#sorry tagging this for my own find-my-shit-again reasons

[genderqueerdykes]

Re: aroace tagging discourse

Speaking as an aroallo person, my (albeit limited) exposure to this discourse has been less "never tag reblogs with #aroace EVER!!!" and more "Every time I try to go through the aro (and even aroallo, for some reason) tag, a vast majority of the posts I see are more about aceness than aroness, and I'm tired of not being able to find posts that are relevant to my experiences."

Like, I don't care if an aroace person tags an original post or reblog with both tags, I'm just frustrated that I can't even find community with other aroallo people because the majority of aro people are also ace. Even the tags for aroallo people specifically is somehow full posts that are about asexuality and are therefore not something I can relate to. The aroace and alloace communities are huge, and that's great! I'm happy for them! But, just once, I would like to find a community of people who are like me without feeling excluded for being one of the only people who is aro but not ace (not that aces don't accept aroallo people, they do, but it's obviously hard to be in a space where most people don't want to discuss sexual or horny topics while being someone who ONLY experiences sexual attraction.) We're the fringe group of an already fringe group, and it's sad. There's not much out there that's designed with us specifically in mind. :(

hello there! thanks for taking the time to send an ask

unfortunately, i'm still gonna have to ask people to correct this behavior because it IS hurting other people for the sake of being self-centered and petty. i'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but the "aromantic" and "asexual" tags are for all asexuals and aromantics. as you stated, if you want stuff for just aroallo people, there are tags for that. i know there's not much content, but that doesn't mean that someone gets the right to make aroace people feel uncomfortable and like they can't even go into the two tags that their identity is comprised of.

if there's a lack of content in aroallo spaces, that is your sign to fill in that gap. making aroace people feel like shit for interacting with posts literally made for aromantic and asexual people is not the way to go to get more alloaro content and people to interact with. think about the inverse: would an aroace person getting mad at alloaro people and saying that it's wrong to reblog a post that's just tagged "aromantic"? what if the OP isn't alloaro? would that give them an excuse to harass alloaros?

unfortunately, friend, the behavior still sucks ass and it's not okay. again, if you want content made specifically for alloaro people, that tag is quite literally right there. if you're not seeing what you want to see, that is your calling to do it yourself. i know it might suck to hear that, but this really doesn't give anyone an excuse to make aroace people feel like shit for using the aromantic and asexual tags. they're STILL aromantic. they're STILL ace. and they're not getting upset at you that they can't relate to you. this behavior is really unfair. try to reframe your line of thinking.

the aromantic community is not owned by alloaros. it's for ALL Aromantics.

the asexual community is not owned by alloaces. it's for ALL asexuals.

i hope this makes sense. try not to take other peoples' identities seriously. i know how much it sucks to feel left out, but this is your sign to build a stronger alloaro community. if you want to see it, you have to put yourself out there and do it. complaining about a lack of content will not make some more magically appear out of thin air. i'm sorry if this is harsh, but this behavior hurts people. it cuts them deep. and it's not fair to assert that the aromantic tag is for people who aren't ace, and that the asexual tag is for people who aren't aromantic. it makes no sense and it's excluding people for the sake of being self-centered. please try to reframe your thinking. as rude as this may sound, you are not the protagonist of the aromantic community. i am not, either. none of us are

as an aromantic person on the asexual spectrum, it doesn't bother me in the slightest when i come across alloaros in aromantic spaces. i can't relate to them with regards to their sexuality, but we're both aromantic, and there is plenty of ground there. i have no right in telling them that they don't belong, they have no right in telling me i don't belong. this is a specific issue with specific aromantic people being acephobic, and specific ace people being arophobic. it's not an attack on you, it's being directed toward someone else, and it's not cool to think that they should deserve to feel isolated from their own community just because you don't relate. you can't relate to everyone in your community. diversity is key. we need general aromantic spaces to stay diverse. we need general asexual spaces to stay diverse.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

one day i'll get the brainspace and balls to draw one of my other favourite Things i see happen in the Zelink space and it will deeply wound me but so good

[melancholic-pigeon]

Okay this is the *actual* last comment, for real, but I just found out Spider is now smearing me as a convert and accusing me of being involved with drama I was not involved with because he mistakenly attributed my apologies for his public temper tantrum as being about something unrelated.

THIS IS A FALSE ACCUSATION and I do not appreciate having yet another bit of fake malicious intent falsely ascribed to my actions and* attributing a completely unrelated attack to me.

Also, it's very sad and disappointing whenever a Jew gets mad at a convert because something else is going on in the Jew's life and the convert happens to be in the splash zone and the Jew falls over backwards to smear the convert and invalidate her faith.

Just....the childish aggression is making me so, so sad and disappointed, from someone I used to think very highly of, who is now lying about me and publicly smearing me with false accusations based on a conflict he started because he misinterpreted something I said and I went out of my way to give him the benefit of the doubt when trying to clear up the mistake HE MADE that led him to decide bullying and attacking me for three fucking days was appropriate and okay and that I'm the bad guy for saying it's wildly unprofessional to behave like this in public to a former customer face.

Sorry, but facts, reality, linear time and the truth of what I actually said and did are on my side here, and I will not stand for being smeared and attacked and shat all over because I had the gall to try to kindly resolve his uncalled for, unjustified temper tantrum.

I am also not sorry that I left a side note in the tags that it was also unacceptable for HIM to drag his daughter into a stupid internet slapfight based on his own reading comprehension failure. Because it was and is unacceptable, and she needs to hear that message from someone.

End of story. Keep digging that hole as long as you like, Spider. It's not helping your case and is continuing to make you look progressively worse and more unreasonable, and the only person you have to blame is yourself.

*revised for clarity

[thesorrowoflizards]

i am BEGGING twitter to stop showing me doctor and clara content. begging. please. please please please. what do i have to do

[minzis]

The Ghost Of Her

Art Credits: “Selene Thrown Down by Argus,” 1886 by Ferdinard Keller.

⋅•⋅⊰𖥸•┈୨A Simon Riley One-shot୧┈•𖥸⊱⋅•⋅

♡Summary: Even after being on the team for months Ghost has yet to warm up to you. On a drunken night he confesses a truth leaving you feeling worse then before when he simply hated you.

♡Tags: Angst, no comfort, sfw :)

♡Authors Note: so wow have I been gone….I have worked on other things. Can’t really use the I’ve been busy excuse cause I haven’t I’ve been literally doing nothing.-. ANYWAYSSS I did listen to “Sweater Weather” by The Neighborhood on repeat while writing this so take that as you will. If y’all want a part two let me know! Other then that I will work on things hopefully soon but no promises😞

⋅•⋅⊰𖥸•┈୨♡୧┈•𖥸⊱⋅•⋅

“You look like her,” he admitted blankly his hand half hazardously setting his empty glass on the counter. He’s drunk, very drunk.

You weren’t even sure why he was talking to you let alone why you bothered sitting next to the same man who treated you like complete shit during training, during missions. Just about any interaction with him was always ill ending but at the same time you couldn’t help but sit next to him based on the looks from the rest of the team. They all looked worried but couldn’t bring themselves to approach him. So you settled for being the sacrifice, he always yelled at you anyways what’s another night?

His gaze was unfocused as he looked at you, he was there but he wasn’t really there. His finger tapped as his glass as he went to take another sip but he placed it back down his glance of realization it was still empty.

“Who?” You asked softy, eyes drawing over his half covered face the balaclava just hovering above his lips. The blacked makeup around his eyes smudged, he looked messy. You wondered if he’d even remember talking to you tonight.

“My girlfriend,” his eyes crinkled the same way a person’s does when they smile. His brows furrowed shaking his head like he simply forgot something, he motioned over the bartender to refill his glass. Your eyes followed the bartender as she refilled his glass, that was his fourth glass since you had gotten here.

“Sorry my ex-girlfriend, she died a few years back. Some tumor in the brain they said, it was inoperable and terminal,” he spoke as you swallowed harshly sitting up in your seat. You tired not to frown but the pale look on your face would’ve been obvious if he hadn’t been so drunk.

The hatred made a sudden sense now, your hand clenched at your own glass as he continued. “Yeah she looked just like you, same hair, the laugh too and the eyes it’s really in the eyes the first time I seen you I could’ve sworn it was her but,” he trailed off his gaze flicking in hits of disappointed.

“But it wasn’t, it was just you,” he spoke taking another sip from his drink, more like half the glass. You hated the way he said you like it had been wrong for you to even exist at all, like it was some evil thing you had done showing up at all. You suddenly wished all he did was yell at you, for some reason that would have cut less deep.

You downed your own drink the alcohol leaving a stinging taste like the thoughts of wishing you had never even sat down next to him. Wishing you had just ignored him like he would’ve done to you. You glanced back at him surprised to find he was already looking, you thought he was but once again his gaze was unfocused. He wasn’t looking at you, he was looking at her.

This wasn’t just another night, it was a sicking one. One that left you feeling ill and guilty for hating him even more after his confession. How could you hate him but how could you not hate him? Your eyes watched him as you took in a heavy breath. He reached out to brush a stray hair of yours tucking it behind your ear. His hand dropped to your shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered but it sounded pained like he was being forced to speak. You couldn’t even move as your lip quivered at the sight. His eyes watered as he moved to hug you. His arms wrapped around you tightly, he was shaking horribly as he clung to you. The overwhelming smell of alcohol from him engulfed you, his fingers clenched at the fabric of your shirt.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t at the funeral. I should’ve been there but I couldn’t see you in that casket all dull and lifeless,” he spoke in a slurred speech as your own tears fell. Still even now he wasn’t even speaking to you, you simply weren’t even there to him.

The feeling was overwhelming you, being so unseen and invisible was truly something despicable. You bit your lip in attempts to keep yourself from crying any further. You felt sick, surely you’d throw up soon.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited your grave. I swear I’ll come and I’ll leave your favorite flowers. I just wish…I could’ve been there to hold your hand, I should’ve been there when you died I’m really fucking sorry,” he spoke in rushed statements as you tired to bring yourself to push him away, to yell or scream. Just anything at all but you were stuck frozen, what are you supposed to say to a drunken man who thought he was talking to his dead girlfriend?

Your heart ached as you reluctantly returned his hug as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. Your hands rubbed up and down his back humming in response. Your teary eyes met with the rest of the 141, you shook your head glancing down at Ghost’s back. They nodded moving across the bar to pry him off you. Gaz and Soap each held up one of his arms and a supporting one along his back. What hurt the most was for some odd reason they didn’t seem all that surprised. The three men shuffled away Ghost mumbling more words but you could hardly understand.

You gaze met with Price’s as he looked sympathetic, he reached to offer a soft tap on you shoulder but you pushed his hand away. You felt angry and used, “you guys knew didn’t you? You fucking knew I looked like her and you still let me run around like some fool wondering what I had done wrong.”

You stared at him with a frustrated glare standing up on your feet ready to say more but held your tongue. You sighed shakily digging through your purse, you opened your wallet slamming a hundred dollar bill on the counter.

“For the drinks,” you muttered angrily turning on your heels, he grabbed your arm his own gaze softening. He moved to speak but you stopped him yanking your arm back.

“Don’t…just leave me be,” you sighed in disbelief, how stupid you must’ve looked complaining to them about Ghost’s antics as they joked along. A complete and utter fucking fool you must’ve been. “Respectfully sir fuck you and the rest of the damn team, I want a transfer put in,” you spoke through gritted teeth, he didn’t say anymore letting you walk away.

[steddieas-shegoes]

i wanna make your heartbeat run like roller coasters

for @subeddieweek day one with the prompts manhandling and accidental subspace

rated e | 3,520 words | please check ao3 for tags

⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕

Eddie gets pushed against a lot of lockers.

It’s rarely accidental.

It’s always painful.

He doesn’t exactly have a lot of meat on his bones. Every hit leaves a bruise.

So when Steve fucking Harrington does his own dirty work for once, even though he graduated the way Eddie was supposed to, it’s just a bit embarrassing that it doesn’t hurt. It feels…kinda like he should be on his knees.

Which is really not something he wanted to think about when Steve’s got a hand on his shoulder, gripping hard enough to bruise, and something like fear in his eyes. Why is he scared?

“Did you sell weed to Robin?” he asked, teeth clenched.

Jesus fucking Christ. Steve’s got himself a band nerd girlfriend. How the hell did that happen?

“No, I sold to her friend. She waited by the treeline talking to herself the entire time.”

Eddie could hear his own voice shaking, but he wouldn’t back down. Black eyes were kinda metal weren’t they?

“Which friend?”

“Dude, I don’t even know. Someone else in band.”

The hand on his shoulder tightened and he barely bit back a whimper.

Steve’s eyes were very pretty this close. They were pretty from far away, too. Honestly, having Steve this close was probably rewiring something already broken in his brain. Having Steve’s hand on him like this was making his brain do somersaults trying to stay focused.

And then his hand was gone.

Eddie breathed in, breathed out.

“Sorry. I-” Steve shook his hands out and backed away. “Sorry.”

Eddie ignored whatever the fuck was happening in his stomach. It shouldn’t be happening so it isn’t, simple as that.

“Maybe you should ask your girlfriend if you’re so worried about her buying drugs.” Eddie should learn to shut his mouth at some point. “I only sell to the people who come to me first.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I remember.” Steve wiped his hand down his face. “Sorry again.”

Eddie looked him up and down, taking in the fact that he was genuinely apologizing. No one ever apologized for knocking him around, not even when it was on accident.

“You good?” He eventually asked.

“Yeah. Just, she’s been through a lot. I didn’t really want her to get pressured into buying something,” Steve sighed. “Has she come out of the band room yet? I’m supposed to bring her to work.”

“Uh, yeah man, everyone left an hour ago.”

Eddie watched Steve’s face fall as he checked his watch and must’ve realized the time.

“Shit. Okay. I must’ve lost track of time.”

Steve looked pitiful. Eddie’s seen dogs in alleys who looked less beaten down and neglected than Steve currently did.

“I can help you find her?” Eddie offered for some unknown reason.

Well, he knew the reason, but he was choosing to ignore it.

“She’s probably already at work. It’s my day off so I ended up getting distracted with something and didn’t realize it was so late,” Steve admitted, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. “Thanks, though.”

Wayne liked to tell Eddie he was too nice to undeserving people. Lord knows he gave his dad too many chances and got let down every time. He even tried to be friends with Tommy Hagan in middle school because he could sense something was going on with Tommy’s dad much like his own.

But Eddie liked to remind Wayne that Eddie is often considered undeserving and he took him in and gave him multiple chances regardless.

“You wanna smoke?” Eddie asked, despite knowing he barely has anything left after the long week of midterms for students. His busiest times of year were right before school breaks, midterms, finals, and graduation weekend. He usually stocked up, but with Rick being in prison again, he had to try to stretch what he had out.

“Uh…smoke what?”

“Weed.” Then it hit Eddie that maybe Steve was into harder stuff. But he hadn’t ever even bought from him in high school. Tommy had, Carol had, almost everyone at his parties had, but Steve never did. “I have regular old cigs too if you prefer.”

“Yeah, man, cool,” Steve sighed with relief.

“I got a spot behind the cafeteria if you wanna…”

“Sure, yep, let’s go,” Steve nodded, gesturing towards the double doors that led outside to the cafeteria and auditorium buildings.

As they walked, Eddie’s mind raced with thoughts of being alone with Steve, Steve’s arm brushing against his, Steve pushing him against the wall of the cafeteria, of Eddie dropping to his knees and unbuttoning Steve’s pants and-

“I’m really sorry about what happened back there.”

Steve’s voice shook him from his thoughts, but his dick didn’t quite get the memo. When did he even start getting hard?

“No worries, dude.” His face scrunched in disgust at calling Steve dude. What was next, the bro pat on the back? A fist bump? “Kinda jealous of how protective you are of your girlfriend.”

Okay, actually, what the fuck? Eddie needed to shut his fucking face, right the fuck now.

“She’s not my girlfriend, but uh, I don’t think you’re really her type either,” Steve gave him a look, one Eddie knew well and one he couldn’t quite believe he was seeing on Steve’s face right now.

“Right, right.” Eddie wouldn’t make him say it, especially if it was actually the look he thought it was, but maybe he could offer a little something in return. “Yeah, she’s not really my type either.”

