#statick

[doctorwhoisadhd]

oh yeah. happy anniversary to the day that cemented that i would never get thomas england or sixpack back ever.

[leonstamatis]

the thing is, okay. and i know not everyone agrees with me on this one and that’s okay, different interpretations are fun and keep things interesting. but. the thing is that i don’t want the ending where all the people who never fell or who died or who were lost all come back.

like. blaseball was horrible, and horrifying, and that was what i liked most about it. i liked the death and the grief and the negative emotions, and the weight that they gave the good moments when they happened to come along. people died; they are gone; they were mourned.

and the way blaseball ended… didn’t give us, as fans, any kind of closure. it just. stopped. i like leaving the players in that same place, and processing the emotions of being left in the lurch through the ones who didn’t get the ending we would have given them if we chose, or the ending they would have gotten if it all played out how it was supposed to.

again, i get and appreciate the other interps. the happy endings are all well and good. i just prefer the one that does not feel like it ended how it was all supposed to, because. it didn’t! it was weird and off kilter and off putting to witness for me, so. it can be for the players, too.

[rubra-wav]

Okay I read this Vox fic, and now it's slightly plaguing me.

NSFW/18+

I am just imagining this man going to try eat pussy without thinking and just. Bonking his wide ass fucking head into your thighs. 💀

How does Vox even cunnilingus?

[kissporsche]

Can I make it a little weird please? Top 5 fictional human characters you'd ride into battle (literally)🎉✨

ALRIGHT SO. After much discussion (thank you @lu-sn for your invaluable insight) here are five human* characters I would ride into battle. The conditions they had to meet were: Have the strength to carry me into battle, have the fighting skills to protect me in said battle, and *would not drop me at any point*. If you're wondering why someone isn't on the list it's almost certainly because they would drop me (looking at Vegas)

Wen Ning- The Untamed. There are a few MDZS characters that meet the criteria but Wen Ning is the winner

Gideon Nav- The Locked Tomb. Maybe I never finished the first book but it doesn't matter, I know Gideon would carry me

Xie Lian- TGCF. The only downside to this is that Hua Cheng would probably smite me

Magnus Burnsides- TAZ Balance. If he managed to keep Steven the Goldfish alive he can keep me alive too

Shen Wei- Guardian. Would he be happy about it? No. But would he drop me? No. (SHOW VERSION SHOW VERSION I KNOW NOVEL VERSION WOULD DROP ME IN A HEARTBEAT)

Here are some other options if Wen Ning/Xie Lian/Shen Wei are not human enough for you: Carrot Ironfoundersson (Discworld), Merlin (Merlin, although might not have the carrying strength), Boromir (LOTR), Haruka Tenou (Sailor Moon), Bacta Campaignpodcast (Campaign, are clones human? Discuss)

[haunthouse]

thinking about. violet mason

[hopeful-hugz]

@strawberry-barista​ asked: ✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪✪ = Marry me Hope <--> Espresso {Espresso kicking his legs as he writes his future wedding vows in his little poem journal on his bed}

Send my Muse some stars! || Accepting

Oh gosh, he���d really fallen for her hard hadn’t he? How did she even respond to this? “I- I appreciate it, b- but- I think there’s a ways to go yet before that stage is reached?”

[batsing]

I feel like I'm gonna puke ough

[celelorien]

An additional pic to go with this one - I just really liked the idea of them on the couch together in matching sweaters, with Glinmuin reading aloud for them. Though admittedly, by this point, Kluh'taq is less listening to the story and more just listening to Glinmuin's voice.

[keferon]

Ok i said i would do itater, but this was done for my sister who got really hurt and wanted comfort out of my drabble, shout out to you @saltynsassy31 XD

This will probably be very OOC bc again, i am NOT too acquainted with these characters

So apologies in advance, but i think this will still be very entertaining for you :]

So yeah, here's part 2!

---

Jazz was tired, they haven't given him much time to rest since he came back. And even if they did, it's not like he could rest anyways, thinking about....about Prowl.

No way he could have just left him, right? After everything....it just didn't feel right, and the way they spoke to him about it too. Call him crazy but something in his gut told him they were hiding something from him. But it just never seemed enough to push him to look into it (oh how he would regret that for the rest of his life)

Today was supposed to be a normal routine check to the new mechas, with new recruits coming in for him to teach.

Jazz was given a new mecha suit, despite his protests to it (which surprised even him honestly, but it just didn't feel right). He hadn't gotten the chance to see it yet, today was the day they would present the new model, though it was said to be in its early stages still.

...

He doesn't know how it happened, how he'd gotten here, but all he knew was that he had seen red. When he gotten to see his new mech suit, it seemed oddly familiar in touch, in fact something about it made him feel sick to his stomach.

Small dents and scarring coated the plating around the panels that opened to the cockpit. He recognised that plating, from crawling on it with his magnets, sleeping on them comfortably despite being made of metal (there was something so warm about it, but that warmth was....lost. He wanted to puke). But what broke the string holding him together, a scar, a scar so familiar it sent him back to the exact moment he witnessed his partner getting it in the first place.

Jazz had weilded that shut himself, they had gotten in a bad scuffle a while back, and with worry he wanted to try and make sure Prowl wouldn't be in too much pain before they could get some proper help.

"Jazz?" Someone called out to him. That was the last thing he remembered.

Now? Now he stood by the halls in which they didn't allow the likes of him inside, the halls in which the scientists worked on. He made a fast dash to the last room, the room one of the scientists told him had the one he was looking for (though he wasn't proud to admit he had perhaps aggressively gotten that answer out of the poor guy). He had a weird unknown blaster weapon with him that he had ripped from the mech suit he was supposed to try out (deep down, he hoped that weapon didn't belong to Prowl. He hoped that he wasn't too late), using that, he blasted the door open hoping that would keep anyone from stopping him from getting inside.

As soon as Jazz layed his eyes on the scene before him; his partner hanging from wires holding him into place, chain keeping him from leaving, mutilated almost beyong recognition save his face, and with a small weak staticked cry from his partner, "Jazz?" the small bit of awarness he had gained back was gone again. All he could do in that moment was to yell, a desperate cry that came from the pits of his lungs.

"GET AWAY FROM MY PARTNER!"

And in another flurry of motions he didn’t have complete control over, he was beating the ever living hell out of the prick who decided it was a good idea to mess with HIS partner! He didn’t even know how long he had been at it until the twisted man he called a boss scratched his face, small bits of blood flowing out. In shock and pain, he grabbed the man by the neck of his shirt and threw him to the otherside of the room. Once he was certain that he wouldn't be getting up again, he turned to face Prowl once more, running and calling out to him as he ran to scoop up his beloved's face, blurting out a mess of an apology.

"I'm so sorry, i shouldn't have brought you here- we, we need to get you out-"

Oh did the guilt eat him up from the inside, he- he shouldn't have brought him here. Prowl probably hated him right now, but the sudden distant bell of an alarm down the halls had him scrambling to his feet to try and make things right.

Suddenly, as adrenaline slowly faded off, he realised how much damage he had actually taken throughout his rampage, a limp on his left leg catching up to him. Stinging pain on his face and limbs, but he needed to keep moving, they weren't safe yet.

