.”

Luke laughs, tilting sideways until he’s leaning against his big brother. Ryan’s chuckling as well, picturing you being mad because you can’t fly.

“Are you the big sister?” Ryan asks.

“I am,” Gin says.

“How many years?” Luke asks. “Ryan’s two years older than me. I’m the baby.”

“I’m six years older than her.”

“I’m six years old!” Luke shares excitedly.

“Do you have any more stories?” Ryan asks.

Eddie and Wayne share a smile between the two of them. Ryan is usually never so open with people he’s just met—he’s always been the shyest in the family. But there’s something about Gin being your sister that has Ryan feeling comfortable enough to be himself. The two of you aren’t identical, though it’s easy to tell that you are sisters. Gin is slightly shorter, and her face holds more roundness than yours does, but there’s a clear resemblance. Especially around the eyes, Eddie notices. They aren’t the exact same shade, but the shape of your eyes and arch of your eyebrows are very much alike.

“Hmm,” Gin hums as she thinks of another story to entertain the boys with. Eddie can’t help but notice she purses her lips when she’s thinking the same way that you do as well.

“Oh, okay. She used to make us watch her sing and dance all the time! Especially to New Kids on the Block.”

“Who?” Ryan asks.

Before the stab of feeling old has time to sink in for Eddie, Gin, or Wayne, the lights dim and a blanket of quiet falls over the crowd.

The faculty takes their places on stage and Pomp and Circumstance begins to play over the loudspeaker. Soon, a rolling wave enters the floor of the arena as all graduates file in towards the rows of chairs laid out for them.

Both Ryan and Luke stand, the younger Munson on his tippy toes as he tries to look as far and wide as he can to spot you in the crowd.

“Where is she?” Luke groans. “Everyone is so blue!”

“Ugh! I can’t find her!” Ryan follows up.

It takes Eddie a few moments to find you as well. Everyone is matching so he can’t go by what you’re wearing beneath your gown, and it’s even hard to see your beautiful hair with the cap restricting his view. But it doesn’t take your boyfriend very long to spot you, as he’d be able to find you anywhere—even if he was blindfolded.

“Look, look,” Eddie says, gesturing for his sons to step closer to him. “She’s right there. Next to Aunt Jess.”

Ryan and Luke do their best to follow the direction that their father is pointing in, but it’s hard–even when the graduates all stop walking once they reach their seats. But as Ryan wrinkles up his brow and really tries to examine his dad’s line of vision, his eyes catch on you.

“I see her!” A grin lights up Ryan’s face and it fills Eddie with a warmth that the outside sun could never hope to aspire to.

After a few more minutes, and once the speeches begin, Luke spies you as well and becomes just as excited as his big brother. Their joy quickly wears off as speaker after speaker comes up to the podium to give some of the most boring speeches Eddie has ever heard in his entire life. He can’t blame his boys for practically falling asleep slumped against one another.

Finally, the names of the graduates begin to get called and the boys muster up their energy reserves to wait for you. There’s a good chunk of graduates who have their moment before a name is called that the boys recognize.

“Jess Arnold.”

The boys excitedly cheer but become even giddier when they see you’re next up.

Nothing could have prepared you for the emotion of walking across the stage to receive your diploma. Hearing your name called over the loudspeaker was cool, being up on the jumbo screen for a moment was pretty surreal, but the sounds coming from one particular section of the audience have you choking up as you accept the rolled up piece of parchment from the Dean.

The claps of two small pairs of hands and cheers from those same boys send goosebumps shooting up and down your arms. Luke hadn’t even shouted that loud in excitement when he saw the real-life Hot Wheels cars. Wayne’s whistle joins the noise, that piercing sound making you chuckle as you try to swallow your emotions. Gin’s voice is unmistakable in her cheering—you heard that yelling every day growing up, you’d know it anywhere. But the sound in the cacophony that makes a few tears spill over your lash line is Eddie’s proud and happy “Woo!” that he repeats as you make your way across the platform. You just wish he was waiting for you as soon as you stepped off the stage so you could run into his arms. But as you step down and are about to head back to your seat, you look up and see where your family is up in the stands.

When they realize you’re looking at them, the boys wave excitedly, both hands flapping over their heads. Wayne and Gin both give you waves as well. Your eyes are glued to Eddie though, as he presses his hand to his mouth and then extends it towards you, blowing a kiss your way. A girlish giggle bubbles out of you at the gesture and you blow one right back to him.

It feels like ants scurrying out of an ant hill as you exit the arena and try to find familiar faces amongst the thousands of family members and friends who are here to support their loved ones today.

Jess comes up beside you and loops her arm through yours. You flash her a quick smile and the two of you fight your way through the crowd, searching for your people.

Your name catches your attention and your head whips to the left to see Luke’s small hands cupped around his mouth. It’s a swim upstream as you tug Jess in that direction, but you finally make it to find Eddie waiting with a bouquet of carnations in his hand.

More tears threaten to spill over as he hands them to you with a smile so full of admiration and pride on his face.

“Congratulations, sweetheart.”

The wrapper around the flowers crinkles in your hand and you make sure it’s held tight in your fist as you throw your arms around your boyfriend’s neck and hug him as close as you can manage. Eddie doesn’t hesitate for a moment, his arms encircling your waist and holding your body up against his.

“Thank you,” you say loud enough for him to hear over the crowd. “I love you so much.”

“They’re from us, too!” you hear Luke say.

With a soft chuckle, you pull away from Eddie who is raising an eyebrow at his boys.

“Are they, now? I must’ve missed the part where you chipped in,” he says.

“You must’ve,” Luke agrees with a shrug.

You laugh and hand the flowers to Eddie so you can pull both boys in for a big hug. Each of them gets squeezed in an arm but they cling to you just as tightly.

“You were on stage!” Ryan says when you let go.

“And I heard you cheering for me!” you tell him.

“Can I wear your hat?” Luke asks.

“Oh, I need a picture of that,” you say while nodding your head.

That leads to dozens of pictures being taken. You with everyone at once, you with everyone individually, you and Jess goofing off before she went off to find her family. Luke takes a handful while wearing your cap but Eddie plops it back on your head so he can take a few more with you.

Both boys make gagging noises as Gin snaps a picture of Eddie giving you a kiss. Their groans only grow as you wrap your arms around Eddie’s neck and sink further into the kiss, another snapshot being taken.

“Please tell me that one isn’t going to get hung up anywhere,” Luke gripes.

For the next picture, Eddie wraps his arm tightly around your waist and dips you, causing you to let out a mixture of a squeal and laughter as your hands cling to him for stability. You’re aware of the flash of the camera going off but it’s nothing compared to the brightness of Eddie’s grin as he looks down at you. It makes your heart pound faster than the adrenaline from the feeling of almost falling could ever do.

Once multiple roles of film have been used, the camera gets tucked away and it’s time to get going. Eddie offers to drive you back, just the two of you, since Gin drove you here and she’s headed straight back home. Wayne can take the boys back to give you and Eddie some time alone.

“Thank you for coming,” you say to your sister as you pull her in for a hug.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she tells you. “I’m so proud of you.” “Thank you.”

It makes you smile to see how the Munsons all hug her goodbye as well–even shy little Ryan. With one last wave, your sister heads towards the parking lot and Wayne ruffles the hair of the two boys.

“Ready, knuckleheads?” he asks.

“Can I wear your cap home?” Luke asks.

“Sure.” You hand the blue piece of regalia to him and instead of switching it out with his fedora like he did for the pictures, he just stacks it on top of his own hat.

“That’s a great look,” Eddie tells him, to which Luke winks in response.

“Will you take these for me, Ry?” you ask, offering the eight-year-old your bouquet of pastel-colored flowers.

“Of course!” The wrapper crinkles as the boy situates the long stems against his shorter frame.

You press a kiss to both boys’ cheeks before they head towards the parking lot with Wayne. Eddie laces his fingers with yours and you go to follow in the same direction the others just went, when Eddie tugs you back and smacks a kiss to the back of your hand.

“How about a little campus tour before we go?” he asks.

“Oh?” you ask, raising your eyebrows. “Anywhere in particular you want to see?”

Eddie shrugs. “Your favorite spots. Somewhere there’s no one else, maybe.”

“Right,” you say, a smirk tugging the corners of your lips. “Let’s see what we come across.”

Hand in hand, the two of you take a leisurely stroll through the quad of campus. Where there are usually people studying or picnicking during the semester, now there are graduates and families taking pictures and celebrating. The warm day outside leads you to the cool shelter of the student center at the far end of the yard, where you spent a lot of your college days having lunch. It’s mostly empty now, no one having any real need to be in here other than to escape the brutal sun.

An empty hallway catches Eddie’s eye, and he leads you by the hand to follow him in that direction. His boots squeak against the white linoleum tiles and your heels clack as you step behind in his wake. There isn’t much down this way except for a few offices that are now empty, a room full of vending machines, and some bathrooms.

Your boyfriend takes advantage of the latter, the empty hallway leading him to believe there will be no one in the men’s room. His gamble is correct as he pulls you in behind him. He moves quick as lightning to turn the lock on the bathroom door, assuring that no one will interrupt the two of you.

Eddie’s lips are on yours a heartbeat later, both his and your hands going to the zipper of your graduation gown. Neither of you can get it down blindly, but Eddie’s too impatient to make another go at it. Instead, he grips your hips and helps you sit on the peach granite counter behind you. The gown gets rucked up your body, the dress he’s so fond of joining it until they’re both up around your waist.

“Eddie,” you whimper.

“Shhh, shhh, baby,” Eddie croons as he sinks down to his knees. Soft, plush lips trail hot kisses from the inside of your left knee all the way up to the apex of your thighs. Large, strong hands massage up and down your legs as his lips never leave your skin, touching and teasing everywhere except where you need him the most.

Eddie lets his eyes slip closed not only to let himself enjoy the feeling of having his hands and lips worship your soft skin, but also because if he gets one more look at the wet patch on your purple lace panties, he’s going to rip them off of you and the fun will end far too soon.

“Eddie, please,” you beg.

“I’ve got you, princess,” he says softly.

Torturously slow, Eddie’s mouth comes closer to your center, the heat of his breath making you curl your toes before he even comes in contact with you. Brown doe eyes open to look at you, darkened by lust as he finally presses his mouth against your core, kissing against the wet patch of your panties that’s driving him so wild. Pleasure flutters in your pussy, your hole clenching around nothing as Eddie opens his mouth and grips the material of your panties with his teeth. As quick as he grabbed them, he lets them go, letting the wet lace smack back against your clit.

“God, I need you,” Eddie growls.

Calloused fingers work themselves up the outside of your thighs and grip the purple material at your hips. You arch your back, head resting against the bathroom mirror, to assist your boyfriend in ridding you of your underwear, which he shoves into the back pocket of his pants.

Now with nothing between him and your soaked pussy, Eddie eyes it greedily and the way he stares at your bare sex turns you on even more. You choke on a breath as he dives in, tongue instantly running from your hole up to your clit. He decides to keep his attention there, flicking the sensitive nub with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth.

“Fuck,” you moan. Eddie’s responding moan reverberates up your core, adding another layer of pleasure to his mouth on you.

He hitches your left leg over his shoulder to open you up even more for him, going in to devour you like his life depends on it. His hot, long tongue glides through your folds as he licks at you, not stopping even for a moment to catch his breath–not giving you a moment of reprieve as his mouth works against your pussy like it was made for this.

You never want this–him–to stop but Eddie’s too God damn good with his mouth for you to last long.

“E-Eddie, please.” You’re not sure what you’re pleading for as you reach down and grip the curls on the top of the older man’s head in your hand. It takes all of your control not to rut your hips against his sinful mouth.

Even though you’re not sure what you’re asking for, Eddie somehow knows what you need—he always does. He slips a finger inside of you, quickly followed by a second, as he keeps his mouth working on your clit. His eyes are trained on yours, not breaking contact for a second as his tongue laps at your clit and his fingers pump in and out of your greedy pussy.

If the feeling alone wasn’t about to bring you over the edge, the sight before you was.

“Oh, I’m gonna, I-I’m gonna–”

You don’t have time to finish your thought as your orgasm rushes over you, pleasure sparking throughout your body and leaving a tingle in your veins that only Eddie can give you. Thick fingers continue to work you through it, his tongue not giving up its assault on your clit until he’s wrung every ounce of ecstasy he can from you.

Once your muscles relax and you’re panting above him, Eddie slips his fingers from inside of you and stands up. He wastes no time slipping them into his mouth, moaning as he savors the taste of you. You’d come again just from that if you had the energy.

“Eddie,” you whisper between labored breaths.

“I love how much you say my name,” your boyfriend says as he leans over your body and presses his lips against yours.

The sound of Eddie’s zipper being pulled down shoots a thrill of excitement through you as the two of you exchange easy, lazy kisses. His hard cock nudging at your hole has you breaking your mouth away from his, a whimper tumbling from your lips.

“Yes,” you whine, the only word in your otherwise blank mind.

His initial push into you has you gripping at his shoulders, throwing your head back, which Eddie takes full advantage of and attaches his lips to your throat. The deeper he sinks into you, the harder your nails dig into the back of the button up shirt Eddie wore just for the occasion today.

“Shit,” Eddie huffs with a small laugh. “I’m not gonna last long, baby. Fuck, been hard since I saw you this afternoon. Couldn’t stop thinking about how bad I wanna fuck you since then. How bad I needed to taste you. Feel that tight, perfect pussy of yours squeezing me so fuckin’ good.”

You lift your head up to look at him through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Even though m’not your college girl anymore?” you ask through your shallow breathing.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Eddie growls, gripping your hips tighter and adjusting the angle that he pushes into you. “You’re my college graduate. My smart girl. My smart girl who gets so dumb on my cock, doesn’t she?”

“Uh huh.” You nod, your head heavy as the familiar pressure builds up in your lower tummy.

“That’s my girl.”

“So close,” you whine.

“Me too, baby. Come on. Be my good girl and come with me.”

One of Eddie’s hands leaves your hips and his thumb presses against your clit, making tight circles just the way he knows drives you crazy.

“Fuck,” you groan.

“Let go, princess.”

“Shit, I-I’m coming!”

Eddie spilling into you, coating your walls with his warm seed elevates this orgasm as you hold onto your boyfriend for dear life. Lightning sparks everywhere his body touches yours and pure bliss washes over you like a wave on the surf.

It takes a few minutes for the two of you to catch your breath. Eddie’s body hovers over yours and, if you’re honest, you’d be fine if he never moved. Eventually, he has to though, which also means pulling out of you. Though you whine at the loss, Eddie is right there to help clean you up and press sweet kisses to your mouth.

“I love you,” he whispers against your lips.

“Mmm, I would hope so,” you tease, throwing your arms around his neck.

Eddie has one arm draped around your shoulders as you walk down the hallway to his apartment door. He keeps pressing kisses to your temple and running the material of your graduation gown between his fingers.

“What’re the odds the boys will be asleep?” Eddie asks when you’re one door away.

“Slim to none,” you answer with a bark of laughter. “It’s still light out.”

“Details, details.” Eddie grabs the doorknob and tosses the front door open, allowing you to step inside first.

But you don’t even get one foot over the threshold before your eyes take in the sight before you. A large banner reading “Congratulations!” hangs in the archway that leads to the bedrooms and the apartment is crowded with people. Your jaw drops and it takes your brain a few moments to recalibrate. Once it does, you spin around to face Eddie and swat at his arm.

“I told you I didn’t want a party!”

Eddie shakes his head, a shit-eating grin on his face, as he leads you into the apartment and closes the door behind him. All six Harringtons are here, Max, Lucas, and their daughter Tiffany, and Wayne with both boys, who look more mischievous than ever.

“Oh no, this isn’t a graduation party,” Eddie says.

Nancy steps forward, a sly smile on her face, when you narrow your eyes at Eddie.

“Nope,” she echoes. “It’s an employee performance review.”

You stare at her for a moment, not comprehending her words.

“What?”

She can’t help but let out a small chuckle so Steve steps up to her side to help her out.

“You’re our employee, right? Watch the kids? So, we reviewed your performance and determined it was excellent.”

“Which of course calls for a party,” Nancy explains, gesturing to the living room full of people around her.

“And the fact that it happens to be on the day I graduated college?” you ask, tilting your head to look at Eddie.

“Complete coincidence,” he says with an innocent shrug.

“Look, look, look!” Luke bounds over and grabs your hand, leading you over to the counter that separates the kitchen and the living room.

A large sheet cake with vanilla icing and blue piping rests there, bearing the words “Congrats Grad!” in gold lettering.

It brings a smile to your face, but you smile even wider as you look down at Luke and then over at Ryan.

“Did you two know about this?” you ask.

“Maaaaybe,” Ryan drawls.

“I can’t believe you kept a secret from me!”

You pull Luke in against your chest and start to tickle his sides. He squirms, trying to get away from you as he howls in laughter.

“Ahh! Ryan! Help me!”

Ryan rushes over and tries to tug his little brother out of your grasp, but you’re quicker. You pull the older Munson brother into your clutches as well and he becomes another victim of your tickling. They both shriek and try to run, but you cease your tickling to wrap your arm around each boy and press a kiss to the top of their heads.

“You little sneaks,” you say.

“Can we have cake now?” is Luke’s only reply. He doesn’t wait for a response before posing another question. “Do you make a wish on graduation cakes?”

“What would you wish for, babe?” Eddie says as he walks over to you. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh, and you furrow your brow. “Would it be to fly like Mary Poppins?”

Your eyes widen as all the heat in your body rushes to your face.

“I’m going to kill my sister.”

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #older!eddie #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fan fiction #eddie munson fic #eddie munson imagine #dad!eddie #AYW #AYWS #request

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erwinsvow · 7 months

Text

He recognizes you instantly—Sarah’s friend, the shy one who never muttered out anything more than a quiet Hi, Rafe when he would walk by the pool or pass the two of you looking for dessert in the kitchen.

You’re all dolled up, makeup decorating your pretty face and wearing a yellow dress that’s twice as short as anything he’s ever seen you in. You look out of place in his living room, laying across his couch, eyes fixated on the television which is currently playing some kid’s show. He watches you for a minute, listens to you hum along with the song playing quietly in the background of the episode, looks at your hands fiddle with the strap of your heels.

You try harder again, working to yank the clasp so it’ll free your ankle from its painful constraint, but to no avail. He hears you sigh and curse under your breath, giving up and stretching your legs out. You keep watching the show, what he now recognizes as Strawberry Shortcake, what Wheezie was watching before bed.

“Need help?”

You jump from your position on the sofa, sitting up instantly, turning to look at Rafe with your heart pounding. You don’t know where he’d come from, expecting Sarah who had told your earlier that everyone was asleep.

You look up at Rafe quizzically, confused. You must have had a few drinks with Sarah, the way you look all flushed and warm, breathing heavy and eyelids fluttering. He thinks you look like a deer caught in headlights.

“What?” You say it softly, like you’re embarrassed.

“Your shoes. Need help?”

He thinks normally he’d be a little annoyed to repeat himself, especially with one of Sarah’s stupid friends, but he doesn’t seem to mind as much right now.

“Oh, oh,” you let out, misunderstanding what he originally meant and sighing a breath of relief. You bring your thighs to your chest so you can access your ankles again and watch with those doe eyes while he walks around and sits down on the couch right next to you.

The way you’re bent right now, he can tell you’re definitely drunk, because he can see entirely too much—a glimpse of white cotton between your legs, all the smooth skin of your upper thighs and lower legs. Your strappy heels are white, and he lets himself reflect for a moment that they match your panties, which is ultimately a mistake, because once he starts thinking about that, he can’t stop thinking about it.

“It’s broken, I think.” You stare at your friend’s older brother—the one who you’ve never been alone with before. Sarah complains and talks about what their dad thinks, and you half-listen, agreeing only because she’s your friend, but you’ve never understood what’s been so bad about Rafe.

“I can get it. Let me try.” The way he says it, you believe him right away. In your tipsy state, you don’t think there’s anything he could say that you wouldn’t believe.

The two of you stare at each other for a few heartbeats. It feels like ages because he takes your ankle in his hand, moving your heels into his lap. He takes the first shoe gently, gentler than you thought Rafe would be with you, and pulls on the strap so the buckle comes undone. He slips the shoe off of your foot, letting it hit the ground with a dull thud. Rafe moves onto the next, pulling on the strap again but this time it hurts. You inhale sharply, foot almost pulling away from him, but his other hand on your ankle keeps you in place.

“Sorry, kid.” He tries again, with more care this time, until it loosens and finally frees you. That shoe falls too.

You want to speak but no words come out. Your heart is thudding loudly in your chest again, looking at Rafe while he’s looking at you, your ankles in his hands and his fingers rubbing over the spot your heels had hurt you.

“Thanks, Rafe,” you say quietly. You’re almost worried to let anyone else hear, to let him hear.

“No problem.”

You hear the clatter of a door opening, Sarah’s voice and what can only be her on the phone with someone, confirming that they were here to pick you two up.

“You ready?” You hear your friend’s voice call to you from the kitchen. You don’t want to move but you do, folding your legs back and standing up, sliding down your dress while you walk to the kitchen without even looking back at Rafe.

He sits on the couch with your discarded heels near his feet, wondering what the hell just happened and why he’s hard. He hears a door open and close while his eyes flick back to the television, still playing the episode you were watching.

Then the sound of another door—and you walk back in, settling right back to where you were sitting, now upright, shoulder to shoulder with Rafe.

“Not gonna go with her?” He questions, already knowing the answer.

You stretch your feet out over his lap again, getting comfortable and melting into the sofa, giving him an eyeful on purpose this time.

“Can’t go without any shoes.”

#so what is this. idk #I like it tho #and now good night!#rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader

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lakefu · 5 months

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A Perfect Warmth 🕯️

Summary: Astarion and Tav take a well deserved break away form the chaos of their adventures at an inn inside Baldur's Gate. They need to clean up and get back on the road but they keep getting distracted. Perhaps plans could be delayed for a night of passion...

Pairing: Astarion x female!Tav

Tags: 18+, Explicit, fluffy smut, brief Astarion trauma response, PIV, erogenous elf ears, scent kink, blood + biting, a bit of praise, a bit of edging... a sprinkle of cockwarming...., these guys are in love...

Word count: 3.5k Note: This was my first fic originally uploaded on Ao3 on 11/27/23, inspired by the patch #4 dev note mentioning adding sponges to clean your companions. I've made edits from the Ao3 post.

“Remind me to sell this junk next time we pass by a merchant, would you dear?” Astarion was seated at the edge of the bed and rummaging through his traveler’s pack, placing various items on the nightstand for further examination. Two silver forks, an old necklace, and a handful of various polished stones ended up on the table before he plucked out an intricate sapphire ring and held it up to the sunlight peeking through the window.

“Good taste,” he muttered to himself. He placed the ring on his pinky finger in amusement and resumed the scavenge.

“It’s going to get difficult sneaking up on people if I have to lug this heavy thing around you know.” He threw over a glance at Tav, who was preoccupied with gathering laundry together in preparation for the next day.

“It wouldn’t be so heavy if you didn’t pocket nearly every shiny thing we came across,” she teased, without even looking over at him.

He gasped dramatically. “Framed by my own lover? Quite the scandal. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the near dozen times you’ve asked me to hold onto your things because your own pack was too full.”

“Hmm. Maybe. I guess that might sound sort of familiar…” She giggled to herself and walked into the bedroom to catch his eye, meeting him with a mischievous grin.

“Why are you such a- oh! Now, what’s this you’re wearing?” Astarion blinked and scanned her up and down, clearly enthralled by the wardrobe change. She stood there in an old linen robe that was yellowed with age, definitely unlike anything he had ever seen her in before.

“Just some old thing I found in the dresser here, isn’t it just fabulous?” Tav's words were dripping in sarcasm and yet she smiled, performing a grandiose little spin in the middle of the room as if she was wearing the most beautiful ball gown in the world.

“I… it’s just so different from your usual armor or that drow nightwear you fancy so much. You look so… domestic.” His eyes were locked onto Tav intensely, with brow furrowed as he seemed to be confused by his own words.

She felt her heart skip a beat and a flush run to her face.

“And you think that’s a good look for me?”

His eyes softened and he paused a moment before quietly answering.

“Yes… I do.”

Tav watched as his smile faded and the gaze of his eyes became increasingly more distant. The atmosphere seemed to shift and a slight panic ran through her body. Did she do something wrong? No... and it didn’t require a tadpole connection to get an understanding for what had brought down his spirits.

Astarion hadn’t considered a comfortable domestic life was possible for someone like him. Even the slightest concept of such a thing had been buried for over a hundred years, and he never expected it to resurface. Was he worthy of such a thing, and was it even possible?