Steve stopped just before they reached the hidden area behind the dumpster and picnic table for staff to smoke.

“Really?” Steve’s eyes were wide. “So you’re more into…someone like…me?”

Eddie was actually leaking into his goddamn boxers. Why was he getting turned on just talking to Steve?

“That would be one way of saying it,” Eddie said. Still easy enough to back out of it, at least. Could just say he likes women who wear polos and use more hairspray than Melvald’s has ever carried at any given time.

“Huh,” Steve continued walking to the picnic table, sitting on top of it and kicking some dirt off the bench by his legs for Eddie to sit. “So those rumors were true?”

“That depends on if I’m gonna make it back home to my very loving uncle if I say yes.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Obviously, I’m not gonna judge you about it when my best friend is-” He cut himself off and Eddie had to give him major credit. The Steve he used to know never would’ve cared if he outed someone, or at least never would have realized that was wrong. He coughed and then looked down at the bench. “You gonna sit?”

Eddie sat down on the bench, extremely close to Steve’s legs. Almost touching. Was that heat coming from his body or was Eddie just extremely warm?

“Did you actually wanna smoke or did you just wanna get out of the hall?” Steve asked after another minute of awkward silence.

“We can smoke.” Eddie reached into his pocket, hating how tight his jeans were in the front, and grabbed his lighter. His pack of cigarettes were usually stored in his van because he rarely smoked them, but luckily he’d brought them with him all week to sneak smokes between classes. He pulled one out and handed it to Steve.

He started to light his own when Steve leaned down, his face right next to Eddie’s, breath hot on his neck.

“You aren’t gonna light it for me?”

Eddie whimpered.

He would deny it a million times over if anyone asked. He almost had himself believing he imagined it.

But Steve laughed and backed away, pulling out his own lighter and giving Eddie a second to catch his breath.

What the fuck was that? Did Steve know he was making Eddie’s brain flatline?

He watched Steve take a long drag out of the corner of his eye, his mind shuffling between ‘what if he fucked me right here?’ and ‘get the hell away before your dick pops a hole in your jeans.’

Steve’s lips were so pink, and looked so soft, and just wet enough from licking his lips before taking the next drag, and Eddie was really going through it right now.

He’d gone through his Steve Harrington phase just like everyone else, thought it was over when he graduated. Had avoided the mall all summer when he heard he was working at Scoops so he didn’t have to see him in those tiny blue shorts. Had even gone so far as to avoid being around when the kids were being picked up from Hellfire because Dustin mentioned Steve was his ride.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Except for Eddie’s imagination was impressive, and his late night thoughts turned into very vivid scenes of Steve working him to the edge and making him beg, or pushing him against a locker and making him take his cock with barely any prep, or-

“Dude, anyone ever tell you you’re kinda space-y?” Steve’s voice once again lifted him from his thoughts, though he felt a bit hazy.

“Think I’m comin’ down with something,” Eddie squeaked out. All he was coming down with was a sickness deep in his chest: Harrington Heart-itis.

“Did you hit your head?” Steve sounded concerned now, setting his cigarette in the ashtray left on the table and moving so he had one leg on either side of Eddie. His fingers landed in Eddie’s hair, pulling his head closer and inspecting it for injury. “I didn’t think anything but your shoulders hit, but maybe-”

“No,” Eddie gulped. He should pull away. “Didn’t hit my head.”

Steve’s fingers tightened, not quite painfully, but enough of a bite to it that Eddie whimpered. Again.

Steve’s grip loosened, but his fingers stayed buried in his curls, and Eddie felt pressure guiding him to rest against Steve’s thigh.

“You eat today?” Steve asked, though his voice sounded kinda far away, like he was above the surface of the water and Eddie was sitting at the bottom of a pool looking up at the sun. “Eddie?”

“Hm?” Eddie blinked up at Steve. “I ate.”

“When?” Steve’s hand was cupping his cheek. “Lunch?”

“Mmm, no,” Eddie shook his head, blinked. “Breakfast? Cereal.”

Steve cursed under his breath.

He was so pretty. Had he been told how pretty he was? Surely when Nancy was with him, she told him.

Even if Robin liked women, she had to at least notice how pretty he was, right?

Steve’s sharp intake of breath somewhat centered Eddie.

“I’m gonna drive you home, okay?” Steve whispered, leaning down so his face was only inches away.

Eddie could kiss him. It would be the easiest thing in the world to lift his head the final two inches to make their lips meet.

“Eddie, eyes open,” Steve’s fingers tightened again, gaining Eddie’s full attention. “Should I call someone? Are you dynamic or something?”

Eddie’s brows furrowed. What did that even mean?

“Like the sugar thing?” Steve continued.

“Diabetic?” Eddie still felt a little hazy, but he was starting to come back to it with Steve’s hand migrating from his hair to his shoulder. “No, my sugar’s fine.”

“I’ve got some soda in my car. I can drive you home and then bring you to school in the morning. You probably shouldn’t drive like…this.”

It all came crashing down when Eddie realized how vulnerable he’d just been, how he’d actually lost track of time, not sure exactly how long he’d been sitting between Steve’s legs with his hands in his hair before he started coming back to earth. He stood up, maybe a bit too quickly, rocking a bit before finding his balance.

“Woah, take it easy.” Steve held his hands out, grasped his biceps to hold him steady. “You were pretty far out of it. Don’t rush it.”

How fucking embarrassing.

Eddie had only gone down that far one time with someone and they got freaked out when he was giggling and couldn’t walk on his own because his legs felt like jelly. But that had been on purpose. This was- Steve didn’t– Jesus Christ.

“I’m fine now.” Eddie was not fine. He knew what would happen if he left right now. Aftercare was a major part of this whether Steve was prepared for it or not. “Just, um, walk me to my van.”

Steve looked like a kicked puppy, but Eddie didn’t have the time to explain all of this to him.

Steve Harrington didn’t know how much of a freak Eddie was even if he did know he was gay. There’s no way Steve participated in any type of BDSM with the many girls he slept with in high school.

There was absolutely no fuckin’ way Nancy Wheeler let herself get tied to a bed and get fucked by Steve.

He shook his head at the thought.

“I’d feel a lot better if you let me drive you. I promise we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Steve sighed. “I just don’t know if you should drive when you went down so hard.”

“You have no idea what even happened,” Eddie argued, pacing back and forth. “I can drive. I just need to walk it off.”

“You don’t walk off subspace.”

Eddie froze. Steve was standing right in front of him now, concern in his big, stupid, adorable eyes.

“How do you even know about subspace?” Eddie whispered.

“I slept with half the high school and two guys in Indy. I know what subspace is, Eds.”

Eddie must still be in space. Or maybe another galaxy.

“Sorry, did you just say you slept with two guys in Indy?” Has Steve seriously fucked more guys than Eddie has? Eddie, the resident gay man of Hawkins, has only been with one man in his entire life and Steve has apparently slept with two?

“Well, I wasn’t gonna sleep with two men in Hawkins!” Steve threw his hands up before putting them on his hips. “I hit up a gay bar and didn’t realize it doubled as a BDSM club until I was already in it and then a nice guy showed me the ropes. Literally. There were ropes involved.”

Eddie snorted. Steve was pretty and funny. Great. Just what he needed.

“I have a quick recovery, so I’ll be fine to drive home,” Eddie tried, though even he could hear his voice still shaking.

“No one is that quick,” Steve wrapped an arm around his shoulders, tugging him into a hug. “Has that ever happened before?”

“Not like that.”

“We should probably talk about it.”

The last thing Eddie wanted to do was talk about how someone playing with his hair and moving his head around while showing the bare minimum of care was enough to send him into subspace, but he had a feeling Steve wasn’t gonna give up easily.

“Fine. What should we talk about? How no one ever touches me gently so the moment someone did, I slipped? How I’ve been avoiding seeing you anywhere in public because I knew it would make my crush come back full force? Oh, I know!” Eddie laughed hysterically as he pulled away. “Let’s talk about how I still think about you in your stupid basketball shorts when I’m fucking myself on four fingers, which is never enough because I can never reach the spot I need to. Or how I once cut out your yearbook photo to keep for jerking off material because my mags weren’t enough. Could even talk about how earlier I wanted you to put your leg between mine so I could rub off on you. Or maybe the weather if you’d prefer that.”

Eddie was panting, could feel the heat on his face rising as he realized everything he’d just said, admitted, to Steve.

He’d never said any of that out loud. Shit, he’d barely said most of it in his own head.

Steve’s arms were pulling him in and Eddie let himself have it, let himself feel small for just a moment. If Steve wasn’t completely disgusted by what he said, then he would at least accept this offering of kindness for now.

They stayed like that for a while, long enough that Eddie started to wonder if he could just live here, right in Steve’s arms.

“It’s looking a little cloudy,” Steve said quietly, hands still rubbing Eddie’s back slowly.

“What?” Eddie still felt a little out of it, but that was entirely out of left field.

“You said we could talk about the weather.”

Eddie snorted. “Oh my God, you’re so-” Eddie looked up at Steve, who was smiling down at him. He felt off-kilter, being the object of that particular Steve look. “Stupid.”

It was fond, probably too fond for someone who needed to protect himself from whatever the hell was happening. He needed to shut this down.

“It’s been mentioned,” Steve’s eyes flickered down to Eddie’s lips, then back up to his eyes. “You good to head out?”

Eddie started to nod, but stopped.

This was his only chance. He wasn’t dumb enough to think he’d ever be alone with Steve again. If he was gonna kick start a spiral over feelings, he might as well go all out.

He stood at his full height, almost eye level with Steve, and leaned in.

The kiss was not even close to perfect. In fact, as far as kisses go, it was probably in the bottom three for Steve. Eddie chose not to think about how he screwed it all up.

But once the initial shock wore off, and Eddie put his teeth away, Steve’s hand cupped Eddie’s cheek and he licked past his lips.

Leave it to Steve to turn this around, make it something worth the risk.

Their lips moved in sync, both of them deepening the kiss without making it too wet, too filthy for a public space.

It was, dare he say, romantic.

Most kisses Eddie had managed to have were dirty and rough, hidden away in dark bars and alleyways, not exactly prime teen romance.

Of course Steve was good at this, of course he made Eddie melt against him, and of course Eddie was going to start writing hearts around Steve’s name in his notebook as if they were high school sweethearts.

When they pulled apart, it took him a minute to open his eyes. How stereotypical.

Steve was already looking at him, softer than he probably deserved.

“You’re pretty good at that,” Eddie breathed out.

“It’s been mentioned.” Steve’s lips turned up in a smirk before he pulled away completely. “Let’s go.”

They walked back through the school, stopping at Eddie’s locker to grab one of his textbooks as if he actually would use it. By now, he didn’t really need the textbooks to get his work done. And he was actually committed to getting it done this time around.

They were quiet as they continued out to the parking lot, only a few cars belonging to teachers left, maybe a few students stuck here for football or basketball practice. Steve’s car was towards the back, but Eddie’s was almost all the way in the grass field by the main road. It was less risky leaving it further away, less likely that anyone would slash the tires or key the side.

“You’re sure you can drive?” Steve asked as they stood outside his car.

“Yeah. Only five minutes to the trailer. It’ll be fine.” Eddie shrugged like it was nothing, but he was actually a little worried the kiss set him too off balance to focus on the road. Fuck the subspace, Steve’s lips were like discovering a new galaxy.

“Can I call you later? To check on you?” Steve seemed hesitant to ask.

“Uh, yeah? Do you…have my number?”

Steve shook his head, opening the door to his car and reaching into the glovebox to find a pen and an old receipt. As Eddie wrote down the number to the trailer, he thought about how much worse this would be tomorrow, how shitty it would be to have had this absolutely out of this world experience with the one person he never thought he could and then be left with scraps for the rest of his life.

“You uh, you don’t have to call, man. Don’t feel pressured. My uncle will be home so it’s not like I’ll be alone.”

Steve took the paper and pen back, folding the paper and putting it in his pocket and throwing the pen back into the car.

“I’m gonna call.” Steve moved a piece of Eddie’s hair from in front of his face. “You got a phone in your room?”

“No, but the one we have reaches to the bathroom?” Why the hell did he need one in his room?

“Good. Need you to be alone.”

“Steve, what the hell does that mean?”

“How else am I supposed to tell you what I wanna do to you?”

Well, fuck.

Day two: ao3 | tumblr

[bindeds]

[ DON’T BE SORRY. ] : 5.1k words. 𖤐 LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR X FEM READER. — you’re dating the big boss of hell himself, but it’s a sticky situation when you’re also good friends with a tech-savvy overlord who believes the cause of your boyfriend’s daughter is absolute bullshit.

#tags. slight hurt/comfort, slight jealousy, nsfw (+18), fluff, smut, vox being a hell of a friend, lucifer being vulnerable as hell,

a/n. fuuuuck i forgot to post this under the request but this was the request that i wrote this for <33 didn''t even remember they wanted fluff which is lucky bc i suck at fluff so i don't write it too often but i ended up writing in fluff anyway bc it felt appropriate for the fic SO

masterlist. request something :>

“Sir, someone is here to see you.”

Vox growled. His office would have been pitch black if it weren’t for the multitude of tv screens that stared right back at him, boring holes into his screen. They buzzed and whined with a cyan glare bright enough to light the entire pentagram. Claw marks left the edges of his head unpolished, his bowtie askew as his teeth grinded so hard he wanted to encounter a system error.

“Tell Val I am not in the mood for sorting out whatever’s got his panties in a twist this time—”

“Someone else, sir.”

“Well don’t just stand there you useless fuck! Who the fuck is it?” Static shocks ruptured from the wires on his head as he jumped out of his chair fuming. 

The employee pulled one of the handles of Vox’s grand doors. In pranced a sunlit woman with a grin that stained her cheeks red. On her arms were shopping bags lined all the way down their forearms, marking their weight on her flesh.

You pulled your rose-tinted sunglasses away from your face as you cocked a brow.

“What, are you not happy to see me Vicky?” 

“When are you gonna stop calling me that, you absolute slut!” Vox beamed, and as if a new line of code had entered his program, he shedded his jacket off to peel your shopping bags off you as he set them on his couch.

“What brings you back here after all this time, whore? And whose money are you wearing because I know there’s no goddamn way that’s all yours,” Vox laughed through his clearly lighthearted remarks. 

“Whatever. Whore is right because you’ll never guess who I’m fucking.”

.

On the edge of the pride ring resided halls and halls of vintage red wallpaper and intricate gold decor. Knocking frantically at her father’s door just to ask where his partner had gone was never how Charlie would have imagined her morning to go, ever, but here she was, knees wobbling with her hands clasped together as she waited no longer than a second before she had her fist in the air again to—

“Charlie?” 

“Dad!”

When Charlie had asked of your whereabouts, Lucifer simply frowned, though a hint of terror struck his shrunken pupils.

“Uh—I thought she was with you? Don’t you guys have that trust building exercise thing on today—”

“Yes! Yes that is precisely why I am panicking—she’s not in her room and she never misses our gatherings! Dad, how do you not know where she is?” Charlie screeched anxiously.

“Relax, Charlie I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for—”

“For her not to tell her own boyfriend where she’s going?” Charlie seethed with dirt kicked into her tone. 

“Let me call her, okay?” Lucifer pulled his phone out and speed dialed you. 

Something in his room buzzed intermittently. 

Charlie peered into her father’s room, only to find another phone rattling on the further bedside table.

Lucifer looked over his shoulder to the same view. His shoulders dropped.

“Ohhh no.”

.

“Face it baby, I got bigger bucks than daddy could ever conjure up.”

“Vox!” You punched him in the shoulder, unable to hold back laughs that pulled at the bottom of your stomach.

“What? Oh my god, you actually call him that in bed don’t you, you bitch? Holy shit, you really are a slut!” Vox cracked up after you both had left his building. “Where to?” 

“A few blocks away I got something to show you in the ma …”

Your lips fell numb when your gaze fell on a certain man with a white overcoat tailing in the wind as he approached your direction with a storm in his steps. He had been looking at his sides—your hand moved to shove Vox even before your body could follow.

“Ow, what—”

“Go.”

“Babe, what’s—”

“Vox go GO! Back in now!” You spun him on his heel and elbowed him back into the glass doors of his building lobby.