"I have to get you to a safe place," he mumbled, mostly to himself, "and- and then maybe call for help. Oh but who could i even go to?" As he spoke, he started to set Prowl's limbs free from it's chains, gods they were so damaged, he could barely look at the missing parts. But as he worked his way through, he let out small sighs of relief to see that at least, he seemed to not be missing some vital parts. He could still maybe make a run for it, if only he could stall the facility long enough-

"You really shouldn't have...."

Jazz turned in shock, Prowl's voice snapping him out of his panicked haze.

"Prowl..." if he wasn’t crying already, now he certainly was. Gods he fucked up badly.

Not having the courage to face the other just yet, he turned back to the chained leg he had been working on. Prowl didn't seem to have wanted an answer either way, sitting up as he watched the organic do his work (Jazz tried to ignore the missing arm).

As he finished getting rid of the chain, he got up again, letting out a hiss of pain from his injuries (which did not go unnoticed by the mech). Clutching his left side as a bleeding cut let out a terrible stinging sensation which he doesn't think he'll ever get used to, he walked over to the final limb stuck under chains. As he walked over, he briefed over the quick plan he thought of

"Look, i- i know you might not trust me right now-" a huff, almost soundling like a disbeliefing chuckle, was heard from the mech, Jazz ignored it. "But there is a place you can go to and hide, hide- hide until maybe i can get help or- or find a way to send you back-"

"You wouldn't make it that far." Prowl spoke, matter of factly, which got a hit under Jazz's skin

"I know that! Which is why you will make a run for it. There's an exit by the other side of this room where you can leave-"

A sudden realisation hit Prowl. Jazz wasn't planning on coming with him.

And the human nodded, seeming to understand that Prowl finally got what he was saying. As he reached the last final screw to Prowl's chains, he finished off what he was trying to say "I'll keep them busy long enough for you to leave," before he could finish, as the final screw was let lose and Prowl was free to move, he felt himself be lift up from the ground and let out a startled yelp. "Wha- HEY!"

It took Jazz being shoved inside Prowl's cockpit for him to realise that he had been picked up by the mech (maybe a possible concussion he thought to himself). Jazz couldn't even try to jump out as, despite it missing the plating to shut him inside, Prowl placed his servo up to close to exit.

Desperately and confused, Jazz called out, "What are you doing?!"

To be entirely honest, Prowl wasn't sure himself, he was just as confused as the human to his actions, usually so full of logic. This one was acted apon pure emotion. Emotion of fear, anxiety, anger but most importantly

Desperation

Because somehow, this stupid human had his spark between his fingers, and he'd be dammed if he let him get himself killed just for him.

This isn't how he would want to say goodbye

---

Thanks again, to my sister who pushed me to write this, and also helped out in some parts!

Might have done more if i could, but it's super late rn lol (it's 4am and our mon will kills us for staying up this late).

Again sorry for any OOC moments, but i hope this was to your enjoyment! Maybe i can do a part 3 to this, but idk enough about how things work to do that, so i let anyone be free to mess around with this :]

Oh my... oh fuck I can't. I just keep thinking about Prowl pressing his palm on his chest even when other humans eventually get to him and start shooting. He's a mess, half of his armor is missing he's probably leaving an energon trail behind him. But he knows that while it would take a lot of bullets to take him down, it would take only one lucky bullet to kill Jazz. I'm. AUGh

[takumiraine]

Once upon a time Chapter 6

In which Danny has a bad night and Jason is conflicted.

<first> <prev> <next>

“So you know how your friend walks home from GU?” Oracle asked, apropos nothing one night while Jason was mid patrol. The pit had been angry, and Jason was just looking for a fight.

“Now is not the best time to talk about him O,” Jason growled, swinging between buildings just to feel the brief rush of adrenaline from stepping off the roof of a building and falling. Watching the ground rush up to meet him. The pit had been angry over the last half hour, and it was only seeming to get worse.

“Alright. Just thought you’d want to know he is in a 6v1 in the Bowery and B is on his way.” Her tone was nonchalant, with an air of ‘have it your way’ even though he knew she knew he wouldn’t be able to leave it at that.

Jason, to his credit, did not splat on the ground or crash into a wall. But it was a near thing. “What?”

“I thought now wasn’t the best time?” She teased, before sending the location to his visor. “From the looks of things, he’s been trained by someone. Just did a sick Judo throw that would make A proud.”

“Is B going to get there first?”

“Oh yeah.” Jason groaned. It wasn’t going to go well.

“Can’t reroute him?”

“You want to tell him why?” Nope. Abso-fucking-lutely not.

“No”

“There’s your answer.”

Jason groaned again, trying his best to swing faster. The closer he got, the more the pit writhed.

—-

Danny met the eyes of Batman, his grin dropping into a scowl. “Why are you here?” He asked, hands clenching back into fists.

“I came to help.” Batman said, beginning to zip tie the criminals hands.

“Help? Help?” Danny scoffed, kicking a rock towards Batman’s feet. “Now you want to help? I don’t need it anymore.” Danny took a step towards him, finger pointing in his direction menacingly. Batman paused and looked down at him again.

“I am very sorry I did not get here sooner, young man. But-“ Danny stormed towards him, getting into the masked superhero’s face.

“But you’re years late guano-man. I asked. And I asked. And I begged. All you” Danny jabbed him in his armored chest with two fingers, core screaming a litany of -rage-hurt-fear-“sent were those government assholes. You call yourselves heroes up there in that fancy ass tower, with your billionaire’s funding, but the reality is, if someone doesn’t live in one of your protected towns then they’re on their fucking own!” Danny shoved him back, and Batman took a couple steps then looked at something above and behind Danny’s head. He didn’t even have the time to look before Batman spoke.

“Hood, now is not the best time.”

Danny spun then, eyes widening then narrowing. “And you!” He stomped over to Red Hood, jabbing him in the chest for good measure. “Are you following me?! First with the stabbing, and I’m not even in your territory and you’re here! you claim you’re not with this asshole, but you’re here? You-“

Danny stopped himself mouth dropping open and core twisting into -recognition-shock-betrayal-angry- eyes glowing green before he could stop them. “oh this is fucking rich. You are stalking me. Knowing where I live isn’t enough? You have to insert yourself into my fucking life?” He backed away from the two masked vigilantes getting both of them into his eyeline. “None of you, or anyone else in your little justice mafia, ever talk to me or try to help me again.”

Danny backed up, circling until he was clear of both of them. Then once he was far enough away, he broke into a run, turning the corner at the end of the block.

—-

“Fuck.” Jason muttered as he realized he had been found out. Seeing the Lazarus green in Danny’s eyes, feeling the fear, shock, betrayal and anger just rolling off of him, his own pit responding in kind.

“Hey B? It was heavily staticked, so I might be wrong, but did the kid say you sent the government after him?” Oracle asked after a long moment of silence.

“He did.”

“I hate that I even have to ask but…. Did you?”

“No. Is there anything we need people on at present?”

Oracle’s typing was heard in their ears for a moment “No, it doesn’t look like it.”

“Recall everyone from patrol to meet at the cave. We need to go over every inch of this and find out what we’re dealing with.”