Oh, it was possible. The evidence was standing right in front of him, spinning circles in an ugly bathrobe. He could see glimpses of a happy future that was so close to being a reality he nearly felt nauseous. Not because he was unsure of himself, but because there were still too many unresolved matters they had a duty to attend to. Too many missions and stupid little quests that could now go wrong and threaten this idea of a happy ending he never even knew was possible.

Everything was different now that he realized what was possible, and he suddenly felt an unknown and uncomfortable pressure. All he knew was that he couldn’t afford to lose in the upcoming battles. Battles that some would say were impossible, suicidal even. The thought of loss at this point was beyond unbearable. It was sickening just to think about.

“Hey!!” Tav ran up to where he was sitting on the bed and took his head in her hands. She placed a delicate kiss on his forehead, knowing she had to get him focused on something else.

“Why don’t we go to the shop right now and get rid of that stuff,” she motioned to the collection of items that had been gathered on the nightstand.

“Wouldn’t hurt to get some more coin in our pockets, right?” She looked at him expectantly and felt a huge relief as a light seemed to return to his eye and meet her view.

“Please tell me you aren’t going to wear that horrid robe to see the merchant,” he sighed and looked up at her pleadingly.

“Of course not!! I’ll change and- oh gods!!! We’ve got to get this blood off your face, the merchant is going to think we are trying to kill him!” Tav exclaimed as she lightly shook his shoulders, and quickly began examining his body to see how much cleaning would have to get done before they could leave.

“Blood… on my face?” He raised an eyebrow and brought a finger to his cheek.

“Yeah!! Well, it’s all over you really, dontcha remember earlier today, fighting those cultists?? You sneaked up behind one of ‘em and BAM!!! Just obliterated with a single strike, it was amazing!! You’re so strong…you know.” Her pulse was racing at the mere memory of the event as she delicately traced the side of his face with her fingers and ventured down to his chest.

“Ah of course. That was all so terribly easy I’d nearly forgotten,” he said proudly, adjusting his posture and keeping his eyes on Tav’s hand movements sliding across his chest. Her soft touch was becoming more firm as her fingers made their way toward his arms, giving his biceps a teasing squeeze before leaning her face into his and teasing a kiss.

Before their lips could touch, Astarion wags a finger in between their faces as if to remind Tav of the task at hand.

“Alright my sweet, let’s clean up shall we? You’re my mirror after all. So, go on then.” He took her hands into his own and gave them a kiss before placing them back at her side, encouraging her to go and gather whatever it was she needed to get him cleaned up.

Right, the supplies. It was nearly impossible to remain focused after moments of intimacy with him, no matter how brief they were. She quickly moved into the other room to acquire the washcloths and bucket of soapy water that she was using for herself not too long ago. Hands full, she scurried back to the bedroom to meet her lover, who hadn’t moved an inch.

As she approached him, Tav could feel the tie on her robe becoming increasingly more loose with each step that was taken across the floor. The embarrassment hit her as she realized she didn't have any hands free to do anything about it. She quickly tried to put the bucket down by the bedside, but the bending movement only resulted in the robe slipping off one of her shoulders, exposing a bare breast.

“Oh? You haven’t got anything on underneath?” Astarion cocked his head in amusement, eyes unmoving from the newly exposed skin.

“Ye-yeah that’s the whole point of robes isn’t it? I was doing laundry earlier ya know and umm,” She laughed nervously and started to fix the wardrobe malfunction but was quickly stopped by a hand over her own. Astarion reached out toward her until both hands were around her waist and pulled her in close to his body. Fangs were peeking through his devious smile while determined eyes looked her up and down. With a singular finger he crept over to the loose knot of the robe’s tie and flicked it completely undone with one swift movement.

Tav shuddered and felt her body starting to run warm despite now being suddenly exposed to the cool air of the inn. She was completely revealed to him now, the robe only just clinging to her arms and draped across her backside.

“Gods, you’re beautiful,” he sighed and began kissing her stomach and caressing the curves of her waist. “Come here.”

Tav gasped as she felt his cold grip around her waist tighten as he expertly lifted her up onto his lap with ease. Pleased at the new angle, Astarion shifted his attention to kissing the crook of her neck and started moving down her chest. He delightfully found her nipple with his mouth in no time, and teased it in circles with his tongue just as he knew she liked it. His gentle sucking continued for only a few brief moments before he suddenly withdrew and cleared his throat.

“Ah, well. You can reach my face better up here I’m sure. For the cleaning of course,” he said smugly. The elf leaned back and admired the view of his lover, nude and flustered, perched oh-so perfectly on top of him.

“The cleaning…” Tav nodded and remembered she still had a warm and soapy washcloth in her hand. The urge to throw the stupid cloth into some unknown corner of the room was nearly undeniable. All she wanted in this moment was for him to take her completely, in any way he wanted, it didn’t matter as long as she ended up getting fucked into oblivion. So fine. On with the cleaning.

She raised the washcloth to his temple and slowly began to wipe away the dried blood by working down his face. His cheeks were a bit sunken as usual but flushed adorably in this moment, clearly enjoying the tender rubs of cloth on his skin. She continued rubbing down toward his chiseled jawline, across to his lips, and back up the other side to repeat the process once more. She ran her fingers through his silver curls and noticed his ears would need cleaning too.

One hand caressed the pointy ear to keep it in place and the other brought the washcloth in for a gentle scrub. A quiet moan suddenly escaped the vampire’s lips.

Oh? She had seemingly discovered a sensitive spot and noted that she would have to continue her work carefully. The scrubbing continued but Tav couldn’t keep her eyes off his face now. His eyes were closed but still noticeably moving behind their lids, and his lips were slightly parted with his breathing becoming increasingly heavier and more noticeable.

Astarion was in his own world of pleasure. What in the hells had he been doing these past weeks, aimlessly scrubbing himself clean alone in the river when they could have been doing this the whole time instead?

He opened his eyes just to make sure it wasn’t all a dream. She was still there of course, diligently and lovingly taking such good care of his body. A wave of maddening lust rushed through his core and he needed her closer. He needed her as close as physically possible and even more so after that.

Their eyes met, revealing intense desires. Tav lowered her hands and she spoke slowly, “Can you take your shirt off? There’s a spot I can’t get to with it on…”

She wasn’t fooling anybody, but he obeyed without hesitation. The shirt was gone in seconds, revealing his pale and perfectly sculpted chest. It was a sight that Tav never tired of admiring, and was in fact the subject of distracting daydreams on the daily. She shifted her body closer to his and continued scrubbing his neck and chest, despite it becoming increasingly more difficult to focus. Deep breaths.

She had always been fond of his cologne that he was quite proud of concocting himself. The scent of aged brandy, bergamot, and rosemary was now forever an Astarion specialty that she could never forget. Even during times of battle or travel, a gust of wind could carry his essence to her and bring along with it a sense of reassuring familiarity. As she continued to wipe him down, however, a different scent began to come to the forefront.

It was something that did not seem completely foreign, but it wasn't immediately identifiable either. There was something about taking it all in that felt forbidden. Tav tried to pinpoint what she was experiencing. He smelled earthy… raw… unnatural… it was without a doubt, the undeath.

An undeniable heat rose through her body as she engulfed herself with this pure scent from her lover. The washcloth, the bed, the entire room seemed miles away, and nothing felt coherent except for a craving to be even closer to him. Nothing else existed except their bodies and her overwhelming desire to-

“Eager, are we?” A sultry voice snapped her back into reality, where piercing red eyes amusingly greeted her return. She suddenly became aware of a presence between her thighs and glanced down, realizing she was sitting atop a clothed bulge. His hands had a firm grip on her backside and his encouraging movements made it clear she had been absentmindedly grinding on him during her trance.

“Shit, I got carried away…” She hadn’t taken her eyes off his crotch and began to notice that her excitement had left a dampness on his clothes. Embarrassment nearly overtook her, but a gentle yet confident hand grabbed her chin and brought it up to meet his gaze. He leaned into her with a grinning open mouth and kissed her passionately, tongues intertwining.

She felt his fangs briefly scrape against her tongue every so often until a metallic taste became increasingly noticeable. She didn't mind the blood, especially since it seemed to enhance his arousal as noted by his hips continuously jolting faster up into her exposed crotch. Tav was soon pleasantly overwhelmed between his deep kisses and desperate hands groping her at every curve of her body. She longed to give him everything; her blood for his hunger, her body for his pleasure.

Tav released herself from the kiss they had been locked into and tilted her head so that her neck became exposed as an undeniable gift. His mouth lunged at the presented spot as soon as it was noticed, fangs immediately sinking in deep. Tav cried out at the initial impact but soon was reveling in the experience. It was a perfect mixture of pain and pleasure that she was only capable of experiencing from him.

He remained on her neck for a while, still tightly holding on to her body and keeping one hand free to reassuringly caress the back of her head. It was only after the blood flow slowed to a near stop did he cease his medley of licking and sucking at the wound. Blood dripped down his chin and onto his exposed chest, but he was ultimately unfazed. He leaned back, clearly happy and mostly satisfied, but there was still a different type of satisfaction he had left to chase.

Astarion's throbbing erection was begging to be released from its clothed restraints. He quickly untied his pants and shifted his underwear to finally free it. He moaned a few incomprehensible words of relief and stroked himself a few times before looking up at Tav for approval.

Tav had been staring at his length from the moment it was exposed, an impressive size for an elf, no doubt. Her eyes fixated on his perfectly pink tip, glistening with precum just for her. She immediately fantasized of shoving him down her throat until she choked and cried, but that was a fantasy for another day. In their current position, they both knew there was only one simple way of how to continue.

“Astarion,” she whimpered. “Fuck me.”

Tav sat up on her knees and positioned herself so that her entrance was just nearly grazing the head of his dick, ready to take him in completely at any moment. She grabbed ahold of his shaft and guided the tip back and forth through her folds until he was covered in her slick. The new sensation of the friction between them left them both gasping and desperate for more.

Suddenly, finally, his arms wrapped around her body as he pulled her down onto him with one firm motion. Astarion grunted through his teeth while Tav moaned unapologetically, focusing on relaxing enough to allow her body to adjust to his length inside of her.

The temperature differences between their bodies only heightened the feelings of pleasure whenever they became one. Her warmness was intoxicating to him, granting a sense of safety and bliss that was impossible to achieve anywhere else. He was already so close to the edge in this moment, but was not ready to give in just yet. He wanted this moment of heaven to last as long as possible.

Meanwhile, Tav was having the time of her life riding her man like there was no tomorrow. She had no intent to slow down until a pair of large hands suddenly gripped her hips in a way that prevented any further movement.

“I’m not done with you yet, love. Didn’t you notice the mess I’ve made after feasting on you?” Astarion took a finger to his chin and smeared a bit of Tav’s fresh blood down his neck.

It was true, he had made a mess. Quite uncharacteristically of him in fact. Tav had assumed he had simply gotten careless in his horny and feral craze but no- it was clearly all calculated.

“Just be still and sit nice and pretty on my cock. Finish the cleaning, then I’ll take care of you myself. How does that sound?”

How does that sound? His words echoed in her head, which was already spinning plenty enough as it was. She was unsure if it was from the blood loss or her seemingly never ending carnal desires, but perhaps it was both. One thing was certain, however, he could convince her to do damn near anything speaking in that low and lustful tone of his. Without uttering a word she slowly brought the washcloth up to his chest.

“Good girl,” he whispered. He felt her body twitch around him in response to the praise, and he leaned back to relax and enjoy these final few moments of intimacy.

It had taken everything in Tav's power to remain still while she worked. It wasn't exactly easy to focus- she was being split in half by a whimpering vampire beneath her after all. Astarion’s skilled fingers had been dancing around her swollen clit the whole time, just enough to keep her stimulated but never enough to let her come.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the blood was all cleaned up. She hadn't even realized when it happened or how he did it, but his pants were completely gone now. She reached over to place the cloth down and awaited her reward of sweet release.

Astarion’s hands moved to the knees that were straddling him and slowly pushed them farther apart, spreading Tav’s legs open bit by bit. She inhaled sharply as she took him in deeper. He opened her up more and more until she lost her balance and fell backwards onto his expectant embrace.

“Relax darling, I’ve got you,” He purred in reassurance.

Astarion took her entire weight in his arms with ease and laid her down amongst the soft pillows of the bed. He nestled himself comfortably between her legs, making sure their bodies were flush with one another. Nearly smothered by his body now, all Tav could do was claw at his back and arch her hips into his powerful thrusts. His mouth frantically traveled across her lips and neck with desperately wet kisses until he settled near her ear with a playful nibble.

“You’re so beautiful…” He whispered tenderly, while the rhythm of his lovemaking became increasingly sporadic. “So fucking perfect… Gods…just for me… I love you… so much...”

“Star, I- ah!” Her words cut short as she felt something snap within her. Pure ecstasy- she was falling and flying somewhere a million galaxies away and never wanted to come back. Obscene noises and curses filled the room as they rode out each other’s high in tight embrace. The smell of sex lingered in the air as their bodies heaved with labored breaths, finally collapsing on each other in exhaustion.

They laid together a while longer, exchanging soft kisses and enjoying the short moment in time where nothing else in the world mattered. Eventually, Astarion rolled out of the bed and stood up to stretch.

“Tsk, looks like it’s my turn to clean you up my dear,” He said with an accomplished grin, eying how her thighs were dripping with his sticky mess.

“I’ll be right back, don’t move an inch. Actually, I doubt you can move at all after that, ahaha!” He laughed and leaned over to brush aside a strand of Tav’s sweaty hair that was stuck to her forehead before walking over to the other room.

“Shut up… dummy…” she smiled to herself and rolled over, feeling at ease enough that the weight of sleep was starting to overtake her.

“I love you too, Astarion.” Her eyes closed as she drifted off into a peaceful slumber, knowing that her lover would soon come back to her side like he always did, and always would.

#astarion #astarion x tav #astarion smut #astarion fanfic #astarion romance #astarion ancunin #tavstarion #bg3 astarion #astarion fluff #bg3 #astarion fanfiction #vampire fanfiction #astarion x f!tav #astarion x female tav #bg3 smut

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xsublimelimex · 9 months

Text

CW: pee/messing & breastfeeding kink

Disclaimer: all characters depicted in this story are consenting adults over the age of 18. If you are NOT 18 or older, click away now!

Little droplets of sweat roll down between my breasts from the heat of the sun beaming down on me. I’m currently elbow deep in my garden and have been for an hour or so.

I sit back in my heels and look at my sweet little girl laying on her stomach soaking up the sun and the beautiful warm weather. Today I dressed her in the tiniest Jean shorts I could find and a little pink bikini top covering her small breasts. She looks absolutely delicious in her outfit I can hardly wait to get my hands on her.

Today my pretty little girlfriend decided she wanted to be a big girl and only wear her training panties no pull-up. I was a but skeptical because I know my sweet Angel usually can’t hold herself but she begged me and I’ve been trying to potty train her so I agreed but not before instilling in her how important it is for her to tell me when she needs the potty. So far so good, there’s been no accidents.

She looks so beautiful laid out on her tummy her soft skin glistening in the sunlight. I check my watch and decide it’s time to go inside and have a snack. I pull off my gloves and walk over to my sweet baby. I hear her little grunts and immediately know what’s happening, she’s having an accident!

I rush to her side and between her legs is soaked in her yellow piss her Jean shorts completely soaked through. “Aw sweetheart you had a little accident hmm?” I coo at her and she immediately pops her head up and looks at me her eyes wide. “Mommy I didn’t mean too!!! I forgot I had to go pee and it just came out, I promise I meant to call for you!” She says in a rush with tears in her eyes.

I sit on my knees beside her head and caress her hair. “It’s okay my love accidents happen that’s why I like to have you in pull-ups but it’s okay sweet girl.” She nuzzles her face against my knee and sighs before groaning. “Uh oh does my sweet girl need to go poopies?” I question her. She nods against my knee and curls her legs up into her belly on her side. “I need to go poopies really bad mommy I dunno if I can make it to the potty my tummy hurts so bad.” She whines and stuffs her thumb in her mouth. My poor baby girl.

“It’s okay sweetheart why don’t you go poopies in your undies.” I say and she looks up at me uncertain but I stroke her face softly. “It’s okay sweetie mommy will clean you up don’t you worry about a thing just use your undies and go potty in them.” She nods and suckles her thumb harder making grunting noises as she attempts to squeeze her poop out. I need to feel her push out this big load so I put my hand right above her Jean shorts where I know her little butthole is my fingers resting right over her pussy hole and wait. She pushes her butt against my hand obviously stimulated by my hand between her pretty legs.

“Keep making pushies Sweet Girl come on. Mommy knows you can do it.” I encourage her pressing down on her hole. She whines and moans just as her big load pushes out into my hand. “Good girl! You did so well for mommy I’m so very proud of you honey.” I praise as I pull her up onto my lap. She straddles me and squished her mess against her ass as she presses down on my lap. I push her up and held her grind herself against me. Loving the sounds of her mess squishing.

She mouths at my chest using her hands to squeeze my heavy tits. I help her unbutton my top and immediately pulls my left tit out and slips my fat nipple into her mouth. She sucks hard and sighs in content when my milk fills her mouth. Her gulps audible as she suckles. The sound is so fucking erotic my pussy is throbbing in need.

I caress her face as she suckles. “You see sweet girl” I squeeze her messy butt. “This is why you need to wear a diapie, no more panties for you. You hear me missy?” I say softly but sternly. She looks up at my with her big doe eyes and nods with my nipple still squeezed in between her lips inside her warm wet mouth.

#piss kink #omorashi #mommydom #gentle fem dom #ab/dl diaper #md/lb blog #md/lb community #md/lg blog #md/lg community #mdlbkink #mdlb blog #mdlgmommy #breastfeedingkink #breastfeeding kink #breastfeeding

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msafterhours · 1 month

Text

No Promises

Reader POV x Joo Kyulkyung (Zhou Jieqiong)

~2.7k words

“We were meant to be together sounded so much sweeter when it felt like we had forever.”

There's something beautiful about intentionally making the wrong decision. Like, sure, it sounds crazy to step into the line of fire and say yeah, come on universe; take your best shot, but it’s also kinda fun, no? Granted, soaring down the streets of Seoul with the wind whipping against your jacket and the rain pouring past your helmet is maybe a bit much, but you left any concerns you might have had in the dust long before the sun set. Besides, this is far from the first time you’ve acted with the type of reckless abandon reserved for those who have yet to live long enough to have something to lose.

That calculus changes when you re-enter Seoul: speed limits shift from suggestions to mandates. After a third red in a row rips an extended groan from your chest, you spend the moment inspecting the streets you’ve traversed a thousand times. You’re met by the familiar sight of Gangnam-gu’s glimmering lights, gleaming skyscrapers, and garish nightclubs each casting their own unique reflection onto the shimmering street below. On most nights, you’re able to let the mess of colors fade into the background, but tonight, it feels uncharacteristically gray. Even then, it’s all so loud, from the rainfall on the swarms of umbrellas to the downcast expressions of the faceless crowd—hell, even the red light you’ve been keeping an eye on seems washed out.

Right as you’re wondering if you’ve been transported back in time and cast in a 1940s sitcom, a sudden flash of color at the far edge of vision completely derails your train of thought. You turn and are met by a sight pulled straight from a modern drama: a student close to your own age wearing a soaked banana yellow top and skirt clinging to her legs as she hides under her highlighter pink backpack like it’s some shoddy umbrella. It’s … not a pretty sight.

Or at least it wouldn't be, if not for the rest of her. Her long, dark hair cascades down past her shoulders and clings to her face, obscuring your view of her finer features, yet every aspect of her from her posture to the placement of her steps projects a practiced poise that monopolizes your attention. Everyone else fades from your vision as the light turns green and she turns the crosswalk into her personal runway … though the effect is kinda ruined by the urgency with which she scurries through the rain.

A feeling from deep within urges you to act—that and the person behind you honking their horn since you’ve spent the four seconds since the light turned green frozen in place. You release the brake, accelerate forward, and veer your motorcycle to the side where you know she's heading. With a quick step onto the soaked pavement and a tug on the strap of your helmet, you greet the rain with the widest of smiles, then feel it shift into a smirk as you call out, “Ouch, aren’t you a sad sight to behold. Need some help with that?”

She turns and stares, mouth agape, as she processes the sight of you. Your first glimpse of her leaves you stuck mirroring her expression, mouth agape in disbelief because she's gorgeous, with a sharp jawline that contrasts perfectly against her soft skin. It’s a face sculpted to show on billboards … and one whose disbelief shifts into a smirk as she remains unaffected by your reaction. Your eyes travel upwards past those invitingly soft lips, along the bridge of her nose, all the way up and meeting her own, where you’re all too tempted to lose yourself in them. Eventually, she breaks the silence and asks, “What. The. Fuck. Are you doing? Are you trying to die?”

“Of course not, don’t you listen? I already told you, I’m trying to help,” you say back, smile widening as her skepticism refuses to fade whatsoever. “I just figured that while we’re both out in the rain, only one of us wants to be, yeah? I'd be doing something wrong if I didn't at least offer to get you there faster, so I ask again: do you want my help or not?”

As you offer her your helmet, you see the distrust finally start thawing, just enough for her to crack a smile of her own. “This is insane—you’re insane. But you also seem fun, so why not?”

You hand her the helmet and exchange names, and as the girl you'll come to know as Kyulkyung repeats yours back to you, you watch as her eyebrows relax and the distrust starts leaving her eyes. As you go through a brief crash course—how to wear a helmet, where to sit, etc.—her posture slips too, hints of comfort and fatigue settling in as her shoulders slump. Yet through it all, her eyes remain locked on yours, causing an unexpected pang in your chest as you turn to climb onto the bike. It fades slightly when you turn back to her, offer your hand, and ask, “Okay, you ready?”

Even as Kyulkyung shivers and shakes like a leaf in the wind, the fire in her eyes burns bright as she dismisses your hand and climbs atop the bike with ease. Her arms wrap around you, sending a shock of heat through your system and your heart rate into the stratosphere as she asks, “Do you happen to know where the PLEDIS building is?”

“Funnily enough, I do,” you tell her, smirking with sinister intent as inspiration strikes. “What’re you, a trainee or something?”

“No …” Kyulkyung murmurs, averting her eyes as she continues, “I just have a really good reason to want to be there before 11:00.”

“Sure. Yeah. Totally,” you say. Her eyebrows raise; yours respond in kind. Her bottom lip catches between her teeth. You continue. “You, the ‘School of Performing Arts’ student—in said uniform—strutting around Gangnam of all places. You’re gonna try and convince me you’re not a trainee, just that you happen to have a ‘really good reason’ to be at an agency before a very specific time of night.”

“Are you trying to say something?”

“Two things actually: you’re full of shit and you’re out past curfew.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Why would it even matter?”

“Because I like being right, and you apparently hate being wrong. Aside from that, if I need to get you back before curfew, we’re going to have to book it, run a few red lights, pray that we don’t get pulled over—”

“Alright, enough,” Kyulkyung interjects, eyes rolling with a gymnast’s grace. “You’re not wrong, but let’s just focus on getting me back in one piece, alright? I’m pretty sure they care more about me being alive than on time.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you say it,” you insist. “Go ahead, tell me I’m right.”

“You’re actually serious?” she mutters in disbelief. You opt to let the silence act as your confirmation.

“Fine. You’re right: I’m a trainee. Happy?” Kyulkyung grumbles, grimacing as a grin overtakes your expression. “What gave it away?”

“I dunno, you kinda just seem ‘that kind of pretty’,” you say with a shrug. “Something about the way you walk too … honestly, nothing about you comes off as normal.”

“Bit rich for you of all people to say that, don’t you think? I wouldn’t exactly call this a ‘normal’ way to spend a Friday night.”

“I wouldn't either,” you admit, smiling wide as you respond. “But are you—the trainee—really gonna be the one to lecture me about running headfirst towards an enticing risk?”

“No, I'm not,” Kyulkyung says, her grip on your ribs tightening. “Though I might not be so kind if you keep me out in this rain any longer.”

“Alright, alright, fine,” you wheeze out, struggling to catch your breath as you paint on your most dramatic pout. “You’re no fun … but you are kinda cute, so I guess I can cave just this once.”

“Good,” she replies, smiling in smug satisfaction. “Now, let’s get going! I’m cold.”

“As you wish, princess,” you say, revving the engine and speeding off before she gets the chance to respond.

You immediately lose any semblance of newfound confidence as the unfiltered brunt of the elements threatens to overwhelm you on your first time riding without a helmet. First, it’s the scent of rain. Then, it’s the rain pummeling your brow. Finally, it’s the noise. Your motorcycle roars and the cars passing you scream off into the night as they pass—it’s all just so fucking loud and every single sensation threatens to pull your focus away from the road. Yet even amongst the brutal weather of a stormy night, Kyulkyung’s thoughts resonate through your mind clear as day. You feel her heartbeat race as you accelerate out of a turn, feel her cling to you tighter at every hint of yellow in the stoplights above. Without fail, she wordlessly pleads for you to choose caution, and, without fail, you do whatever she asks.