“Honey?” 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—”

He called your name, loud and clear as day that even the ruby skies of hell echoed it.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Vox deadpanned.

“Hey!”

Both yours and Vox’s heads turned to the sound, Lucifer just a few strides away from possibly opening a portal down a ring.

“You!” Lucifer barked, gaze locked with Vox’s. “The fuck are you doing calling my girlfriend ‘babe’?” 

“Oh, that’s not—”

“Lie to me and I swear to fucking god I’ll make sure they’ll be prying you for parts.”

“Luci.”

“What?” His head snapped in your direction.

A silent gasp escaped you. 

His shoes hadn’t nearly been dragged through as much gravel as his voice had been. It was something he’d dug up from the depths of his chest like it was nothing—and it brimmed with the filth of his own disdain. 

Lucifer blinked hard as he shook his head. “Honey, I didn’t—”

“We’re just friends.”

“I know that but—”

“It’s an expression.”

Lucifer blinked a few times again, and with each blink he lost more and more tension in his brows, his shoulders—even his lips parted, perhaps to say something, perhaps not.

You and Vox were frozen halfway through the door so Lucifer kicked him in and shut the door quickly to leave you and himself out on the street.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?” Lucifer asked, and it was like he placed a pillow to your head with the way his tone softened. His thumb had somehow ended up stroking soft circles on the back of your palm as he held your hand.

Vox stayed inside but his prying eyes stared through the glass nonetheless. He crossed his arms.

“Don’t look at him, darling,” Lucifer consoled with a lowered voice. He delicately took your chin and pivoted it back to him. “Look at me.”

“Look, can we talk about this back at the hotel?” You asked, but with the tone you used, you were teetering on the edge of pleading. “I’m … I’m sorry.”

“Oh, honey,” Lucifer cooed, tucking away any small pieces of hair that hung over your face. “Of course we can.”

All you could do was give Vox a weary glance before you ducked down into Lucifer’s car and disappeared in the distance.

.

The ride back had not been short of thick silences that hung in the air. Everytime you looked to him for some sort of emotion, there was nothing for you to read; his complexion was a still pond resting under the moon’s grace. Not even anger bubbled up the surface—and this is solely based on your assumption of what he must have been feeling, because he was a blank page. It’s only reasonable. 

Lucifer stopped at the newly built hazbin parking lot but didn’t pull out the key.

He looked at you expectantly, turning even his upper body to face you. 

You bit your lip.

“You don’t wanna go inside first?” A squeak of a voice was all you managed.

“I don’t want Charlie to see us upset,” Lucifer reasoned solemnly as he frowned at the floor before he returned his attentive gaze to you. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can work it out in here.”

“I’m … ashamed, okay,” you exhaled, folding your arms over your chest as you slouched forward. “I’m in hell for a reason. I know it looks bad but I’ve known Vox since he was alive. And I still believe in Charlie’s cause! I’m doing better … you know that, right?”

“Of course, I do, sweetie,” Lucifer blurted immediately, holding your arms like he was the glue to keep you from crumbling apart. “But why did you … did you think I wasn’t going to understand if you had told me?”

“Yes,” you admitted. “Even I wouldn’t have understood if I were in your shoes. I mean, I act like a completely different person around him. And I know what Vox has done, trying to send in Sir Pentious as a spy. It’s horrible. But he wasn’t always like that. Or, maybe he was but—never with me.”

“Honey, I trust you more than just about anyone in this hell. And fuck, that’s difficult in this side of the world, right? I mean—I just … you had me thinking the worst. Well, maybe not the worst but—”

“You thought I was cheating on you, didn’t you?”

“No, never,” Lucifer denied immediately as his eyes widened but his brows furrowed. “I knew it was some kind of mistake. I know you’d never do that to me. But you know … catching up with an overlord like it’s a regular tuesday still raises a few questions if—”

“I know that. I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’m sorry,” you repeated rigidly, curling into yourself so much that your head landed on his shoulder as he still held your arms. 

Lucifer pulled back to hold your face by the cheeks, and you didn’t struggle against him as he pressed his forehead on yours, his hat tilting up to accomodate you. 

“How about a kiss and we’ll call it even?” He smiled, and you felt his warmth spread to your cheeks.

You grinned back. “Okay.”

You tilted your chin up and gave him a kiss, and both of you had sustained it longer than either of you had expected. Your hand cupped his own over your cheek. 

Your lips finally parted, but not much before you both reconnected again, then again, and the third time your mouth was a little more open—and Lucifer’s tongue slithered inside. 

Your tongue met his, and they rolled over each other every time you kissed him. A few more kisses, and suddenly you were biting his lip lightly. He chuckled.

“I can see you’re eager to make it up to me, princess,” he said in that voice he knew drove you up the wall.

“I am,” you hummed, a little more innocently than you had intended. 

“Well, what are you gonna do?” He asked, genuine curiosity brewing in a higher tone.

You slipped away from his flowerbud grasp and pulled the lever of your seat. The backrest declined all the way backwards, and you laid down comfortably while your thumb slid under your dress and hooked around something that was already mildly damp.

“I’m gonna sit back …”

You chuckled as Lucifer’s eyes followed your every movement like a moth to a lamp; he followed the way your underwear slid down your knees before you folded your legs up to your chest to fully rid yourself from the garment. You tossed your underwear in his face before he could get a good view of what he’s getting himself into. 

He shook his head in a jolt, crumpling your panties and stuffing them into his pocket anxiously. But by then you were modest again, with your dress covering your thighs but still riding up dangerously high. 

“And let you decide the rest,” you finished in a thin breath.

“Goodness, okay, woo! Okay—” Lucifer sputtered and fanned his overcoat as he averted his gaze. It didn’t last long when his gaze gravitated towards your core that had been concealed but outlined your dress.

You bit your lip. “Well?”

Lucifer’s shoulder emerged from his coat as he shrugged one side of it off, and your gaze magnetized to the view as it slipped down him like a snake traversing down a tree. 

He planted his knee on the closer edge of your seat and it didn’t take long for him to shift your legs closer together, allowing space for his knees on either side of your thighs. Though, steadying himself naturally had his chest protruding as he held onto the car ceiling for support. His muscles peeked through the folds of his dress shirt, and the same can be said with his chest under his waistcoat. But that—that was no complaint. 

He finally fell to you with only his forearms to keep him up. His eyelids sank, his gaze indecisive between your eyes and your dry lips.

He settled on neither when he ducked below your jaw and planted kisses along it before he strayed downwards. 

The spaghetti string of your dress slid down your shoulder the more your squirmed at Lucifer’s nibbles. You knew the moment he caught sight of this because he hesitated for a tenth of a second. 

He grinned. He took it between his fingers delicately and slid it down further. 

“Whoops,” he grinned. 

Glossy silicon mocked him as it peeked out from what had been peeled off you. 

“Luci, careful with that, I’ll need to put it back on later—”

Lucifer tore it off you anyway, tossing it to the back with his overcoat. “I’ll give you my coat when we go in, you’ll be fine.”

“Luci!” You laughed as he did the same with the other, your nipples stiffened from the cold air of the car. 

Lucifer sat on your pelvis, his hands traveling under your boobs to cradle them. 

You both have had sex multiple times together, and yet every time he removes undergarments off you, he enters a dazed trance like it was something new. Something to bask in the wonders of. 

He massaged your breasts gently, and it didn’t take long before he ducked down and had his lips wrapped around one of your nipples, one hand twisting and playing with the other.

A noise bubbled in your throat but you held your breath and bit your lip. Watching Lucifer hadn’t been any help; he cocked a brow at you, and a cheeky grin still made its way to the red circles on his cheeks as he quicked his tongue’s flicks against you. You gritted your teeth, a squeak making it past your lips. 

His hand abandoned the other nipple, but before you could whine in protest a new sensation rose in your lower stomach as Lucifer shifted his entire body further down.

His fingers had already been deep beneath your folds, your clit sitting pretty between as he pinched it and rubbed it in his grasp.

“Luci … fuck …”

“Atta girl,” he chuckled. Hell, you hated just how raspy his voice gets when he’s worked up. That by itself had been a leg-opener all on its own. “That’s it. Let me hear you sing.”

Your legs flinched at the jolt of pleasure his fingers brought, and Lucifer took this opportunity to lift the hem of your dress for easier access—and perhaps, a pretty view.

Every so often, he’d bring the threat of pushing his middle finger past your walls, but through the haze of pleasure, it was impossible to read his intentions when he easily could have been using your juices to lubricate his ministrations on your clit.

It had been like the wave of a wand, the way his free hand undid his tie. It dangled loose below his collar that he used to straighten out so diligently; something once so clean soon turned into a crumpled mess in your name. 

His wrist pivoted down to the buttons on his waistcoat. The faintest flick of his thumb and suddenly his waistcoat hung dead on his torso before he rubbed faster on your clit, making your squeal. 

Cold air brushed past your arousal at the sudden absence of him, and your walls throbbed against each other in response; they bruised and ached and when Lucifer turned down the brightness of the car light, it was all you could feel besides the leather your nails were sinking into.

“Luci, please …”

“Please what, honey?”

“It hurts,” you whined. You didn’t mean to, and in fact a burning sense of shame rose up to your neck and cheeks as sweat tore through the pores on your forehead but all you could do was grab his hand.

“I’m coming, daddy’s coming.”

A slow zipping sound ensued and just as quickly, the head of his erection pressed into your folds and your dripping walls pushed back from the pressure.

You moaned and grabbed Lucifer’s shoulders out of raw instinct, which brought him closer to you. 

“You want it all, princess?”

“Yes, fuck yes,” your mouth sagged numb from having to carry your writhing heart in your throat. The vulnerability of his skin on yours, the way his head was just so warm compared to the cold air earlier—your pussy throbbed once more.

 “Are you sure?”

“Please please please Luci I can’t—oh! Fuck!”

He pushed his length into you, your neck arching back as you grabbed a fistful of his shirt from where your hands hung around his neck.

Your throat clogged with the embarrassing sounds you knew you would have let out if you had no restraint left. You closed your eyes, knowing well that they were halfway to the back of your head. 

Your stomach seemed to make way for his size in you, tossing and spreading the ache to your limbs as your entire body steeled to accommodate him and the space he filled in you. 

“Are you okay?” He asked. 

You nodded, and a hole punctured through your throat as you sighed shakily. “Yes, god—” 

“Don’t say his name,” Lucifer breathed, his hand soft on your neck as he looked at your lips then back up at you. “If you have to say someone’s name, let it be mine.”

“I’m sorry.” Was the first thing your brain conjured, and the only thing you could utter when all else in there had been undone. 

Lucifer kissed your jaw. “Don’t be sorry baby.”

He took your lips in his, his forked tongue brushing past your teeth once more. “Don’t be sorry.”

It was barely considered movement when he pulled out less than half his entire length and pushed in gently, as if you were something fragile he couldn’t afford to drop. You bit your lip and hummed at how smooth he slid into you, how your juices coated him beyond what was needed. 

He pulled out quickly but reentered languidly, like a wave finding its way to shore your core clenched at the nerves that tingled in you, the bruises almost sated in what it yearned for as he thrusted again, and your heart spewed.

“Fuck, if you make a sound like that again I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself,” Lucifer panted. “You’re so pretty, it makes me tremble.”

You reached up to give him another kiss, tilting your head along with the circles spinning in it. “Do whatever you want to me. You deserve that much.”

“Yeah? Well, I want to treat you like fucking royalty. Savor every inch if you,” Lucifer hissed through his pleasure. A choked moan left you, causing Lucifer to smile. “Yeah, see? Just like that princess. Fuck, taking me so well …”

With how soft his thrusts were, pressure subsided into more liquid pleasure that sloshed over your nerves. They lit up like christmas lights in your brain as you both moved in tandem to Lucifer’s pace. 

A fire had started at your nape from the body heat that had nowhere to go, sweat dripping from your hairline and paving wavy lines of hair that caused your forehead to glisten. Your collarbones warmed up in a different way, Lucifer’s hot breath filling the space between the both of you. 

His thrusts grew anxious over time, but his hips never once hit your ass which might have scalded your stomach further; the fact that this man possessed an iron grip over his control in his strokes, he had been careful not to taint you—he only took from places he knew both of you would be enraptured in—and absolutely nothing less. 

“Honey, I can’t—” he hissed through gritted teeth as his fingers curled in your hair. His eyes wandered down to how your breasts bobbed to his strokes. He moaned your name, and if the car hadn’t been shaking from Lucifer’s rutting, it shook from the way he proclaimed your name and dropped his head like he was bowing to a god. “Holding me so tight—you worried I’m gonna let go, sweetie?”

“No—ngh! You just feel so good I c-can’t!” You yelped in time with each thrust that followed. “Luci, I—fuck!”

His head perked up, just like the bundle of nerves in that oh-so familiar spot. An old friend. 

Lucifer gave a determined grin, sweat trickling down his cheek as he paused to wipe it away. 

“Well, hello,” he greeted in a low sultry voice.

He resumed fucking you, but this time he had you screaming his name as his length rubbed up against that spot your body purred to. You shivered and your walls clenched, causing Lucifer to falter.

“F-Fuck, that’s it, good girl,” he grunted in between controlled thrusts that had your gut squeezing. He never once missed. 

When your walls fluttered, Lucifer chuffed through his teeth and through the fog of your satisfaction, you indulged in the smell of cotton candy sweat. 

“You’re close, princess, so close, I can feel it.”

You gritted your teeth with whatever strength you had left, even your hands had begun to slip from Lucifer’s shoulders. 

 “You?” Was all you could manage. 

“Me? Baby, seeing you like this has me fucked out,” Lucifer huffed. “Shit!”

You squeezed his shoulders before he could pull out.

“In me, Luci!”

He froze, shaking his head to wave away his own daze to focus on you, the things your … request entailed. 

“Darling, I don’t have a condom on,” he whispered as the inner corners of his brow quivered. 

“You’d make beautiful fucking babies, Luci—I wanna carry them.” Your voice had been obliterated from the sounds Lucifer had fucked out of you. Wispy breaths was what it had become—but the red in your cheeks and your weakened yet felicious state made Lucifer smile.

“You’re not thinking straight,” he said your name and it was nearly enough to get you back down from the clouds. “C’mon, honey …”

“Luci …” you whined. “You’re so goddamn hot when you’re being responsible …”

“Yeah?” He laughed softly, cradling your cheek in his hand. 

“Yeah …”

“Let’s finish you up, okay?” He reached up to kiss your forehead but you squeaked from the fact that his length slid deep into you in the process. “Ah, sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry, baby,” you quoted him from last time, and his surprise melted into a warm smile instead. “Please fuck me.”

“As you wish.”

You screamed brokenly as he continued his ruthless pace from before, and he remembered the exact angle to hit. Your nerves were about ready to jump out from your body as you skyrocketed back into the clouds, your orgasm coming sooner than you could warn him. 

“Cumming!” He gritted through his teeth as his horns shot up from his head and you both came together with Lucifer’s cum hitting your dress instead.

Your head hung off the car seat’s headrest. Sweat shimmered on the leather you laid on, and your legs trembled from how long they’d been held at the same position. The only thing you two shared now was open-mouth breaths. You thought of moving, but your muscles were well past its limit to even be lifted.

Lucifer twisted around to grab tissues from the passenger seat compartment. In just a few seconds, he wiped out most of the evidence of himself on your dress. By this time, his horns were long gone and his eyes had returned back to its original form.

“Fuck … I didn’t think this through …” Lucifer grumbled to himself as he hit his temple with his palm. He ran his fingers through his hair before he mustered a weak smile for you. “Wait here, I’ll grab your clothes from your room.”

You exhaled audibly as he vanished with a swirl of sparkling red smoke. 

A few breaths of silence by yourself wasn’t ideal, especially when you felt the whine and ache of your limbs in the fact that you were as good as scattered leaves across autumn grass. 

Just then, your phone buzzed from the cupholder.

You winced as you bent to take it.

Brat >:)

you better not be fucking him right now i swear to FUCKING GOD [ 13:06 ]

you disappear for years and suddenly you’re back and you’re telling me YOU’RE DISAPPEARING AGAIN?&2$:$$3;: FUCKING [ 13:05 ]

HELLO? THE FUCK [ 12 :57 ]

i’m not gonna let even the king of hell himself keep you from me [ 12:16 ]

because i am not done with you yet [ 12:15 ]

bitch you better show me whatever the fuck you wanted to show me earlier before daddy decided to whisk you away like some fucking fairy tale prince [ 12:15 ]

You chuckled as you swiped the notification.