Jason was slowly moving his hand toward his grapnel. He needed to process this before anything else. Before he could, an engine revved and the Batmobile was pulling up.

“Hood. In.”

“But-“ Jason began to argue, only for Bruce to shake his head. Batman pointed and Jason felt like he was a kid getting caught stealing tires again. The pit in him demanded he fight back, but after a standoff that he knew felt longer than it was he slid into the passenger seat, door shutting behind him.

“He acted like he recognized you.” Bruce said after getting in himself.

“Yeah.” Jason wasn’t going to be forthcoming just yet he was still trying to process what the fuck just happened.

“Hm.” He could feel every ounce of focus not on the road on him and it rankled.

“Just come out and say it B,” Jason snapped.

“You know what.”

“Maybe I don’t. I’m not a mind reader.”

“Hm.” God he was so much like Damien. The apple fell from that tree and became nestled safely on the next branch down.

Thankfully the conversation was interrupted by the clicks of several people joining the main comm line.

“Hey, I heard the recall.” Dick. Great. Just what he needed. Big brother swooping in. “Everyone have their limbs?”

“Possible compromise situation.” Was the only reply Bruce gave. Jason resisted the urge to slump in his seat like a child being picked up from school for fighting.

“I’ll be in asap.” Dick had to be the responsible first born. Asshole.

“I’m also on about the same time frame. Orphan and I are just handing off a minor robbery.” Spoiler’s voice chimed in.

“Robin and I are en route from the south. Riddler was trying to be clever and we were having fun breaking his riddles before he could even finish his spiel.” Red Robin seemed smug. Really those two were the only ones that found Eddy boy the slightest bit amusing.

“I believe he was considering checking himself back into Arkham he was so frustrated with our prowess.” Damian’s smugness was rolling off him through the comm chat.

There was a little bit of extra chatter as they wrapped up the eta conversation, but Jason was trying to decide if he could dive out of the Batmobile and escape before Bruce could turn around.

As if reading his thoughts, Bruce looked over at him and gave him a look. He knew Oracle was keeping an eye on their route too so driving wasn’t needed to be a focus. Jason frowned and even though the mask hid it, he was sure Bruce knew.

When they got to the cave and parked, Bruce got out and removed the cowl. He stood there, watching as Jason got out, pulling his own helmet off. He could still feel the pit scraping his insides, and looking for an escape. How much was his and how much was Danny’s Jason didn’t know.

“Explain before the others get here.”

Jason turned and walked deeper into the cave, taking his usual spot against the wall. “About a month ago, I interrupted a mugging turned stabbing. Kid ran off with the knife still in him. O gave me basic info and I joined GU to start my threat assessment. He hates Batman and the assorted heroes, hadn’t said why, isn’t fond of Bruce Wayne because he supports the JL financially. Had some potential for becoming a rogue in the future but mostly just wanted to be left alone.”

Bruce gave a hum, settling at the Bat Computer and typing. Not making notes, but looking through the information Oracle had already collected. When Jason didn’t continue, Bruce turned to look at him again.

“Kid was broke. Looked like hell, so I fed him and paid him to catch me up in math. Even though he’s in remedial classes he’s practically at the replacement’s level. He said he had spent most of high school ghosting his classes because they were murder. Seeing his eyes today…. I believe he was being very literal. We…. Became friendly. He did not know who I was until tonight.”

“How did that happen?”

“The pit reacted to him. It… usually does, but not as intensely as tonight. It seems to be tied to his emotional state. He was pissed at you so… What did you do to the kid?”

Bruce sighed. “I’ve never met him before. I think that might be the problem.”

Jason scoffed, standing in silence and staring at Bruce’s tortured expression. Bruce, six foot two slab of muscle, who had just been yelled at by a scrawny young man easily six inches shorter and weighing a hundred pounds less.

Danny had fire, Jason would give him that. Blood pouring from his nose, the start of two black eyes from the break and still facing two masked vigilantes who were known for beating people up, or killing them in Jason’s case, like they were part of the problem.

It was…. It was kind of hot if Jason was being honest. The kind of hot he would openly deny and take to his grave (again).

One by one the different groups joined them in the cave. All in their patrol outfits. All of them staring at Jason and Bruce like they were expecting an announcement of Armageddon beginning.

Once they were all assembled, Oracle popped up on one of the screens.

“So here is what we know.” Bruce began a rundown of the night, starting with Danny getting jumped by some of Scarecrow’s guys and putting them all in their place before yelling at him and recognizing Jason.

Oracle put the cleaned up video of Danny fighting the guys on screen, and if Jason hadn’t thought Danny was hot before…. He would most certainly have now. The way he used his opponents’ weapons and momentum against them? It was beautiful. Danny at one point jabbed a goon in the stomach with one of the batons he stole, then kicked a second goon into him, sending them both sprawling. And the judo throw was nothing short of artistry.

“This is the concerning part.” Oracle zoomed in on Danny’s eyes during the confrontation with Jason. One second they were normal, the next they were very clearly glowing. Jason knew that shade of green too well.

“Have you managed to get any background on him?” Dick asked, eyeing both him and Bruce carefully.

“Only the basics and even then I’m pretty sure it’s doctored. I’ve tried doing reverse image searches on him, both with and without the enhancements I’ve done,” she popped up a side by side of various before and after pictures showing Danny in various states of glitching and the reassembled image from her work. “Every time I try to get anything more I run into this.” She put up what looked to be a standard ‘access required’ page complete with ‘To gain access please call’ and then a number.

“I’ve looked for any sneaky back entrances but they all seem pretty well guarded. I can get in but I would definitely be noticed.” For Oracle to admit that? That was some pretty high tech protection.

“Let’s call the number. Anyone got a burner they don’t want anymore?” Spoiler looked around, holding out her hand. Jason pulled one out of his belt and tossed it to her.

“O, pull my shit off of it?” He asked, planning on transferring all of his more illicit activities to a new number next week anyways.

“Done and done.”

Stephanie dialed and put it on speakerphone. It rang twice then there was the click of the line picking up. “Government Information Warehouse. Please state your name and identification number.”

“Oh my goooood, that asshole!” Stephanie had her high school voice on with just the faintest bit of squeal and complete with twirling her hair around her finger, even though those in the cave were the only ones who could see. “sorry, sorry, not you. I met a really hot guy. Like, hot hot, you know? And I thought we were really vibing. And he gave me his number and I was like, score! But then I call it and I get you! So like, I’m really sorry I won’t call again!” She hung up.

“Well that was disturbing.” From Tim who got an elbow in the ribs from Stephanie. “Steph’s acting aside, what’s our next play B?”

Bruce looked thoughtfully at the screen.

“Let me talk to him.” Jason was speaking before he was even aware of it. “Maybe…. He can explain.”

“He looked like he was a second away from punching you too little wing. You think he’ll talk?”

Jason had no idea. “Fifty fifty. Maybe better if we give him some time to calm down.”

“So long as nothing else happens, you have one week to let him calm down.” Bruce agreed. “The rest of you, stay extra vigilant. Frequent check ins when on patrol, and when away from the manor. Anything abnormal, no matter how small gets reported immediately.” The various bats and birds gave their agreements and started filing up to the manor for whatever food Alfred had laying around no doubt.