At one such intersection, you ask a question of your own: you let go of the handlebar and place your hand atop hers. Kyulkyung's response is just as silent, but she needs no words to tell you yes as she intertwines her fingers with yours as you wait together. Even through the drenched material of your glove, the heat of her touch wards off the cold, sending a surge of warmth through your shivering body as you both stare ahead into the awaiting darkness. You revel in the sensation as long as possible, right up until the light turns to green and you’re forced to pull away.

As she embraces you once more and you accelerate forward, a realization cuts through the fog and arrives at the forefront of your mind: you just met this girl and you already know you’re never going to be able to say no to her. And that’s … okay?

Yes. There’s something about her that takes the tension out of the knots in your shoulders, makes you breathe just that bit easier—at least when she’s allowing you to do so. It’s all too easy to ease into her embrace, all too tempting to take your time weaving your way through the tangled web of your home suburb’s streets. The thought proves far too tempting and you choose to do so, desperate to preserve the sanctity of these seconds spent together.

Unfortunately, the night only lasts so long and the road only goes so far, so you’re soon met by the familiar sight of your destination. You force yourself to ease off the gas, allowing your momentum to carry you forward until you come to a stop across the street from the building in question. With a sigh and a swing of your leg, you step off the motorcycle and turn to face her as you offer her your hand. This time, Kyulkyung accepts, taking it and joining you on the sidewalk. After loosening the chin strap, you gently pull the helmet off her head, granting you a glimpse of her parted lips before revealing the excitement and expectation in her wide eyes.

“So, what’d you think? Kinda fun, right?” you ask, allowing your eyebrows to lift in expectation as you await her response.

“Maaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyybbbbbeeee,” she says, drawing out that single syllable just long enough for smirks to overtake both your expressions.

“You know what? I’ll take it. And you—” you say, turning away for a moment as you unlock one of the side compartments of your bike and pull something out. “—should take this.”

Kyulkyung lets out the slightest squeak of surprise as she catches the umbrella you toss her, though the surprise is quickly replaced by the disdain and disbelief overtaking her expression. “Wait, you’re kidding. You have to be. You had this the whole fucking time?”

“Yep!”

“And you still felt the need to convince me to risk my life on that screaming metal death trap?”

“I thought it’d be a valuable experience,” you say, shrugging once more. “You can keep the umbrella by the way; it’s all yours.”

Kyulkyung’s sigh of resignation is all that keeps the street from falling into silence as you stand there, waiting for her to voice her thoughts. Eventually, she does so. “Give me your phone.”

“So greedy, honestly. I just gave you a ride and my umbrella, yet you’re still asking for more?” you scoff. Still though, you do as she asks, pulling it out of your pocket and unlocking it before handing it to her.

“It’s one of my toxic traits,” she replies as she taps away at the screen. “Everyone else seems to have gotten used to it, so I’m sure you’ll be fine, eventually.”

“Oh?” you ask, eyebrow arching as she piques your curiosity. “You hoping I’ll stick around?”

“No, I was just texting myself from your phone for the hell of it,” she says, sarcasm soaking her words like the rain-soaked streets as she finishes typing. “It totally wasn’t because I was gonna ask if I could get you coffee or something, as thanks for getting me home safe.”

Kyulkyung finally looks away from the screen, meeting your gaze with an infectious smile as she offers you your phone. “That’s unfortunate. I really like the thought of someone else paying for my drink.”

“Yeah?” she asks. A pause. Then, “Maybe we’ll just have to make it happen.”

“Maybe we will,” you agree. With that, you turn and remount your motorcycle. Before you go, you offer her one last smile as you bid her farewell. “I need to get back, but I hope you have a good night and good luck with—” you gesture wildly at the beautiful mess standing in front of you “—explaining everything I guess.”

“Thaaanks,” Kyulkyung grumbles, pouting as she shudders at the thought and ripping a warm laugh out from deep within your chest. As it echoes against the buildings’ frigid walls, her hints of a smile bloom into her own peals of laughter that harmonize with your own as they resonate as one.

“I hope you have a good night too,” she says softly after a short while. “Try not to die on the way home, alright?”

“No promises.”

Kyulkyung’s eyes roll once more, but there’s genuine gratitude in the nod she gives before turning away. As she disappears into the building’s darkened halls and vanishes from your sight, a chill courses through your veins, leaving you shivering as you adjust your helmet and take off down the road.

Barely a minute passes before you reach your apartment complex and the pale brick and light blue tones that define its color palette. After locking up your bike, you hike upstairs, step up to your door, turn the latch, and reveal … the silent darkness within. Empty, just like always. Muscle memory guides your hand to the switch, momentarily blinding you as the cool whites wash away the darkness to reveal the relaxing hues of your home.

While the sight normally instills a sense of calmness, it all seems to blur as the chill refuses to leave your body, rendering you seasick as your head swims. It remains even as you peel away your gloves and free yourself from the soaked leather of your jacket, leaving you shivering even as you turn on the shower and pray for it to heat quickly. As you wait, you decide to check your phone and see what message Kyulkyung sent herself.

You can’t help but scoff at the assumption, but it quickly shifts into a smile as you compose your response.

You (10:59 PM): When you read this, let me know if you got home safe.

I don’t want to put the time into making coffee plans if you’re not gonna show up

You (11:08 PM): You’re insufferable

You (11:08 PM): How’d everything go? Were you able to sneak back in?

Kyulkyung (11:09 PM): Oh, easily

You (11:09 PM): Not your first time pushing curfew?

Kyulkyung (11:09 PM): Definitely not

Kyulkyung (11:10 PM): And definitely not the last either

You (11:10 PM): Can't say I'm surprised lol

You (11:11 PM): I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend, even if the most interesting part has already happened

Kyulkyung (11:11 PM): Lol thanks, try not to get into too much trouble while I'm not there to supervise

You (11:12 PM): No promises

(My sincerest gratitude to @capslocked as always for their contributions towards bettering this fic. This was a draft I started a while ago that I didn't foresee myself finishing, but as I was editing it, I had the idea of posting little vignettes from the plot that I had written instead of making it a singular narrative. The plot I had in mind originally spanned something like 4 years, so just writing the highlights seems like a better fit (if there's interest for this story at all, I know it's an idol that's been away from the industry for a bit). Regardless, thank you so much for spending your time reading my work and I hope you enjoyed it!)

#kpop fanfic #kpop fanfiction #idol x reader #idol x male reader #kyulkyung #zhou jieqiong #ioi #pristin

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chronically-ghosted · 8 months

Text

go west, to the southern plains, go west to breathe (lover, share your road - part i) series masterlist | AO3 Link | prologue | part ii

chapter rating: T

word count: ~21K

chapter summary: at the end of the line, you make a business proposition to Joel Miller. He brings you and Ellie home to the last sanctuary left in this world in exchange for your skills. What you find there and what you find out about Joel Miller is not what you expect.

chapter warnings/tags: depictions of going hungry and poverty, sexual harassment, period accurate sexism, depictions of a sick child, reader depicted as skinny but due to lack of food not her natural body type (and this will change), allusions to domestic abuse, hurt/comfort, pining, the beginnings of a praise kink, let the idiots in love begin

a/n: shout out to the ever incredible @jennaispun for beta-ing the prologue and this first part!

“After a long walk in hell, I found you. You made hell feel like home, you made the flames feel warm. It’s true, you haven’t saved me but you were the closest thing to heaven.” — Maram Rimawi

part i:

Beneath the soot-gray fingertips of your gloves, the dust of the high plains sits coarse and heavy on the tattered, yellowing strip of paper. You hold it down flat as a brutish wind snakes up the empty dirt road through the center of Dalhart, grabbing hold of the brown dust that clings to everything — and tugs. Underneath your pale blue dress, with the hemline torn and the collar in need of stitching, your heart pounds as you read the small, almost guilty, advert:

Help wanted. Can pay.

Contact Joel Miller.

The promise of actual money should have had every able-bodied American scrambling to answer the advert, but by its place near the bottom of the announcement board outside of the country store, buried beneath slashed prices for milk and eggs and headlines out of Washington – it seems certain to be relegated into obscurity.

For all you know, this could be months, even years, old. Miller, whoever he was, could be long dead, or gone with the rest of the exodus to California. Or he could have gone the way of your “Uncle” Robert – a huckster, discovered too late; one of many who prey upon the desperation that sticks to the country like the acrid smell of smoke. Your hand shakes as you pluck the yellow card from the wooden plank. There is no contact number, no address. Another trick? Dust stings the corners of your eyes when you pinch them close, your breathing quickening, your pulse sharp in the sleeve of your ratty glove.

Oh, God, what are you going to do? What if this is nothing, just like Robert’s promise? What if there’s nothing here for you? What if –

A small hand on your forearm centers your spiraling thoughts. From beneath a faded blue baseball cap, two brown eyes peer up at you, firm and reassuring.

“You okay?” She keeps her voice low, just like you asked.

“Yeah, El–Ellie, I’m fine.” You squeeze her too-thin hand, your stomach toiling with guilt and its own emptiness. “Just figuring out what to do next.”

“Is finding and murdering this asshole Robert still off the table?”

You frown, your niece’s quick temper more from your dead sister than you. “It is. Now, I’m going inside to ask about this advert. Maybe this Miller still has a job or two open.”

Ellie’s eyes fall to the slip of paper in your hand, her aggressive scowl tightening into something that too closely resembles fear. She knows what’s at stake just as much as you do and you hate that that knowledge ages her youthful face.

“You stay close and don’t let anyone get a good look at you, okay?”

Ellie nods, already familiar with the routine, and scoops up your luggage case, her tattered satchel hanging off her other shoulder. She had been wearing pants long before reaching Dalhart, but it soothed you to think the eyes of cruel men passed right over her, their interest rarely in young boys.

A bell above the door tinkles when you open it, but by the dull, muted sound, it most likely has a few dents. Behind you, the afternoon heat follows you in, the sunlight illuminating the floating dust mites in the air. The door whines as it closes, brightening the inside of the store, where the mites settle back into the silver layer that sits over cans of tomatoes and peaches, linens, boxes of gum and cigarettes. Nearly everything sits untouched and unmoved, old dust settling between cracks and grooves, patrons not having enough money to buy something and the owner not having enough to change out stock. Struck still, frozen in a single, long exhale. The slow, creaking death of the economic system has reached Dalhart too. You shudder, suddenly cold as if in a mausoleum.

The further away from Boston the train took you, the further back in time you felt. Here, you are reminded of the old general stores of cowboys and pioneers. But maybe, that is exactly where you are: out of time.

A man in long white sleeves, coiffed hair, and perfectly round glasses, looks up from the wilted newspaper spread out over the counter.

“Can I help you?” His accent hails from the east, North Carolina most likely. However, his manners are not reflective of that famous southern hospitality. He looks at you like you’re a bad dream and it unsteadies you.

“Y-yes. I, uh, I’m hoping that you know a-a Miller. Joel Miller? I have his advert and I’m, um, I’m looking for work.”

The man’s thin eyebrow jumps mockingly. Aren’t we all, sister? But eventually, he shakes his head.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing all the way out here, but this ain’t no place for a young lady out on her own, job or no job. Where’s your husband?”

“Dead.” Your voice doesn’t waver, but then again, why would it?

The clerk’s eyes soften, if only slightly. “I see. But I’m sorry to say, there is no job here for you.”

Your mouth instantly dries out. “What do you mean? Where’s Mr. Miller?”

“He’s a mean ol’ sunuvbitch, livin' God knows where. Comes in twice a month for supplies and he’s back out into the prairie.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see why that’s a problem –,”

“He ain’t fit for civilized life, ma’am.” The clerk drops his nose, eying you seriously over the rim of his black glasses. “Whatever he’s offering, you don’t want no part of it.”

“I think we’ll be the judges of that.” Beside you, Ellie drops your suitcase and it loudly clatters to the ground. “Thanks for the tip though.”

The clerk’s eyes widen – this is terrible behavior even for a boy – his mouth unfurling to give a nasty tongue-lashing, when you interject, your voice thick with pleading.

“I would just like to meet the man. Please, sir.” The clerk, like most men without scruples, can barely resist the sound of a woman begging. Those uncanny blue eyes find you again. “Has he come in recently?”

You can feel Ellie’s wicked sneer behind you, the clerk’s gaze switching between the unlikely pair in his shop. Finally, he shrugs. Who gives a fuck if one more woman goes missing?

“He’s due for a resupply.”

“How soon?” Your palm sweats under your gloves.

He narrows his eyes, evidently annoyed that a woman would reject his warnings. “Soon. We have a parlor in the back if you’d like to wait for him. But you have to buy something,” he adds vehemently.

You nod, unsteady on shaking knees as you walk towards the door in the back of the store.

“Thank you, sir. You have been so kind. We very much appreciate it.”

Any chance that the clerk finds you sincere is lost when Ellie wraps her knuckles on the counter as she passes.

“Buh-bye, dude.”

The parlor is small, dark, damp, and smells faintly of kerosene and leather. A woman, most likely the wife of the clerk you just annoyed, glares from behind a counter as you and Ellie walk in.

“Lunch.” Not a question.

Ellie looks up at you, eyes wide, fearful. You hadn’t let her see what is left in your purse, but she knows it’s low.

With your stomach in knots, you wouldn’t be able to eat anyway. You pluck out a dollar, bringing your total down to three dollars, and giving it to your niece.

“Order whatever you want.”

The beating heart of the blazing Texas sun edges downward across the open sky, falling, until it drops completely behind the harrowingly flat horizon. Purple erupts in its wake, the last pump of blood of a dying muscle, and nearly instantly, the temperature drops. You watch the explosive coronary of the sky from a table at the back of the parlor, your own pulse doubling the later it gets. You squeeze your hand between your thighs to keep your fingers from drumming uneasily on the table. But for once, Ellie doesn’t pick up on your nerves.

A dollar went farther out here and, as a result, Ellie is allowed her first big meal in months. Twice now, she’s nearly forgone the silverware to shove food directly into her mouth with her fingers, had it not been for your glares to remind her to slow down.

“This is slow,” she grumbles as she licks her bowl of mashed potatoes clean. Of course, half of what she ordered sits waiting for you, but you know she needs this meal more than you do – even if your rumbling stomach disagrees. You’d already had lunch at the train station; one more missed meal won’t kill you and less for you means more for Ellie.

Suddenly becoming a parent to a very opinionated fourteen-year-old girl was not something you had anticipated, and most times you figured you were doing it all wrong. The least you could do is give her everything you could.

“You think he’ll show?”

You tear your eyes away from the parlor door, blinking back into your body out of your cloud of thoughts. Ellie’s little hands grip the bowl, a white smear sitting on her bottom lip, her eyes dark as they watch you.

You grin as her pink tongue swipes up to lick her mouth clean. How easy you forget she’s only fourteen, with her loud mouth and provoking eyes. “Eat your food, Ellie.”

The words have barely left your mouth when the door to the parlor bursts open. Two men, clearly drunk and smelling of it, stumble in. This is the part where you wish you too could believably dress up like a man. Your pulse thrums in your neck like a heightened prey animal.

One pushes the other’s shoulder, smirking, and grunting something. His friend, also in a cowboy hat but half his size, nods and makes an unsteady line for one of the tables, while the other does his best to get to the bar.

The man at the table has light green eyes, overly thick eyebrows, and a flat mouth, loose with drink. He flops into a wooden chair and you watch as the Texas Rangers badge on his chest flashes in the firelight behind him. Your stomach tightens.

He stretches out, feet crossed over his ankles, limp hands crossed over his denim jacket, hollering at his friend and the woman working, who looks equally displeased to see them as she did you and Ellie.

Smirking, his eyes slide from the wooden bar top, over the back wall, and right onto you.

You watch as his gaze blurs for a moment, a film of beastial hunger smothering the color of his eyes. You can feel your pulse in your ankles now.

“Well, now, what do we have here?” The lilt in his voice calls out two unspoken words: fresh meat. Distressingly steady, he climbs to his feet, his hat tilted obnoxiously on his forehead. “Where did you come from, you pretty little thing?”

He saunters over, his thumbs stuck in his belt, the gun at his side snug in its holster. The grin on his face is hideous. You’d smack it off if you weren’t suddenly overcome by a debilitating fear. A look like that on a man is never, ever a good thing.

“Whatcha got there, Lee?” his buddy calls out from the bar, beard drenched in beer foam.

“I dunno quite yet, Knapp,” he says over his shoulder, his livid green eyes never leaving your face. He nearly folds in half to press his spider-like hands on the surface of your table, coming inches from your face. His breath smells like corn whiskey and cheap tobacco. “Guess I’ll have to find out. What’s your name, pretty thing?”

“Or she could not tell you her name and instead, you could fuck off.” Ellie’s scowl wrenches her mouth open, her knuckles white around her spoon. There’s a part of you that fully acknowledges and accepts that if given the signal, she’d scoop the fucker’s eyes out with the silverware right here. “We’re eating here, or are you too busy smelling like a fucking whiskey barrel to notice?”

As with most adults when Ellie decides to show her teeth, Lee stares stunned before the self-righteous anger sets in. Your heart stops for a moment when you think he’s going for his holster, but instead, he uses the flat of his hand to swat her hat off her head.

“Shut up, you little fucker, where’d you learn your fucking ma–,”

Ellie’s long hair tumbles down her shoulders, the baseball cap on the floor behind her.

Lee is stunned into silence once again. The parlor goes deathly silent.

It’s Knapp who sets off the explosive spark again. “Holy fuck, you’re a little girl.”

Ellie snatches up her hat, cheeks flaming red, but Lee’s hand grabs her wrist.

“A kinda cute one at that,” Lee sneers. He twists her arm and she yelps. Knapp at the bar laughs, his paunch shaking as beer sloshes over the side of his glass. The woman is cleaning something with a rag, turned away from the scene, her shoulders hunched to her ears. You’re on your feet, your hand on her purse. “What are you thinking, hm? Dressing this sweet little girl up like a boy?”

The trigger clicks and Lee and everyone else in the parlor freezes. The edge of your lash line is wet, fear rolling through you like fog on the bay. Your hand is steady, miraculously, but your voice isn’t.

“L-l-let–,” your voice cracks and you try again. You only have one gun drawn on Lee and you pray to whatever god is listening that Knapp doesn’t remember his. “Let her go.”

This small pistol is your last line of defense against those who would take everything from you. You couldn’t keep your sister safe, your husband didn’t want to be saved, but you’d die before you’d let anyone come within an inch of Ellie. You pawned off your wedding ring long before you ever considered selling this weight in your hand. You couldn’t physically win a fight but you’d be damned if you weren’t going to take someone out with you.

There’s more than one reason you never let Ellie look into your purse. You won’t make eye contact with her now.

Lee’s eyes harden into black flints in his head. “Yeah? You’re shaking like a leaf. You ain’t gonna do shit about it.”

He twists harder, forcing Ellie to her knees, his mouth smearing into a sickening sneer, Ellie’s cries loud – “get off me, you fucker!”

All you have to do is miss. Once.

Your arm shifts right and you fire. You meant to hit the floor, but instead the leg of a chair at a nearby table shatters, wood and smoke sparking into the air. Lee and Ellie jump, their struggle broken, but Ellie’s quicker, smarter. Hunched to avoid debris, they are nearly eye to eye and Ellie doesn’t hesitate; she jerks her head back and then launches her forehead forward – square into his flat nose.

The crunch is sickening and it turns your already empty stomach. Lee shrieks, releasing Ellie, his hands flying to his misshapen nose to staunch the river of blood pouring from his nostrils.

“You bitch!” he whines, voice wet and gummy as blood trickles down his throat, eyes watering. You hear a roar of anger as Knapp stands, no longer finding any of this funny.

“Get behind me, Ellie.” You snap, eyes on Knapp as he lumbers forward. She hesitates, looking like she’d like nothing more than to kick Lee up the balls, but obeys the closer Knapp comes. She slots behind you, eyes sharp on the squealing man on the floor.

“She broke my fucking nose, man,” he cries, face already purpling.

“Yeah, and don’t you forget it, you fucker!” She snarls over your shoulder. One hand holds your elbow, and the other brandishes her mother’s knife that had been at the bottom of her satchel seconds ago. Fuck.

Ellie Williams is not, and never has been, nor will be, one to deescalate a situation. Knapp responds in kind. His drunk fingers fumble with his holster, his face contorted with rage.

“Shootin’ at an officer of the law – you’re gonna hang for this, you thieving little c–,”

“Knapp.”

A fifth voice – low, deep, a mammalian bark that grinds the chaos of the room to a halt. The large man stalls, his engine snagged by the rough grain of that voice. On the floor, Lee lets out one quiet whimper as he cracks open a pulsating black eye.

In the glow of the firelight, you watch as beads of sweat swell on Knapp’s big forehead beneath his wide-brimmed hat. His wide eyes flash between you and the man who just walked in.

“M-Miller, the fuck you want?”

Your heart seizes in your chest. Miller.

Joel Miller.

You never thought your saving grace would come in the shape of a hulking, dark-eyed man.

A well-worn handkerchief around his neck, crusted over with dust, his broad shoulders stretch a denim work shirt, the unbuttoned collar loose and just as dirty. Worked-over hands, dry and brown as the earth, curl into fists at his side. Tight jaw, flared nose, eyes black, his presence expands in the cramped room, a leviathan cresting dark waves to command the roaring void.

“Back off, both of you.”

Knapp sneers, desperately tugging at some misguided sense of bravery, with sweat running hot and fast and smelly down the sides of his rubbery face. “Y-yeah, or what?”

“You fuckin’ know what.”

Knapp visibly swallows and lowers his pistol, hands trembling. Lee whines from the floor, his eyes open as wide as the swelling will allow, abject terror on his face as he stares up at Miller. Neither of them move.

A guard dog satisfied by the corralled sheep, Joel’s heavy gaze roves from the two men, across the room, to you.

His expression doesn’t change.

The weight shifts across the stiff planes of his shoulders, and he turns, leaving as quickly as he appeared. Beneath his thick boots, the wooden floor creaks and it rouses you. Your mouth is so dry you can feel the skin of your lips split apart.

“Mr. Miller, w-wait.”

He doesn’t.

With a single glance to the men still frozen in terror, you follow him through the now-dark and empty store. The cold desert air cracks hard against your overheated cheeks when you burst through the door, into the black night. The moonlight illuminates the threads of silver hair in his beard that the dark parlor hid. His fingers work slowly, unhurriedly, as he tightens the leather buckle beneath the wide girth of his off-white horse. It lifts its head as you stumble out onto the dusty road, its round eyes watching you with more interest than its rider. White ears twitch forward, a snort from the long snout, and Joel rubs the soft place between two giant nostrils without looking up.

“J-Joel – Mr. Miller, please, I need your help.”

“Already got it.” His shoulders flex and roll as he loads up another loose sack onto the rump of the horse, then tightens the securing belt. It snorts again and shifts on its hooves, its long tail flicking back and forth.

You shake your head, swallowing the hot rush of embarrassment. The wind licks at your ankles and you fight back a shiver, bringing a hand to your shoulder to warm the goosebumps. “No, sorry, I mean – I’m here to help you. I saw your advertisement and I was wondering if the position was still open.”

The buckle quiets. The dirt at his feet crunches as he faces you.

There are no trees in Dalhart, Texas. There are barely any clouds, no coverage. Overhead, the few buildings not yet folded up in the wake of the financial collapse throw shadows over his angular face, but you can still feel the trace of his gaze over you. A curious search, the investigation of scent.

Then he shakes his head.

“No.”

Your entire chest tightens. “Has the position been filled?”

“No.”

“Then why–,”

“I don’t need you.” He lifts up the third and final sack and you feel your hope being carried away with it. “Need a farm hand. You’re not the type.”

“N-n-no, I’ve worked on a farm. I-I’ve only planted seeds but I’m a quick learner and I–,”

“No.”

“Sir – please, I’ll do anything–,”

“Then go home.” He unties the reins from the wooden post and clicks to the horse. Its big eyes watch you as he turns them for the road. “There’s nothing here for you.”

You absolutely will not cry in front of this gruff stranger. Panic icing down your spine, you follow him on weak knees. In the wake leftover from the wheat boom, Dalhart is quiet as soon as the sun goes down. Empty of people, of light, of any sort of guiding hand, you try to appeal to the last human you’ve found at the end of the world.

“Mr. Miller, there must be something you need. I’m a hard worker, smart, you won’t have to train me at all. Please. I’ve been a housekeeper, a seamstress – a nurse. I —,”

The horse huffs when Joel pulls tight on the reins.

In the moonlight, all of his hair looks gray. Your heart plunges in your throat. You can feel your stomach trying to digest your spine.