You [ 13:06 ] : bitch you know the dick is good cmon now

Vox [ 13:06 ] : i mean this in the most platonic and murderous way possible, i will fuck you myself if that’ll get you to ACTUALLY BE A FRIEND AND VISIT ME INSTEAD OF DISAPPEARING FOR YEARS

Vox [ 13:06 ] : i already have to deal with the heartbreak of al

Vox [ 13:06 ] : ykw doesn’t matter THE POINT IS THAT YOU ARE THE SHITTIEST FUCKING FRIEND AND I MISS YOU IS THAT NOT REASON ENOUGH

You [ 13:07 ] : okay, okay, how about this sunday then lmaoo

Vox [ 13:07 ] : you better fucking believe i’ll be blowing a fucking hole through that radio prick’s hotel just to pick you the fuck up asshole

You [ 13:07 ] : if i didn’t know any better vicky i would have assumed you’re actually coming to pick alastor up HAHAHAHAAHAHAH

Vox : ( typing … )

Your phone levitated out of your hands and when you followed where it zipped off to—

“Luci!” You sprung up from the declined backrest in surprise.

Lucifer squinted at your phone as he swiped his thumb down on your screen.

“First of all, I’m honored that you’re telling people how well I pleasure you. Second of all,” Lucifer paused, leaning into you as he used his free arm to hold himself up to you. “Vox is in a world of hurt if he thinks I’m gonna let him lay a finger on you.”

“Yeah?” You copied the way Lucifer says it and watched as his face reddened.

You noticed your spare clothes on his lap and you lifted the dress over your head and discarded it on the floor of the backseat. 

You held out your hand for Lucifer to hand you your clothes.

He simply looked at your hand, then back at your naked body, then back at your hand as took it in his own.

You laughed. Hard.

“What—what’s happening why’re you—”

“The clothes, baby!” 

“Oh—Oh! Right! Shit!” He finally handed you an oversized shirt, fresh underwear and a pair of shorts you used to at-home wear. “I thought you were asking for another round or something, holy shit—”

“I mean …” you smirked. 

“Honey …” Lucifer warned, as if trying to keep a predator from attacking. 

“Oh? You don’t wanna? My bad,” you replied innocently. “I was just wondering if Vox was free tonight—”

“I know you’re trying to get a rise out of me but honey …” Lucifer trailed off as he flipped your phone and shoved it into his back pocket. 

He crossed over to your seat once more and pinned you back down where you once were, one knee pressed on the side of your seat as his hands ended up on either side of your neck.

“I hate to remind you that I am the fucking devil,” his voice dripped with a poison much worse than what you’ve heard from Alastor’s static. His horns hadn’t sprouted out yet but with his eyes aching red, it wasn’t too far from reappearing. “And if you love me as much as I love you then there is no goddamn way in this realm I am sharing you with anyone else let alone some overlord who thinks Alexander is worth anyone’s fucking time.”

“It’s Alastor and—” you paused, combing through your hair idly. “Luci, Vox is only a friend from the living world—“

“A friend who thinks he can fuck you.”

“He’s in hell for a reason.” You crossed your arms.

Lucifer sighed and closed his eyes, the red dissipating from them once they reopened. 

“Listen, honey, I—” Lucifer’s gaze lifted away from you for a moment, almost like he’d been overwhelmed with the words clogged in his throat. “You’re someone I can’t afford to … mess up … again. And I know that means simply letting you be. But also, I’ve just—I’ve lost so much, and I only just got Charlie back so I …”

You lifted your arm as your hand fell on his cheek, your thumb softly stroking him back and forth. 

He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath as he placed his hand on yours. 

“I know Vox is just a friend. And I know it’s insane to think I’ll lose you to him, but … at the end of the day, this is hell. He still mocks the very thing we’re trying to achieve and I get that you’re not like that and that you’re not easily manipulated but I just …”

“Luci …” you muttered. You sat up and kissed him chastely on the cheek. 

“I think about losing you a lot. I think about it to an irrational degree. So it’s not actually something you can fix. It’s something I have to do on my own.”

“Even if that’s true, I can still do my best to be with you and make sure you feel loved everyday. I really was a dick today, I had no idea you were … I’m s—”

“It’s okay. We …” Lucifer chuckled weakly. “We made up, remember?”

“Yeah,” you smiled. “Luci … you know I love you, right?”

“Like the sun loves the moon,” Lucifer said. 

And you knew where it came from, maybe not its exact whereabouts but just how deep it was embedded to him, that statement; he himself had witnessed the creation of the sun and the moon. He knew the tides the two shared, the way their yearning for each other’s pull had been the natural way of things, the only way the people could ever experience day like they do night.

I know you love me because we love like it’s fate.

.

You and Lucifer walked into the hotel, your back slouched with Lucifer’s overcoat hanging over your shoulders as you folded your arms beneath them. 

“Hey Charlie,” Lucifer greeted, and he told her daughter who was already making her way to you that you weren’t feeling well and that you needed rest. Of course, Charlie nodded and resumed her activities with her other friends. 

You retired to Lucifer’s room, the left side of the bed while he took the right.

“I love you,” your chest exhausted what it had been used to holding for him, until you saw him.

“I love you, too,” Lucifer hummed back, a sigh escaping him like cherry blossoms in the wind. 

“I love you for the soul you are beneath your bones.”

[divinegrey]

ᴘᴀɪɴᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴏᴡɴ ʙʟᴜᴇ / ᴊɪɴx x ꜰ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

sorry for the wait everybody!! been writing other things in the meantime, arcane hasn't been my sole focus. also i have homework and exams. but here's something to appease all of you!! anon, i hope i did this prompt justice!

prompt: I'd like to request a Jinx x Fem! Reader. I like the idea of the reader being a follower of Jinx, as I think the dynamic could be fun. I think it could be cool to explore a follower of Jinx getting to know her and realizing that she's more than just a symbol. She's a multifaceted individual.

words: 1585

warnings: none

It started when she caught you tagging the side of a building. With her face, no less. 

With all the shit going down in Zaun in the wake of Silco’s death and every gang leftover fighting for scraps of power, it was only time before Jinx caught up to the fact that while yes, her face is plastered everywhere on wanted posters, there are about a dozen more spray-painted graffiti tags of her over them. Which was the goal of what you were doing when she dropped down from a building and walked to your side. 

All she did was look at the statuesque version of her face, washed in shades of blue, and say, “My nose doesn’t look like that.” 

And she was right.

Of course, with time, you got better at it. The wanted posters did a mean disservice, honestly. The only thing they got correct were the pink eyes, pink eyes that followed you when you went to your shitty box of an apartment and flopped onto a mattress flattened by years of use. You’d go to sleep, wake up, grab your paint duffel, and head back out again. The nice thing about Zaun is that there’s always an empty spot just waiting to be tagged. 

Somehow, Jinx always finds you. 

“You know people see you as a leader, right?” You say, shaking a can of neon pink, the ball rattling around inside the canister. You glance over your shoulder to where Jinx sits on some pipes connected to the wall, her braids dangling and the gold bullet casings wrapped around reflecting the faint light that falls through the fissures. With a gesture to your own head of hair, dyed an insane hodge-podge of bright colors, blue included, you continue, “Silco’s gone. Whole world down here has turned upside down. But for the first time in a while, we’ve got hope. Cuz of you. Cuz of what you did to those fuckin’ Pilties.” 

“For all the good it did,” Jinx remarks, a dryness to her tone you’ve come to know and love. 

“I’m serious. C’mon, you can’t tell me you don’t know the reason why I keep painting you? Why a dozen other taggers I know keep painting you? Why the color blue is nearly sold out in every damn shop?” You kneel down, arcing a curve of pink paint along the grey brick wall, moving quick and precise. Overthinking it makes it worse. “I’m not wearing spray-painted clothes in your colors for nothin, Jinx.” 

She turns, peering at you. In the shadows, her eyes seem to reflect some more, glowing like a cat’s would. “Because y’all have some weird, deluded sense that I’m a leader, or somethin’.” 

“You are. To me. To us.” You point at the other tags in the alleyway, some of them copies of the same mark you’ve seen a dozen times around town. Jinx’s name, sigils of BOOM! and explosives doodled about. You twist and take a seat on the scaffolding, your legs dangling off the side of it. “I didn’t know you when I first started drawing you. I heard what you did, and I thought damn, there’s someone out there willing to actually do something. In a single day, you did more than Silco ever did in years. Sure, we might be going head long into a war, but dying free is better than living under someone else’s boot.” 

Jinx hums. She leaps off the pipes, crossing the gap between you and her with ease, landing on the wooden scaffolding. She straightens up, gazing at the half-finished tag you’re working on. With a hum, she turns to you, and puts something in your hand. Before you have the time to look down and figure out what it is, Jinx says, “Nozzle control. Quality on some of your cans are shit, no offense. Slap that thing on it and you won’t have an issue after that.” 

“Oh, thanks—” 

“Don’t mention it!” Jinx steps off the scaffolding, landing on the ground below with a THUD. “And for the record, I ain’t the kinda person to follow.” 

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that to convince me!” You call down, grinning from ear to ear. Her brows furrow together, then a small huff, a hint of a smile on her own face. She walks away, off to do… whatever it is that she does when she’s not hanging out with you. 

It isn’t for some time that you see her again. You’d say you’re worried, but you pass through the crowds hearing whispers of Jinx sightings. Every day, it seems another head of blue hair appears, the quiet signs of revolution brewing in the heart of Zaun as the enforcers grow more and more strict, searching anyone and everyone for some hint or clue to find the one that destroyed the Council Chamber in Piltover. You’ll never say a word. 

You walk into your apartment. Work was… work, boring and mind-numbing as it always is. You wonder if you can handle another day of it, but another day will bring another chance of seeing her out there, so you decide not to fly off the handle just yet. You shrug off the soot-stained work clothes, and where you reach for your paint-splattered jacket, it isn’t there. 

Instead, a note. 

Never had anyone believe in me quite like you. The Hound’s statue, midnight. Come and get it. 

With the pink lettering and the doodles of monkeys and bombs scribbled across the page, it doesn’t need to be said just who left this note. You snatch it off the wall, utterly beaming; Gently, you fold it into fourths, tucking it into your shirt. Thank god for the late shift— less waiting!

Any of the weariness you might’ve felt before is gone as you race through the streets, taking any and every shortcut you know. The night is quiet, what with the enforced curfew put up by the Pilties to discourage wandering, not that they’ve done a good job of it. Zaun is Zaun, and the cogs down here will always keep turning, whether Piltover likes it or not. 

When you arrive at the open plaza where the statue erected to Vander, the Hound of the Underground, is, your mouth drops in shock to find the entire plaza covered, every square inch of it, in neon paint. Sigils upon sigils that you have seen time and time again, glowing in the dark. It reaches all the way to the statue, pink highlights in Vander’s hair and blue accents along his metal jacket. 

Sitting on the shoulder of the statue, paint can in one hand and your jacket in the other, is Jinx. 

“Shoulda known you’d be a little early. Good thing, I work fast,” Jinx remarks. She crooks a finger at you to come closer, and you do, taking care to step over the paint lines on the stone. You’re a little in awe of the work she’s done— how has nobody taken notice? Come to think of it, you heard there was a scuffle a few blocks away. The logistics don’t seem to matter anymore the closer you get to her. 

You arrive at the base of the statue. “How’d you even know where I live?” 

“Sweets, there are a lot of things I know about you. And a lotta things you know about me. Things that might drive other people away, but not you,” Jinx says, something like an angel as she looks down upon you from the statue. In the flash of a second and the trace of neon light left in the sky, she’s standing in front of you, your back pressed against the statue. The beam of moonlight that breaks through shines on her, her shimmer-pink eyes locked onto your frame. “You keep sticking to the inside my brain, can’t stop thinking about you.” 

“Could say the same for you,” you reply, a little breathless. “Why’d you do all this? Get my jacket and bring me here?” 

“Cuz you showed me somethin’ important. That people, for whatever crazy reason they got in their head, believe in me,” Jinx says. She holds out your jacket to you, and you take it, slipping your arms through the sleeves and fixing the collar so it stands upright. Her eyes go from bottom to top, taking her sweet time. “I wanna show em what I can do. Give those people with my blue in their hair a reason to keep going. To keep fighting.” 

“You have me. All the way, Jinx,” you say, putting a hand over the front of your jacket, where a pink heart has been painted. “So what do you wanna do? Other than all this?”

“Right now?” Jinx cocks a grin. “I wanna kiss you.” 

What? You blink, wondering if you heard that right, but her taking a step closer to you only confirms that yes, you did hear it right. You swallow the nerves, finding your cheeks hurting from how hard you’re smiling. “And then what?” 

“And then, we show Zaun all the fun we have to offer, and we tell Piltover to shove their Hextech where the sun don’t shine,” Jinx finishes, her hands grabbing the lapels of your jacket and pulling you in. Your lips touch hers, something you never thought would happen, not in your wildest dreams. 