Jason stayed, debating going up. He had one week to figure out how he was going to do this.

One week was not a lot of time.

[korpuskat]

Metal in Flesh

[Ao3 Mirror] Pairing: Ramattra/Reader (GN, has a vagina) Rating: E WC: 4.4k Warnings: None, it's pure smut & fluff. A special thank you to @statuetochka for indulging my silly ideas & drawing his hands so much. ===

He tastes like his machine oil. Freshly cleaned, not a trace of dirt between his purple-painted joints. It’s hard not to flex your tongue against him, to explore the little creases in his plates that tease the side of your tongue.

But the hand on your jaw and the precarious placement of his fingers- two under your tongue, his thumb on top, keep you still. He’s exploring. Though it’s not your tongue itself that he’s examining. He drags his thumb down, making the object of his obsession spin- a particularly strange feeling that is still novel even after so long healed.

It’s only taken him a few months into your relationship to notice- or at least to ask about it.

“…Why?” Is the particularly succinct question he comes up with.

“Becath aylikith”

Ramattra’s gaze lifts ever so slightly, from your pinned tongue to your face. Reluctantly, he lets go. You push saliva over your tongue, wetting it before you try speaking again.

“I said, because I like it. I like how it looks.”

“Aesthetics?” Ramattra tips his head, looks down to your lips. You obligingly open your mouth again and present the jeweled rod again. This time, he just looks at it, rather than trapping the muscle for investigation. “I would think that should hurt rather badly just for aesthetics.”

“It did.” You confirm. “When I first got it, it hurt a lot, I couldn’t even eat the first day. But it’s all healed now. Doesn’t hurt at all.” To prove it, you catch the bead on your top lip and pull your tongue sideways, making the entire piercing rotate again. “Besides, you’re in no place to judge; I know you also changed stuff on yourself for how it looked.”

He scoffs, “That is hardly the same. Repainting my enamel coat isn’t remotely painful, nor did it impair such a basic, important function as eating.” He touches the purple plate at the back of one hand with the other. It’s more subconscious than anything, but you still watch his hands with that same fascination. “Besides, my modifications aren’t exclusively aesthetics.”

You grin widely. That kind of stubbornness, the mild disdain in his vocoder… It’s so easy to goad him. “Neither is mine! It has a very good use, actually.”

Ramattra’s head actually bobs as he modulates a disbelieving noise, “Really? Exactly what functional purpose does a metal rod in your mouth serve?”

Excitement washes over you and you don’t bother trying to hide it. “I can show you! I’ve kind of been meaning to for a while, actually, but you keep insisting I don’t have to.” This alone makes his head twitch to the side, perplexed, intrigued. You reach for his hand, and he happily allows you to take it and bring it back to your face, much too curious.

Here, you pause and stare up at the dark slits for his optics. His huge fingers caress over your cheek, cool and firm against your skin as you gently kiss the circular rubber pad of his palm. Ramattra hums softly- which breaks into a stuttered, staticked mess of a noise as you lick that rubber pad. He can feel it, you’re almost sure given the twitching of his fingers against your cheek. Those pads are sensitive, meant for traction and precision- you know he must feel the warmth, the softness of your tongue completely surrounding the hard point of the piercing’s ball. Even with your spit, the metal drags against rubber, catching on the textured ridges.

“You--” His voice cuts out, glitches sharply as though gasping. It’s a rare treat to see him worked up, indulging his own desires, so you bask in the roughened sound of his voice and the dull hum of his ventilation system ramping up. “I should have known it would be that...”

You grin again, then kiss his palm innocently, as though you don’t feel the warmth that’s now radiating from him. “I did want to use it sooner. You’re too selfless for your own good.” You pull on his arm and he allows you, lets you trail kisses up the smooth plate of his forearm. “Can try it now, though.”

His nod is sharp, firm enough to jostle the endcaps of his mane. “Yes, perhaps I would… enjoy that.”

You snicker, but don’t comment on the breathy tone his voice takes, already dysregulated from a single lick, don’t comment on how quickly he sits on the bed that he’d gotten for your sake nor the speed with which he releases the latches on his pelvic plate. Air rushes from his vents again, almost like a sigh as his cock bobs freely.

You might never get used to it, knowing that he made something so obscene just for you… The thrill of it- of all of him- rushes through you, makes your belly heat. But you set that aside for now, instead pushing the golden joints of his legs apart and lowering yourself down to your knees. Which only makes your growing desire ever worse.

Like this you’re so very, very aware of how big he is. Built for war, he dwarfs you in every way. Beside you, his thin, bird-like legs are almost up to your shoulder, just barely giving you enough room to comfortably lay your arms on his thighs. Looking up at him… He sits so stiffly, one hand curled into the previously pristine sheets, the other is curled across the lowest part of faceplate as though obscuring his mouth. Shy, maybe, you think. Would make sense- he doesn’t particularly enjoy receiving one-sided attention. So, you smile up at him, rub your hands soothingly across his canvas-covered thighs and hope that soothes him.

Finally, you let your eyes wander back down his body. Slowly, you ease your hands in from his legs until they brush the base of his cock, where the silicone meets his inner frame. Without any lubricant it’s a dry, sticking feeling, but it’s still enough for you to hear the hum of his fans pitch up in anticipation.

He’s been so patient, so nice to finally let you try this, so you only tease him a little more. You straighten up and stare up at his faceplace, hands moving firmly onto his cock as though you’re going to take him into your mouth immediately. He tenses, waits the sudden onslaught of your mouth around him-- and finds instead your soft lips laying against the smooth head, pressing a delicate kiss to the silicone. Ramattra’s legs twitch,, a little whiny noise coming from somewhere inside him-

And you lower your head down, dragging the tip of your tongue from the base of his cock all the way up. His ventilation kicks and a staticked gasp slips from his vocoder. With only the tip, not yet letting him feel the jewelry, you lick at him, you flick your tongue against the soft ridge at the head of his cock until you think you might break him.

Ramattra hisses your name, somewhere between a plea and a threat. Desire surges in your core again, but you think he's been patient enough. Slowly, deliberately letting him watch as you move- you open your mouth and ease his tip past your lips.

Immediately, Ramattra groans, both hands twisting into his sheets as he processes your warm, soft mouth on his cock. He's big enough that even just his tip makes your jaw twinge in annoyance, but you relax your muscles and urge him further in. His body bursts with heat, already struggling to keep up with the hot air that’s soaking his processors- but that's not quite the reaction you were expecting. So you press your tongue firmly against the underside of his tip- though you aren't sure if Ramattra's cock is particularly sensitive here too- and drag the piercing over the ridge.

A high-pitched noise spits from his vocoder, almost a yelp as his whole body flinches. You'd almost worry you hurt him, that the metal was too rough on the silicone, except for the rough, rolling gasp that comes after. For Ramattra it's a distinct feeling- your mouth all soft and inviting and one firm bead of resistance that pushes back against him, that emphasizes each stroke of your tongue along his cock. It's addicting, one tiny piece of metal in all of that plush flesh. His hand lifts- nearly burying itself in your hair unbidden, but he kills the impulse- tries desperately to be still for you.