“Done any work with kids?” He asks, after a moment.

His brisk question is not what you expected. You can barely hear him over the pounding in your heart.

“Y-yes. I’ve treated children before. A-and I was a teacher, briefly. I’m very good with children, actually.”

The scarred hand at his side tightens, flexes open and closed, the tips of his thumb and forefinger twitching over the other. Over his shoulder, you think his head tilts a centimeter towards you.

“You know what? Fuck this.”

Out of the shadows of the county store, Ellie tears down the steps, her face pink and her hair stuffed back up her ball cap. She loops her small hands around your forearm and tugs, her eyes like chips of bark, glaring hatefully at the man in the middle of the street. Faint dust churns beneath her faded sneakers.

“She’s fucking begging you and you don’t give a fuck, you old shithead!” She tugs again. In the flash of the moonlight, a glassy film has settled over her eyes. “C’mon, we don’t need him. We – don’t need – him.”

“Ellie, please!” You grab her by the shoulders, a soft hand in a swirling tempest, and she settles, her mouth twisted up in anger and embarrassment. She hates that you have to beg anyone. “Please.” Shielding her from him, you squeeze her shoulders. “I know, Ellie. I know. But I have to keep you safe.”

Ellie finally turns that hot glare at you, eyes damp. Petulant when terrified, your sister was the exact same way.

Fuck, Anna, it should have been me.

“She yours?”

Joel rests his weight on his left knee, fingers loose around the reins. He’s lowered the mask around his mouth. You snap your head up, your voice thankfully steady. “She’s my niece. She . . . I’m responsible for her.”

Below your palms, Ellie stiffens.

Fifteen feet from you, Joel nods, the muscle in his jaw tight. The horse huffs and he glares at it like it just yelled at him too.

“I’m not in the habit of pickin’ up strays,” he says as if that means a lot.

Hope springs in your chest and it snags the air in your lungs. “We’re not. I-I mean, we’ll work hard. Please, give us just one chance.”

“And you expect me to take on the both of you.” It isn’t a question, but his eyebrow arcs all the same. “That’s two mouths I gotta feed, ‘steada one.”

“She can have mine.” In the silence, you think you can hear the faint choir of crickets. You remember the tarantulas and centipedes that lived inside the walls of your husband’s prairie dugout, and your stomach twists. “Ellie can have whatever you give us.”

She makes a brief cry of protest, but you squeeze her shoulders. The sharp flair of his nostrils smooths and the corners of his eyes pinches, tilting his eyebrows up. He’s still glowering, but somehow, his expression has suddenly opened, just a crack.

And then he nods.

“Stay here a night. I’ll be back in the morning with the wagon.”

And that’s it. You have a job.

You’re so elated it takes a minute for his words to sink in. He turns back down the road, the horse's hooves clipping on the dry ground. You follow after him, hand outstretched.

“Oh, no, w-we can walk, it’s no trouble. Let me just get our things and–,”

“Too far to walk. And there’s things out in the dark more dangerous than those fuckin’ rangers.” He nods to the country store, eerily quiet. It sits, ugly, like a brown old frog. “There’s a hotel just up the road. It’s not much, but it’ll do for one night.”

“But, sir, we really can’t stay. I don’t – there’s no –,”

You stumble to a stop when those merciless dark eyes root you to the ground. The leather reins squeak when he tightens his fist around them. Again, you are under the impression of a dog sniffing out your scent for any deception, any treason. He takes you in, all of you in – your ratty gloves, your torn hemline, your tattered collar – and by some miracle, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, the groove above his nose softens.

Wordlessly, he reaches into his back pocket and takes out five dollars from a brown leather wallet. He offers it to you between two fingers.

Take it, his eyes command.

You do, with a shaking hand. You hate charity, you hate that you’re at his mercy –

But Ellie has a bed for the night. Inside, warm. Where, hours ago, she didn’t. You smother your pride and nod, gaze at the scar on his cheek that you only now notice at an arm’s length away.

“One night,” he says. “For you and the kid.”

You nod again because that’s all you really can do, his pity clutched in your fist and held against your heart.

Ellie scowls as he swings up onto the horse and readjusts his mask.

“What a guy,” she murmurs to you, her eyes still narrowed. Joel clicks his teeth, and the horse trots off into the dark, a lone man riding out into the featureless night.

Evidently still feeling slighted, Ellie sticks her tongue out at the denim back.

“Better keep that tongue in your mouth, kid,” he hollers before digging his heels into the horse’s flanks. “Liable to be chopped off like a copperhead.”

Ellie’s mouth snaps shut.

The money Joel gave you is more than enough to cover a room and another plate of food. You even spurge your own money on some small candy for Ellie, determined to give Joel back every cent left over and then some, once you’ve proven you can earn your keep.

For you and the kid.

You shake your head, lost in your own thoughts, the gnawing hunger in your belly satiated, as you pull back the covers to the twin bed. The metal frame squeaks as you climb in, your night dress thin and ragged as the rest of your clothes.

“C’mon, Ellie, time for bed.” When she doesn’t move, you stop rearranging the pillows and look at her. In her own white nightie (because she’d outgrown all her other pajamas), she sits in front of the roaring fire, her chin on her knees, and her arms wrapped around her shins.

She’s quiet - either a good sign, or a terrible one.

“Ellie, sweetie, we’ve gotta get some sleep. It’s gonna be a long day tomorrow.”

You watch as her narrow back expands and falls in one slow breath, her skin bright in the firelight.

She nods mutely and climbs into the space beside you. She rolls onto her side, away from you, her hands tucked up under her head, her knees curled up beneath her.

This is where Anna would know what to say. How to soothe this girl with so much awareness in a world that is raw to even those willfully ignorant. You can’t bullshit Ellie the way you can some kids. She knows too much. Seen too much.

You settle down next to her in the shadow of her shoulder. Your fingers hover, locked between the yawning gap of touching her and not touching her, when she finally speaks.

“Is this really going to work?” Her voice is quiet, soft, dust-covered and buried. “Is Joel really gonna . . . are we safe?”

You cannot bullshit Ellie Williams.

“I don’t know. I’d like to think so. I know you don’t like him, but I think we can trust him.”

She’s quiet again, only this time because there’s something she doesn’t want to say.

“Not like Uncle Robert – or Robert, if that’s even his real name. I’d never met the man in person, but I wanted – so badly – to believe . . .” You swallow, your own shame boiling your skin. “I think we’re safe with Joel Miller.”

The god’s honest truth.

She hears it in your voice.

Ellie tips back to look you in the eyes. She’s lost so much weight recently. “Yeah?”

You tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, the ghost of your thumb across her cheek. She allows the show of affection. “Yeah, El. I do.”

You want to say: you can trust me. I’ll always take care of you.

But you know it would only come out hollow.

Neither of you would think it was honest.

She pulls away from your grasp, her eyes almost golden in the firelight. She nods and stares at the burning wood.

“Okay.”

“So . . . is your car, like, broken or something?”

You elbow Ellie and she sits up from hanging over the edge of the wagon. She frowns at you – what? – and you both glance at Joel at the front of the wagon. If the question annoys him any more than he perpetually already is, he doesn’t show it.

“Don’t have one.” He says to the back of the horse. The wagon rocks and sways over the clods of dust and stone in the road. “Never did.”

“Uh, why?”

“Cars break down in the dust storms. Short out. They end up being more trouble than they’re worth.”

Again, that half-centimeter turn, his tone implying what his eyes can’t, faced away from you. Ellie narrows her eyes at the back of his head. She wrenches her mouth open, fire in her eyes, but she catches you glaring, and her mouth snaps shut. Pouting, she chucks a lone pebble off the back of the wagon.

The sky is strikingly blue, bright as a livewire, the air warm and crackling with the early summer heat. Away from Dalhart, away from the collection of dust on every surface, dripping through every crack, you find the clarity and distance of the southern plains to be . . . unexpected. So careless and abrasive one minute, but then, in moments like these, it became hard to believe that nature could ever be so cruel as to make the earth rise up and swallow it all whole.

You swing your legs off the wooden edge, the sunshine warm on your knees. It’s no use trying to hide how badly your socks need darning, so you lean back and stretch your legs as far as you can, your face tilted towards the sky, the still air peaceful. This morning, you’d put on your yellow plaid dress, torn cotton lace around the sleeves that stop at your elbows. You tucked your hair up and pinned your straw hat to your head. It was a reflex, to present your most beautiful self to a man, even one you barely knew. By the way Ellie had rolled her eyes, she felt no such compulsion.

Demure, your mother always told you, you’re not very pretty, you’re not very bright, the least you can be is demure.

The wagon shudders, clicks, over the empty road and you open your eyes. Ellie is turned away from you, eyes out to the fields on either side of you. You don’t understand what she’s looking at, until you realize that’s exactly it: there is nothing to look at. On the other side of those loopy barbed-wire fences through cock-eyed posts, there are miles and miles of nothing but churned-over dirt. A lazy wind spins over a patch of emptiness, tossing clods and sand into the air, an aimless sadness as tangible as the dust itself. Phone lines stand, corroded and chipped, along the side of the road like tangible manifestations of a deadly infection.

“There’s no crops here either.” Ellie says, voicing loudly what you only thought. You can’t see her face but she sounds as stunned as you are. “What happened?”

You watch over her shoulder, eyes level with the earth bleached of all material, all life. With the drought, your husband’s field shriveled up in months, the cracked ground peeling away from the sodhouse in some places. You still have nightmares about waking up with grit between your teeth, choking and coughing up bloody chunks of mud.

This is desolation on an epidemic scale.

“Ask different people ‘n they’ll tell you different things.” Joel says in his slow drawl, the crackle of the earth soft beneath the wooden wheels. “No one really knows. But nothing like this happened when the buffalo grass was here, ‘steada wheat.”

“Wait, you were here before Dalhart?” Ellie twists on the wagon, leaning over the lip where Joel sits and drives the horse.

“My family was. Here before anything. My grandpa befriended the Comanche Indians and –,”

“You got to hang out with Indians?” Ellie nearly hurls herself over the edge of the wagon to try and look him in the eye. “What are they like – did they teach you how to shoot a bow and arrow – can they really ride horses like that –,”

“Ellie!” You want to grab her by her collar and yank her back into the wagon. “Not so many questions.”

The noise Joel makes is somewhere between a grunt and the word no.

“It’s fine –, “ he looks down at Ellie, still curled around the back of the seat, her eyes wide with a giant smile on her face. His ever present scowl doesn’t seem any deeper, nor does it deter her. Joel turns away again and in the sunlight, his hair is gooey, caramel brown. You stare at the dirt road while listening, the back of your neck hot. “They’re good people. Didn’t deserve what happened to them – to any of ‘em. But they taught my grandpa and grandma how to take just what they need, nothing more. But then everybody needed grain, offered money for cheap, easy labor. They poured in here, into the prairie, and in years, it became this. Folks blame the drought, but it’s more’n that.”

Ellie’s inordinately quiet. She knows exactly what your husband did to you, to your family, and now, maybe to the entire land.

“‘Next year’ people, they claim,” Joel continues, his voice deepening with anger, “‘next year’, things’ll be better. ‘Next year’ the rains’ll come. ‘Next year’ the wheat’ll return.” He shakes his head, boots creaking against the toeboard. “Anyone who thinks that is lyin’ to themselves. Anyone’s who’s been here, seen what’s here, for us it’s been –,”

“The end of the world.”

The silence that follows your words stretches long, an anchor dropped off the end of the wagon and rattling around the wheels. You swing your legs, fingers curling around a tear in your hemline. It wasn’t the first time you’d heard those words to describe the state of things. That’s what your husband called it and you believed him.

Evidently, Joel agrees. His wide shoulders taught, the denim blue faded beneath the boundless sky, he nods.

“Griiim,” Ellie mutters as she curls up and drops her chin on her knees.

You’ve been watching a single cloud chase the sun from the floor of the wagon when Ellie, silent for all of about fifteen minutes, lifts her head from her hands draped over the edge. Her eyes go wide, her ears pink from the sun, and says:

“Whoa.”

The horse huffs as you sit up, a soft wind snagging the loose hairs on the back of your neck, and your mouth drops.

Grass.

Fields of it.

The air is fresh, warm, and filled with the scent of living, breathing earth. Tipped with lush purple seeds shaped like paintbrushes, a sea of stalks bend and ripple in the cooling breeze, undulating like waves on solid ground. The wind is soft here, teasing, rolling through the tall grass, carrying the scent of growth and green in the air. You’re suddenly aware of how dry your mouth is, cracked and padded with dust.

“We left it be.” Joel offers simply, voice too gruff to surely be filled with pride. “It’s endured and survived, and so have we.”

Further back, you can see where the line of his property ends – a harsh division of paradise and purgatory – and marked to the north by a dip in the ground and even over the crunch of the wheels over the ground, you hear it: water.

A river. An oasis in a wasteland.

Ahead of the white tufts of hair on the horse, the road curves, disappearing into the sea of grass, but letting your graze drift up, you see an a-frame home, white like a lighthouse at the edge of a storm. The instant the home comes into view, Joel clicks his tongue, urging the horse faster – eager.

He leads the horse up through the road, through the grass, and on the other side, by the river, two cows chew up the green, oblivious. Beyond them, tucked behind the house is a barn. Low to the ground but wide, hunched like a fighter with a heavy center of gravity, it looks ready to endure and survive. As this entire secret world had.

Joel tugs the horse to a stop, the wagon rattles as it slows, by the wide porch of the a-frame. It sits also low to the ground, wider with a dark roof, held together with something black and smeared. You’re so distracted by the unique qualities of this house in the middle of paradise that you miss it when the door creaks open until you’re staring down the barrel of a shotgun.

“Who are you?” The voice behind the gun is deep, even if the barrels shake slightly. In the dark of the doorframe, you can’t quite see their face, only their short stature.

You see Ellie’s hand twitch towards her knife, which she now carries in her sock since the night of the county store.

However, Joel is less concerned. In fact, the boulders of his shoulders loosen, ease to simple muscle and blood. He makes a noise that on anyone else, it might be considered a laugh, a chuckle, but he isn’t even capable of smiling –

He slings down from the seat and pats the horse.

“Easy there, Annie Oakley, it’s just me.”

The shadow in the doorway stiffens.

“Dad?”

The shotgun lowered, the shadow staggers into the light. Brown eyes, just like his, scrunched against the blinding sunlight, a girl with the most beautiful head of curls blinks at Joel, her thin hand held up to shield her face.

“Hey there, baby girl.”

In a single leap, she jumps down from the porch but all too quickly, the smile slips from Joel’s face.

“Hang on, not too fast–,”

She stumbles towards him as best as the metal braces around her knees, down to her ankles, will allow, defiant and smiling, despite the beads of sweat that have swelled over her forehead. Joel surges forward, faster than you thought possible, and reaches for her, nearly on one knee.

“Slow down, please, Sarah.”

“Dad, I’m fine,” she huffs before tossing her arms around his neck. “I’m fine. Just – missed you, is all.”

You can’t see his face, but he straightens up still holding her. With one hand he flattens those curls to her cheek, and kisses the other.

“Enough to forget all the things I taught you about gun safety? You just tossed that thing aside,” he scolds fondly. She rolls her eyes as he sets her down.

“Okay, but if you didn’t know it was me, you would’a been totally scared, right?”

She watches as he chuckles, a deep, warm sound, but her own smile flatlines when she spies Ellie climbing down from the wagon. You ease off the edge, your lower half sore from the ride.

The girl, Sarah, narrows her eyes.

“Who are you?” She positions her body slightly in front of Joel’s. “And why are you dressed like a boy?”

Joel’s soft scolding – “Sarah” – is lost beneath Ellie’s scoff. She adjusts her satchel.

“Why are you dressed like Raggedy Ann?”

Her father’s massive hands clench down on her shoulders, Sarah’s scowl evident that she’s about half a second away from launching herself at Ellie, leg braces be damned.

“Now, let’s slow down here.” Joel’s deep baritone is light, but just as firm as his grip. If you knew him better, you’d think he is about to laugh, the lines around his eyes thick, while his mouth stays flat. “We got off on the wrong foot. Sarah, this is Ellie and her aunt. They’re going to be staying with us for a while to help out with your schooling.”

Those curls go flying, her frown now pinched in worry. Another girl caught between a child and adult – for the sake of their single parent, you notice, your chest tight.

“I thought you needed a farm hand. You were going to teach me.”

“You know you already read better than I do.”

“Dad–,”

“Miss here is also a nurse.”

“Oh. Oh.” She glances down at the metal braces as if she’d forgotten they were there. The skin on her knees is chaffed, rubbed pink. “She can . . . help me?”

Twin pairs of brown eyes settle on you, one hesitantly curious, the other aggressively determined.

You can, right?

Ellie’s staring at the braces, her gaze distant, heavy. She’d seen this before, but everything back then moved too fast. Back then, there was no time for braces.

Braces only help a small percentage of polio patients. The lucky ones.

You nod, your heart hammering under your chest bone. “Yes – yes, sir. I think with Ms. Kenny’s therapy, we might be able to alleviate some pain.”

Those eyes, exactly like and so unlike her father’s, widen.

“Really?”

You introduce yourself with your first name, pressing the crease in your glove between your nail and your thumb with your other hand.

“I’d like to try, Sarah.”

You suddenly understand that Sarah is Joel Miller’s most guarded secret, out here in paradise, paradise as the most beautiful prison in the world. He continues to stare at you from under thick eyebrows after Sarah moves away from him. Ellie, caught off-guard by her forward movement, takes a significant step back.

“I, um, got some marbles out back,” Sarah starts, thumbing over her shoulder, and every other word sounding like an apology. “If you wanna play.”

Ellie jerks forward, her eyes round with excitement, but stops. She looks at you.

“Can I?”

Soft when eager, just like her mother. So unlike you. You nod.

“Stay close, okay?”

You and Joel watch as Ellie and Sarah toddle around to the back of the house, Ellie quietly narrating every thought she has as she keeps pace with Sarah.

Those look actually really cool, you know?

Yeah?

Totally. Have you read Amazing Stories? You look like you could be part of the Space Family Robinson.

Who are they?

Oh, you’ve never read those!? Okay, so they’re a family who live in space and they go on these awesome adventures together to different planets and . . .

The farther they go, the faster Joel turns back to stone. His gaze lingers just a hint longer before those dark eyes pin you to the ground.

“You said you can clean? Cook?”

You nod quickly. “Yes, sir.” Guard dog Joel. Stocky pitbull, teeth long and wet Joel.

He tilts his chin towards the house.

“Kitchen’s in the back. I gotta clean up the wagon and the horse, then gonna tend the field. I’ll be back in a few hours, but Sarah knows where to find me if y’need somethin'.”

You nod again, but he misses it, turning away to unbuckle the horse. You slide your trunk and Ellie’s satchel off the end of the wagon and head into the shadow of the house.

The white clapdoor snaps shut behind you, followed by the softer snik of the screen clicking into its frame. Slipping the bobby pins out of your hair to release your hat, you take in the Miller home.

The air is cool. Dust motes float in the sunlight streaming in from the second floor over a staircase with wooden wainscoting leading away from the open front room. With a brief glance up, you can see the faded white walls of the upper hallway, some not-yet-seen window drawing in bolts of morning light that pierce the air in bullet holes. It’s quiet and it smells warm, like lace kept in the back of a drawer near a wall that faces the heat outside.

A blue two-seater couch faces a squat fireplace, with a Queen Anne table sandwiched between the two. Behind you, a large grandfather clock ticks and waits, a server waiting in the shadows with a watchful eye to report back to its master on the going-ons of the house. With only a cedar hutch, a few daguerreotypes, a smattering of books, the room is sparsely decorated, but kept clean and organized. You could see Sarah, a focused look in her eyes, sitting on the steps of the stairs and making Joel move and rearrange furniture over and over again until the room felt right.

Through a white arched doorway, you find yourself in the kitchen. The light sparks more brightly here, the sky a stark blue through the four square window over the kitchen table and above the sink, reflective of the sun. You realize then the house runs north to south at an angle, where there are limited windows in the walls on the east and west sides, thereby limiting direct sun exposure and, more importantly, heat. Both the kitchen and the front rooms had been built out of the line of the sun, making cooking and cleaning and living bearable without a painful glare.

A thoughtful and patient consideration.

Someone had attempted to add some levity with brown and blue plaid wallpaper around the cove of the dinner table, all the way to the other side of the room around the kitchen counters and stove. But unfortunately for everyone else, the wallpaper is hideous, only tampered by the off-white counters and cupboards.

The cupboards have glass doors, blurring ceramic cups and plates on the tops of the shelves.

It reminds you of the small apartment Anna and you lived in back in Boston, when it was just the two of you. It wasn’t much, but it felt sturdy, secure. Safe.

A door to the right of the stove has a latch, and you lift it and poke your head inside. A chilly darkness greets you, along with the scent of wet, deep earth. A basement? No. Not this close to the kitchen. Curiosity pulling you forward, you descend the sturdy wooden stairs, into the sunken darkness. You count ten until a draft licks your ankles. You keep going, one squeak of wood after another until - you touch soil. The heady scents of pine bark and peat moss soothe the air from where your feet press into the ground, fertility thick like mushrooms in the gut of a lichen-drenched tree. But it’s dark, too dark to make out much, barely your own hand in front of your face. With your fingers outstretched, as if you’ll bump into a gas lamp conveniently on the ground, you shuffle forward and almost immediately a cold chain tickles your face. You grab out of instinct and pull.

Nearly blinded by the light that erupts from an exposed bulb directly in front of your left eye, you stagger back, wincing, your footsteps muffled by the earthen floor. You blink through the tears as the secret at the end of the stairs finally reveals itself.

A pantry. A cellar.

At least twenty feet deep and ten feet high, with rows and rows, stacks and stacks, wood shelves cover nearly the entire length of the underground room. In between the rows, large barrels sit, quiet and sturdy, with bottles of vinegar and olive oil sitting on their rims.

You realize two things within seconds of each other.

This house has electricity. It stands above the ground, proud, independent, full of heat and light. So unlike your husband’s dark hole in the ground.

and

there is so much food.

Pickling jars. Seed pouches. Culled wheat. Cans of fruit and vegetables and eggs. Olives with squash and pumpkins. Crates of potatoes and half bottles of wine and syrup. Onions and carrots and spices and garlic.

A feast. Meals for days and days and days. The bounties of earth stored, safe beneath the ground, like a secret.

It’s more food than you’ve seen in years.

A hunger like you can’t remember having roars in your stomach out of nowhere and everything pitches to the right. The edges of your vision blurs, your shoulder knocking into stone wall, and breathing becomes a nearly impossible task. You turn, nearly stumbling up the dozen steps that have turned into a thousand.

The tacky memories that stick to the crevices of your dreams yawn awake, bringing with them dry mud in your mouth and thick salt to your eyes. Mud, dirt, dust – everywhere. In that stinking hut in the ground, the dust replaced your molecules, your atoms, until you too might blow away, until you are cracked and empty and dry. The static from the dust storm memories shoots down both of your arms and you sway on your feet. Your heart suddenly pounding so achingly fast, you have to drop your forehead against the flat surface of the closed door to keep the room from spinning.

You had forgotten what safety looked like.

You had forgotten what living could be.

You know the ringing sound of that gunshot is just in your head, it’s not real, but you shudder all the same, your hands curling into claws under your chin, your nails tearing up the white paint.

You’re here, not there. You are safe. Ellie is safe. That house and him have been entombed together under piles of dirt, with the bugs and the rot and the stench from the weak stove. Rivers of sweat rolling down the back of your neck, you beg yourself to stop shaking. You feel like cheap terracotta pottery – made from dirt, left too long to bake in the sun and made brittle; one good tap and you’ll shatter.

You breathe in and taste wet salt. Breathe out and cry – cry from the fear and the dread and the relief and the hope. God, that hope tastes worse than all the dirt in the Panhandle of Texas.

You cry and cry and cry until you don’t feel so brittle anymore.

Sunlight has struck copper, heavy, tangy in the mouth, when the back door opens and the house is instantly filled with the sound of girls’ rabid conversation. You step back from the stove, cheeks warm and arm sore from continuously stirring the rice and vegetable soup. It’s not as thick as your mother once made, but without milk, it would be nearly impossible to improve. You smile at the girls as they tumble in, more dust mite than human, whispering about some secret.

“Having fun?” You ask with a grin on your face as Ellie helps Sarah take off her shoes, already attentive to what a girl with her health concerns might need.

There’s an overlap of chatter as Ellie and Sarah both answer you and then, answer each other.

“Well, good,” you say, turning back to the stove, making sure the bottom of the soup doesn’t burn, “but whatever you got up to, it’s all over your faces so please wash up before dinner.”

“It smells real good, miss,” Sarah says as she hobbles over to the sink and starts rinsing off her arms and cheeks, while Ellie takes off her own shoes. “What is it?”