But here you are, arms wrapped around Jinx as she kisses you in the streets of Zaun, the cry of revolution soon to come. 

~~~~~

A/N: thank you for reading!! comments are always appreciated <3

[chronically-ghosted]

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

chapter rating: T

word count: ~25K

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

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

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

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

part ii:

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

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

crunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just by the top drawer.

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

It’ll be small. Just a latch.

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

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

Joel.

“Joel!”

“What?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Planning on getting wounded any time soon?”

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

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

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

Morphine. 

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

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

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

Would and wouldn’t.

Should and shouldn’t. 

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

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

“What else you got?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ellie!”

“Joel, look, it’s a radio!” 

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

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

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

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

“No.” 

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

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

“But I’ve got room in my pack –,”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

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

No other purpose at all. 

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

“Hey, Ellie, uh–,”

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

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

Luxor, the label reads. 

Hand cream. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lifts her chin, hands curled at her side.

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you make them afraid?” 

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

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

“It’s not. Not when it’s for her.” 

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

“Yeah, of course, she’s your kid.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just stares wide-eyed and inhales. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could hardly recognize the woman underneath it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever Joel gets back. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellie.

And Joel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah, are you –,”

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

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

At least crazy runs in the family. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh? What was it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It was fine. Did she mention anything?”

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

“Nothing out of the ordinary, at least.” 

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

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

“Joel? What is it?” 

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

“C’mere.” 

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

You go to him without question. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re welcome.”

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

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

You can’t deny this anymore.

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

One hand in the air.

“Yes?”

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

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

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

“Correct again.” 

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

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

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

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

Genus

Common name

Poisonous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellie merely sniffs hers. 

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, of course, I know that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s a kind of math –,”

“Advanced math,” you interject. 

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

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

“Sam? Who’s Sam?” 

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

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

Ellie, however, remains completely baffled.

“Yeah and? He’s just some guy.”

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

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

Sarah shakes her head no. 

“Not even with a group of people?”

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

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

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

“Oh – you mean like a date.”

“Who’s going on a date?” 

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

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

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

“We were talking about boys.”

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

“Oh.”

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

Joel nods, wiping his hands on his shirt. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s Sam?”

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

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

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

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

“That’s not funny, Dad.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joel’s trust makes your heart soar. 

Only to come crashing down. 

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

Nurture. It’s not what you do. 

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

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

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

  “Alright, Joel. I’ll try.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t think so.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until something sang out to it. 

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you see the world?” 

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

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

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

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

“But I can’t leave him.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah, do you know what rouge is?” 

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

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

“Have you ever worn it?” 

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

“Would you like to?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hard to believe, right?”

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

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

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

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

“How so?”

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

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

“Have you seen him since he left?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Yes, please.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?” Small. Hesitant. Hopeful. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sarah’s face nearly shines with joy.

Cool. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. Oh, Joel. 

“Tell me you want this.”

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

“I won’t stop.”

Don’t. Please. 

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

His hands are gone, his warmth evaporated. 

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

Pick it up. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re surprised.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A soft, barely intimate gesture. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You unplug the drain, your movements slow, hesitant.

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

“Of course she does. I know that.”

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

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

“That is not your decision to make.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What else are you to me? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, goddamn it, I don’t!” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shit, what the hell did he know?

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

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

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

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

“Um, yeah, that’ll be fine.”

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

“Are you okay?” Sarah asks.

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

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

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

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

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

“Wanna talk about it?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What did he do?”

You blink. “What?”

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

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

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

“Sarah, don’t –,”

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

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

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

He’s angry. He’s still angry.

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

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

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

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

And yet he hadn’t. 

He’d let someone in. 

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

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

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

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

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

For coming here and upsetting everything. 

Fuck. 

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

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

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

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

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

Now, what does he do with –

“Dad!” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sarah . . .” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you’re mad about somethin’?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know, baby. You have to go.” 

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

But instead –

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

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

“No, not right now. But some day.” 

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s nerves. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you haven’t been able to focus since. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vanilla beans.

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

“Thanks.” 

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

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

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

Grateful, was the expression he remembers. 

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

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

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

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

“Like a Hank Williams kinda something?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dinner’s ready.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Holy shit!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You used it for my birthday?” 

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

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

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

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

“Um, thanks, guys. I guess.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less of him to share. 

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

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

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

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

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

Even if you begged.

The cake is gone in a matter of minutes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But then when will Ellie get her present?”

His eyes lock onto you.

“THERE’S MORE?!” Ellie screeches.

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

“What is it?!”

“Is it more comics?”

“More marbles?”

“New clothes?”

“Ew, that would suck.” 

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

A radio. 

The radio.

The same one they had found in town. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps it was the witchcraft of the sisterhood. 

Perhaps they had managed to work out some secret code.

Perhaps they were just lucky. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And then I think you do this–,”

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

“No way this is a real thing!”

“It is, I swear!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not a real move, Sarah–,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joel Miller would never, ever hurt you.

Joel Miller is not your husband.

Joel Miller could be your friend.

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

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

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

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

So, you open your stupid mouth and say,

“See, teaching isn’t so easy, is it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joel Miller is still staring at your mouth. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is . . .

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

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

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

“Good night.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was warm.

END OF PART II

series masterlist | AO3 Link | part i | part iii

[pretzel-box]

Hihi! Would you be okay with doing a monster-masquerading-as-a-human read, who is a former researcher and like, is a little shit at first but grows attached to Sebastian? And for the scenerio can it be like reader reaffirming Sebby of his humanity, but really awkwardly cs they struggle with human emotions.

Sorry if this is too specific I think ALOT about Seb (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

Tags: GN!reader, reader is an experiment but hides as human, sassy reader

Words: 1k

Sebastian had always been suspicious of you, from the moment you wandered into his shop with that too-easy smile and gleaming eyes that seemed to be hiding more than they let on. You were a former researcher, you had claimed, but something about you always felt off. It wasn't just the way you walked, too sure of yourself for someone in this hellish place, or how you seemed to know a little too much about the twisted layout of the Blackside and the lurking dangers within. It was the way you seemed to enjoy it all—thrived in it, even.

But despite his initial suspicions, Sebastian tolerated you. Maybe it was the way you could effortlessly talk your way out of trouble with some of the nastier entities, or how you seemed to know exactly where to find valuable items amidst the chaos. Whatever the reason, you’d become a fixture in his shop, hovering around and occasionally offering unsolicited advice.

For a while, it was a practical alliance. Sebastian didn’t trust you—he wasn’t stupid—but you were useful, and he was willing to play nice if it meant staying alive. You were, in all ways, a little shit. Always poking fun at him, always with a teasing remark on the tip of your tongue. But recently, something had shifted. You were around more often, lingering a little longer, your jabs softening into something that almost resembled… friendliness.

It was unnerving.

One evening, after a particularly rough encounter with one of the more violent entities, Sebastian was nursing a cut on his arm, a deep gash that stung worse than usual. He was sitting on a stool behind the table, his tail swishing in agitation as he tried to wrap a bandage around it. You leaned against the table, watching him struggle with a faint smirk on your lips.

“Need a hand, friend?” you offered, your tone mockingly sweet.

Sebastian shot you a glare. “Got enough hands, thanks,” he muttered, holding up his three arms pointedly.

You chuckled, not moving from your spot. “Doesn’t look like it from here.”

He rolled his eyes, huffing in frustration as the bandage slipped from his grasp again. “Fine,” he grumbled, finally conceding. “If you’re gonna be a pain, at least be a useful one.”

You grinned, stepping around the table to help him. Your touch was surprisingly gentle as you took the bandage from him, wrapping it around his arm with practiced ease. “You know, you’re not half-bad when you’re not being a grump,” you teased lightly.

Sebastian snorted, but there was no real heat behind it. “Yeah, well, you’re not half-bad when you’re not being a little shit,” he shot back, though his voice lacked its usual bite.

You worked in silence for a moment, the air between you oddly comfortable. As you finished tying off the bandage, you hesitated, your gaze lingering on the cut. “Why do you bother?” you asked suddenly, your voice quieter, more serious.

Sebastian frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Why do you bother trying to stay… human?” you clarified, your tone awkward as if you were unsure of your own words. “I mean, look at this place. Look at us. What’s the point?”

Sebastian was taken aback. You’d never asked anything like that before, never shown even the slightest hint of introspection. He studied your face, searching for the usual hint of a smirk or teasing glint in your eyes, but found none. You looked… confused. Almost vulnerable.

“I… I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “Maybe it’s just all I have left. My humanity. It’s… it’s who I am.”

You nodded slowly, as if digesting his words. “It’s… important, isn’t it? Being who you are.”

Sebastian nodded. “Yeah. It is.”

You were quiet for a long moment, and Sebastian could almost see the gears turning in your head, trying to process something that didn’t quite compute. “I think you’re doing okay,” you said finally, your voice awkward and halting. “With the whole… human thing.”

Sebastian blinked, surprised. “That… means a lot, coming from you,” he said slowly.

You shrugged, looking away. “Don’t get all mushy on me now,” you muttered, but there was a faint smile on your lips, and for a moment, Sebastian thought he saw something almost… soft in your eyes.

Sebastian chuckled, the sound low and warm. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said lightly. “But… thanks. Really.”

You nodded, still not looking at him. “Yeah, well… don’t make me regret saying it.”

Sebastian smiled, feeling a strange warmth in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe you were still a little shit, but there was something… different about you now. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, but something he found himself oddly grateful for.

Maybe, just maybe, you weren’t so bad after all.

“You know, we are quite similar.” You nudged him gently with your arm, grinning at him with your signature smile. There was a spark of confusion in his eyes, trying to understand what exactly you refer to. But you simply stood up from your seat, wiping the imaginary dust of your palms and walking to the vent.

“It's not like I am fully human either, but Sebastian— we are still ourselfs. Nothing has changed but our appearance. Don't let the Blackside fool you.”

He was awfully touched by your words, feeling a bit reasurred, before his head shot up, realizing your reference.

“YOU'RE NOT HUMAN—?!”

But you were already gone.

You could hear him shout from the other side of the vent, the rushed movements and the noise of surprise and you couldn't help but giggle about his reaction.

Sebastian was truly amusing and you secretly hoped he valued your words, realizing he isn't alone with it all, knowing there is someone who will take some of his pain. After all, you took a liking to the usual moody shopkeeper and it would be a shame if he stops being the grumpy sunshine that he normally is.

[anisespice]

heyy

can i request hanma w reader who has abandonment issues? if you don’t write for that kind of topic it’s fine!!(:

take care!!<33

of course! thank u for the request anon, sorry for the delay <3 had to do some more research into the topic, and brush up on my hanma lol hope you enjoy :)) !!

pairing: hanma x gn!reader

warnings: mature language, MDI, crude jokes, violence, cringy/cornball behavior lol and hanma gets his own warning, not proof read, sorry for any errors!! and i think that’s it :)

notes: SO SORRY FOR TAKING LITERALLY A WHOLE YEAR TO MAKE THIS ANON, i wanted to do a little bit of research on the topic (ended up learning a little about myself LMAO) but it’s finally done! i’m happy with how it turned out, and i figured this format would work perfectly, so i hope you enjoy!! <333

tagged: @fantasycantasy , @illegalspacecow, @captaincyberqueen

I struggled with the idea of how Hanma would be like with someone with abandonment issues/anxious attachment. At first, I figured he’d be the absolute worst in terms of handling someone with such an intense need for validation and reassurance, but after some further contemplation I realized how he’d be the absolute best—To the most unhealthily healthy degree, if that makes sense. Let me explain:

“yo, who’s blowing up your phone?”

“jeez, your s/o again? talk about excessive”

“couldn’t be me, bro. if i was you, i’d set a boundary-”

hanma wouldn’t miss a beat by giving them a dangerous grin and say, “i’ll a set a boundary for your fucking teeth if you say another word about my s/o.”

then, in the same beat, he’ll answer your call with a whole different energy, like, “hey doll, my love, my sweet, my sexy” something corny like that