You gently bob your head, working up to a slow rhythm. With each motion you keep your tongue moving, sweeping across the silicone. Each time you move down, you try to take in more of him, slowly inching his cock deeper until he's prodding at the back of your throat. The first touch makes you gag, your mouth tightening around him as spit floods your mouth- and Ramattra's hips jump, momentarily fucking you mouth- and he moans.

You clit throbs at the single rough thrust, at the absolutely musical noise from his speakers- his need completely betrayed with the strain on his synth, the first touches of static to his voice. A desperate whimper escapes you just knowing that you're the one making him feel like that and Ramattra sucks in air in turn, his fists curled so tightly you can hear his actuators whining.

Even just listening to his pleasure, knowing you’re the one causing it-- it's all too much. You take him in deep again, sucking his cock with purpose, but you slip one hand between your legs. Trying to keep your focus on him is nearly impossible when you can hardly think with how badly you need to be touched. You shove your pants down and the first touch on your clit is near ecstasy. Sucking his cock, hearing his appreciation alone has left you swollen and soaked, trembling with pleasure as you moan shamelessly around his cock. You circle your clit and shiver, the pace of your tongue on him stuttering-

And this time, Ramattra doesn’t stop the impulse. Ramattra's fingers curl into your hair. You expect him to push you down, that his self control is broken, that he'll fuck your throat and-

he pulls you up. Your scalp stings softly, but you can only mewl in confusion, in desire- how must you look to him? Your own spit covering his cock, eyes glazed over in lust, one hand working yourself with a desperation- and Ramattra catches your arm with his other hand. You whimper, a mindless plea of no, please don't stop- as he pulls again, draws you up, up off the floor-

And you think for a moment he's going to fuck you, to get you in his lap-

“Come here.” His voice is almost unintelligible, harsh with static. He doesn’t even let you comply, dragging your body onto the bed with him as he lays back. Your head spins, too clouded to understand what he wants- which is fine, because he moves you exactly how he's thinking. He pulls you on top of him, legs spread wide over his broad chest and then spins you around so you're looking at his cock again.

That's all the prompting you need. Still spit-slicked, you take him into your mouth again. The new angle is different, unusual- his cock arcs down towards your tongue, making it easier to take him deeper-- and making the press of your piercing into him all the more intense. Ramattra makes some noise behind you- and you would try to squeeze your hand beneath yourself to keep rubbing, but with your belly pressed to his, it’s too tight a fit. The metal of his chest would dig into your wrist too much. But your clit aches, too needy to be ignored. Desperate, you rut your hips against his chest, hoping to find any friction at all against his hard bands of armor-

And Ramattra's big hands land on your hips.

He pulls you back- back as far as he can without dislodging your mouth from his cock. You want to ask, can't seem to understand what he's doing- until each thumb slips between your legs. You moan softly, try to question what he’s doing, but if he hears you, he makes no response. Ramattra parts your folds, revealing your pussy. Warm air washes over your sex- another rush of his ventilation- and you whimper, twisting in his hands at the embarrassment of him looking at you so closely.

You don't expect the press of cool metal directly to your clit.

The temperature makes you jolt away from him, but his hands keep you still, keep your clit trapped right against his faceplate as Ramattra moans. All crackling and ruined, his voice is vibration right against your clit- and you finally understand. You bob your head again, determined to keep those noises coming from his synth.

You sink down on him, taking as much as you can. Ramattra purrs against your pussy, a low rumble that makes your hips twitch, rutting back against his face, your clit rubbing delightfully on the divot between his faceplate and jaw. It’s so primal, needy-- and Ramattra’s grasp on your hips shifts, pulling you towards him again, urging you to keep going. You’re so close already it’s hard to hold any rhythm, but he helps, pushing his mouth against you each time you come up on his cock- and each time your piercing catches the tip he moans, a bolt of static pleasure rumbling directly into your clit.

You can’t help it. You dig your nails into the coverings on his thighs, try desperately to focus on him, on making him cum- but the sound of him, the taste of his cock, and the incessant buzzing of his moans against your pussy are too much. Your rhythm breaks entirely as he pushes you over the edge. Your own noises are muffled, lost to the silicone in your throat. Metal hands keep your thighs spread as they twitch and try to close around him, forcing you to feel as he moans, praises you indistinctly through your orgasm- the words lost against the overwhelming feeling of the continued vibration of your clit.

You can’t think, the pleasure too sharp, too strong- you try to squirm away, to get any relief, but his grasp shifts, one arm now wrapped around your waist to keep you still. The other presses to the back of your head. His hips lift- and he as fucks your mouth desperately.

Ramattra moans, all static-garbled and needy, still rumbling against your pussy. And still you work your piercing against him, match his careful pace with hard licks of your tongue- and each panting, growing moan you can feel him getting closer, every Ah, ah, ah- buzzing harder into your clit as acute pain- a raw overstimulation that only builds into whimpering, twitching second wave that makes your whole body tremble in his hands-

And it’s your hips throat twitching around him again that makes him gasp- the rushed intake of air and firm press of his face against your pussy in a long, droning note as he overloads entirely. His hips thrust up into your mouth one more time before steam rushes from his vents, fills the room with hot air and every joint in his body goes lax.

For a long time you lay there, shivering and boneless. His arms are a pleasant, heavy weight across your back, a good counterpoint to the weak shudders your body gives from time to time. Your clit and throat ache, but it’s a monumental task to move yourself just enough to no longer be choking on his dick or have your over sensitive clit pressed to his firm metal. It takes three tries on your shaking arms before you can manage it.

You lay there, limp and much too tired to try to extricate yourself further from the heft of him. Instead, you close your eyes and enjoy the silence, letting your body relax and cool off until the soft harmony of Ramatta’s internals returns. First, the hum of his processors, then the fans of his ventilation resume, much quieter than they had been before- then his lights return. Positioned as you are, you don’t see his array’s lights, but you do watch as the indicator lights in his cock turn from a yellow- muddied by the purple tinting in the silicone- to green, to finally red.

Ramattra’s fingers twitch on your back, and you laugh slightly as he mimics clearing his throat. He gently lifts your hips and helps you roll off of him, but with a limp waving request of your hand, he then helps you to turn around and lean against his broad chest, half on top of him again.

If you had any energy left at all, you’d be embarrassed- or perhaps aroused again- at the sight of his faceplate; he’s soaked. Everything between his optics down to the tip of his chin is coated in your wetness.

And yet when he speaks, “I apologize I was… overly enthusiastic.” It’s all contrition. One hand touches the side of your neck, a silent voicing of fear of injury.

Instead, you press your face to his hand and he meets you halfway, stroking along your cheekbone with unspoken reverence. “But you liked it?” While his voice has been perfectly reset, yours is still rough, rasping from the strain on your throat.

“I…” He starts- and immediately his fans hum louder again. Your lips barely crack into a knowing smile before he admits it, “Yes. It was… enjoyable.”

“See, more than just aesthetics.” You say, melting onto his chest more, idly stroking at the long pistons mimicking collar bones.