“Something my mom used to make when the cupboards were bare.”

Sarah stills, the water rushing over her soft skin. Those inquisitive eyes are just as captivating, just as forceful as her father’s, but for entirely different reasons. She tugs the words out of you by the sheer, needling strength of her gaze.

“I mean – I found the cellar, the house is incredibly well stocked, but I didn’t see any preserved meat or dairy and I didn’t – I didn’t think your dad would want me poking around out back.”

Immediately Sarah softens and rolls her eyes. “Dad’s all bark and no bite,” she huffs. “We’ve got stored beef and cheese in an ice chest downstairs. I’ll show you around tomorrow.”

You smile and those brown eyes go warm in the coppery light. “Thanks, Sarah.”

“Bunch up, I gotta wash my hands too.” Ellie none-to-gently bumps Sarah with her shoulder to get to the sink but before you can scold her, Sarah swings back, using her precarious momentum, and pushes Ellie back. They both giggle. Something that’s been cramped far too long in your chest loosens.

“So, Sarah, tell me where you are with your schooling. Do you have books, diagrams?”

She thinks for a minute as she opens a drawer that leaves her back to you and takes out two, then four thin cloth placemats. She hobbles back to the table to carefully spread them out.

“I was up to seventh grade before the school shut down. That was about two years ago, so Dad’s been trying to make sure I don’t forget anything. He got me a Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare a while ago and made me read it out loud to him. He has me work on my letters every day – including cursive.” She adds, with a bright spot of joy cranking her mouth open. You imagine someone like Sarah would have beautiful penmanship. “He shows me around the yard, asking me to identify plants and animals, especially anything that might be poisonous. I don’t think he really understands it but he explains what happens when you add water to a seed and keep it in damp earth. Oh, and he has me help balance the books for the farm – what we made, what we sold, how much we have left, stuff like that.”

You smile at her over your shoulder as Ellie hands her bowls. “Accounting.”

“Huh?”

Ellie rolls her eyes. “It’s so boring, don’t worry about it,” she whispers conspiratorially.

“What your dad is teaching you is called accounting,” you say a bit firmly, eyes tracking your niece as she shows no shame. “It’s a very special skill to have, especially if you work on a farm or in a business. Do you like it?”

She nods rapidly, those cork-screw curls bouncing around her thin face. “Yeah! I do! I’m much faster than Dad when it comes to figuring out the sums and dollar value.”

In the front hall, the clap door creaks open then slams shut, heavy footfalls proceeding the man that makes them.

“Does that happen a lot?” you ask softly as Sarah sidles up next to you to peer into the pot.

“Where I know more than my dad?” Sarah smirks up at you, all devious youth. “More often than you think.”

A mini sun bursts from the ceiling as Joel flicks on the light switch and is almost immediately tackled by Sarah. The copper sun on the horizon finally, in the distracted moment, slips down and drags the night behind it. It’s purple twilight outside when Joel lifts his head from the embrace around Sarah’s shoulders to stare at the two strangers in his kitchen.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” you say brightly and you can almost picture your mother in the same exact position in front of the stove, stirring soup until her cheeks were pink, her hand resting low on her back, her tummy round and full in her second attempt to keep her husband’s rage diverted from her. It’s a boy, she promised.

The memory makes you so violently ill out of nowhere, you lose your appetite. But you persevere; you carry on and load up the bowls Sarah stacked for you. Ellie saves you from having to dislodge the prickly knot in your throat when she snags a bowl and eagerly yells, “get it while it’s hot!”

The arrangements from the stove to the table are a bit of a blur, the slick anxious weight from earlier today curling around your lungs again as you remember shadows in chairs like these, but so different from the flesh-and-blood bodies that occupy them now.

You’re dazed, a little light-headed, but not so much to miss the glance between Joel and Ellie. A junkyard puppy skirting the territory of an older watchdog, a bone in each of their mouths and dragged to opposite corners of the battlefield. Satisfied with the lines of demarcated territory that had been drawn, they call a temporary truce by eating in complete silence, until Sarah groans.

“Oh my god, this is better than it smells!” she hums, her mouth full of potatoes.

“Just wait till she adds chicken,” Ellie grumbles, mouth cupped open to keep from spilling. You watch her, a faint smile on your face, and the slippery feeling fades. When cleaning up, she missed a spot on her left nostril and you fight the urge to clean it with your thumb.

“There’s more.”

Your gaze snaps to Joel hunched over his bowl. The spoon that Ellie and Sarah have to both clutch in their fists to eat barely swings between his massive fingers.

Joel’s dark eyes trace down your nose, your chin, your neck, to where your hands lay flat on the table in front of you. Your own bowl and spoon sit on the counter behind you. You worry you might have upset him, with the way he’s frowning.

“There’s more,” he repeats, same tone.

“I'm sorry?”

He puts his spoon down and clears his throat, then nods to the pot on the stove. Ellie watches him out of the corner of her eye.

“I saw how much you made. If you’re hungry, you should eat.”

As though speaking a language only you could hear, he looks at Ellie the same time you do.

She frowns. “What? Is there something on my face?”

Sarah begins to giggle, nodding, when Joel starts again.

“You should eat. There’s enough.”

It’s like his eyes can see through your blue veins and clammy skin, to your yellow bones and clawing stomach. You choke on the mudball that’s been hovering in your throat for months and nod.

“Alright.”

You don’t know if you’re actually hungry – you can’t really remember the taste of warm food – or if you’re doing it just to appease him, but something about the heat of the bowl and solid spoon in your hand, it rouses you from this sinking you find yourself in. Your bones feel like jelly.

“How’re the fields, Dad?” Sarah asks with her big eyes, seemingly unaware of the layered exchange between you and her father, or kind enough not to address it.

He responds to her, his voice deep in the cavern of his chest. It’s an easy way he speaks to her, heavy with the seriousness she’s earned to be talked to like an adult, but gentle enough that for all his low grumbling, it comes out as a thick murmur. You find yourself listening to their conversation, their interactions, as soothing as music turned low from a well-tuned radio. Ellie is even roped in when Sarah tells Joel all about the Space Family Robinson and Ellie’s knife. “It’s really cool, Dad,” she says preemptively. “She knows how to use it and she’s really safe.”

“Well, if it’s really cool . . .” he fills his mouth with potatoes, tamping down the ghost of a grin on his lips around the spoon.

Ellie shuffles in her seat, her own hesitant smile glittering in her eyes, and with only minor prompting, she holds no prisoners when gleefully telling Sarah that she’s got the story of finding a mess of wriggling worms out by the back of the barn all wrong.

“Just keep ‘em outta my side of the bed, alright?” You grin at her, spooning another dribble of soup into your mouth. You’ve realized too much, too fast can just as easily twist your stomach so you focus on cradling a digestible amount of food – broth, potato, carrots – in the well of your spoon.

But the landscape beyond the silver lip has stilled. Both girls are happily slurping up the last bits of their meals, throwing quips back and forth, but Joel’s shoulders have locked up again, the bones of his wrists flat, a static alertness that you’re sure would travel all the way down to his ankles if he was standing up right. You aren’t sure if Sarah has picked up on the subtle change in his breathing – from the deep well of his lungs to shortened and shallow – but somehow you have.

You’re staring at him far too long.

Those thick eyebrows pitch down again. Beneath the loose button that pins your dress closed over your chest, you feel a swell of heat and you wish you were like Ellie, capable of making an easy joke – what, is there something on my face? The heat bubbles almost uncomfortably under his weighted gaze.

“I hate bugs,” you blurt out, desperate to give him what he wants, if only you knew. The girls glance at your sudden outburst. “I don’t like worms especially. I don’t mind straw beds, as long as they’re clean – I mean, I–I hope they are, the straw beds, not the worms.”

Another eternal second of being pinned down by Joel’s frown, this one decidedly less hostile, before understanding breaks open the harsh lines of his mouth and around his eyes. His eyes go wide for less than breath, then he drops his gaze to the bowl. His shoulders shift, muscle redistributing weight as he settles his thick forearm closer to the edge of the table.

Oh, that relief of muscle says.

“You’re not sleeping in the barn.” Joel says, head tucked down. At that, Ellie slows her ravenous eating and frowns at him.

“Then where are we sleeping?”

Joel lifts his head, a new, special emotion just for her tugging on his mouth: exasperation. “My room. You two in there and I’m takin’ the couch.”

Shame and embarrassment drip down over your skull, between your ears, like a cold, runny egg.

“No, we couldn’t possibly–,”

He shakes his head, eyes still on the split potato chunk at the bottom of the bowl. His hand flexes briefly and you think of it around the bridle of the horse.

“It’s not up for discussion.”

Beside him, Sarah frowns at him and you’d wonder how many times in her life he’s ever said that to her – if you could think properly over the roaring of blood in your ears.

“Joel,” you say, something syrupy under your tongue molding the words Mr. Miller into a tone you’d use for an old friend. “I can’t ask you to–,”

Hand flexes. The seat of the chair squeaks.

“You’re not askin’, I’m tellin’.” You’re still vastly underprepared for when those eyes - those deep, dark eyes - suddenly snap on you, as if your very presence commands his entire attention. You notice the dirt underneath his nails and around the knot of his wrist on the table. He’s filthy.

Quietly, with the surety of a dog slipping its snout between its paws, he cuts the last chunk of potato in half with the curve of his spoon. “The new mattresses’ll be here next week. We’ll make do ‘till then.”

The slurp of soup between his lips seems to signal the end of the conversation, but you can’t quite mash together your kaleidoscope-spinning impressions of the man across the table from you.

“Thank you . . . Joel.”

He nods, back teeth breaking apart the soft mush of the potato. He swallows and glances back up at you.

“It’s good,” he says, briefly holding his spoon aloft. “You did good.”

His words burst the choking bubble in your chest and warmth drips down your spine, splashing in the cradle of your hips. Hunger rises, but it’s a different kind of hunger. A growl of neglect. One you sometimes wondered if it was even possible for you to ever even feel.

Even while you were married to your husband.

You put your spoon down to keep your hand from shaking. The soup won’t feed this new churning hunger and, frankly, you don’t know what will.

You did good, he praised, parsed out like torn bread tossed across a black lake.

It makes you warm in places food never could.

The immediate next morning, you meet the sun early, eagerly. Eager to wake and rise and become so useful, you are intricately tied to this house; if you are removed, a vital piece of the land, the prairie is torn up along with you. Ellie sleeps softly next to you, curled up in the same position she was in the hotel bed, tucked in so tightly as if to take up the least amount of space possible. She sleeps, unbothered, blissful, and again you fight the urge to brush the hair that covers her sleeping eyes. You settle for tugging the beautiful quilt, with its stunning blue and red and green patches, up to her shoulders.

As you tie your dress up, your suitcase partially open and on the ground, movement from outside in the dawning pink catches your eye. A brisk shadow, those thick shoulders proceeding a taught waist are unmistakable as they move towards the barn. You stand, transfixed for a moment as broad hands slide open the barn doors, you hear a faint creak, and he disappears inside. The capability of those hands; the surety, where every action is deliberate and intentional – it makes something arc up your throat. A warm piercing that bursts through bone and muscle alike. Trembling fingers tug at the wilting lace around the cuffs of your dress, imagination stretching out into the dark morning, inspired by curious and impossible ideas of those hands.

Something – most likely Sarah next door – squeaks the floorboard and those tendrils of thought snap back as if someone had slammed a lid shut. You glance at the clock and make a mental note to wake up earlier tomorrow, to beat him to the kitchen.

You are also desperately eager to get out of the room where you can practically smell Joel on the walls. It’s simple, just like the rest of the house, but amongst the hand-drawn sketches of himself and birds (likely gifts from Sarah), the half-spent candles and well-read books, you find him in everything. You wonder, briefly, if the indentations made on the cotton mattress are from him or you – the scent of his hair in the pillow from sweat or soap.

The encroaching feeling that you don’t belong here in this house nearly swallows you whole as you dress in a room you definitely don’t belong in.

Joel remains a distant figure, a familiar shadow across the lightning horizon, long after you finish the eggs and toast. You consider perusing the pantry for blueberries or something similar, when Sarah comes down. Fresh-faced, dressed with the care most people reserve for church, she stumbles in, her braces clacking as she finds a seat at the table.

You notice a brief flash of pain across her face when you bring over a plate of food. She unconsciously rubs a circle with her thumb on her left knee as she picks up her fork.

“Pain today?” You ask, eyes on her knee, even though it’s obvious.

She nods, strained. “Just a little bit. But it’s nothing. I’m sure it’ll go away when it warms up outside.”

You doubt that is remotely true, but you let her hold the comforting lie. She doesn’t seem like the type to swallow pity with ease, and neither was Anna. You put on that detached but focused "nurse's" mask, your lips a straight line and brow furrowed, your voice slipping on something more commanding too.

“Let me see.”

Sarah blinks at you briefly, evidently surprised by your shift in demeanor but eventually, she obeys. She drops her fork and slides the chair back, the chair legs squeaking against the rough wooden floor.

You crouch in front of her, gathering up her ankle first and testing its mobility.

“When were you diagnosed?” you ask, as soft as you are firm.

“Never, technically.” She watches you and occasionally winces. You wonder how long she’s grown stiff like this. “The doc had left over braces that Dad bought before the guy skipped town.”

“So then how did you know it was polio?”

By her sudden stillness, you know this is the first time that word has been uttered under this roof in a long time. You lower her ankle, rising gaze meeting hers. Her mouth is pulled tight. You can practically read the familiar headlines as they scroll across her mind.

New Polio Cases by the Thousands

Polio Claims Life of Infant

Polio Outbreak: Thirteen Dead

“Not every case is serious,” you say, gently, using the word serious in place of fatal. You don’t want to scare her unnecessarily. But by her wide eyes, you know the word sits in her chest all the same.

“I know. And I know it can be made worse by moving too much. That’s why Dad’s always on me about resting and going slow.”

You return to your examination. Her skin is rubbed raw in some places by the braces. You remind yourself to ask Joel for some old sheets to make better padding.

“That’s not always true,” you say, shifting to her other leg. “Even though she was sore after, Anna often said she felt the stiffness go away after walking around the neighborhood block.”

Curious, Sarah tilts her head, those lovely curls swaying like leaves in a breeze. “Who’s Anna?”

Your skin around your eyes tightens – how could you be so careless with such a secret – when you hear feet thundering down the stairs and a second later, Ellie swings around the lip of the doorway.

“Is that toast?” She asks, eyes wide and hopeful. “If you got bacon, I’m gonna start kissing faces.”

You and Sarah exchange a small grin before you stand up right and Sarah returns to her own meal.

“No bacon today, but who knows what else is stored in the pantry?”

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Ellie exclaims as she slides into a chair, her own plate pilled far too for a girl her size. “Treasure hunt.”

You see the tips of Sarah’s ears go briefly pink at Ellie’s language but the muffled smile on her face hints at awe, impressed – so you let that one slide. A stream of light through the half-shut curtain tugs your thoughts outside, to the man literally toiling in the fields.

“Does your dad want me to bring him some food?” You ask, standing from the chair and glancing out the window. You can’t see him any more and for some reason that makes your chest go tight.

Sarah shook her bouncy curls. “No. He’ll come in and get it when he’s hungry.”

You didn’t like the idea that you weren’t going to be directly feeding the man who employed you literally to cook for him and his daughter.

“Does he like coffee?”

Sarah arches an eyebrow at you. “Yeah, he loves it. But I’ve tried for years to make it the way he likes and he always drinks it, but I think a little piece of him dies inside every time he does.”

“Then you must be a great cook too,” Ellie smirks up at her. In response, Sarah smiles impishly around a mouthful of eggs.

You hold that little bit of information about Joel - something you knew that he didn’t know you knew - close, like a dollar bill in your pocket. You drum your fingers, searching for memories of how Anna used to shoe-string coffee when you couldn’t afford a maker in Boston.

“Did you eat?”

Ellie’s voice tears your gaze from the window. Her plate is only halfway empty. Her fingers uneasily move the fork around.

“Yeah,” you answer truthfully. In fact, you are rather ashamed by how much you took, sitting at the table in the purple dark, before you remembered that you had to feed three other people. “I’m good, Ellie. Thanks.”

She nods, returning to her plate and shoveling two bites into her mouth without slowing down.

“What’s first today?” Sarah asks, her eyes bright. “I can show you my sums. We have a chalkboard in the barn.”

You smile at her eagerness to show off while Ellie dejectedly pokes at her remaining floppy eggs. She had never been one for school, another thing you found hard to relate to about her. Fortunately for her, Anna nor you ever had the time to be as diligent about her education as Joel had been for Sarah. And unfortunately for her, you intend to fix that as quickly as possible.

“I’d love to see them, Sarah, but would you mind showing me around the cellar first? Maybe there is bacon hiding down there somewhere.”

You don’t miss the small smile that creeps across Ellie’s face.

“Junk or keep?”

Sarah looks up from the tip of her stick dragging nonsense through the barn’s dirt floor, her chin flat in her palm, elbow on her knee. She frowns at Ellie holding up . . . something that might have been a tractor part at one time.

“I don’t even know what that is, so – junk?”

Ellie shrugs, tosses the piece back and forth in her hands, and then chucks it like a ball to the opposite end of the barn. It collides loudly with the wall and Flora, the white and black cow, lifts her head at the noise from her stable and lets out a low groan.

The entire barn smells of hay and animal but in a way that is warm, almost comforting. The two cows lazily munch from their troughs in their stalls, occasionally eyeing you as you carry items back and forth. It’s fortifying in a way only working outside and with your hands can offer.

You turn to her disapprovingly but she’s already back, elbow-deep, in the pile you had designated hers to sort. Sarah, to whom you suggested rest this morning, goes back to boredly drawing circles in the dirt. Even though she clearly hates the idea of being idle, you are surprised she takes your medical advice without any fight.

If you had successfully completed your duties as cook, now it was time to take on your other task as teacher. Sarah had a few textbooks, but mostly outdated and only one copy. You know trying to find a full library in times like these is laughably impossible, but there is nothing wrong with hoping for a blackboard. You’d made one before when the school district you tempted at didn’t approve new funding, and you feel confident you could do it again. Trouble is, you have nowhere to put it, much less set up a laughably impossible classroom for two students.

Until Sarah casually mentioned the unfortunate pile of junk in the back of her father’s barn, “taking up at least half the space in there.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Yuck – is your dad a hoarder?” Ellie asks with slight disgust as she pulls up a stack of newspapers held together by twine. “Why does he even have this stuff?”

Sarah grins, delighted by Ellie’s prickly teasing. “This place actually used to be pretty organized. This was his space for a long time – where he went to think, or figured out what crops we needed for the next year.”

Her smile crumbles. “But, uh, then I got sick and now he doesn’t come out here unless it's for work.”

Ellie pinches the soft of her cheek with her teeth, nodding, her eyes downcast.

“So . . . junk?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

The stack of newspapers comes up to her knees and Ellie struggles, off-balanced, to carry it across the hay-covered floor.

You reach for it and she gives it to you gratefully. You take it with a smile; you never know what she’s going to appreciate or just see it regretfully as charity or pity.

“I think your dad is losing it,” Ellie says as she wipes sweat from her brow, shaking her head far too seriously. “Losin’ it, big time.”

Sarah giggles.

You drop the stack of papers in the corner, but when you let go, the string snaps and the papers spill everywhere. With a sigh, you kneel down and gather them back together, but not before a few headlines catch your eye.

Your heart twists.

Paralysis Takes Three Children

Join the Mothers’ March on Polio

QUARANTINE: POLIOMYELITIS

Why would Joel keep these? Everyone knew how devastating polio could be to children, even infants. Why would he –

Roughly dispersed throughout the article, sentences and phrases were underlined in blue pen. Sentences containing, “iron lung”, “bedrest”, “antibiotic” –

No cure.

Warmth spread out across your chest. Joel was looking for a way to treat his daughter, the only way he could in a town without a doctor: outside information. Something about this makes the space beneath your chest bone hurt so badly, you get a little nauseous.

Now you consider conserving these papers as if they are important historical documents. Behind you, where Ellie and Sarah are lobbying jokes back and forth, you see more stacks of neatly contained newspapers. He looked everywhere and found nothing.

You reshuffle the stack that fell, when you spot something else that hardens the warm feeling in your chest and makes it brittle.

Mob Over Breadline Kills FIVE

Experts Say There is No Way Out of This Depression

Mother of Drowned Children Claims She Did “What Was Best”

The rough floor hurts your knees. Eyes closed, you try to ignore the flood of images of what you witnessed in Boston, how desperate and cruel people became in Oklahoma. With each memory, your heartbeat pounds harder.

Red. Blood. Pink. Skin. White. Bone.

The riots got to be so terrible, but people were just hungry.

Ellie calling your name jerks you out of the sinking muck of memories.

“What? What is it?”

She eyes you with distant concern then glances at Sarah. “She wanted to know where you learned all this stuff.”

“About cooking, and teaching, and nursing,” Sarah clarifies. “I think I’ve read every book in our house probably four times and I still feel like I don’t know anything.”

“You probably know more than you think,” you offer as you scoop up the uncomfortable newspapers, easily switching tracks of thought to mute the swell of horrors from the rotting box in your mind. You leave them in the corner for Joel to do what he wishes with them and stand, dusting your dress off. “What do you call the process by which plants get energy from the sun?”

Sarah’s eyes brighten immediately. Where her body fails her, her mind is as sharp as a tack.

“Photosynthesis!”

“Good,” you nod, smiling. “And what’s the primary source of energy in animal cells?”

“The mitochondria!”

“Very good.”

Ellie sighs angrily from her pile and puts her hands on her hips. “I think I’m gonna make like mitosis and split, if we keep talking about all this boring stuff.”

Scorned for her love of learning a second time and already in a bad mood from the pain this morning, Sarah frowns.

“What’s your problem? Why do you act like school sucks? You had your mom teaching you –,”

“She’s not my mom!” Ellie snaps back, her knuckles white around a rusted bucket. “She’s just my aunt!”

“Yeah, well, I have an uncle I never even get to see!” Sarah stands up as smoothly as she can, but her knees and ankles are pink again. Her calves shake. “You’re lucky!”

Ellie’s teeth clench in the back of her jaw, lip curling.

You remember distinctly more than once having to pick Ellie up from school early because she’d been caught fighting and you take a step in her direction, even if Sarah could no doubt land a few solid ones in.

“And you’re–,”

“Ellie.” You know how rough Ellie can be. You remember the tone to take with unruly students, even if you don’t mean an ounce of it. “Don’t. Just let it g–,”

“Why do you always take her side?” That ire whips around to you. Loyalty, that was another trait her mother favored. Ellie’s shoulders roll forward, her fists clenched. “Why do you let her talk like she knows anything about us? About Mom?”

“I’m not taking a side, Ellie,” you say firmly, your chin tilted down to her. One day she’s going to be taller than you, you know it. “Both of you, this is enough.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Ellie tosses the broken bucket in her hand to the ground and storms towards the barn doors.

“You just like her because she’s a fucking dork like you,” she growls under her breath before shoving open the large square door.

It swings shut, the metal clattering against the wood. The brief stream of light filtering in is shortly swallowed up into the shadows again.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says almost immediately, her brown eyes swiveling on you. Her skin is tinged a little lighter and there’s sweat along her hairline. With a fleeting flash of worry, you wonder if she’s in more pain than she lets on. “I didn’t mean it . . . I mean, I think she is lucky to have – but . . . I shouldn’t have said that.”

She drops your gaze and you think those dark eyes might be softer, wetter than usual. She plucks at the hem of her dress, her mouth twisted to the side.

Where Ellie explodes outwards, Sarah implodes inwards. You never could understand Ellie’s inclination to destroy everything around her.

You hand her a broom, with a smile on your face.

“Do you want to tell me about your uncle?”

She takes it slowly from you, eyebrows furrowed down. This is a look you are familiar with, even when it comes to Ellie. She is stuck between answering like a kid, getting it all off her chest to be free of the emotional burden, and swallowing it all to please the adults in her life.

You’ve also found Ellie tends to open up when she doesn’t have to look you in the eye. Sarah’s own gaze is stuck to the floor as she vaguely sweeps at the hay.

“We don’t talk about Uncle Tommy a lot,” she mumbles.

You focus on untangling an old bridle. “Oh? Why?”

“Dad’s still pissed at him for moving out to California. Said he left what’s really important for a bullshit dream.” Her eyes pop up, wide and shocked. “Sorry, that’s what he said.”

Despite your limited time with him, you can easily see how Joel Miller might take something like that personally, but you just store that away too, another breadcrumb leading the way.

“Why California?”