you’d express that he said he’d be back around 9, and it was pushing 9:30…

he’d chuckle fondly, “aw, you miss me that bad? you’re obsessed, doll, it’s adorable.~”

the guys with him would watch in shock as the usually violent, and quick to annoyance, shuji hanma was…understanding? patient??

i hc hanma to be so so so patient with you whenever you get that intense clingy feeling, or talk yourself into thinking he’s sick of you and your neediness

like

homie WANTS you to want him

even to an unhealthy attached degree, sign him up, yes ma’am, yes ham, yes turkey

if you do get into those moods of feeling like he’ll leave you, TRUST that he’s gonna feed into it just a little bit (he’s a bit of a sadistic bastard) only to shower you with every possible reassurance until you are drowning in him him HIM

“why you cryin’, hm? i said i’ll be back, what, you think i’ll just up and leave? never come back?”

“hm, maybe i should do that, make you miss me a little more, yeah?”

but, once he sees you’re really torn up about the thought, he’d gather you in his arms with a small, teasing grin, kissing your tears away and telling you how silly you’re being

“baby, i’d rather get shot in both of my legs than ever think of leaving you”

“you couldn’t get rid of me even if you begged”

“no more cryin’, kay? i hate seeing you cry…unless it’s for different reasons” he’d suggest, earning a weak hit to his arm for being a pervert

he’d snigger, holding you up until your legs wrapped around his waist, “how bout you just come with me then, hm?”

he’s not perfect, far from it, but he tries

he’ll tease, and poke, and push but he always has his moments where he takes your situation deathly serious

like

let someone talk shit about you in anyway, whether it’s about how you need to touch him a lot, or constantly text/call just to hear his voice, or accuse him of this that and the third, just let someone TRY it and he finds out about it

“man, i don’t know how he puts up with them”

“yeah, his s/o clearly has some issues..”

“god forbid he’s gone for more than ten minutes, it’s like they’re some kind of parasite-“

the air in the room shifts DRASTICALLY when they eventually notice hanma standing there, with you at his side looking more than upset

how long he’d been there didn’t matter…the damage was done as soon as those idiots spoke your name

if looks could kill, they’d be playing uno w the devil right about now and losing

hanma looked rather calm. but his eyes told a different story as the gold shined bright with malicious intent

he slowly grinned, tilting his head “oh? don’t stop on our account. keep talkin’. i wanna know what else you think.”

none dared to even blink

you sniffled, embarrassed, ready to bolt out of there, but hanma’s grip on your hand doesn’t falter, merely pulling you closer as he rested his chin on your head

you wiggled for a moment, but hanma wasn’t letting you go anywhere

he called out your name, making you stop as he turned you in his hold to have you look him in the eye

“stay right here. i want you to see just how much i love you. my little parasite.~”

hanma had you stand there and witness what happens whenever someone dares to speak on you and your relationship, solidifying his devotion and loyalty to you and you only

as those guys laid in a pool of their own blood, hanma still took the time to shower you in love and his undivided attention

he’d wipe your tears with bloodstained hands and kiss you hard on the mouth

“you’ll never be too much for me, [_____].”

© 2023-2024 anisespice ッ all rights reserved. likes, comments & reblogs much appreciated!

[fawnning]

everything i said i knew, i didn't (come through)

lando norris x fem!reader → tags: wc 2.2k, pure smut, fan(?) x athlete, no use of y/n (thankfully) not proofread, 5am.

author's note: this set us back by like 60 years.. i won't elaborate on why it's so bad. (my excuse is that i only write resident evil fanfics :3)

it's about a week or so into the new season, which has everyone evidently excited, some more so than others, much like you, you could only ever dream of watching the races in real time, it's a given that you're on vacation a little too near to what could be considered a hotspot for drivers alike.

drivers were practically saran wrapped in black coats, heading from the hotel lobby straight up to their respective rooms,

you were just a simple thing, minding your own business, it'd be rude to even try to look for any one of the drivers, that's class a asshole behaviour, as much as you were willing to look for any of them, it's not like it's in your cards to find a driver on their one special night's rest, let alone build up the courage and ask any one of them for their signatures.

to your surprise, word on the street says something about mclaren's drivers promoting a new sponsor of theirs, it won't hurt to snag a picture or two, especially now that there are fans posting about it,

you arrive at the ballroom, not too big not too small, reasonable enough not to squint to look at either one of the two, but you were fairly distanced away from the two, a crowd lies in between you and the two, hell, if someone had to point you out from the crows it'd probably take hours, not for lando though, his eyes had been on you since the moment you'd been there, probably longer? only he knows, but it takes you a questionable amount of time to even realize who exactly he was staring at, you shrug off the possible feeling of the fact that he was actually staring at you, don't get your hopes up, that's what you agreed on since the start anyways.

a little after the event concludes, it's a slip past midnight but you still manage to shower the feeling of heavy crowds pushing you back and forth away, slipping into a racy nightdress, you're reminding yourself to make the best of a holiday, even if it means you have to sacrifice some comfort to look cute (even when nobody's looking), you finish off by tying a near slobbish knot that doesn't have you trying again, still buzzing with the idea that lando's been looking at you, as much as you're willing to deny it for the right reasons, it's true, looking back at the recordings on your phone and it's more apparent that he was taking quick glances at you and the crowd ahead of him, then you, back to the crowd, it's an endless cycle and it has you giggling to yourself, a fucking coincidence

a knock or two hits your door, it's faint but you're aware that it's bed time, room service at this time of the night? they changing your room due to booking fuck ups? you think of the possibilities on the short walk to the door, you peek through the peephole to find lando norris, at your door, smiling somewhat like an idiot.

meeting an f1 driver was certainly not on your "list of things that happened today" bingo card, let alone on the fact that he's here just to see you, it's too surreal it has you nearly weak at the knees.

the door, holy shit. opening the door, butter fingers, it's a generational curse, lando seems much more relaxed after seeing you, poor boy was probably scared he got the wrong room,

you turn to speak but he hushes you, a fucking finger to your lips and it already has you feeling butterflies, given your knees were weaker than gruel, he's had you in a trance, captivated to the point where you take a few steps back from the door until he allows himself in, he shuts the door softly, double— triple checking if they're locked, he turns to you, it's the glint in his eyes that show he owes you an explanation,

"sorry about that," he starts,

"what brings you here?" you ask out of pure concern, it shocks you (and others, probably) that lando would go out of his way for someone like you, it's cute, to a point.

"just needed an escapade," he sits himself on the edge of the bed, it's crazy that you have him here but there's no way in hell he's here for whatever your brain believes.

"well, if you really want to know," he clears his throat before speaking again, "i'm here to see you,"

"me? of all people, me?" you cough up, at this rate you won't stop beating yourself up over nothing, it's valid given the status difference between the two of you.

you're visibly surprised, and it amuses lando, well enough for him to take the first step.

"yes, you," he murmurs, standing as he speaks, his frame slightly overlooks yours, he's like a a shadow that's brighter than you, in any and every way, odd.

"i saw you at the event earlier, you'd be surprised to know how easy it is to play pretend with the concierge." he chuckles, you just stare at him with your arms crossed, like you're babysitting a kid.

"it's still shitty of me, i know, i know," he has both arms slightly up, you're turned to him, now you're sitting on the same bed as him and it smells like bergamot and a pang of tension.

a pang doesn't cut it, you stare deeply into his eyes as he does with yours, it's not long until you're letting out, it's messy, really.

catching onto how many times he's been chuckling in between kisses, it just gets hotter and hotter, he really is the sun much like they claim.

his arm is around your waist drawing you in closer to him, his free hand tangled in your hair, gently caressing your cheekbones.

he deepens the kiss, savoring the warm heat of your body against his. his hands move slowly down your back as he pulls you towards him, it's nearly dramatic, the way you two hit heavy on the bedframe while simultaneously continuing, like animals, it's evident from the pale moonlight watching over the two of you, he's ferocious, grasping onto either sides of your waist and down, bruising them evenly, he whines and bites his lip the moment you pull back, just briefly before he has you on your back, you feel the mattress dip as he gets closer to you, crooning in your neck, he whispers, "jesus, feels so fucking good,"

barely a minute, no, two minutes? three? you lost count, your mind is drifting elsewhere, questioning how lando could keep track of the time, (it's his job to do so, obviously) but his kisses just keep pulling you back to the situation at hand, he'll deal with the rest later, he's desperate to peel the layers of clothes stringing you two apart.

"come on, can't wait—" he mutters to himself, desperately undoing the final strap of your silk before tossing it somewhere to the side, he's careful to not rip a single thread,

if it weren't for anyone or anything suspecting your unexpected visitor this late at night, he'd make it his goal to get you to scream his name, he'll settle for what he can get now, the rest will come eventually.

"there, there, sweetheart," he's coaxing you relentlessly, you're at ease, "where do you want me?" he looks up at you, you say nothing, slowly snatching his wrist to feel his calloused palm feel your stomach, he's knee deep in this, you're just made that way, made for him, "fuck, that's hot," lando hisses by your ear as he positions himself to box your frame.

"want me to be gentle, sweetheart? or rough, it's your call," he murmurs sweetly before softly nibbling at the lobe of your ear, peppering kisses from ear to neck, "rough," you choke out, "didn't hear you, sweetheart," he's teasing you and it feels worse than having pins and needles, "rough, please," you're crying out and he's heartlessly teasing you, barely met the guy and you know he's gonna make up for it, "atta girl," it's like you were sculpted for him, mind, voice and body.

he brings the incessant teasing to a mere halt when he motions you to get on top of him, feeling your cold but sweat glazed back pitted against his abs, feeling his cock swell against you, in heat of the moment, you mindlessly respond to him without even realising it, swirling your tongue on his middle and ring fingers, coating through and through before bringing it down to your aching pussy, his digits pressed up on your clit, he's really, really slow with his movements but you're not fighting it, you're not fighting for a quick stimulation, given the situation, the pace and timing are suited to your mind's liking, not like when you'd desperately stuff your fingers in your pussy to take your mind off the edge, you were sloppy n' straightforward with it, but lando, lando's a whole other topic that needs to be studied,

"this good for you, sweetheart? i can go a whole new mile for you if you need me to, just give me the word, i'll be more than happy to provide," he's whispering in your ear and it's making your stomach turn, unable to think and come up with anything, you come, cum all over his hands, all over nearly nothing, guilt washes you, barely pleased him and you're already selfishly doing this, lando's not even questioning a thing, he smirks against your shoulder and you feel it, he's silent but he doesn't even think twice before he continues, "good girl, such a good girl," he's consistently praising you, still at the same pace, maybe a little faster, you wouldn't know because of how it'd felt in the moment, lightheaded but in a good way, indefinitely, cloud nine? better than that, then you're hit with a second orgasm, this time your legs trash and you nearly give in before he stops briefly, you're gasping for air but you're desperate to finish, "no, please, don't stop," you pant in frustration, "hey, i'm not going anywhere," he's nonchalant about it, treating your desperation with utmost attention, he's careful with you, switching positions, he's up and facing you on the bed, slowly going over your waistline, then, he lines the throbbing red heat of his cock with your mound, slowly teasing you, pushing it up and down for a few seconds before slowly bottoming out, you push back in a pang of shock, not even a split second later it feels better than anything you figured he'd promise, locking your fingers with his, slow but rhythmic slaps fill the hollow sound of your once empty room, he dives forth, finds the crook of your neck, slowly sinking his teeth in, this one definitely does it for you, the third orgasm definitely jumps on the scale, feeling it ramp up to a solid twelve, you feel lando pick up the pace, "'m gonna cum, baby, n' it's gonna be all over you, n' you're gonna take it," evident from the grunts you hear in the back of your mind before you're picked back up into reality, he pulls out and you feel empty, yearning just a little more, nothing beats the view of seeing his essence take up certain areas of your belly, he watches as your breathing slowly regulates.

figuring you need a minute or two to cool off, he disappears into the bathroom without saying a word, you hear the water run and hit the cold floor, then you start to see steam fog up the mirror from the door, conveniently angled to the bed, lando pops back out to pick you up, bridal style at that, he's admiring every feature painted on your face, even the waterproof mascara he's managed to ruin, kicking the door shut with the back of his foot, he sets you in the bath tub where you're immediately soothed by it's warm embrace.

[kennahjune]

Part 2 of my s3 Steddie :D

Tag list: @anaibis @marklee-blackmore @hellowhatthehellisgoingonhere @swimmingbirdrunningrock @clumsiluni @just-a-tiny-void @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @mugloversonly @skyewaytohell @lololol-1234 @conversationswithamillennial @maya-custodios-dionach @nuggies4life @luthienstormblessed @blu3stars @samsoble @finntheehumaneater @thatonebirthstone @bird-with-pencils @swiftielouie55 @queenie-ofthe-void @paintsplatteredandimperfect @monsterloverforhire @krazyperson @literatelobster @jaytriesstuff @hippieg1rl420 @beawritingbooks @nightoffury @irregular-child @colidamae @stevieboyscoffee @martinskis-lydias

Holy shit!! I’ve never made a tag list before?? Thank you guys sm for being so into it!! And without further ado;

…

Steve woke up with the initial thought of “what the fuck”. So he could automatically assume his day was going to go great.

Out of his room, down the hall, down the stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen is where he finds Jonathan and— oddly enough— Robin.

Steve was used to finding Jonathan with him after one of his “episodes”. Usually he or Nancy will help him through it the best they can, laying with him or sitting with him wherever he is.

The idea of Robin in his house doesn’t even occur to Steve as weird until Robin says, “Sorry for the intrusion, uh… you really freaking worried me, man.”

Steve blinked— then, without taking his eyes off of Robin, asked Jonathan “Where did I have my episode at last night?”

Jonathan had the decency to look sheepish about it. “Uh— pfsshh, you had it at work, Steve.”

“And how bad was it?” He looked at Jonathan.

“You collapsed and had to be carried to the break room to rest. And the fact that you don’t seem to remember much of anything is also saying a lot.”

Steve stood there, thinking long and hard about yesterdays events.

“I remember Billy coming in and saying something about Max. Then he said something about Dustin that pissed me off. I don’t know. After that… who the hell?..”

Munson.

Holy shit.

Jonathan must’ve clocked the moment of realization cause he walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, man.”

Steve groaned and hurried his face in his hands. “That’s so embarrassing!” Was his muffled complaint. Robin— the asshole— had the nerve to snort at him.

“Hush, Buckley! Ugh I hate this.”

Jonathan was rubbing his back now, barely hiding his own snickers and laughs. “Come on—“

“I have to go,” Steve said quickly and went to turn around to leave.

“Where are you going? This is your house!” Robin retorted.

“I have to go apologize!”

Jonathan snagged Steve’s wrist and prevented him from going any further. “Go sit down, Steve. You can apologize later.”

Steve begrudgingly obliged, sitting at the small kitchen table that was usually used for his dads drinking. He crossed his arms and put his head down. He’d fucked up his vision again when he spun around too fast to leave. Jonathan sighed and came up to rub his back again. Physical touch helped Steve a lot during times like these. Especially during the vertigo.

Robin took the seat next to him. “So, two concussions? If you were having such a bad time why didn’t you just call in?”

“Cause I’m constantly late to work and the only reason I haven’t been fired and kicked on my ass is because you keep covering for me so I figured I had to return the favor,” he replied in one breath.

They were silent for a couple of minutes, just basking the each others presence. Until Jonathan stopped rubbing Steve’s back, let his hand rest there, and then patted between his shoulder blades twice before going over to the pantry.

“You need to eat something before you do anything. Robin can you get him a cup of water, please?”

Robin nodded and stood to get it. Steve groaned. “I can get my own water, Jon.” but he’d made no attempts to move from his seat. Jonathan muttered something about toast.

“Considering the fact that yesterday you just about passed out on your feet and how a few minutes ago you nearly fell over just by turning too fast, I’d like to differ.”

Steve huffed, knowing he was right. He heard the toaster start and glass was set down gently in front of him. He lifted his head and eyed the water.

“I didn’t poison the damn thing, dingus.” Robin tapped her fingers on the table.

Steve snorted and finally took the glass. He was done with it in seconds.

“Christ,” Robin muttered while refilling it for him.

When Steve was just about done eating his toast and downing another cup of water his house phone went off.

“I’ve got it.” Jonathan stood.

Steve shrugged and stood himself— slowly this time— to put his dishes away. Robin remained seated and watched him.

Jonathan huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Steve furrowed his eyebrows and walked over, trying to hear the conversation.

“Yeah— no I’ve got it, don’t worry. I love you to. Bye.” Jonathan hung up and sighed heavily.

“You alright?” Steve leaned on the wall next to him.

“Yep. Great. That was my mom, by the way. And apparently the kids are all on the loose in Forest Hills, looking for Eddie.”

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah.”

“So…” Robin stood. “I’m going with Steve?”

…

Max was curious. They all were. Just who the hell was Eddie Munson? Steve had never mentioned him before, but from the looks of it both Jonathan and Steve knew him.

Will had wanted to ask Nancy about him, saying how Jonathan said they all went to school together, but Mike refused to ask Nancy about any of this other than asking about migraines.

So they were on their own.

Max took her skateboard and the boys took their bikes (Will riding with Mike) and the four of them made their way to the trailer park.

Max was running on borrowed time, telling Billy that she was going over to the Byers’. And if that’s not where she is in the next 2-3 hours when he comes to pick her up then she’s done for.

But it’s fine. They figure out where Eddie Munson lives in no time. It’s not a very big trailer park, and “Eddie Munson” seems to be a pretty recognizable name. A nice old lady named Miss. Bottomette pointed them right down the street from her own trailer.

The four of them made their way over, dumping their bikes (and skateboard) in the yard— not bothering with kickstands. Max and Mike shoved their way in front of the other two, both going to knock at the same time.

Mike gently shoved Max to the side when the door opened, now all three of them being behind him. Standing at the door wasn’t Eddie Munson, unless he’d aged 50 years in past 24 hours. The new man was a lot older, and was just a bit taller than Mike. He looked the four of them up and down before leaning on the doorway and crossing his arms.

“What can I help you kids with?”

Will gulped. He didn’t like adults and especially not ones with heavy western accents that look like they’d kill him if he so much as breathed wrong.

“Um— we’re just looking for an uh, an Eddie Munson, sir,” Max tagged on from behind Mike. Will reached over subtly and grabbed someone’s hand, he thinks it’s was Lucas’. Why the hell was this guy so scary?

The man had a gleam in his— something like amusement. It kind of pissed Mike off but he knew better than to get pissy with an adult he’d just met. Especially with how Will was reacting to him.

“Well,” the man chuckled, “I’m not sure what you kids need with ‘im, but he’s not here right now. So why don’t you go back home, huh?”

He went to close the door but Mike spoke up. “Wait! Please— we uh— we really, really need to talk to him. Even if it’s just for a couple of seconds!”

“If he’s not here do you know where he is?” asked Lucas.

The man studied them all closely, his eyes raking over them each individually. As if they were threats. Mike nearly scoffed to himself.

Finally the man gave in and sighed. “Why do you wanna see Ed so bad?”