“I suppose I have to agree. You can hardly see it to begin with.”

“Maybe you should give me a piercing you can see, then.” You say it offhanded, a little joke-

“What? I couldn’t.” Ramattra shoots back immediately, “I have no experience with that.”

And his rejection only makes the idea more appealing, more real. “No, wait, think about it! You could research how to do it and where. Your hands wouldn’t shake, you’d be able to center it better-- I bet you could even design it yourself…” You grin and look up at the dark slits for his optics, half pleading. “Come on, at least you’d be saving me money and a trip out.”

Ramattra’s hands on you stop moving, but he doesn’t pull away. So completely motionless, you know he’s processing it, mulling the idea over. “You… want me to pierce you?”

“Well. Yeah, I guess? I mean I like piercings and I think you’d do a good job… and…” You blush softly, finally averting your gaze from his as though this is somehow more intimate than sucking his cock until he overloaded and cumming on his face twice. “Maybe I kinda… like the idea of having jewelry that you made, that you put there…”

His design on your body. It’s not just intimate; it’s possessive. A silent, private mark of your relationship… If you weren’t not so thoroughly spent, it might bring another wave of heat between your legs. He must have come to the same conclusion, because something shudders in Ramattra’s chest.

“I see.” He says coolly, as though you don’t feel the streams of hot air that again slip from his vents. “Then, I will look into it.”

In all, it takes Ramattra three days. Three days before he’s guiding you into his workshop and lifting you up onto his desk. The thrill of how easily he picks you up- big hands cradling your rib cage as he sets you onto the metal surface- always makes you a little giddy. Even more so is the little purple velvet box that sits nearby. You reach for it-

And Ramattra snatches the box up with a tut, “No peeking.”

“Fine.” You sigh exaggeratedly, watching as he skims over the tools he’s acquired in the last half week. A bottle of antiseptic, forceps, a marker-- and your eyes wander to a small package of needles. Your stomach tightens a little just seeing them, so you look at him instead, distracting yourself as Ramattra finishes his preparations. “Where did you decide?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, instead gently putting one finger under your chin and turning your head away. His other hand drifts over your ear- and eventually catches the little flap in front of your ear canal between thumb and forefinger. “Here.” His hands abandon you, turning back to his tools and grabbing the marker. “It is called the tragus.”

You hum in acknowledgement, but otherwise keep still as he focuses on your ear. Carefully, methodically- Ramattra touches the tip of the marker to your skin.

He draws your chin back towards him, examining the dot he’s made from the front before retrieving and handing you a mirror. “This is… acceptable?” He prompts as you look at your reflection. You could almost laugh; the ink of the marker is perfectly centered- likely is, mathematically. You knew he’d be good at this.

“Yeah, it looks perfect.” You look at the mark a moment more, picturing jewelry in its spot. It is… a strange location. “Why’d you pick this one?”

Ramattra pauses, his turn towards his tools a little too intentional. “If you wish to remove it later, any scarring should not be too disruptive.”

Something tightens in your chest. You reach out to him, gently touch his forearm. His head only slightly turns back towards you, just enough for you to see the corner of one slit. “I’m not going anywhere.” You say it, squeeze his arm again and hope he’ll internalize it this time. His only response is a small hum, an acknowledgement of the words, if not their meaning. So, you redirect him. “Can I see the jewelry now?”

Again, Ramattra hesitates, but caves with a halting, “Yes, I suppose so.” He holds the box a second too long- so tiny in his big hands- but offering it to you.

You don’t even hide your ecstatic grin as you take it- too excited at the possibilities. His designs are always so sleek, but you don’t know what he would choose for you to wear. You crack open the box- and the first thing you recognize is the color. Purple- the exact shade as his accents, as his jaw. But it’s not just his paint- you hold the tiny box closer and squint. It’s almost an inverted teardrop shape, but not quite. There is a silver dot embedded in the lower half, the point that would be sharp is clipped, a notch taken out of the wider top… You look at it for a moment longer- and your excitement melts into something warmer, recognition.

“It’s your chest plate…” You murmur and reach for him again. Only the lower half is visible under his tan cowl, but Ramattra stands still, lets you lift the soft fabric to reveal his own inverted teardrop- the purple latch right in the center of his chest.

“There’s more…” His voice falters, rasping through a whisper, strained with the same feeling that’s twisting in your throat.

You look back to the jewelry, unsure how there could be more meaning lain into it- but you take it from the little velvet cushions that hold it in place- and understand. The back of it is green with tiny golden lines etched into it. A circuit board. You brow pinches for a moment, dragging a nail over the back- feeling the protective coating over the circuits. It’s too small, too clipped to be functional. Just decorative, symbolic?

“When I…” He starts and stops, stepping closer to you- laying one hand on the outside of your thigh. “When I installed…. that I also had to replace and redesign some chips that were in my hips for functionality. I… kept the originals.”

“This is… you?” You murmur, tracing the tiny golden threads again. An actual chip from his body… “Or, was part of you?”

Ramattra nods stiffly, watches as you examine the tiny thing. “It’s… acceptable?”

“Yeah.” You sniffle, “I love it, Rama…” then hurriedly put the jewelry back in its box and shove it back towards him. You rub at your watering eyes and force out a tight, “Hurry up and pierce me before I cry.”

Ramattra nods again, shifting easily into his practiced movements. He swaps your ear with antiseptic and dips the piercing into the bottle, laying it on a sheet to dry as he picks up his tools. You focus on his faceplate and stare up at him as he steps in front of you. He waits there a moment- soaks in your gaze before touching your chin and urging you to turn your head just as he had earlier.

You close your eyes, don’t look as he clamps the forceps down.

“Breathe.” His voice rumbles, so close to your ear. You shiver, but obey- taking in the cool air of his workspace, the scent of his oil, relax into the warm proximity of him-

And as you exhale he pierces you. Hot pain washes over the whole side of your head. You clench your teeth, try not to flinch as he moves quickly, replacing pieces with a smoothness that you should’ve expected from him.

“Good,” He praises, still low and quiet and so close to you- and finally he pushes his design into the backing.

Ramattra steps away, but you grab at him- hands landing on the silver handles at his hips. He stops, turns towards you- and the tears you’d managed to suppress before being stabbed boil over.

“Does it hurt? I-”

You’re crying before you can even wrap your arms around him.And realizing you’re crying into his cowl- your face pressed right up against the exact plate he used as a design makes you weep harder. But he steps right up against the table and shushes you, strokes your back with an affection no one else has even seen in him.

“I love you,” You manage between shoulder-racking sobs- and something inside Ramattra shudders.

So quickly he adjusts, no longer holding you to his broad chest, but near doubling over, half lifting you off the table to press his faceplate into your shoulder. He buries himself in the warmth of your body- and shudders again as your grasp scrabbles over his back, no longer cinched around his tiny waist, but sliding up under his cowl, grabbing at the long bars of armor and holding yourself up against him.

“I love you so much,” You murmur to him, half broken by sniffles- and he squeezes your ribs in turn.