“It’s–,”

The barn door opens again and Joel’s shadow breaks through the almost painful white light. Behind him, Everett (the horse) snorts and huffs, pulling along the giant creaking plow, the air suddenly pungent with the smell of warm dirt, leather, and animal sweat. Joel murmurs something to the frothing snout and wipes his own forehead with the back of his arm, smearing sweat and dirt across his browline. He stops when he sees you two staring.

By Sarah’s wide eyes, it’s clear Uncle Tommy is a subject that is not often brought up in this house either. Joel frowns, but just as he opens his mouth, you interject – you know how to deflate a potentially angry man.

“We were just cleaning up the back of the barn,” you say, careful not to use words like junk or scrap heap. “I’m hoping to use the space as a school, for Sarah and Ellie.”

His gaze settles on you, like the dust at his feet.

“Mhmm.” His tone scrapes something low in your stomach.

“I’m sorry – I should have asked – I didn’t think –,”

“No, it’s –,” he shakes his head. His eyes catch Everett’s foamy nose and he pats it, noting the long sweaty forelock. “Smart. Next spring, we’ll come up with something better, but there’s no time now, with the harvest comin’.”

You nod, peeling off what you were going to say from the back of your teeth with your tongue. Joel casually drags his fingers through Everett’s forelock before stepping back to unhook the plow’s leather buckles. It’s when he shifts towards Sarah, looking to her, that he grimaces.

He put his weight on his right knee and it immediately caused him pain.

“We could help,” you offer, eyes on his knee, his thick fingers rubbing into the muscle just above his knee cap. "Ellie loves being out in the sun and I can teach her how to plant–,”

“‘M fine,” he mutters gruffly, straightening up and wiping his hands on the cloth around his neck. “Sarah, go inside for a bit. There’s something she n’ I gotta discuss.”

His tone indicates this is not the time for eye rolling but she does it anyway.

“I’ve said for years that you need help, Dad. She’s just offering to–,”

“Sarah, inside. Please.”

Sarah scowls and drops the broom against one of the stalls. She hobbles out of the barn, first scrunching her nose up at Joel’s obvious smell, then muttering something about having to go look for the hell spawn. You finger the scrap metal in your hands, a fluttery nervousness growing in your stomach the closer Sarah gets to the door. With one more disapproving shake of her thick curls, she shuts the door behind her.

Everett nickers and paws the ground, eager to be returned to bed after a long morning of work. Light streams in gold from the slanted windows above the loft, separating the front stalls from the back of the barn where you stand, fidgeting. There’s no escaping the hot animal smell now, and it’s your turn to be intercepted by Joel.

Another apology is nearly out of your mouth when he speaks first.

“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” He asks, his mouth set into a firm line. In the half-darkness of the barn, you can’t quite make out his eyes.

You swallow against the encroaching dryness in your throat. “I-I have a gun. Keep it in my purse, o-only for emergencies and I–,”

“That’s not what I asked.” He shakes his head, tone soft, almost gentle. He glances past you to the stacks of newspapers you had moved into the corner, the ones about violence and pestilence. He rubs his fingers between the bridle and Everett’s thick hair. “Found a hole in the barbed wire fence today.”

You frown, the tension of his voice indicating a severity you are utterly unprepared for. “What does that mean?”

“Someone tried to cut through.”

A white hot panic lurches up your spine out of nowhere. Fueled by fear, you see the outline of your husband shambling across the propertyline and you go cold.

“W-why would someone do that? What are they after?”

His hand stills as every muscle in his body briefly tenses. Eyes dark beneath a tight brow, the tightness in his jaw is an answer and a threat all at once. He looks almost offended by your question.

You know exactly what they would take.

All you can do is nod.

Everett nudges Joel’s shoulder, impatient to get out of the harness, for that bath he so very much deserves. As though you had disappeared, Joel unbuckles the restraints, taking a brush to the gray coat as he goes. Maybe you’d misread that last signal and he thought he told you to fuck off.

You move towards the back door when his voice, timbre deep and low, stops you again.

“I’m gonna to teach you to shoot.” He announces to the lathered withers of the horse. “But you keep that gun on you, at all times, especially when you’re out with the girls. You got that?”

He pauses just as he slides the hitch off the horse's back, his arms covered in dirt as dark as the leather. It’s minute, the shift in his weight, but you suddenly realize he wants verbal confirmation.

“Y-yes. Yes. I’ll take it with me.”

The minutia shifts again, a lessening of tension across his broad shoulder, his thick back. He nods.

“Good.”

The aching need for him to say more, for that good to turn into you did good or good job – or good girl – it sparks so fast and hot inside of you, you think you’ll choke. Instead, you leave through the door on unsteady legs, jaw locked tightly shut.

You find comfort in the monotony of sewing.

Anna always scolded you for it, that you were “giving into women’s work.”

How are they ever going to take us seriously when you actually like doing this dainty shit?

But where Anna seemingly delighted in her mile-a-minute thoughts, you need an outlet – some way to settle, to ground yourself in the here and now. Furthermore, you could sew anywhere – on the train, on the bus, in a foreign house in the middle of nowhere where you were, again, dependent on the kindness of a complete stranger –

It isn’t sewing specifically that you enjoy. If there was another activity where your mind could detach itself from your body, you would have liked it too. Here, in this space of blank concentration, you separate further from yourself with every stitch you pull together. Here, you are not a sister, a housewife, or an aunt. Not a nurse or a teacher or a failed fieldhand.

Not scared of living or scared of your husband or scared that you’ll fail your sister over and over and over again –

For a handful of minutes, you are not scared and you are the closest thing to yourself you can possibly be. You think, as a child that might have been the closest you’d actually been to understanding your own wants and dreams and desires, but now it is through this act of repetition, of delicate guiding, do you find yourself remembering what it was like to exist unafraid, as thoughtless as a child.

You sit on the edge of Joel’s bed, eased into something vaguely like relaxation by the needle and thread in your hand. You’d found some old pillows in the barn earlier today and surprisingly the stuffing was still intact. After watching Sarah struggle today, you knew you couldn’t spend another second watching the poor girl hobble around on painful braces.

It’s twilight, the sun gone beneath a blanket of scarlet and indigo, everyone fed and full – the girls almost instantly forgetting their first fight in favor of a discussion about their most effective marble-flicking techniques – and you already have at least one leather-bound pad that is twice as thick as her old one. You grin, excited to share your creation to her. You wonder what Joel will say.

Through the wall over your shoulder, in Sarah’s room, you can hear the low murmur of their voices, as quick and fast as two co-conspirators. You can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but the words don’t matter. It is the high joy in Sarah’s voice, or the creaky laughter from Joel. They could be speaking in a completely incomprehensible language but the sentiment is unmistakable: you make me happy and I love you.

I love you.

The needle and thread stills in your lap.

You glance out the window, to a much smaller shadow in front of the barn as it cuts and darts in the blurry half-light. The silver tip of Anna’s knife winks in the glint of the light from the windows as Ellie slashes and digs in the open air. Alone.

In the late hours, in the hours when the veil between life and death felt so especially fragile, Anna made you promise that you'd look out for Ellie, to raise her as your own. To finally give her a childhood like the two of you never had.

You had done that. You raised her. She’s alive and healthy and fierce.

But would she find your sentiment about her unmistakable? Do you know hers as intimately as you knew your sister’s?

Do you make her happy when both of you are constantly reminded of the ghost between you?

Sarah’s chatter echoes throughout the dark house, disembodied and entirely untethered.

It’s one week into this new, adjusted life in a house you haven’t yet found a home in when the unthinkable happens.

A loud, wet cry startles you awake and immediately your hand flies towards Ellie, panic like ice in your jaw. Your palm touches her shoulder, but she’s already sitting up, eyes towards the door. She glances at you and from your stumble out of a dreamless sleep, you realize it wasn’t Ellie who made that noise.

It comes again, as sharp as a bone crack, and you both scramble out of bed.

Sarah.

Up against the far wall, in the corner where her bed tucks up into the corner, Joel holds her like a lion clutches to prey.

Giant, fat teardrops pour down the sides of her ashen cheeks, those bright eyes clamped shut, her mouth twisted in agony and she claws at her father’s forearm across her shoulders. His other hand is going white from her fingers crushing his in a bone-cracking grip. His voice is soft, firm, and fast in her ear, comforting and scared as hell, as she whimpers.

Every muscle from her thighs down is stretched taut. Every muscle unwillingly tightened, flexed, the chemicals in her brain battling the commands of the bacteria. The pain, as described in medical journals, is crippling.

Ellie glances at you out of the corner of your eye. Muscle spasms.

“Sarah, darling, how long has this been going on?” She’s trembling from the pain and exhaustion. You wrap your robe around you before kneeling down to inspect her — and you feel Joel’s glare nearly singe the skin from your face.

“Don’t touch her,” he snarls and pulls her closer. Sarah whines and buries her face in his shoulder, trying to stifle her sobbing to keep from shaking and causing more spasms. “She’s–,”

“I can help her, Joel.” Your training became a bulwark – strong, immobile – in moments like these. Maybe it was all an act but that first rush of hope that you could ease pain, soothe what hurts, made you feel like you were made of gold. You let that unbreakable shine pierce Joel’s gaze. “But you need to listen to me.”

Sarah squeaks and you watch his resolve instantly break. Shakely, he nods.

“Ellie,” you instruct over your shoulder. “Go start boiling water. There’s a pail out on the porch.”

She is out the door before you finish your sentence. She knows exactly what you need.

Help on the way, you turn back to Sarah, her feet twisted in grotesque contortions.

“How long has this been going on?”

“About ten minutes,” Joel grumbles. She squeezes his hand so hard you hear his knuckle pop. She sobs, open mouth, and he presses his cheek to her. He murmurs softly, “I’m sorry, I know, I’m sorry.”

“Is this the longest fit she’s had?”

Joel reluctantly nods.

“Sarah,” you say and gently touch her knee. She peels her eyes open, cheeks stained with tears, eyes wet with fear. “We need to loosen your muscles, okay? That’s what’s causing you pain right now. So, we’re going to use heat and pressure to do that.”

She nods, gaze solidifying with your every word, every word a new step out of the path of pain. Joel smooths her curls off her sweaty forehead, his own wide-eyed stare never leaving your face. You roll up your sleeves and curl up your hair off the back of your neck just as Ellie stumbles back into the room. She’s got at least five towels around her neck, and she’s red-faced and straining from keeping the pail of boiling water from spilling or burning her. She eases it down next to you and hands you a towel. Both of you each take a side and immediately tear the one in half.

Before you wore gloves, some sort of protection, but now there is no time. You hear Ellie inhale sharply, recognizing what you’re about to do a second before you do it.

You dip the towel into the steaming water, let it soak, and pull it out. You grit your teeth against the immediate burn on your palms, the trail of fire over your knuckles and wrists, as you squeeze out the dripping water, Sarah’s soft cries in your ears enough to push past your own pain.

Half-way between an inhale and an exhale, you think you hear your name.

Ellie already has another dry towel loose around one of Sarah’s legs. She glances at you, her brows knitted together.

Ready? She asks without words.

You drape the hot towel around her leg and Sarah yelps. She thrashes in her father’s arms as you wrap the towel tighter and tighter. Expecting Joel’s inevitable bark, a hard shove against your shoulder, get away from my daughter – but it never comes.

As soon as you tighten the towel as firmly as it can safely go, Ellie slides in next to you and begins to massage the muscles in her calves, her feet, her toes.

Sarah whimpers again, but the sound isn’t as sharp, pain-choked. Joel holds her tighter, as if her torso is also knotted and could be relieved with warmth.

On an inhale, you pick up the other half of the towel, drench it in boiling water, and wring it out with your bare hands. A silent prayer for lotion is fleeting as it drifts through the dense focus of your mind. You squeeze out the dripping water and wrap Sarah’s other leg, prepped again by Ellie. She watches you as you tug and tuck the steaming towel, her own focus as sharp as a tack, mirroring your motions as you knead and massage the muscles.

After a few minutes of faint whining, a couple of sobs, the room slips into an exhausted silence. Her breathing slow on his chest, Joel draws back her damp curls and finds her face relaxed, asleep. His mouth parts and the skin around his eyes goes slack.

Relief.

With a shudder, Joel knocks his forehead against hers, his thumb on her chin as if to feel her breathing. You look away, the moment so tender it shouldn’t be witnessed.

You realize then how badly your palms ache.

The towels have lost their immediate heat, so you unwind them. Ellie’s small hands overlap yours as she helps. For some reason, you can’t bring yourself to look her in the eyes. The both of you fall back into roles most comfortable to you.

The wet towels gone, you wrap her legs more tightly this time, slightly past the edge of comfort. You ease her back, flat into the bed, and some small part of you is aware Joel is letting you guide her. He slips out from behind her when you tuck her in, tight with another blanket around her legs. She could be exhausted for days after this.

“We’ll need to keep heat on her legs every thirty minutes, fifteen if we can manage,” you say as you fold up the damp towels. Joel hasn’t moved. Stares down at Sarah’s small body. “I’d like to keep a warming pan here, to have hot water on hand if she wakes up in pain again. When she comes out of it, she needs water and food. Have her eat it slowly, small bites at first.”

You remember a doctor at the hospital where you trained as a nurse give advice to a newer doctor: medical mysteries and illnesses are one thing. Nervous parents are something else.

You call his name and he doesn’t move.

You step forward, touch his forearm, and he blinks at you. He feels so remarkably solid.

“Joel. She’s safe.”

“Do you want me to go get more towels?” Ellie’s gathered the damp towels off the floor, her chest wet. She stares at Sarah’s bed frame.

“Get breakfast first. Then I might need your help later.” She nods, turns to go, but hesitates. Her mouth is pinched tight, eyes wide, looking for something to ground her, to calm the vortex that the adrenaline in her veins widens with each beat of her heart. She looks so . . . childlike.

She looks so much like Anna.

The momentary fortified strength shatters and you're afraid again. What do you say to comfort her? What would Anna say? Good job, I'm proud of you, thank you -

But then she turns away, carrying the dripping towels, and you lose your chance to parent.

Joel has curled himself into the rocking chair by her bed, so close his knee touches her mattress. He holds her thin hand in the cup of his two massive palms. His heel taps loosely, quietly against her rug, every possible outcome of this morning striking him in the chest with each drop of his foot. His face is a blurred, dark shadow, hanging between his shoulders.

To describe Joel in this moment, nervous seems quaint.

In silence, you gather up the tepid pale of water and exit the room, closing the door after you.

The rest of the day passes in haze, tendrils of sleep still between the cracks in your brain left there by the harsh break into consciousness.

You have Ellie feed the animals, and you start a load of laundry. The ratio of dry towels to wet is rapidly becoming unbalanced and you know after the initial attack is over, pressure is more important than heat. Sarah has barely moved all day but she is responsive and drinks water when she comes out of her deep sleep. You’ve made soup again – a heavy meal that doesn’t require much managing and can be easily re-served – and it gives you time to think. Sarah mentioned the doctor skipping town, that he had all but dropped everything and ran. You wondered what else might be in the doctor’s old shop. Morphine seemed too valuable to have been ignored in any ransacking, but often doctors kept a secret supply, unbeknownst to even most nurses for special cases or when supply was low. You think about that and stir the pot as the sun crawls across the sky.

With your head bent over the pot, something moves in the field outside and you watch with surprise as Ellie leads one of the cows, Fauna, out of the barn. Through the rippled glass, you watch her talking to the cow, her face scrunched up in concentration, and shockingly, Fauna appears interested, her big ears flicking back and forth. But Ellie leads her only a little bit from the barn, in the grass but visible from the house. She drops to her knees and takes out a wooden stake and a hammer — nevermind where she found those – and then ties Fauna’s lead rope to top of the stake sticking out of the ground.

Ellie wags her finger, her back to the window, her stance very serious. You smile to yourself and to Anna as she marches back inside and shortly returns with Flora, the other cow, to do the same. She gives them both a stern talking to, as evident by her hands on her hips, before turning back to the house. You glance down, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate it if you saw her babysitting the cows. It was what Joel did every morning – let the cows out to graze – but she did it in her own Ellie way: on a smaller scale and perhaps with a little more gentleness.

See, Anna, she’s all grown up.

By nightfall, both of you are exhausted. You don’t know how Joel manages to run this place by himself, especially with a sick child, but after one day, you’re ready to curl up into bed and never leave. Ellie looks like she’s about to face-plant into her soup, her eyes half-shut. You smile, stretching, before gently shaking her shoulder.

“Go to bed, Ellie. You’re exhausted.”

She blinks harshly, indignant and scowly, as you take both your bowls to the sink. “‘M fine. Just a lil’ –,” she yawns deeply, “sleepy.”

“You’re right. My mistake.”

“Besides, we got coffee coming, don’t we?”

On the counter, your make-shift coffee press gurgles, the cap steaming from the bubbling water over the grounds you found in the cellar. You eye her over your shoulder.

“You don’t even like coffee.”

“Yeah but you’re staying up, right? You and Joel?”

Neither of you had seen Joel leave Sarah’s room all day. Ellie eyes the ceiling as if she can see right through it.

“I’m taking him some food and a cup of coffee,” you say as you finish drying the plates. There’s a rigidness to your hands as you delicately lay the plates flat, unconsciously careful to keep them from making a sound as they touch. “But at St. Joseph’s, some of the nurses would offer to keep vigil, to give the parents a chance to rest.”

You know in your heart he won’t take it. You just hope he finds your coffee inoffensive.

But Ellie doesn’t respond. She sits still, staring at the ceiling.

“Ellie, she’s going to be okay.”

Those bright eyes fall on you. “You can’t know that.”

In your hands, you wind the damp towel between your fingers. They’re pink and still ache but the rough linen is a welcome distraction from the churning acid in your stomach.

“This isn’t going to be like last time,” you say, your hips against the counter. “Sarah’s infection is nowhere near her lungs. And she’s been responding to treatment.”

Ellie drops her gaze, her bottom lip curled between her teeth.

“Don’t say that unless you mean it. Unless you can swear to me.”

One of life’s simple truths: parents lie.

You recognize there is a part of her that wants you to look her in the eyes and lie. She’d be angry, eventually, if your lies were exposed, but in that moment, as she sits in an unfamiliar house, at an unfamiliar table, with you and this wretched ailment the only things she knows to be constant – she wants a comfort you can’t give her. You are not capable of parental truth.

“I can’t promise anything.”

She inhales, breathes shaky, and exhales, the spoon in her hand trembling. “I know.”

Hands full of a white, chipped food tray, you knock twice carefully with one hand like you had been trained to before opening the door. The lamplight has been turned on, but the room, blanketed in darkness and shadows, looks the same. Sarah sleeps deeply, if not well, her hand curled by her face against the pillow, her heavy storm of curls cradling her head gently. Joel watches her, as still and silent as the moon. His foot has settled, but now he breathes so slow he might not be breathing at all.

Of all the terrible things you had seen during your time as a nurse, witnessing someone like this is always the hardest. Feeling helpless is a sentiment you are all too familiar with and the thought of someone just sitting there and watching you with your grief makes your skin itch.

“Joel.” A formality, because those trapped in a cyclone of worry require a slow approach, easing a startled animal. “I brought you something to eat.”

Speaking, it lets him acclimate to your voice.

You set the white tray on Sarah’s dresser, a piece of furniture meticulously crafted. Like Joel’s room, there are books everywhere, but more animal drawings, some directly on the walls. Sarah’s brilliant personality expanded here, in the blues and pinks, not capable of being contained in a single body.

A body that seems so small and fragile in that little brass bed, while her father looms impossibly large.

“Joel.” Again, soft, but this time you put a hand on his bicep. Never near the neck, an older nurse warned you, that area is sensitive. His denim shirt is soft beneath your fingers, nearly bleached white from the sun and worn smooth from dust and dirt and wind. You think you smell churned earth and hot leather in the instant it takes you to kneel down beside him, your grip sliding from his shoulder to his forearm. With the other hand, you tip a steaming cup into his open palm.

“Sarah told me you liked coffee.”

Slowly, as though he had blinked and reality disintegrated and reformed around him, Joel’s gaze slides from Sarah’s waxy face, to yours, and then the hand on his forearm. The back of your scalp prickles, the bulwark of courtesy shaking, before you remember you’d done this hundreds of times, to people of all ages, men and women. He seems to understand this – a professional gesture – and he takes the mug from you. With an almost perplexed expression, he stares into the nearly black liquid, his jaw tight.

And then he drinks, without saying a word.

You think you might have heard a low rumble from him, a pleased groan as heavy as the plow in the barn outside, but the floorboards creak when you stand up, so you might have been imagining things.

“This tastes good,” he says bluntly, voice weather-beaten. You smile into the bowl of soup as you wave a hand over the steam to cool it down to something bearable. “How?”

Despite his monosyllabic responses, you take this as a good sign. Something tells you that you’ve made exceptional progress by getting him to talk at all.

“I got pretty good at making cowboy coffee, as my sister used to call it, before we moved to Oklahoma. You already had the beans in the cellar,” you say, shrugging as you bring the soup over to him. He eyes it warily, as if this is not the appropriate time to eat, as if his own suffering would make Sarah’s lessen.

You’d only ever seen that instinct in a handful of parents while in the hospital and it made something wide and warm press up against your chest bone.

So you don’t give him a choice. You push the soup into his hands with enough speed that he has to take the bowl or drop it entirely. He, like most people with common sense, takes the bowl. He has a second to frown at you before you turn away to Sarah.

“And I suspect they were hidden down there on purpose?” You ask as you take out another blanket from the basket beside her bed and flutter it over her legs. You remember stories about the women working with Elizabeth Kenny filling quilts with rocks or beans, anything with weight, and putting them over the affected limbs of polio patients. The compress soothed the ache.

Sarah snores gently in her sleep as her father behind you laughs, a soft rush of air from his nose, his mouth preoccupied with a half-grin.

“I try not to hurt her feelings,” he admits quietly. You hear the clatter of metal on porcelain as you fold and refold the blankets to carry more weight. “That girl is a lot of things, but good at making coffee isn’t one of ‘em.” He slurs around the soup in his mouth.

It’s hard to believe she’s only a year older than Ellie. They have both lost things, indescribable things at too-young an age. But where Ellie carries it in the grip of her hand around her knife, Sarah takes it on the chin.

Polio, a disease of freezing agony.

You wonder how much of Sarah’s inner world she keeps to herself.

Like with Ellie, you fight the urge to brush a lovely curl away from her cheek.

“You have a special girl here, Joel.”

You feel his gaze on the back of your neck and you drop your gaze from her pristine face, remembering it’s not your place to look at her like that. Not like how you want to look at her.

Not like how you might want to look at him.

Joel shifts on his feet, leaning forward to put the now empty bowl on the ground.

“I know.” By the strength of his tone, he admits to knowing that you see the bright light about Sarah like he does and so he lets you look. Your heart stutters at this silent transference and you grab blindly for that mask of noble duty.

“How has her breathing been?” You sit down next to her and pick up her wrist, feeling for that steady pulse. You relax slightly when it’s easy to find. The beat of it is a little faster than you would like, but it hasn’t woken her up.

“Good.” A disgruntled groan from the chair as he adjusts behind you. His voice is rich like molasses, dripping warmth down the knots in your spine. “Woke up here n’ there, like you said. Gave her food. Got her water. But she just went right back to sleep.”

“But she ate and drank?”

He nods out of the corner of your eye. You check the mobility of her joints and they seem to be back to their natural looseness. Whether she’ll feel strong enough to walk is another matter entirely, but it’s not good to worry him unnecessarily.

“That’s good, Joel. That’s really good.”

You smile at him and finally, finally, the corners of his eyes soften, his brows pluck up, and he breathes deep. The tension leaves his body the way steam leaves a lake in the hours before dawn, the cup of coffee resting on his thigh. His gaze falls from your face to hers, shrouded in shadow.

“She’s never slept this long after an attack,” he says quietly. “Always restless, pain flaring up. We once stayed up a whole day and night when it got bad.”

He shakes his head, clears his throat a bit as if the words in his mouth leave behind a mucky, sour taste.

“Thank you. For treating her properly.”

For doing what I couldn’t.

It’s true. But no amount of reassuring – I’ve just had training, you did the best you could – would dissipate that repugnant scent of guilt lingering in the air. You are forced to let it linger, unable to say a single damn thing that would mean anything to him.

As he finishes the last dregs of coffee, Joel unwinds his long legs from beneath the seat and his knees crack. Stiff joints after a long day of stillness, but immediately his fingers fly to that same spot he touched in the barn in that afternoon, his mouth tight from the unexpected flash of pain.

Immediately you kneel down, worried at the slight hiss he made, fingers inches from his thigh when he straightens.

“You don’t have to–,” he shifts as if he can pull away from your touch and stay seated. “It’s not that bad –,”

You frown at him. “Can the person here who has had actual medical training determine that?”

Something light flickers over his eyes, so fast it might not have been real, smoothing the lines around his mouth. Joel nods, glancing to the floor.