Max tapped her foot really hard on the wooden porch. When everyone jumped and looked at her she put her hands up. “Sorry! Got excited.”

Lucas spoke up this time. “We, um— wanna thank him? And ask him a few questions I guess. He helped out one of our friends yesterday and we really really just want to talk to him, please. Sir.” he tagged on the “sir” like an after thought.

In the next few moments, they found themselves piling into the very small, very cramped trailer living room.

“I’m Wayne, by the way. Wayne Munson, Eddie’s uncle.” he finally introduced himself. He raised his eyebrow at them. Oh yeah, they have to introduce themselves as well.

“Oh! Um— I’m Lucas. Lucas Sinclair.”

“Er— Max Mayfield.” she crossed her arms.

“Mike Wheeler.”

“Um, uh—“ Will grabbed Mikes hand “—Will Byers.”

Mr. Munson’s eyes seemed to study Will extra hard. Mike gripped his hand and squeezed to let him know he was there. Even Max and Lucas moved in slightly closer to Will. They didn’t understand why this guy seemed to come off so mean.

“Hey Uncle Wayne! What’s taking you so long at the door, man?” The man of the hour showed his face at the end of a small hallway. His brain seemed to short circuit at the sight of all the kids in his very small and very cramped living room.

“Um, hi?” Lucas greeted awkwardly.

Eddie leisurely made his way into the room with him. “Aren’t you Harrington’s kids from last night?”

“We’re not his kids,” Mike grumbled under his breath. But he couldn’t deny the spike of joy that came with the title.

Mr. Munson looked at Eddie like he’d lost his mind. “Harrington’s kids?” he put extra emphasis on “Harrington”, as if it was actually so weird.

Max rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Harrington’s kids,” she said under her breath with heavy sarcasm.

Lucas shot her a glare and she grunted.

“Well—“ Eddie clapped his hands “—what can I help you kids with?”

Mike and Max eyed each other, trying to decide who was going to start. Turns out; it was Will.

“We wanted to talk to you about yesterday,” he spoke up timidly. Mike squeezed his hand.

“Ok,” Eddie accepted. “Hit me. What’s up?”

Lucas was the first this time. “Why were you so willing to help Steve?”

…

When Wayne went to get the door Eddie didn’t think it’d take 20 minutes. And he also didn’t think that going out to check on him would lead him to finding four little kids in his living room. More specifically Steve Harrington’s kids.

He should’ve known it was to be bombarded with questions.

“Why were you so willing to help Steve?”

Well shit.

“Cause I’ve had an undying crush on him since he first came to the high school in his freshman year and I wasn’t going to turn up a chance to help him out and maybe talk to him and then I realized it was actually a lot worse than I thought so I stuck around to make sure he was ok.”

Yeah absolutely not.

“Because he needed help. The guy couldn’t even stand on his own.”

Lucas eyed him but handed it over to Max.

“Why were you so chill about his migraine? I mean you said it yourself: he could barely stand on his own. Most people would’ve left the moment someone else got there if not before.”

Little Red held a strong point.

“Cause I knew he needed help. Simple as that.”

No. Not “simple as that”.

“Did you know him in high school? Back when he was dating Nancy?” Little Wheeler asked.

Now this; this was a conversation he really didn’t want to have. He sighed, maybe a little harsher than intended, and answered “Yes. I knew him in high school and when he was dating your sister.”

At this point Wayne had left to the kitchen. But Eddie knew he was listening in, making sure they didn’t cross any lines.

“So if you knew him in high school, when he was an asshole— don’t kick me he was!— then why were you so nice? Cause most people he talks to from high school seem to hate his guts.”

“Jonathan doesn’t hate his guts!”

“I said “most people”, Will!”

Well golly damn they hold a lot of good points today. Before he got to answering the question there was another knock on the door. Max flinched and moved closer to Lucas.

“I got it,” Wayne said as he made his way over.

When he opened the door Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, and Jonathan Byers were all there on the porch. Wayne looked back and forth between the two groups before sighing and saying, “Why don’t we all step outside? Trailer ain’t big enough for all of ya.”

So that’s where they all went, outside on the front yard. Wayne sat on the porch steps while Eddie hung back.

“What the hell was the point in this?” Asked Steve, scolding the kids.

“We just wanted to ask him some questions!” defended Lucas. Will hung back by Jonathan but nodded his head.

“Questions.” Steve deadpanned.

Max huffed and Steve’s glare turned on her. She crossed her arms and looked away, seeming to close in on herself.

Steve sighed and pinched his nose, turning around and grunting before turning back around. “Ok, here’s the game plan.” he clapped his hands. “You four—“ he pointed at each of the kids “— are going to apologize to Mr. Munson and Eddie.”

The kids all started to grumble and protest.

“AND THEN—“ he continued loudly over them, making them shut up “—you are going to all go home to your own houses. We will talk about this tomorrow when I don’t want to fucking strangle you.”

“I can’t.” Max huffed.

“Cant what?” Steve asked.

“Go home. Especially not with you. I told Billy I’d be at the Byers’ and he’s expecting me to be there in the next half hour.”

Steve’s entire face dropped and he rubbed a hand over his face. “Max.”

She folded her arms and looked down. Steve sighed and placed his hands on his hips. “Ok, it’s fine. Change of plans; we’re all going to the Byers’! You four go apologize now and then load your bikes and board into my car as best you can.”

Eddie stood through their half-assed apologies while Steve stood back conversing with Jonathan. When the kids made their move to get their bikes and skateboard Eddie moved over to stand next to Steve. While the kids loitered around for a moment. Steve turned on him when he noticed his approach.

“What were they bothering you about that was so important Max lied to Billy?”

Eddie smirked and answered “oh you know; questions.”

Steve groaned.

They stood in silence while Steve watched Jonathan quietly scold Mike and Max for something.

“You can use my van.”

“What?”

“My van. To bring their bikes? There’s no way in hell they’re all fitting into your’s or Byers’s car.”

Steve watched as Mike and Lucas argued about the bikes while Max and Will talked behind them. He sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face in agitation. Steve placed his hands on his hips again and hit the inside of his cheek. Eddie watched him closely, finally noticing the ruffled hair and the plain gray t-shirt and way to short basketball shorts.

“Did you come over here straight from bed?” he asked.

Steve looked at him, squinting in the sun. “Yeah? What of it?”

“Dude it’s like 2pm.”

“Migraines knock me out.” he shrugged.

Another moment of silence went by until Steve sighed. “If you really don’t mind, letting us use your van would be great.”

Eddie watched Mike’s bike fall out for the fourth time and nodded. Just in time for Mike and Max to both call out in a whiny tone “STEEEEVEEEE!!”

Steve huffed and whined back “WHAAAAAT?” Eddie snickered.

“The bikes aren’t going to fit!” Lucas yelled, throwing his bike on the yard.

“Yeah I realized that. Thankfully, Eddie’s very nice and has offered to let us use his van.”

Mike and Lucas’ eyes lit up. “Can we—“

“Absolutely not.” Steve shut them down. “You four are going to ride with Jonathan and Robin back to the Byers’ while I run around with Eddie to drop off your bikes.”

Eddie nodded, not knowing what else to do.

Mike huffed.

“Steve,” Max called out quietly. “You’re not dropping mine off, right?”

Steve’s face softened and he smiled at her exasperatedly. “No, Max, you can toss your board in Jon’s trunk.”

She nodded and looked hesitant to walk away. The boys had already gotten in the car, and with one look around Max gave in and quickly hugged Steve. He patted her back and ruffled her hair and then she ran off to the car.

With final goodbyes and a promise to Robin to just call in sick next time, Steve and Eddie were left alone, Wayne going inside to take a nap.

Steve clapped Eddie on the shoulder. “Looks like it’s just me and you now, Munson.”

Oh boy.

…

Guess I am gonna need that part three 😭😭

I’ll take tags for part 3 if you guys want :)

Part 3 :)

[dixonsdarkelf]

Joshua "Scud" Frohmeyer NSFW Alphabet

A deal was made with @francisofthespook, and here's my part of the deal. She agreed to write Daryl's NSFW alphabet if I wrote Scud's, so here it is! Massive kudos to @dixons-sunshine for proofreading my work, as always, and to @francisofthespook for proofreading as well (I proofread yours, so it felt fair for you to proofread mine lol). I hope you enjoy it! To my general taglist people, I'm sorry if this isn't something you'd normally want to be tagged in. I figured I would just add y'all anyway lmao. This is hands down the filthiest thing I've ever written and I had to stop several times to fan myself.

Also these are MY OPINION. If you don't agree with something, that's fine, but please play nice.

NSFW alphabet template by @the-coldest-goodbye, dividers by @anitalenia

18+ below the cut, minors DNI

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

He’s big into aftercare! The cleaning up, the cuddling, the pillow talk, he loves it all. I think it’s one of his favorite parts of sex. Basking in the afterglow all cozied up under the covers with you, your bodies tangled together…God, he lives for that shit. After your first time doing something new, he’d want to talk with you about how it was, how much you liked or didn’t like it, and if you’d wanna do said thing again.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

For his own, I wanna go with the obvious and say his dick, but I think (and hear me out) that his stomach would also be one of his favorites. He thinks his scars are cool and are proof that he survived something he probably shouldn’t have, and I think he loves that part of himself. For his partner, he’s a boob guy, easy. He doesn’t care what they look like or how big or small they are. They’re yours, and that’s all that matters to him. And if you have any insecurities about them, he’ll be sure to show you how much he loves them.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

He loves to be inside you when he comes, whether that’s with a condom or without. He loves the faces and sounds you make when he’s twitching inside you, riding out his high. If you allowed him to come inside you without a condom, he’d be thrilled, but he’d still check in with you the whole time up until he comes to make sure that’s really what you want.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

This might seem like a cop-out, but he doesn’t have any dirty secrets. He doesn’t have any shame in what he likes in the bedroom, so there’s no secrets between you two. If he likes something or wants to try something, even if it’s something other people might find strange, he’s going to tell you/talk to you about it. If he expresses he’s into something and you’re not down to do it, he’s not going to feel ashamed for asking. Like I said, he has no shame in what he likes.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He’s very experienced & absolutely knows what he is doing. He prides himself on being able to make his partner feel good, and all the skills he’s acquired over the years will aid him in pleasing you.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Cowgirl and doggystyle, both for different reasons. Cowgirl so he can watch you bounce on top of and fuck yourself on him. Especially when he’s high, he loves to lay there and just let you go to town again and again. Looking up at you through hazy, half-lidded eyes would make him crazy. Doggystyle (specifically facing a mirror) so he can watch you watch yourself take him. He’d lean over you and dirty talk into you ear, telling you to look at yourself in the mirror so you can see how beautiful you look taking him. Both positions are also great for him to be able to circle your clit.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Very humorous. He never takes himself too seriously, and that include in bed. Sex is supposed to be fun, and he definitely brings that. He needs someone that can joke around with him during sexy time. If he were to get more serious at any point, it would be when either of you are close to coming.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Yes, the carpet matches the drapes. He doesn’t care about grooming, though. He’s not bothered by body hair, both on himself or his partner. If you asked him to clean up a bit, he certainly would, but otherwise, he doesn’t care. He’s not unhygienic though, he just isn’t bothered by it enough to do anything about it. For you, though, he’d do anything.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

That depends on our little angel’s mood. Sometimes, he just wants to lay back and let you do the work, but he’d still praise you and tell you how good you’re making him feel. If he’s releasing some pent-up frustration, he’d still be soft with you, but he might not be as giggly or romantic as usual. For special occasions, like your birthday or anniversary, he’d really ramp up the romance, adding sensual touches like lighting candles and putting on music.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

This one feels obvious, but he thinks about you when he jacks off. Thinks about your taste, your scent, all of the sounds you made during your last sexual escapade. He drools a little when he comes, specifically when he comes from masturbating. He’s so deep in the thoughts of you while he’s touching himself that he can’t be bothered to make sure he isn’t drooling.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

He loves having his hair played with/pulled. When he’s going down on you, he lives for having your fingers tangled in his hair and gently tugging while you buck up into him. He also loves to be praised (because who doesn’t?) (it would send his ego to the moon) and give praises as well, telling you how good you feel/how beautiful you look/how good you’re doing.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Somewhere where you’ll both be comfortable, like in bed or on the couch. But if it’s a quickie, he’d take you in the shower, over the kitchen counter, even the floor as long as you’re comfortable. He’d even take you over his work bench if it didn’t risk you two getting caught.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

He gets easily turned on, especially when he’s in love. He loves seeing you in lingerie, and of course that turns him on, but he gets really turned on when you wear his clothes. Your bare breasts against the inside of his jacket, your core on the inside of his boxers, he loves it all. He’d have a hard time keeping himself together the next time he wore something of his that you had on, picturing you in it instead.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

He’s turned off by anything non-consensual, he’d put his foot down at that. Even if it was something you wanted to try, he wouldn’t allow it. He’s into gentle biting and giving hickeys, but biting to the point of drawing blood is a no. Anything else that would cause either of you harm (something that would cause bruising that isn’t a hickey, leave welts, etc) is a no.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He loves both giving and receiving, but he prefers giving. He’s in heaven with your thighs clenched around his head and the taste of you coating his mouth and tongue. His skills are next level. When he’s high, his skills somehow get even better, bringing you to orgasm faster than you could’ve imagined.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Sex with him is for sure soft and giggly. He’s a goofy bean, and that personality of his certainly transitions into the bedroom. If you asked for something a little more rough, he’d obliged, albeit hesitantly at first, until he sees how much you’re enjoying it. However, that wouldn’t be often, as he prefers to be soft and slow and take his time with you.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He prefers to take his time with you and savor every second. He may have a high drive and be DTF a lot of the time, but it’s still special because it’s with you. When there’s not time & you’re both so fucking desperate and needy for each other that you can’t wait, a quickie will suffice, but he’ll be longing for more. And he’d make sure the next session after the quickie was extra special.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Yes yes and yes. He’s willing to try just about anything, and if he isn’t, he’ll let you know. He won’t shame you for any ideas you bring up or anything you might be embarrassed about wanting to experiment with. He’d be flattered that you felt safe enough with him to ask to experiment in different ways.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

Depends on the type of sex. If he’s high, he’d only be able to go for one round, wanting to cuddle up and fall asleep shortly after (post-aftercare ofc, I can’t stress enough how much he loves that). If he’s had a stressful day and/or it’s been a while since you two have been intimate, he’d be able to go a few rounds, wanting to stay in the throughs of pleasure with you for as long as possible.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He would certainly use toys on you if you asked. He prefers to do the work himself and get you off with just his touch, but he knows toys are friends, not competition. If you did the deed and he was too sleepy after to go another round but you wanted more, he’d lay there and watch you get yourself off with toys, watching your eyes roll back while he knows you’re thinking about him the whole time.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He loves to tease you until you’re a squirming mess & can’t take it anymore, whining & begging him to do what you’re asking. If you express that you like to be teased, he’d be delighted and draw out the teasing for as long as he possibly could until neither of you could take it anymore.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Our little stoner is definitely vocal in bed. He makes a variety of sexy grunts, groans, and moans, all of which sound like music to your ears. When there’s privacy, he’s loud. He doesn’t hold back at all in expressing how good you’re making him feel. If you’re ever in a situation where you might get caught or others are within earshot, he can hold back the noises, though he’d struggle to hold back the closer he gets to coming.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

This may be a hot take, but he is not a whimpering mess of a sub. A switch? Sure, I can see that. A whimpering mess that’s begging you and calling you mommy? Absolutely not, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He’s average-sized, maybe a little bigger than average. He’s an average-heigh guy, so it would make sense that his package reflects that. There’s a couple of veins that bulge when he’s got a boner, and they add to the pleasure you feel when he’s inside you. There’s also his scars. He loves when you give them attention, kicking and licking down them slowly as you position yourself to suck him off.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

He’s got a high sex drive, especially when he’s in love. After the first time, he can’t get enough of you. Your scent, your taste, your touch…he dreams of it.  He’s so in love with you, he’d get distracted at work thinking about all the things you did the night before. And the second you’re both home, he’d be pouncing on you, ready to devour you again and again.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

That depends. If it was sleepier sex while he was high, he’d pass pretty shortly after (post-aftercare of course, once you were both snuggled up under some blankets). Otherwise, he’d want to stay awake and enjoy some pillow talk with you, admiring how beautiful you are post-orgasm and savor the moment of you two wrapped up under the covers.

General taglist: @raddydaddydude @lovenormandixon @angeldemoncrowley @negansbestie @holdmytesseract

GIF & (c) message below were made by me. Glitter divider is by @anitalenia

[southwestchili]

୨⎯ "Zero to Sixty" ⎯୧

Synopsis: Basically you ride Batman while he’s driving 🤷‍♀️

Batman x Cat Woman! reader

Tags: AFAB reader, Degrading, ab riding???, fingering, praise, he gets mad at you for distracting him, unestablished relationship, pet names (Baby, darling and he calls you kitty like once put its not cringe trust), fwb but there's definitely more there, car sex, riding, orgasm denial, top and bottom dynamics, reader is submissive for most of the time but she gets control for a second

Genre: Smut

Synopsis: You and Batman have been close for a while, you know his identity and he knows yours. You two often find yourselves getting a little... carried away after going out on missions together and today was no different.

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ

You and Bruce just finished completing a pretty easy mission against some local gangs, however, you just weren't focused. He did fine on the mission today but it was obvious you were a little sloppy. He insisted on taking you back to his place. That wasn't very uncommon for the two of you, but this time the car ride was more agonizing than usual. Maybe you were ovulationing but you can't help to bite your lip at the way Bruce's biceps flexed as he was taking down the gang members, or how toned he looked in his suit. You just wanted him to take you right then and there. You didn't care who saw at this point. "You're staring." Bruce's blunt tone snaps you out of your daydreaming and you look at him in shock. "You've been dazing off all damn day and staring to get on my nerves. You better fix this shit before the next time." He gives you a cold glare taking his eyes off the road for a second and then he focuses back on the road. "I'm sorry Bruce.. it..just.." you look out the window trying to think of something to say. You know you can't tell him that you want him to just fuck you right then and there because you know he will just give you shit. "You could've gotten yourself hurt, thank god I was there to cover for your ass, what was so important that was distracting you today?" He says looking at you. He notices your heads turned so he grabs your chin and forces you to look at him. "Answer me, you really pissed me off today." He spits at you. "Ugh, if I tell you, your gonna be pissed at me, and I don't think I can deal with that right now Bruce!" you say with a bit of attitude. He glares you before turning his eyes to the road and his hands to the steering wheel. "Listen, Bruce, it's not gonna happen again okay? It was just a bad day for me! And honestly, you're not gonna be happy with my answer." You say pouting.