[atinylittlepain]

joel miller x f!oc

story playlist

monsters are made of myths. in this story, two myths become one. two myths are in love. they are in wretched love.

warnings | 18+ this is a work of contemporary horror | literally cannibalism, and the trappings of it - love as consumption, non-graphic death, murder, grotesque depictions of food (normal food) and eating (normal eating), non-graphic references to unhealthy parental relationship (abuse and neglect), descriptions of dissociation, smut, strange neurotic processes in general

word count | 17K (yes, really)

a/n | this fic is partially inspired by the movie Bones and All, and it is my attempt to get Bones and All right (read: better) - i cannot stress enough that this is a work of horror, and as such, deals with unsettling imagery, subject matter, and emotions. read with care. special thanks must be given to @pr0ximamidnight and @wannab-urs who loved these two characters enough to keep me writing them, thank you, my darling friends, i hope i've done them justice. and thank you, dear reader, for coming along on something of an odyssey.

Monsters, she thinks, are hewn from guilt and shame. She is trying very hard not to feel either of those things about what she must do. But some slippery part of her still supposes that she has been a monster for a very long time, maybe even from the beginning. When did it change? When are monsters made? Like everyone else, she drank from her mother’s breast. Some time after that then.

What she does remember is not regretting it, any of it, until her mother taught her it was something to regret. Shame in the whites of her eyes, the dark ring of her open mouth, stricken in a scream. She has only ever met one other person like her in all her time skipping from town to town, a few years younger than her, but older in her confidence, her certainty in who she was. And like her, the first time, a babysitter, blood in the bathtub. She took her ear clean off, and the girl’s father found the scene when he got home from work, babysitter having fled, baby still in the tub, gumming on something pink and soft in her mouth. He had been afraid, she told her, that she could have drowned. Never mind the ear. Monsters are loved too, after all, a wretched thing of love. 

For her it had been a finger. At least that’s what her mother told her, easy to wrap her small mouth around. She believed her, vaguely remembering the flicker of red nail polish, bitter amidst the rest of sense and sate. What she does remember, the feeling of fullness. What she does remember, her mother making a myth out of her, conjuring up some way to explain this condition of hers. Condition, what she decided to call it. An affliction of appetites, something to be controlled, to be smothered under the thick swaths of what her mother taught her. How to be normal is really just another way of saying how to hide. And she hid for a very long time, weak and wan and wanting things she knew she shouldn’t be wanting. Until, eighteen, and their tenth packed car and dark house and her mother telling her that she was no longer interested in this myth, this unmaking of a monster. You are what you are and I have tried, I have tried, I have tried, but you are what you are. 

Not just guilt and shame, monsters are made in the breadth of a back turning, in eyes settling somewhere up and away. Monsters are made in a leaving. Everyone has already left. So what else is there to do but eat?

She likes the song that’s playing in the convenience store, the light haze of it, staticking from somewhere overhead. Hazy in the afternoon slump, everyone making minced conversation about setting the clocks back last weekend. Her watch still reads an hour ahead. 

I feel the earth move– she needs toothpaste.

I feel the sky tumbling down– and soap.

I feel my heart start to tremble– but there’s an empty promise left in her wallet.

Whenever you’re around– soon, she will have to stay.

I just got to have you– soon, she will have to pretend.

Baby– make-believing normal.

I just lose control– make a little more money.

I get hot and cold, all over, all over– before another leaving.

Tumbling down, tumbling down– before another fullness. 

“Excuse me.” A man, somewhere in her periphery, and the quick realization that she’s been standing in front of bars of soap, considering what it would feel like to slip one or two into the pocket of her coat, standing there for a bit too long. Shrug and shuffle to the side, a quiet sorry, keeping her eyes down, but in a quick flicker, she sees his face. Fang recognizes fang, always. 

He looks tired, like if not for whatever weight is pulling at his shoulders, he would be much bigger, much badder. Worn thin at the edges, wings darkening beneath his eyes, he spares her a single glance, disinterested, picking up two bars of soap, the kind that smells clean and young and kind. As he leans down, she sees the glint and flirt of gold dangling from his neck, a cross. But she knows, she thinks she knows. When you are rare like this, it isn’t difficult to know another myth when you see one. 

She watches the heels of his boots clip down the aisle toward the checkout, there and gone, and she does not follow. This is not something that should be followed. She knows, she knows. She tried once, with that girl. That girl who had different ideas about what their myth meant, their mouths, who decided that cruelty felt good, who decided to play the part of the monster with a terrible flair. No, this is something best done alone, and worst when it is shared. 

A single bar of soap sits heavy in her pocket while she pays for a tube of toothpaste, the man already gone, mercy. And the evening unfolds like it usually does during these times of motion. Still enough gas in her car that she can crawl a few miles down the interstate and find a quiet place to pull off for the night, somewhere green, somewhere with trees. Summer, the heat turning cool and sticky as it starts to darken, and a routine that is familiar to her by now. Windows cracked just enough to let a thin stream of fresh air in without threatening danger. And she folds the fact of her body in the backseat, tucking all her angles beneath a worn blanket that she keeps folded in the trunk during the day. Always memory before sleep, though her mind has made motheaten, misshapen murmuring out of the most of it. The fullness is always what remains. And that thick curl of shame. 

Here is how her mother made her. She broke skin and pulled out a rib of her own, made flesh of her flesh, tended to the wound until it was something else. There was no father, and there was certainly no god. At least that’s how her mother told it. You came from me, mine, this is mine, me and you and your mouth that must stay closed because I love you even though you are like this, awful, you are like this and I love you. But that love stretched thin, snapped, bleeding gums and broken teeth and never again. A goodbye that she is still saying, that she curls herself around in the backseat of her car in the summer when it’s warm enough for leaving. 

…

Maybe a foolish thing to spend what’s left of her money on. The waitress is very pretty though, a flush of red curls piled on her head, red lipstick too, crackling with her smile and bleeding into the lines around her mouth. Pours her a dark cup of coffee and leaves the steaming pot of it at her table. She pours three plastic thimbles of cream into it, two packets of sugar that she doesn’t stir in, lets it settle, biting down on the grit when she tips the last of her cup back into her mouth, and repeats. And the pretty waitress brings her two plates, so hot that they leave red welts on her forearms when she sets them down on her table, pinkened pain. Scrambled eggs, grease and sweat pooling beneath their lingering heat, bleeding over into two pieces of bacon, blistered crisp. A stack of pancakes, the sheen of butter seeping down, she pours enough syrup over them to pool thin and flooded on the plate. Collects a little of everything on her fork, the soft give of protein and matter, everything sagging in the sweet stick. Hand to mouth, but she stops, stuck, seeing him sitting alone at a booth across the diner. And he sees her too. A meal much like her own, enough to give someone a stomach ache. His eyes fall away from hers just as soon, and she watches him pass a knife through a piece of meat, flesh on his fork that he pockets into his cheek, jawing it down. She works her mouth around her own bite, teeth hurting with the snap down onto metal, the scrape of the fork. The food turns to sweet, soft mush, rolling around on her tongue, swallowed hard. 