“Yes, ma’am.”

That single word almost splits your skull in half like lightning.

You are immediately grateful for the heavy shadows in the room. Your palms, smarting all day, are now blistering with heat. Mouth shut tight, you don’t trust whatever sits behind your lips, so you begin your inspection of his muscles. Thumbs down, you feel along the lines that lead down to his knee.

Hard, firm, you notice. Made solid by work and toil. A few of the bricklayers and farmers you’d attended to had muscles like these. Despite the rough denim and how unsettling it is to be this close to him, it’s easy to lose yourself in the methodology of the human body. You’ve learned to read sinew and bone and scar tissue like a map and you come to find that the topography of Joel Miller is mountainous.

“So, mhm, where’d you learn to make coffee?”

You thought the stiffness in his thigh was due to lingering pain, but when you look at him and his guarded expression, chin tilted into his chest, fingers tight around the bottom of the seat, you realize he is uncomfortable. He is made uncomfortable . . . by you. Something sharp pokes through a slot between your ribs and you sit up straighter, trying to make your touch even more clinical if possible. But what he says next, you aren’t sure if it’s genuine or genuinely meant to hurt.

“Your husband?”

You shake your head. “My sister, actually. Ellie’s mom. We’d trade night shifts when she was a baby. One of us would come home from our second job, and the other would leave for their first. Anna said she’d never have survived those first years without coffee.”

You can hear the question he wants to ask buzzing in his head, your thumb rubbing therapeutic circles around the inflamed area. But instead he asks:

“And you . . . you like coffee?”

You shrug. “I don’t think I ever slowed down enough to ever taste it in the first place.”

With Joel Miller, silence means a thousand things. It’s not the way he looks at you, but the way he looks into you.

“Anna always said we’d be fine, that two unmarried women with a baby could make it in the city. But I wasn’t so convinced. There wasn’t much time for something like enjoying the taste of coffee because I was always busy taking every job I could get.”

“Like treating sick kids.” He says it like he just found a piece of you off the ground and added it to a sprawling puzzle. He politely stares over your shoulder.

You swallow, throat tight. “Actually, um, Anna had it - polio - too. I took the job as a nurse to learn how to treat her from home.”

Those heavy eyes swing into you full force and you can feel your stomach roll and collapse against your spine.

“Every case is different, Joel. What I did for Sarah, it wouldn’t have helped someone like Anna.”

“But she died?” A third unwelcome presence.

“Yes. She went fast. There was nothing anyone could do to save her.”

There was nothing you could do to save her.

Your thumbs are starting to ache, but you don’t want to leave just yet. You want to sit and listen to his voice, even if it’s pitched in anger towards you.

But it’s not. His next words come out soft, if not a little bit disbelieving.

“Where did you come from?” Joel asks. “You said the city, Oklahoma. How’d you end up in fuckin’ Dalhart, Texas?”

You use your elbow on the thicker muscle up his thigh and he tries very hard not to wince.

“We grew up in Boston. City girls all our lives. We had big plans of catching the bus line and going all over the country, just the two of us, but then Anna got pregnant and overnight, everything changed.”

He nods, knowingly. You add that to your own Joel Miller mosaic.

“I met the man I’d marry while I worked as a maid in a motel. He was a banker, or so he told me, and he wanted to whisk me away. We were three months behind on our rent, so I told him yes, I'd marry him after knowing him for a week — as long as I got to bring Anna and Ellie with me. All he talked about was money, so I thought he had it. What he did have was enough to get us to Oklahoma, buy some farm equipment for the wheat boom, and then lose it all in a handful of years.”

“And then we lost Anna. We lost my husband. I went back to trying to find a job in town with no jobs.” You pull your hands back, the deep tissue of his thigh flushed with blood from your therapy, and having nothing more to do, little more to say, you drop them into your lap. “Just after we missed the payment for the equipment for the second month, I got a letter from a man claiming to be my long lost Uncle Robert. I hadn’t eaten in three days and Ellie just got tagged by the police for shoplifting. I sent him a letter back and he said if I sent him our last twenty dollars he’d get us set up in Dalhart where he had a successful car dealership. I did and he didn’t and if you hadn’t picked us up, I don’t know what we would have done.”

You sit with the hot truth of it and he sits with the both of you. It’s silent in a way that only a house in the middle of nowhere can be. Sarah stirs in her sleep, her legs rustling the sheets, but doesn’t wake up.

“You don’t have to do that here, you know.” He straightens his legs, just as quietly as the rest of the house. He crosses his arms over his chest and you think about the muscle just under his forearm, thick and immobile as sea-drenched rope. “Not eat . . . for Ellie’s sake. There’s enough for you and her. Always.”

You think of the cellar with its soft dirt, cool air, the endless rows of stored fruits and vegetables and meat, buried like a still-beating heart beneath the dust-whipped house in a paradise on the prairie.

“But I understand the inclination.” With you on the ground before him and Joel leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his broad back arching under the stripe of white moonlight, he looks at you.

Really looks at you.

Like recognizing like.

A passing in a distorted mirror that might be me but it’s not but I think I know you all the same there is a thing just like me out in the world and it sees me.

Slowly, hesitantly, as if he’s afraid you’ll bite, he reaches forward and takes your wrist from your lap. The calluses on his thumb brush roughly against the knot of bone as he twists your palm upward. Pink, too pink, a stinging color, even in the low lamplight. Joel works his jaw back and forth, staring at your palm with weary concern, as if it told him things he didn’t want to know.

His gaze lifts and your fingers curl instinctively in. He’s trying to make you look and you don’t want to. He sees your sacrifice and you don’t want it called that, there’s certain nobility in sacrifice, in a sort of suffering for other people, but it’s not sacrifice if you go willingly and despite you not wanting to look, not wanting to put a name to it, not wanting to take up any space at all, he looks at you like he, a man as broad and wide and powerful as he, is grateful.

For you.

Every bulwark inside of you, every foundation that you had built yourself because you never had the chance to grow hearty roots somewhere permanent, rumbles. Shakes, beneath a single solitary, rolling earthquake. A landslide of earth behind the strength in his eyes.

“For her, for Sarah, I’d do the same,” he says.

For her. For the children in your lives.

Do you even like coffee? All you know is how to make it. What would you do with it if you did? If you liked coffee? If you loved it.

If there was someone outside yourself and Ellie to make you coffee simply because you wanted it. Because you were in a circle of people for whom people would do things for. For her. For you.

The heart of Joel is like coffee: dark but warm.

Your wrist slips between his fingers, finding refuge again in your lap.

“I know.”

You wonder what it would be like to be within Joel’s circle of people for whom he does things. To be given coffee, just because you want it.

You bet it’s warm.

You stand up, collect the empty, used things, and wish him a good night.

A noise and sunlight startles you awake. Your eyes tear open, hand flat on an open pool of sunlight in the center of the mattress, head twisted and knees bent up by your chest. In your sleep, your body twisted itself into a Gordian knot, unable to escape the dreams about the cellar ground turning into coffee beans, and the cramped bloodflow leaves you disoriented until you can roll onto your back and remember where you are. The smells that surround you.

You hear the noise again and you think of Ellie and in that instance where complete consciousness returns to you, the weight of her is gone. Literally.

Ellie is not in the bed beside you.

The room’s brightness is suddenly too bright, the clear, electric blue sky too blue – it’s too beautiful and it lulled you into a sense of comfort. Stupid, so stupid. You ignore the warm floorboards against your bare feet, the faint birdsong from outside, as you rush towards the source of the sound, towards Sarah’s bedroom – oh god, I was wrong it’s too late it took her in the night and I –

The sound you do not recognize, the sound you could not comprehend while buried in dreams and memories, is the sound of laughter. Loud, full laughter.

The brass bed creaks as Ellie uses the mattress to fling herself into the air. On the other end, just as determined to reach the ceiling, is Sarah. Hands outstretched and reaching, her legs bend and flex and propel her up and up. Every time she gets within a handful’s reach of the ceiling, Ellie’s laughing, cheering her on, and then it’s her turn, Sarah giggling as Ellie’s face scrunches up as she reaches out towards the blue sky on the other side of the roof.

“Oh, hey!” Ellie says, pink-faced and causal, half-way out of breath. Sarah spins, mid-way through a jump, her eyes bright, sweat peaking on her brow line. “Sarah bet – I couldn’t touch – the ceiling — so we’re taking turns – loser has to shovel – the barn!”

You watch, dumb-struck, as the bet continues, the girls laughing and criticizing each other and offering techniques as they work in tandem to fling the other one higher. Sarah is flush with vitality, with life, with a dewy glow reserved for spring mornings when the earth stretches awake after the death of winter.

And Ellie . . . she looks her age.

The earth has shifted beneath your feet, while you were sleeping, and a seedling has been planted, the dawn of something new, something fresh and utterly unexpected. You can feel it in your bones. Hear it in their laughter.

“Not a bad thing to wake up to.”

Joel, arms crossed, eyes soft, leans up against the door frame, blue striped pajamas low on his hips, a thread-bare white undershirt cupping his biceps. He eyes you from toe to head and stops when he meets your eyes. You wonder how long he’d been standing there – if he too woke to noises he couldn’t explain, rushed in here, and found something miraculous.

The smile crinkles his eyes as it unfurls across his face.

“I haven’t heard her laugh like that in a while,” he says quietly, head tilted towards the bed, as if there could be any other meaning. “I owe you one.”

You could say the same thing about Ellie.

There’s the line, the boundary of the circle to the place of being warm. He’s not cleared the way for you, not invited you across, but he’s shown it to you. You can see it, feel it, and know what it takes to get there.

Your smile blooms. The girls’ laughter rings throughout the house and into the sunlight.

But, outside of paradise, away from the river and the white a-frame house, from the horse and the cattle and the long strands of prairie grass, where there is not enough to eat and the earth is in its death rattle, the wind blows. It swallows up dust, and dirt, and fine sand, gluttonous. It swirls and pulses, agitated and restless and seeking violence. Spinning with the power to blind with a single whip of dust, it spins up over the earth in its death rattle, where there is not enough to eat, towards the prairie grass. Towards the horse and the cattle. Towards the river and the a-frame.

Towards paradise with the promise of total ruin.

END OF PART I

series masterlist | AO3 Link | prologue | part ii

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selineram3421 · 1 month

Text

⯅ or 🔼 or ⚠️

You're Off-key

Part 2

Part 1

Reader X Gravity Falls

Warnings ⚠

⚠ some book of bill spoils, swearing, blood, mentions of dead body, everyone is aged up, haha boy bands, mention of board games ⚠

Ohmyglobohmyglobohmyglobohmyglob! You thought as the golf cart got closer to the roadside attraction.

Then you saw a familiar goat eating a tin can, and then it turns to look at you.

Very on brand Gompers. You thought before going back to panicking again. OK BUT WHAT DO I DO NOW!?

As you continued to think of answers to multiple questions they might ask, the golf cart stopped and the two brown haired twins hopped out and stood next to you to help you out.

"Careful, we don't want you passing out again.", Dipper says and picks up your backpack, then holds a hand out for you.

"Pshh! Move over!", Mabel pushes her brother to the side. "I'm helping them! I wanna know more about our new mysterious friend!"

"Mabel! They are hurt, we have to help them down carefully!"

"Well, we need to get them into the shack quickly to bandage their still bleeding head! Have you seen the golf cart seat!? The top is all bloody!"

"Wait, what?", you say as the two continue arguing and turn around to see the top of the seat that was behind your head.

Sure enough, there is blood.

"Oh, ew.", you say and get off the cart yourself. "Hey, it's fine. I can walk on my own."

After you take a step, you immediately almost fall and the two react fast, holding you up by your arm, one on each.

Weak.

"Ok, maybe I'm not as fine as I thought.", you laugh.

"What do you mean? We thought-", Mabel began.

"HEY MABEL! Didn't you have some juice in the freezer? If you don't get it out now you'll have to wait for it to unfreeze!", Dipper says quickly.

"OH MY GOSH YOU'RE RIGHT!", his sister says and pushes your weight onto her brother before rushing inside. "I'M COMING MABEL JUICE!"

Ow, my ears...

"Sorry about that.", he apologizes and walks you into the shack. "Mabel can say some random things and I didn't want her talking your ear off haha."

You are led into the kitchen and are seated on one of the yellow chairs near the table. After he walks off, you take in the cool air conditioning inside the house and sigh.

Maybe this isn't as bad as I thought? You leaned forward and rest your arms on the table before resting your head on your arms.

"DIPPER! WHY DO I SEE YOU DRAGGING A DEAD BODY ON THE SECURITY CAMERAS!?"

Did you really look that bad?

"They aren't dead Grunkle Stan!", the twin says back to the older generation twin.

"Do I have blood on my face?", you mumble to yourself.

Dipper turns back to you with gauze. "Uh, yeah? It's not that bad though.", he says smiling nervously.

I look like a dead body for sure. You sigh but don't call him out on his bluff.

"Ok Dipper.", you smile back.

As he starts to clean off some blood, Mabel then comes back from...you don't know where with an empty pitcher that has left over glitter and plastic dinosaurs in the bottom.

"I forgot to offer.", she says.

"That's fine. I still have water in my backpack.", you say.

Gauze is now starting to be wrapped around your head, then you hear someone else walk into the kitchen.

"Ok dudes, who bled on the golf cart? Cuz the cops are outside wondering if it's hot sauce.", the man, the legend, Soos asks wearing the Mr. Mystery suit.

"Soos!", Mabel says and goes over to the man after putting the pitcher in the sink. "We picked up a bleeding person that we found in the woods! AND LOOK!", she then gestures to you as Dipper finishes tying the bandage off. "They are wearing a cool sweater!"

A sweater? You look down and indeed find yourself in a zip up sweater. Ugh..no wonder it was so damn hot outside. Taking off your sweater to tie around your waist, you keep an ear perked to hear their conversation.

"Whoa, are they like a magical person?", Soos asks.

"MmMhm.", Mabel shrugs her shoulders. "We could always find out."

Nope! You stand up and then wobbly sit back down. Maybe I shouldn't get up yet.

"You ok?", Dipper asks.

"Yeah, I just wanted to get my water bottle from my backpack.", you come up with quickly.

"Oh, let me.", he says and picks up your pack and sets it on the table.

"So...", Mabel says sliding over. "Do you like boy bands?"

"Not the time-"

"Actually I do.", you respond. "I like the Front-road Guys."

"Well, do I have a story to tell!", she smiles widely.

"Oh boy..", her twin sighs.

You don't know what you started.

⯅

"Sometimes we'll still see them scampering around the woods and eating out our trash.", Mabel says as she finishes telling you about the boy band clone story.

"Wow, ok.", you say, shocked because she told you more details than what the show revealed. "That's crazy."

"Yeah, that was fun.", she smiles.

You've been introduced to Soos, and then you were given a small tour after the twins made sure you wouldn't wobble like a baby deer anymore. Now you were walking to meet the Grunkle.

I was sure the older twins were on a boat. Did they come back for the summer? That's nice. You thought and found Stan sitting in front of the t.v. wearing his house clothes.

Which is just an undershirt, boxers, and slippers.

The old man turns after Mabel says. "HI GRUNKLE STAN!"

"Who's the mummy?", he points at you and drinks from the pitt-cola can in his hand.

"The one who you thought was a dead body.", you say before the twins next to you can speak.

"Ha! Good to see you're not dead.", Stan says before turning back to watch a rerun episode of Ducktective.

Then they have you wait for something..

You're not quite sure and they sit you down at the table where the card games and some family meetings were held from what you saw in the episodes, still in the living room.

The back of your head still hurt, not bleeding from the recent check ups Mabel has been giving you but it still felt like your head was stuffed with cotton and your hearing was kinda going to shit too. You don't know how many times you've asked either twin to repeat themselves.

Maybe a nap would be good.

"And we brought them back here!", you hear Mabel say, probably going to introduce you to some other character person.

"Exactly where in the woods did you find them?", a familiar voice says.

Oh shit! It's Ford! FUCK!

You do your best to keep a straight face as you see them enter the room.

Shit. Fuck. Shit shit FUCK!

Then the author of the journals is standing in front of you with a small flashlight.

"Hello, I'm Ford. My niece and nephew probably already told you about me.", he says and kneels slightly to get to your eye level. "I'm going to run a series of tests to see how severe your concussion is."

"Oh, ok.", you reply as calmly as you could.

"Follow this flashlight with your eyes.", he says and moves it left to right.

You do so, this scenario reminding you of doctor tests that you've done once after getting hit in the head with a soccer ball during P.E.

Then the six fingered man turns the flashlight on to see how your pupils react.

Woop! Woooo.. Woop! Woooo...

You make sound effects in your head as you dilate and constrict your pupils.

Maybe I do need to take that nap...

"Sorry.", you blink and look at Ford. "I think I'm just super tired."

"Hmm..", the old twin hums and puts the flashlight away. "It's too late to go to the clinic now, why don't you stay in a spare room?", he says as he stands up.

Huh?

"Oh my gosh!", Mabel smiles wide and places her hands on her cheeks. "It's a sleepover!!"

HUH?

"It's not a sleepover Mabel, they are just staying here until the clinic opens.", Dipper sighs.

HUH!?

"Please no loud music that'll burst eardrums. I don't think it would help.", Ford says and begins to walk away towards the gift shop door.

WHAT THE FUCK!?

"WAIT!", you stand up quickly and lean on the table with your hand for support. "Why let me stay?", you ask, specifically to Ford.

The man looks over his shoulder, glasses glinting from a light coming from the t.v.

"I'm a random person they-", you gesture to the younger twins. "found in the woods and know nothing about me! Frankly, if it were me, I would watch that random person like a hawk!"

You're honestly afraid. You don't know how things will turn out. Ford will do anything to protect the twins, same with Stan.

"If you were dangerous, you wouldn't be able to get too far with that head injury.", Ford replies. "You'll need to change your bandages in the morning.", he finishes and leaves the room.

He..has a point.

All you do is slowly sit back down and sigh.

I'm so tired.

"Sooo...", Mabel says as she walks over to you. "Wanna play board games?"

Well, at least the family doesn't find me as a threat. Which is good.

"Got anything stress inducing?", you smile.

You're pretty sure they still have that board game that's like Jumanji.

01000111 01101111 01101101 01110000 01100101 01110010 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110100 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111

~Seline, the person.

Part 3

Taglist@

@diffidentphantom @sleep-7372 @boredwithlifeatthispoint @mspurpl3 @gxstiess @lynkolnevans @fries11 @+?

👁️

GF List🏞️ | YO-🎹

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missannwinchester · 4 months

Text

Marina, +18, Joel Miller/Reader

Summary: On vacation with your father and his new wife, you seek revenge in the arms of an older sailor. Pure porn, no plot.

MAIN MASTERLIST maybe you'll find sth interesting

Warnings: oral s*x (female receiving), unprotected s*x (because this is fiction and not real life), a teeny tiny little bit of degradation I guess? (Reader asks to be called sl*t),

panties used as a gag, pretty vanilla tbh, Reader is over 18, however old you want her to be, she is wearing a dress, Joel is older, unspecified age gap.

You were lying on your back, looking at the wooden ceiling of the cabin. Your yellow summer dress was being pulled up your thighs. Joel, the sexy older man you had met in the marina, spread your knees and ran his scruffy cheek along your inner thigh. One of his massive hands slid up to find the hem of your panties. The other one joined promptly and he took off your underwear quite roughly. You trembled in anticipation and tangled your fingers into his hair when he was busy planting wet kisses on your abdomen. Your hand tried to urge him to stop teasing you, but it was clear he was going to play by his own rules.

Finally, you felt his hot breath on your wet labia. He licked you, starting at the bottom, finishing right on your clit. You moved one of your legs, impatiently pressing into his shoulder. He grabbed your leg with one hand and pressed on it.

"So impatient," he muttered into your core and you sighed.

"Come on, please!"

"Mmm, princess, you know what I should do? Gag you with those tiny little panties, you're distracting me," he tried to reason with you, his brown eyes devouring your half naked silhouette.

"Please do it," you begged before your brain could register what was happening.

"Really?" He wanted to make sure.

"I like it a little rough... I think..."

"You think?" He asked.

The truth was you didn't really know. You had always been too shy and insecure to have ever told your partners what you wanted. This time was going to be different. It was your first ever one night stand and you were going to do it right. And by right you meant that you were going to enjoy it. No shame, no guilt, no regret. At least that was what you were telling yourself. So you nodded.

"Oh b-before you do that..."

You sat up on the bed, instinctively adjusting your dress so that it would cover you.

"It should be easy for you to just spit out. Or tap the bed three times and I'll stop. That alright with you, darlin'?"

There was something about that you couldn't quite pin down, but it was easy for you to trust him. That's why you found yourself on his boat, in that cozy, narrow cabin, on the king sized bed. Half naked.

The way he looked at you made your insides flutter. It was unbelieveable to you that you actually wanted to be vulnerable with that man. It was unthinkable. Yet... you had to ask.

"Are there other names you want to call me?" You wondered.

"Like what? I'll call you anything you want," he promised, carressing your thigh with one hand, squeezing your panties in the other.

"Even... something bad?"

You watched his reaction.

"Ohh," he hummed with understanding. "I got myself a bad girl."

He took your knees and spread them again. You felt his finger at your opening, smearing your slick wettness along your mound.

"I found a little slut today," he smirked at you and you nodded.

Maybe you weren't into rough sex normally? Maybe this situation made you crave it? Maybe it was his intimidating persona that made you think all those thoughts. It was all very naughty to you. He was easily twenty years older than you, looking better than any other man on Earth and he was about to fuck you. Really, truly fuck you.

Suddenly, you found yourself on your back again, looking at the already familiar knag on the ceiling. Joel was hovering over you, holding your jaw lightly. You obeyed him and he put your damp panties in your mouth. You felt a little self conscious for a second, but then Joel's nose pressed against your throbbing clit. Oh damn.

The rest was a blur. He started lapping at your wettness, making obscene noises. His tongue moved expertly, right where you wanted it. Your fingers were massaging his head, trying to press him harder into you. You were a panting mess, a little slut, gagged on a stranger's bed in a shady part of the marina. The tension inside you was building, about to explode any minute. After a few expert moves you came, choking him, trapping between your trembling legs.

Your body finally relaxed and Joel hovered over you, his lips and scruff were covered in your juices.

"How's my slut feeling?" He asked, clearly expecting an answer, but did nothing to remove the makeshift gag.

You wondered for a split second if you should take it out yourself, but you just said "amazing" with it still in, making an incoherent noise.

"Such a good bad girl, who would have thought?"

You were suspecting that he didn't actually think you were a bad girl. Judging by his... performance it all was probably very vanilla for him.

"Fuck me," you said, enjoying the sound of your own muffled voice.

"What are you saying?"

"FUCK ME!" you mumbled loudly.

"I'm sorry," he said.

He knelt on the bed and unzipped his pants, then he quickly pulled them down, together with his boxers. His impressive length sprung out and it was definitely bigger than what you had expected. It looked bigger than your big dildo and in your experience real humans never had those dimensions.

"No idea what you're saying, but I'm lovin' it" he muttered, smearing precum around his tip.

"Are you gonna make those noises now too?" He wondered.

He placed himself above you and nuzzled your entrance with the tip.

"I asked you," he admonished. "Are you gonna make those noises now? Now that I'm feeding your needy pussy with my cock, hmm?"

"Mhmm!" You responded this time, nodding your head frantically, desperately wanting to feel more of him.

"Perfect little slut," he commented.

His dick slid along your labia a few times, smearing the wettness around. He pressed the tip into your opening and you whined, wrapping both of your hands around his strong, still clothed torso. The white shirt he was wearing was starting to cling to his body, but it was only the beginning.

Your walls stretched around him, wet, warm and welcoming. He slid in carefully, slowly, filling you to the brim, making you hum with pleasure. You had a feeling he liked it when you moaned behind the gag so you decided not to refrain yourself from making noises.

The depths of you he managed to reach were now tingling, each move, each stroke was bringing you closer and closer to yet another orgasm. Your legs were pulling him closer to you, your nails were tracing patterns on the damp, white shirt. Your strangled noises weren't enough for you anymore, but you struggled to spit out the gag. Finally you helped yourself a little with your hand, pulling your underwear out of your mouth in between strokes.

"Fuck!" was the first word you said or maybe moaned and it came out much louder than you intended.

You were starting to lose your rhythm, or maybe Joel was, or the both of you.

"I'm- I'm feeling you so deep inside me," you whimpered, rocking your hips into him, desperate for more.

"I know," he panted into your ear in a condescending tone. "You are taking it so well, so fucking well," he groaned. "You're taking it like a real slut, I know it's a lot, I know..."

His thrusts were powerful, forceful even, and you encouraged him with little moans.

"I know, it's okay little slut, it's okay, nothing you can't take..."