Is it just you or does your latex suit feel tighter than usual? You can just feel his annoyance hanging heavy in the air and you know his patience is running thin and you bite your lip waiting for his reply. You know you are digging yourself a deeper hole and when you do tell him the reason for your sloppiness was that you were thinking of how badly you wanted to get pounded by him. You two have fucked before, and every time he leaves you wanting more. You don't know where he learned to fuck like that but he sure knows how to fuck. "I told you to tell me so you're going to tell me, got it?" he commands. You roll your eyes and quickly mutter out an utterly pathic, "I was horny". You are cringing at your own response and you dreadfully await his reply. "Are you serious?" Bruce looks at you, with slight amusement in his expression.

You turn your head to look at him, your face flushed and your expression a mix of embarrassment and longing. He scoffs at your display and removes one of his hands from the steering wheel. He then reaches for the zipper on your latex suit and pulls it down. He removes the outfit, leaving you bare for him. You watch as his hand dips into your panties, and you bite your lip eagerly. Bruce's fingers trance over your clit and you grab onto his bicep for support. His gloved fingers rub harsh circles into your sensitive nub. Your mind is going hazy from the pleasure he is giving you and you let out little whimpers. "You gonna stop fucking up if I let you cum, hm?" Bruce says not looking at you, his eyes are locked on the road in front of him. "Yes! Of course..I'll be better- just for you!" you say with that sweet voice of yours. Bruce's fingers leave your clit and descend down to your hole. He traces his fingers along the outside of your weeping hole before stuffing you with two thick fingers. You moan loudly due to the harshness of which he's finger fucking you with. "You and this cunt of yours are so dirty for me.. such a little slut." Bruce says with his deep honey-coated voice that never fails to make your heart flutter. Your walls clench around his fingers from his words and he lets out a low chuckle. He starts to curl his fingers and they hit your G-spot over and over again. Drool manages to slip past your glossed lips and you start moaning. "Oh fuck-! I think I'm gonna-" "Don't. You don't deserve to after your performance today, like I've told you time and time again only good girls get that privilege." He says sternly before pulling his fingers out of you. Your cunt twitches in response to being empty. You pout and look at Bruce and he only gives you a stern look.

"If you think you can be sloppy during our missions and then get a reward after you are sorely mistaken kitty." Bruce says with amusement heavy in his voice. He approaches a red light and the car comes to a stop, you take this as an opportunity. You know your decision will defiantly come back to bite you in the ass later but you really could not care less in this moment. You unclip your seat belt and quickly sling yourself onto Bruce's lap. "Oh yeah? You wanna try and take control? You gonna regret this later baby." Bruce says his hot breath brushing against your neck. You can feel his thick, lengthy cock poke your core and you bite your lip. You raise your hips and through the tight fabric of his suit, the defined lines of his abs are clearly visible, each muscle sculpted and sharp. You feel his rock-hard abs through his suit and begin to grind your cunt against them. The best part about this is that you are in control of him, well at least for now. The traffic lights go from red to green and you bury your head into his neck to allow him to see the road in front of him. You continue to drag your clit over his abs and grab onto the bat ears on his mask until you get close to reaching your high. "You wanna continue to hump me like a dog, or do you wanna be filled with my cock?" Bruce says placing a gloved hand on the fat of your ass, rubbing the flesh before giving it a quick and firm smack. This causes you to steady your movements and you remove his pants so you can free his aching cock. You lower yourself onto the head of his cock going slow, but then he forces your hips all the way down onto his length. "You better ride me the way I taught you. Don't you dare get sloppy." He says as the car accelerates faster. You bounce up and down on his shaft and a decent pace before rocking your hips forward and back letting the head of his cock ram into your g-spot. Your completely cock drunk, babbling nonsense about how much you were thinking of him fucking you like this. "Bruce..Oh fuck! Yes! I've been wanting this-!" you moan loudly. You go to your previous pace earning a few low grunts from the man under you. Your pace gets sloppier as you reach your high and you can tell Bruce is getting close to it. "Fuck im- Im cumming!" you moan out desperately. "Me too... fuck..do you want me to pull out?" Bruce asks. "No, cum inside me-!" You moan out as you and him cum together. You feel his hot seed pour inside of you and you love the feeling of being stuffed full of his cum and his cock. You stay sunken on his cock as you and him come down from your highs. You barely even notice you two are pulling into the Bat Cave and you gulp thinking of the long night that awaits you. "Hope you liked your 15 minutes of power, that will never happen again darling." Bruce says grabbing you by the back of your hair and making you face him. Oh, you are so fucked.

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ

My friend asked me to write this like 6 months ago and I finally got around to it, sooo yeah hope you guys liked it (◍•ᴗ•◍)❤

[littlexscarletxwitch]

── ༊*·˚⋆ 𝗳𝘂𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝘁, 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲

paring: yelena belova x fem!reader

tag(s): smut with plot but not really, a bit of angst but then again not really, nsfw, wlw sex

warning(s): MDNI, +18 ONLY read at your own risk, explicit wlw smut, wlw sex, oral sex, kinda toxic relationship, mentions of drinking alcohol, grammatical errors, unedited

word count: 3k

note: I'M SO SORRY GUYS IT SOOOO LOOOONG. College had been kicking my ass. Agh! I need a break from that shit. Anyways... I was actually going to make the smut part longer but I kinda didn't want to ruin it, so this is what you get lol. Also I literally googled the russian pet names, so please correct me if they are wrong. I hope you all like it! Lots of love, M <3

note 2: I got so many requests and I'm so glad you guys asked me to write your ideas, I really appreciate that. It's going to take me so time but I WILL WRITE THEM and I'm so excited about them. Love the way you guys think lol <3

requests are open! + check my rules here + masterlist <3

⇨ Detka: baby - Moya lyubov: my love - Malishka: little girl - Krasotka: gorgeous

You knew this whole thing was wrong, it was a toxic never ending cycle, but still you could never help yourself when it came to her. 

You and Yelena were together for three years, three years filled with love and lust and happiness; but then your relationship became hateful, bitter and full of anger, still the lust between the two of you remained the same.

Allegedly, the two of you had broken up 5 months ago. Allegedly, you resented her for the shit she put you through. Allegedly, you didn’t even want to see her face. 

Nevertheless, she always found her way back to you, —back to your bed—. The moment her lips made contact with yours, you knew you had lost all sense of reason. How could you restrain yourself when her hips grazed against yours in a slowly almost painful yet divine pace that had you arching your back and curling your toes?

“Fuck,” you breathed out, as her hands thighten the frim grip on your waist.

You always promised yourself it would be the last time, that it was just your body reacting to hers, that you would be strong the next time and would turn her down. It took you a couple more slips to finally understand that you and Yelena were done, that the two of you were through. But you finally came to your senses.

“You do know this is the last time, right?” you said breathless, feeling your quick heartbeat in your eardrums. 

You sword to yourself that would be the last time you let yourself give in to her. Just one more night of pleasure, just one more night of kisses and whimperings and moans, and the next day it would be over. 

“Yeah, I know,” though her voice was muffled by your cunt you could still make out the sarcastic tone in her voice. 

“I mean it, Yel,” you tried to sound serious, and apparently you did because she lifted up her head for her eyes to find yours.

“I know you do,” and she did know. She knew that you meant it, at that specific moment. 

But she also knew your statement wouldn’t last long, that you would soon change your mind and her lips would find their way back to your neck, hips, thighs and cunt. 

So she allowed you to think it was over, but it will be over once she decided so. 

[...]

It’d been a year since you had last seen her, you thought that was it, that the two of you had moved on at last. But maybe you got it all wrong, maybe all the things she made you feel enhanced by being away from her, maybe you forced yourself to forget about her. But there was no point in trying it, for she had made a mark on your heart. Like a tattoo, always under skin even when it gets removed.

But tonight was supposed to be different, you were supposed to have fun, drink and dance with your girl friends. But for some odd reason you couldn't stop thinking about the blonde. You would mess around with some people, but you found yourself thinking that it wasn’t her hands roaming around your body, or her lips leaving kisses and bites all over your neck, it wasn't her scent and it most certainly wasn’t her hoarse voice reaching your ears.

As you and your friends made your way to the bar, you heard your phone ringing. Even before you took a look at the screen you were 100% sure that it was her calling you, who else could it be then? 

Your heart picked up its pace as you looked at the ID caller and your suspicions were confirmed. It was at that moment that you realised that you had never blocked or deleted her contact number. 

Before you could answer or decline the call, it stopped. You swallowed down the lump that hard formed on your throat, unsure of what would be next. And soon after it stopped you got a text from her, you were about to read it when you noticed that someone was calling out for you. 

“I’m sorry, what was that?” you said, quickly putting away your phone, trying to focus on your friend’s words over the loud music.

“We have to use the restroom. Let’s go,” she said, reaching out for your hand, motioning for you to tag along. 

“No,” you step back, away from her reach. “I, um,” you felt your phone burning your hand. “I’m going to get some air, okay?” you noticed she wanted to say something against it, so you quickly added: “I’ll be right back, I promise,” you smiled at them, before making your way out of the club before they would follow after you. 

Once the cold air of the night filled your lungs you felt like you could finally breathe properly. You looked at her missed call and her text message on your phone screen, it was simple: an address. You knew what that meant, but you weren’t sure of what you should do. As if sensing your doubt, she called you again. The phone kept on ringing in your hand, as you made up your mind.

Seeing her tonight was a bad idea, right? Yes, you might not be really drunk but the alcohol was messing with your brain and you were not thinking straight. Plus, your friends were going to kill you for meeting her.

Seeing her tonight was a bad idea, right? You weren’t just going to throw away the last year and pretend like nothing had happened.

Seeing her would be a bad idea, right? But your mind had other plans as the memories of her soft lips and her rough hands and her raspy voice all came rushing to your brain, and suddenly it was all you could think of.

Seeing her tonight…? Fuck it, it’s fine, was your only thought as you picked up the call. 

“Hello, detka.”

The old pet name sent a silver up your spine, still you were yet to form a coherent thought. 

“I missed you,” she paused, waiting for you to say something. “Did you miss me?” she tried again. Still, you weren’t answering her, but she knew you were listening carefully to every word. “You know? I’m all alone right now. I wouldn’t mind some company.”

You could sense the undertone she was using, you were no fool to her tactics, even though you would always fall for them. That was the kind of power Yelena had over you, everytime you would do so much as think about her your brain would just shut down and you wouldn’t be able to hear your own thoughts. 

“No,” you stated firmly. Shaking your head even though she could not see you. 

“Oh, baby. What’s the matter? You want me to pick you up?” you could hear the jiggling of some set of keys. Your heart stopped for a second, was she really that desperate to come and pick you up? You felt your stomach burning. 

“This is… This is not right, Yelena. I shouldn't have picked up the call. I should probably not—.”

“Oh, come on, moya lyubov,” again with the russian nickname that would make your knees weak. “How about this, I pick you up, we get some coffee and we just have a quick chitchat?”

You knew that it never was so simple with Yelena, but you felt your walls crashing down. 

“I’m not sure, Yel…” it felt weird to pronounce that nickname after so long. 

“Look up, pretty girl.”

You felt your stomach sink as you did as you were told. And there she was, in all her glory. You didn’t even question how she knew exactly where you were, Yelena just knew stuff. You knew she was your ex, but she said it was just a quick chat, can’t two people reconnect? You knew you were stronger now to her advances, you were pretty sure you only saw her as a friend. But, in all honesty, you knew you were full of shit. 

Without a word, you sent a text to your friends, put your phone in your purse and got into the car, wrecking all your plans. You knew you should just stop, but you couldn't. You cursed yourself for that, she knew you too well and you hated both yourself and Yelena for that.

As soon as you took the passengers sit, Yelena sped up the car and the two of you left the building and your friends behind. 

“I did miss you, Y/n,” was the first thing she said as she rested her hand on your thigh. 

She knew how much you loved it when she did that.

“Mmm,” you muttered, unsure of what your answer should be. 

“Didn’t you miss me?” she jokingly asked as she gently squeezed your skin. 

“What do you want, Yel?” 

“I thought I told you,” she quickly took a look at you before looking back at the road. “I just want to chat, that’s all.”

“It’s never that simple with you.”

“Well, maybe this time it is. Maybe this time I want things to be different,” she smiled at you, making your heart skip a beat. She still had that kind of power over you and you hated her even more for that. But not really.

You gently shook your head. It was bad, you shouldn’t have picked up the call, you shouldn't have gotten into the car. You should have thought things more clearly before letting her into your life again. 

As you were mentally cursing yourself you didn’t realise that the two of you had already made it to whatever place she had driven the two of you. Realisation hit you as you now had now idea where the fuck you were, you had no other choice but to follow her. Or so you told yourself. 

Yelena opened the car door for you and stretched her hand out for you to take. Which you did, you didn’t even fight it, you longed for the contact of her skin against yours. And maybe, just maybe, you thought it would be enough, just by intertwining your fingers in between hers. But, god, you were wrong. 

You knew the moment you would step through her front door all sense of reason would leave your mind, and it would only remain the lust and feel of belonging you always felt around her. And you were right, the soon you stepped in, it was like you were that same person a year ago and you had no intention in fighting your feelings, not anymore. You thought maybe you deserve it, as a reward for being all this time apart from each other.

As soon as you entered it was as if you could feel Yelena everywhere. It wasn’t just the fact that she was there next to you with her hand in between yours, but you could all also smell her scent all over her place, you could see her in the furniture she had chosen, hear her in the music that was playing, and even though you had yet to taste her lips you were so overwhelmed by her entire being that it felt as if you already had. 

“So, um,” she cleared her throat as she closed the door behind the two of you, getting your attention. “Would you like some coffee…?”

“Fuck it, it’s fine,” you mumbled to yourself once more before dropping your purse and shortening the distance and crashing your lips against hers. 

Yelena’s hand quickly found their way to your hips, gently squeezing your flesh earning a low groan out of you. She pulled away gasping for air but the next second her lips were back on yours. You moaned into her lips as her tongue easily slipped into your mouth and found yours to mess around with. 

You felt a warm feeling in your stomach as her hands roamed all over your body leaving goosebumps on their way. Then they rested on your ass, grabbing the muscle motioning for you to jump on top of her, which you did without a second thought. The feeling became a small fire in your stomach the moment your chest was pressed against hers. 

“I knew you would come back,” she mumbled in between your lips, feeling her grin into the kiss. 

As a response you bit her bottom lip, not really sure what you meant by that but it felt good when you heard a low moan escape from her lips. 

“Don’t push your luck,” you said once you let go of it, earning a small chuckle from her. 

“Yeah, you’re right, krasotka,” her thick russian was only fuel to the growing fire in your stomach. 

Her lips found the crook of your neck and she left as many bites and kisses as she pleased, leading the two of you to her bedroom. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head and your fingers found their way in between her hair. 

Once in her bedroom, Yelena gently laid you on her bed. As her lips made their way down to your collarbone, her hand tugged at the hem of your dress slowly and painfully bringing it up to your waist. 

On command, you spread your leg open letting Yelena’s head take the place in between your thighs. She kissed and bit them, her lips ghosted over the area where you needed her the most, but all you got was her hot breath which sent a shiver up your spine and made you groan out her name. 

“Stop with the teasing,” you begged her, as your legs rested on her shoulders. 

“Tell me what you need,” she breathed out. 

“I need you… I need your lips on me,” it almost came out as a moan. 

And she did as she was told, but it wasn’t quite what you wanted. Her lips kissed and licked your core, but it wasn’t enough since the area was still being covered by your panties. You wanted more, needed more. 

“Yelena, please…” you begged her once again. 

“Shh…” she cooed as her fingers tugged at the hem of your underwear and slowly pushed it out of the way. “Is this where you need my lips, malishka,” her hot breath over your now uncovered cunt ripped a moan out of your mouth. 

“Yes, yes, just please do something. Please, Yel, I—,” a whimper cut you off as you felt her tongue licked up your slit. “Fuck,” you could feel your heartbeat going a mile per hour. 

Her tongue went up and down a few times, tasting your juices, loving who wet you were for her. She then made sure to give your clit as much attention, so she wrapped her lips around it and sucked hard. You felt your leg trembling on her shoulders as she worked her magic on you. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you were a moaning mess, the fire in your stomach felt like it was taking over your entire body and you only wanted to give in, to let it consume you whole —to let Yelena consume you whole—.

You wrapped your legs around her head, bringing her even closer to you. The thought of her suffocating on your count scared you for half a second, but then as she ate you like a starving woman, the thought only added more to your arousal. 

Yelena took a quick look at you: eyes closed, lips slightly trembling and parted, brows furrowed, your leg around her head, your hand flying to meet her hair. She wanted that moment to last forever, she wanted to be forever buried in between your legs if it only meant she could see you like this. But she could not stop time and live forever in that moment, so she could only moan at your sight. And that was what it took for you to finally come undone in her lips.

You cried out her name as your leg almost squeezed her head too harshly, but she could take it. A few curses followed her name as her tongue and lips helped you right out your high. 

“I missed this, malishka,” she said breathlessly as you unwrapped your legs around her. 

Her nose, lips and chin were glistening from your release, you felt something like a match lighting up inside you once again. Much to your dismay she used the back of her hand to clean some of it, which she noticed that it had bothered you since you slightly frown. She chuckled at just how cute and precious you were. 

She crawled on top of you, placing her knee in between your legs and her lips found yours. You moaned as you tasted yourself on her lips and tongue, feeling the fire coming back to life. 

“I missed you… so much,” she said in between kisses. “Tell me… you missed me too…”

Drunk on her scent, lips and words you couldn’t think properly. But still the words you blurted out were the truth: “I did… I missed you too…”

“Then we should… make up for… the time we lost…'' she said as her hand expertly tugged down the cleavage of your dress, she smiled to herself as she realised you weren’t wearing a bra.

She trailed a path of kiss from your neck, down to your collarbone to finally end with her lips sucking your right nipple. 

“Yeah, we should…” you breathed out. 

“Then, we are going to be here for a while,” she said, her words were muffled by your tit inside her mouth. 

You giggled at her words but then it turned into a moan as she went on sucking. 

You knew the whole thing would fire back eventually, but your head was empty, blank, no reasonable thoughts. Just one that it keep you going and that was the only thought you were willing to listen to: ‘Fuck it, it’s fine.’

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-M