"Fuck! Fuck, Joel!"

It hit you like a truck.

Your walls fluttered around him, tightening, squeezing him. He moved a few times before spilling his seed into you, filling you, painting your insides. Your fucked raw pussy milked him dry. He collapsed on top of you instead of simply pulling out and you pulled him even closer to your chest.

He hummed in content, nuzzling your neck with his nose, tickling you with his facial hair.

"You're something else, darlin'," he gasped into your ear, his spent, sweaty body was still pressing you into the mattress making you feel safe and relaxed, like a warm, breathing weighted blanket.

"You're not bad either," you whispered.

Breathing deeply, with your muscles relaxed, with calloused fingertips gently tracing invisible patterns on your skin you felt your eyelids getting heavier and heavier.

"I don't wanna go," you confessed sleepily.

"Then don't."

Then don't. Simple as that.

You wondered what it would be like. Travelling on his little boat, stopping in marinas, sunbathing on the deck all day, fucking relentlessly all night... You felt a pang of pain at the concept, like you were missing it, mourning a mere idea, nothing more than an efemeral thought.

You decided to indulge yourself, drifting deeper into thought, falling asleep under the weight of Joel, the sailor who rocked your world like the sea rocks such tiny little boats.

The end.

Thank you for reading :) Comments are very appreciated.

~missannwinchester

#joel miller #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fanfic #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller tlou #joel x reader

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pedrospatch · 1 year

Text

what he didn’t do

Preoutbreak! Joel Miller x Female Reader

summary: You’re very recently divorced, but that doesn’t stop a certain handsome, brown-eyed neighbor from taking you out on a date.

warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI. divorced reader, no massive age gap (no specific age is mentioned, but reader is in her early 30’s and Joel is 35) slow burn, 10 year crush kind of deal. reader talks about her past relationship. mentions of food and alcohol. soft, caring Joel. first date fluff.

word count: 5.1k

a/n: so um how are we all doing after today, we still alive out there? 👀 no one asked for this, this fic is purely self indulgent, my lonely single ass is convinced that pre out break Joel would be just the most amazing gentleman on a date, he would be so perfect and just take the best care of you and treat a girl right…so here is what i whipped up.

He’ll treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word

stay home ‘cause he wanted to

always fight for my love

hold on tight like it’s something that he can’t stand to lose

Joel wasn’t all too sure how it even happened.

Earlier that afternoon, he’d gone on over to your place to deliver a piece of mail that the postman had accidentally put in his mailbox instead of yours. While Joel was there, you’d kindly asked him if he could recommend a good plumber that you could call because you had a stubborn leak under the kitchen sink that you needed to get looked at sooner rather than later. Wanting to save you both the hassle and the expense of having to hire someone, Joel had told you to hang tight for a minute and rushed back over to his house, only to return with his yellow toolbox in hand so that he could fix it for you, which he’d done in fifteen minutes flat—and now, just a few hours later into the evening, he was getting himself ready to take you out to dinner.

And the real fucking kicker of it all was that he had been the one to ask you out, proposing the offer while his head had been buried in the cabinet underneath your leaking kitchen sink. At least that way, if you had rejected him, you wouldn’t have been able to see the look of complete and utter embarrassment on his face. But much to Joel’s surprise, not to mention, his relief, you’d eagerly accepted the invitation and even suggested tonight would be the perfect night if he didn’t have prior plans or commitments.

Hell, even if Joel did have prior plans or commitments, he would have canceled them for you without a single ounce of hesitation.

He’d discovered he would do just about anything for you.

Joel shrugged into the light tan, button up shirt that Sarah had helped him pick out earlier just before he’d jumped in the shower. At thirteen, she lived with her nose buried in fashion magazines lately and she didn’t trust him to successfully choose a proper outfit for the occasion on his own without guidance. It had been well over a few years since Joel had been on a date, as she had so kindly pointed out to him while she’d rummaged around through his mess of a closet. Although he insisted that it wasn’t a date, his teenager had scoffed and called him out on his bullshit. “Well, what else do you do you call it when two single adults go out to dinner together alone?” Sarah had challenged him as she held up a couple of different shirts up against his chest, searching for the perfect one. “Especially when one of those two adults has had the most obvious crush on the other one for what, like ten freaking years now?”

“It wasn’t that obvious,” he’d muttered to her in response. Peering at her curiously, he couldn’t help himself as he had asked her, “Was it?”

“Dad, your crush on her has been about as subtle as a brick to the face.” Letting out a huge laugh, Sarah had shoved the shirt she’d selected into his hands and tossed the losers right back into his closet. “Here, wear this one with those dark jeans, the bootcut ones. Don’t roll up the sleeves like you always do. And for the love of all that is holy, at least make an attempt to run a comb through that hair of yours,” she’d advised on her way out the door, leaving him to it.

Joel sighed and buttoned up the shirt, then tugged on his dark blue jeans and a pair of black leather boots—the only pair he owned that weren’t totally worn down to the soles. He finished getting dressed and proceeded to roll up the long sleeves of his shirt up to the middle of his forearms, tucking in the cuffs as neatly as he could. He could already hear his daughter scolding him over it, but screw it, Joel wanted to be comfortable, especially now that warmer weather had arrived in Austin.

After rubbing just the slightest hint of his favorite sandalwood cologne on his neck and on the insides of his wrists, Joel finally left his bedroom and made his way downstairs, trying his absolute hardest to pay no mind to the nerves that were threatening to creep up on him. He entered the living room where he found Tommy sitting on the couch with Sarah, a plastic blue bowl of popcorn nestled between the two of them. Sarah, who had been busy shuffling through a stack of movies in her lap, looked up when she heard him walk into the room and narrowed her green eyes at him. “Come on, man! What did I say earlier about the sleeves?”

“You told me not to roll ‘em up. But I chose not to listen to you,” Joel quipped, eliciting an annoyed sigh from her.

Tommy smirked at him. “So motherfucker, you finally did it, huh? You finally asked her out on a date.” His smirk widened. “Only had to wait, what, about ten fuckin’ years?”

Joel glared at his younger brother. “How did you even—?” He stopped abruptly and his dark brown eyes flickered over to Sarah, who shot him a guilty smile from where she sat. “Really? You just had to tell him?”

“Sorry,” she apologized, sheepishly. “It slipped.”

“Damn, big brother. Y’know, word on the street is that she just signed the divorce papers at the courthouse earlier this week,” Tommy remarked, taking a swig from his bottle of Lone Star as he leaned back into the couch. “You’ve got some real big fuckin’ balls to ask a freshly divorced woman out on a date that quick. I’ve gotta admit that I’m actually pretty fuckin’ impressed with you, Joel. Didn’t think you’d have it in you.”

“It ain’t a date,” Joel muttered out the lie, picking up his keys from the coffee table. “We’re just goin’ out to dinner is all.”

“That’s a date,” Tommy and Sarah stated together in unison.

Joel let out a heavy sigh, deciding that it was better for him to ignore their antics rather than to play into them. “You.” He pointed an index finger at Sarah. “Might not be school night, but I don’t want you stayin’ up too late. And you.” He turned his attention to Tommy. “I don’t want you havin’ any of your little female friends over while I’m out tonight, especially not while Sarah is home. That understood?”

“Yes dad,” both their voices chirped together once again.

Rolling his eyes, Joel bid them a quick goodnight and left the house, making his way across the lawn and over to your place. You lived in the smaller, single story yellow house right next door to his.

You’d moved in next to Joel and Tommy several years ago—Sarah had still been a toddler then and he had just started getting used to life as a single father. Joel would never forget the first time that he laid his eyes on you. He had been in his driveway, taking a look under the hood of his old truck, a hunk of garbage Ford Ranger from the nineties that he’d finally gotten rid of a couple years back and replaced with a Chevrolet Silverado instead; it hadn’t been much of an upgrade, but at least it didn’t break down on him as often. Joel had noticed a moving van in the driveway of the house next door, but he hadn’t given it a second thought. He had been so engrossed in what he’d been doing, but at some point, he looked up from the engine and turned his head at the precise moment that you happened to walk by with a cardboard box in your arms. You’d caught his gaze and offered him what had to be the most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his entire fucking life. Joel had just set his wrench down and was about to head over to offer you some help when a man emerged from the back of the moving van with another box. He gave you a quick kiss on the cheek as he led the way into the house.

Turns out, that man had been your husband.

To say Joel had been sorely disappointed by the fact that you were married had been an understatement to say the least.

It hadn’t taken all too long before Joel met his new neighbors, although he often saw more of you than he ever saw your husband—the man traveled across the country for business and he would be gone for several days, even several weeks at a time. You were a homemaker and to help make life a little less mundane, you’d started something of a daycare in your home, offering to help fellow neighbors who needed someone to watch their younger children during their nine to five work schedules.

When Joel found himself putting in a brutal number of hours in at his construction job, he had struggled to find someone who was willing to look after his then three year old for such extended periods of time. You’d happily volunteered to help him out and you would watch Sarah from sunrise to about sundown for him without a problem. When she started kindergarten two years later, you continued to help Joel out, going as far as taking her to school for him and then picking her up afterwards. You’d never had any children of your own, but you still had maternal instincts, and as Sarah grew up, whenever she would need a woman’s guidance, she would go straight to you without hesitation and you were always there for her no matter what, no questions asked.

Joel couldn’t have been more grateful for you.

He’d seen and spoken to you just about every day for the last decade—he’d even go as far as saying that the two of you were good friends, though since day one, he found himself longing for a hell of a lot more than just your friendship. Joel had thought he would have to shove his true feelings for you down for the rest of his natural born life, that is, until several months ago when he’d noticed the moving truck parked in your driveway one late afternoon as he and Sarah came home from one of her soccer games. Nearly in tears, Sarah had immediately hopped out of the pickup before Joel could even cut the engine and ran over, demanding to know why you hadn’t told her that you were moving—that’s when you fessed up and explained to her that you weren’t going anywhere, but your husband was.

Through whispers in the neighborhood, Joel discovered that you had filed for divorce and although no one knew the exact reason why, many suspected it had been your husband’s constant traveling for work that had done it. Denise, the nosy blonde woman who lived across the street from him swore up and down that he must have had some kind of adulterous affair behind your back—Joel simply told her she needed to lay off her dramatic daytime soap operas.

Regardless of the reason why, you were now officially single.

And Joel was taking you out to dinner.

Whether it was an actual date or not, that hadn’t exactly been established.

He made it up the front porch and inhaled a deep breath, exhaling it slowly through his nose before he knocked on your front door. When you opened it just a few seconds later, all of the wind had been knocked out of his lungs by an invisible force.

You wore a sky blue sundress with a sweet, white floral pattern printed all over it. Thin straps tied together at your shoulders and the hem of the skirt fell right to the middle of your thighs revealing a lot more of your silky smooth legs than he had ever seen before. You’d kept your makeup fairly light, and your hair fell loosely and naturally around your shoulders. Joel noticed you wearing a silver necklace, a butterfly pendant hanging from the chain. He recognized it, because he’d bought it for you, although it was Sarah who had gotten all the credit. She had given it to you as a gift for your birthday that passed by a few months ago.

“Hey!” You beamed at him. “You’re right on time.”

“Hey.” Joel swallowed dryly. “You look really beautiful.”

You smiled shyly. “Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself,” You returned the compliment, admiring the way the sleeves of his shirt hugged his biceps. “I have to hand it to you, you definitely clean up well, Joel.”

“Next time that you see Sarah, you’d best thank her. She deserves the credit,” he stated, eliciting a small laugh from you. “Are you all ready to go?”

You nodded, grabbing your purse and keys from the small glass table beside the door. You stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind you; after making sure that you’d locked it properly, you followed Joel across your front lawn and over towards his driveway. He led you to the passenger’s side of his dark blue Silverado and opened the door for you, holding his hand out to help you climb up into the seat. The gesture prompted you to shoot him a strange look.

He frowned a little. “What’s the matter?”

“No, nothing,” You quickly assured him. You placed your hand in his larger one, the contact causing a jolt of electricity to shoot up the length of your spine.

Joel helped you up into the truck and closed the door before making his way around the front of the vehicle and climbing into the driver’s seat. He shoved the key into the ignition and the pickup roared to life. He watched as you put on your seatbelt and then reached out, giving it a tug to make sure you were buckled in well enough. “Just makin’ sure you’re safe is all,” he uttered softly as you tossed him another puzzled glance. He reached over his shoulder for his own seatbelt and buckled it in before finally pulling out of the driveway.

Out of his peripheral vision, Joel could see you wringing your hands together in your lap in something of an anxious manner—were you nervous?

In an effort to comfort you and ease the nerves, Joel reached out and turned up the volume of the radio. He normally kept it on his favorite country station and was just about to ask what station you preferred when you let out a tiny, excited gasp and turned to him, a radiant smile breaking out onto your face.

“Oh, I love this song!” You told him, bringing your hands together in an enthusiastic clap. You then started singing along to the familiar lyrics. “Heads Carolina, tails California, somewhere greener, somewhere warmer, up in the mountains, down by the ocean—”

Joel turned briefly, raising an eyebrow at you. “Nineties country fan, huh?”

“Duh,” You replied playfully. “Nineties were and will probably always be the golden age of country.”

He grinned, turning his attention back onto the road. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Biting back another smile at his words, you turned to look out of the window, nodding your head and tapping your foot along to the beat of the song as you watched the streets of Austin pass by in a blur of lights and people.

Joel had chosen to take you to Antonio’s, a locally owned Italian place that was somewhere between casual and upscale dining. “Wait,” he told you, noticing you reaching for the door handle as soon as he’d parked in front of the restaurant. He jumped out of the driver’s seat and walked around, opening the door for you. Just like when he’d helped you into the truck back at his house, he offered you a hand to help you out of it. He kept his dark brown eyes on your feet, making sure you that didn’t fall or lose one of the brown sandals you were wearing. “Careful.”

“Thank you,” You said kindly to him as he closed the door behind you. Your breath hitched in your throat when you felt him place his hand on the small of your back as he ushered you inside of the restaurant where a hostess led you to a small, round table out in the back patio. You thanked her and reached for your chair, but Joel instantly stopped you.

“Let me,” he insisted, pulling it out for you. He helped you into the chair and noticed you give him another strange look, similar to the ones you’d given him when he’d helped you into the truck and when he’d checked your seatbelt. “Why do you keep lookin’ at me like that? Do I have somethin’ on my face or what?” He asked jokingly as he took his seat across from you.

You hesitated, but then confessed, “I’ve never had someone pull my chair out for me. I’ve never had someone open the car door for me or make sure I’m wearing my seatbelt.” You offered him a small, sheepish smile. “You don’t know how nice that is, Joel.”

Joel stared at you in complete disbelief.

Before he could say anything, a younger waitress appeared at the table to take yours and his orders for beverages. “I’ll just have a cabernet, please,” You ordered, politely. Not wanting to be the asshole who ordered a beer at an Italian place, Joel asked her for a glass of red wine too. She returned moments later with the drinks and then offered to take your orders for food. Both you and Joel decided on a chicken penne pasta dish that looked absolutely delicious. As soon as the waitress took your menus and disappeared back inside, you looked up at Joel and noticed his eyes were fixed intently on you. You felt a slight heat flood your face. “What is it?”

“Nothin’,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders innocently. “You just look really beautiful, that’s all.”

“You said that already,” You reminded him, letting out a breathless little laugh.

“I know.” Joel picked up his glass of wine. He took a quick sip before adding, “But someone as pretty as you deserves to hear it over and over again.”

The night went by fast, much too fast.

One minute, you were both enjoying your dinner and digging into delicious pasta, and the next, the table had been cleared completely, and so had all the other tables surrounding you—you two were the very last patrons in the restaurant. You and Joel had been so lost in conversation that neither of you had realized it was almost eleven and the restaurant was about to close in five minutes.

“We’ve been sitting here talking for three hours,” You gasped lightly.

Joel chuckled. “Time flies when you’re in great company.”

You looked the bill on the table, which the waitress had dropped off over an hour ago, and reached for it, but Joel was quick to snatch it away from you.

You pinned him with a stern look. “Come on, Joel! You fixed my kitchen sink for free, paying for dinner is the least I could do—”

“A lady never pays on a date.”

Your lips parted slightly in pleasant surprise. “Oh. So this is a date?”

Joel laughed as dug his brown leather wallet out from the pocket of his jeans. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be. But I still ain’t lettin’ you pay.”

“I do.” You told him softly after a minute. “I do want it to be a date,”

Joel’s eyes met yours across the table and he smiled, looking relieved. “Good. ‘Cause I would’ve been kinda crushed if you’d said otherwise.”

He dropped a couple of twenty dollar bills on the table and stood up. He noticed you about to do the same when he shot you a warning glare.

“Oh. Right.” You giggled and waited until he stood up and held his hand out to you, helping you out of your chair.

As the two made your way out of the restaurant and out to his truck, Joel didn’t let your hand go.

“Thank you again for inviting me out to dinner tonight,” You said sweetly as Joel walked you up the porch steps to your front door. You rummaged through your purse and pulled out your house keys, pausing for a brief moment as you peered shyly up at him through your eyelashes. “Would you like to come in for a drink?”

Joel’s heart skipped an anxious, but eager beat. “I think I’d really like that.”

You turned back to your door and your hand trembled slightly as you jammed the key into the keyhole to unlock it and judging by the way Joel let out a soft chuckle beside you, you were certain that he’d noticed it. You pushed the door open, closing it behind you once the two of you had slipped inside. Setting your purse and keys down, you gestured for him to follow you into your living room where you nodded for him to have a seat on the dark blue velvet couch before you walked towards the kitchen. “What’s your poison?” You called out to him over your shoulder as you began rummaging around in your cabinets for two glasses.

“I’m partial to scotch,” he called back. He then added, “If you’ve got it, of course”

“How do you take it?”

“Neat’s just fine.”

You giggled as you prepared a glass of scotch for him and a glass of red wine for yourself. “Oh you’re just so classy, aren’t you Miller?” Before anything, you did a quick mirror check in the stainless steel toaster on the kitchen counter, making sure that not a single hair was out of place. You then took a deep breath, picked up the glasses, and walked back out into the living room. Handing Joel his glass, you took a seat beside him on the couch; you sat close to him, so close that his arm was pressed against yours. Somehow that wasn’t even remotely close enough. You wanted to be closer and hoped he felt the same.

“By the way, thank you again for fixing the sink for me,” You told him after taking a sip of your wine. “You probably saved me a couple hundred bucks.”

“Oh, it’s nothin’ really,” Joel reassured you. He nudged your arm. “If you ever need me to take a look at anythin’ around the house, please don’t hesitate to call me. I don’t want you reachin’ out to plumblers and electricians, those crooks will see a sweet little lady like yourself and see nothin’ but fuckin’ dollar signs. I don’t want anyone takin’ advantage of you, so when you’ve got a problem, you call me first alright?”

You gazed down into the burgundy depths of your glass, a small smile tugging at the corners of your lips. “I really appreciate that, Joel.” You brought yourself to look up at him, admitting, “Now that I’m living alone, it worries me. Having to take care of this house all by myself.”

Joel gripped his glass tightly, a hesitant expression on his face. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. And if it offends you in any way, you’re more than welcome to just give me a good kick in the—”

“Joel!” You rolled your eyes, shaking your head at him. “Just ask me the damn question already.”

“What happened between you two?”

The smile on your face faded away, but you didn’t seem upset at him. “Well, what all have you heard?”

Taking a sip of his scotch, Joel shrugged. “Couple of rumors here and there, but I ain’t the type to believe in gossip. Would rather hear the truth from the source.”

“What did Mrs. Adler have to say about it?”

He snorted into his glass. “That you two probably could have saved your marriage had you just gone to church.”

You couldn’t help but laugh—Mrs. Adler was nice enough, but that woman could really be something else. She was always telling people they had to get right with Jesus.

“So?” Joel prompted you. “What did he do?”

You sighed and turned your body slightly, angling it towards his. “He did quite a bit. Put me through hell, to be honest with you. But you know, I’m not the type to air someone’s dirty laundry. So, I’m not going to tell you what he did.” You paused, your fingers lightly tapping the sides of your glass. “But I’ll tell you what he didn’t do.”

Joel nodded silently, but in understanding.

“He didn’t treat me right. He didn’t treat me the way I deserved. He never wanted to spend time with me. He never wanted to be home with me, which is all I ever wanted from him. He’d travel so much for work, and when he would finally come back after being away, I would be so excited to just be with him.” You scoffed bitterly at the thought of it. “The minute he landed, he would drop his luggage off and head straight to some bar with his buddies. All I’d want is for him to just stay in with me for a night, watch a movie with me, talk with me because I missed him so much while he was gone. But he never chose me. He would never put me first, no matter how many times I asked.” You shrugged and leaned over, setting your glass of wine down on the wooden coffee table before leaning back into the couch. “It probably sounds really stupid but—”

Joel placed a hand on your bare knee, causing your flesh to erupt in goosebumps. “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

Finding a bit of courage, you placed your hand on top of his and continued on, “He never made me feel like I was someone worth fighting for, you know? Like my love was something worth fighting for. He made me feel like nothing, Joel. It got to the point where sometimes I believed it—I felt like I was nothing.”

Joel gave your knee a gentle squeeze. “I sure as hell hope you don’t feel that way now,” he said, his lips tugging down into a frown. “Because you’re fuckin’ everythin’.”

Your eyes flickered up to meet his and you had to silently remind yourself to breathe.

Leaning over, Joel set his glass down on the coffee table right beside yours. He turned to you and lifted his hand, touching the side of your face, his thumb delicately sweeping over the silky skin of your cheek. “A woman like you deserves the world and nothin’ less. You know that, don’t you?”

“Joel?” You whispered out his name, your heart racing in your chest at a rate that you were certain had to be much too fast for the human body to withstand.

“Yeah?”

“Can you please kiss me?”

Joel’s hand cradled your face gingerly as he obliged, leaning in so his lips could meet yours in the kiss that he’s been aching to give you for the last yen years. He was gentle and he was sweet with it, but after a minute, he found himself lightly nipping at your bottom lip with his teeth, silently asking permission for more. He felt your lips part slightly against his and he eagerly deepened the embrace, his hand moving to the back of your head while his other found your bare knee again.

Another wave of courage washed over you and you placed your two hands on his chest, pushing him back against the soft, velvet fabric of your couch. You swung a leg over both of his and straddled his lap, your hands now clutching fistfuls of his shirt.

Joel’s own hands went to your hips and he groaned into your kiss.

You pulled away from him, the tip of your nose lightly touching his as the two of you struggled to catch a breath.

“Let me be the one to treat you the way you deserve,” he murmured after a minute, lifting one of his hands to brush your hair back behind your shoulder; his fingertips lightly brushed against the strap of your dress, and it took every ounce of strength he had in him not to pull it down your arm. “Just give me the chance and I’ll hang the moon for you, darlin’—hell, for you I’ll hang the entire fuckin’ galaxy.”

Your heart swelling at his words, you grinned just before pressing your mouth to his once again.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Joel chuckled with a smile against your lips.

You clung to him with fervor, kissing him with a passion that had the both of you seeing stars. Your hands were everywhere, touching, feeling anything part of him you could, eliciting another groan from him as you started grinding down into his lap. Your fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, desperate to feel more.

“Whoa, whoa.” Joel caught both your hands in his and let out a breathless laugh. “Hey. Slow down, sweetheart.”

You looked at him with wide eyes. “Oh I’m sorry, I-I thought you wanted—"

“Oh I do want it, trust me. Pretty sure you can feel how much I want it.” Joel chuckled again, knowing damn good and well that you could feel how hard he’d become for you as you sat in his lap. His hands toyed with the hem of your sundress. “Seein’ you in this dress all night, trust me I want nothin’ more than to have you right here, right now. But I like you way too fuckin’ much to risk messin’ this up by movin’ too fast.”

You pouted at him.

“Oh c’mon darlin’ put that lip away.” Joel lifted his hand, taking your chin between his thumb and index finger. “All I’m sayin’ is that we ain’t gotta rush this. Trust me, you’ve got me hooked already and I don’t plan on goin’ anywhere, alright?”

You almost groaned out in frustration.

He just had to be a fucking gentleman when it came to sex, too.

You sighed in defeat, resting your hands lightly on his chest. “Fine,” You relented with a tiny eye roll, causing him to grin in amusement. You playfully poked his sternum. “But if you don’t fuck me senseless by the third date, we’re going have a problem, Miller.”

Joel groaned, feeling himself grow even harder at the way such a filthy statement had come out of a woman with the face of an angel. “Keep talkin’ like that and you’re goin’ to make it impossible for me to wait that long.”

“Maybe that’s the goal,” You winked at him.

“Just stop talkin’ and c’mere.” He pulled you forward, fusing your mouth to his once again.

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