He’s watching her again, working his jaw in a slow shift, and this time, his eyes don’t leave hers. She plucks a piece of bacon off her plate, pinched between thumb and forefinger, bites down again and sucks the salt from the dried flesh. He finishes a piece of toast in two bites, mouth screwing to the side, the dip and bob of his throat when he swallows, muscle moving muscle. Sweat is starting to prickle her scalp, the soft stretch of her stomach with her meal, warm and sick and sloshing. She doesn’t chew her eggs, swallows them, slipping down her throat with the rest of the salt and sate. His eyes fall to her hands, the smooth procession of fork and knife making mince out of her pancakes. She sucks the syrup out of each bite, works the sugar down first before swallowing the rest. His meal, almost completely gone, dragging a finger through a smear of ketchup he had been steeping his hashbrowns in, sucks the remnant red into his mouth. She can almost hear the hum that bobs in his throat, even through the murmurings of the diner. And he is very beautiful, beneath it all. The crooked strength of his nose, his brow, the drop of his lashes over the tops of his cheeks when he takes a pull of coffee. Unabashed, she stares, and he stares back, a darkened dare, watching the movements of each other’s mouths.

And just like that, she’s still chewing when he gets up to leave, not sparing another glance her way as he shoulders out the door. Her chin tilts, neck stretched to see him get into a blue pickup truck with a slam of the car door. He’s gone like a thin flame of lightning. She feels like she’s going to throw up. But she doesn’t, pays her check and stumbles out into the starkness of the morning. It’s a Saturday, and families are congregating for breakfast. She watches, slumped in the driver’s seat of her car, a sliver of a little girl and a little boy crossing her rearview mirror, holding onto hands attached to bodies that are cut off from view. She sighs, sits up straight and turns the key in the ignition. 

…

It’s a half-hour worth of driving later when she sees that blue pick-up truck again. Midwest, middle of nowhere, fields of ruin, and that truck, still and silent next to an abandoned barn made of rot. Middle of the day, the sun a flirting threat high in the middle of blue shock, but there are very few people out here, no one around to see her pull off the side of the road, get out of her car, and start swaying through the tall grass toward that truck and the barn. 

He is beautiful like this too. Slinking out from behind the barn, his eyes flickered low like he knew, he knew. His shirt is ruined, dark, damp. White t-shirt bled red, and the strange starkness of that gold cross glinting around his neck. He drags the back of his hand across his mouth and makes the mess worse, smears it up to the height of his cheeks, across his forearm. And his eyes, his eyes, swimming, darkness starting to drip down his face, starting to meld and mix with the rest. Beautiful, and so very sad. 

“There’s nothing for you here.” Low, the shivering thrum of it murmuring from somewhere between his ribs. Some kind of twang that sharps in her ears. She can’t find words of her own, still where she stands, beneath his hunkered gaze. When nothing comes, he sighs, shakes his head, walks right past her to his truck, keeping a wide breadth of distance between them as he does. 

“How did you know?” The question tries up her throat once, twice, before it finally jerks out into sound, stopping him before he opens the door to his truck, squinting at her over his shoulder. 

“It’s not hard to tell.” And in the space that follows, something is understood, confirmed. It’s starting to dry on his skin, in the scruff along his jaw, dark. The strangest hunger, the sharpest, an awful ache just looking at him. But he’s already leaving, not another word when he gets into his car, and the silence is a command in and of itself. I am and you are, and it will be a blessing if we never cross paths again. Again, gone, parting the sea of withering  grass with the slow trundling beast of his truck. 

She does not look, does not see for herself what lies behind the barn. She already knows. 

…

Like a child, her cheeks flamed with tears, scrubbing at the salt as soon as it falls. To put it simply, her car stopped, a few last wheezing rolls, and it will not start again. And there is no one to call, not out here, between states, between time itself. Eventually, the panic gives way to a dull surrender. She leans against the side of her car, tips her head back to let her face flush in the last slip of light, the sun fretting at the edge of the horizon. Memory is never far when she lets her eyes close. Something normal, driving down the street outside of house number five, her mother letting her, teaching her. She had laughed, giddy, running her palms along the wheel. Back then, flight had felt more like option, and less like routine. Those last few years, and the quick succession of escapes. 

She was out of control, her mother’s words, and she felt it too. Felt like a fine thread of hunger had been stitched through her spine and was pulling painful, the sharp tug toward destruction. And when the thread snapped, it was all she could do to find something to close her mouth around. Those last few years, they moved more than they ever had, every couple of months when she would inevitably mess up, making a mess of everything. Much easier now to always be leaving, because staying was never really an option. 

It’s heard before it’s seen, the crackling of gravel, of tires and brakes slowing down. She lets one eye slip open in a thin slit, squinting in the final slip of sun. That blue pick-up truck, sidling up behind her car along the shoulder of the road. He makes no move to get out, but he does roll his window down, and that’s enough for her to walk over to the side of his car, smalling beneath his steady eyes. He’s clean now, she thinks she can even smell the soap on him, that same soap that she stole a bar of and has been holding under her nose in the nights, something of comfort before she sleeps.

“You’re like me.” The words come from somewhere unnamed inside her, what might be called courage in someone else, and it seems to surprise him too, his brow jumping before furrowing back down. 

“I am.” 

“Where are you from?” A stupid question to ask someone like her. She doesn’t blame him for remaining silent, lips pressed in a thin line. So, she tries again.

“Where are you going?” 

“West.”

“Where west?”

“Just west.” Silence again, a single car hums by them. He clears his throat.

“Is your car broke down?” 

“I think it’s dead.”

“Is it worth fixing?”

“No, probably not. And I don’t have any money left.” 

“Do you want a ride?” Myths are made in the fine split of choice. She is walking into a new one. 

“Okay.” 

There is very little of herself to collect. A bag in the trunk of her car with a few spare clothes, her blanket, a bar of soap. The rest can be left behind. 

“I’m Joel.” All that he offers her when she slides into the passenger seat, a glance that falls on the curl of her hands in her lap. 

“I’m Maeve.” 

It has been a very long time since she has been a passenger in someone else’s car. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, leaving always looming, but she had been doing well for her mother. Well enough to get a date with a shy boy who sat behind her in seventh period math. He took her out in his car, fall and dark and dim and something light threatening in her chest, stealing glances at each other as he drove them out to that spot that everyone parked at. Lovers, lovers, lovers, young limbs tangling in the backseats of cars, damp windows and fog twirling up skirts in the wash of headlights. And they had parked, and shy boy had stuck his shy tongue in her mouth, and she had liked it, she had liked it. And of course, it went wrong, blood and body and blood and she ran home with salt stinging down her cheeks. She didn’t mean to hurt him. She never meant to hurt anyone. This isn’t a hurting thing, at least she didn’t want it to be. Her mother had slapped her, hard, sending her neck turning to one side before collecting her up in her arms and making it all better, making a leaving for both of them.

Now, with her temple pressed against the window of the passenger side door, silence save for the thin voices on the radio, she thinks of that boy, and how carefully he had cupped her cheek in his palm. She wanted to kiss him, she wanted to love him. But she didn’t know how to without biting down.

For as long as she can remember, alone has meant monstrous. Evidence of defect, deformity, the delineation between others, normal, the world, and her, somewhere on the periphery, always. But she wasn’t always alone, and for a while, that was enough to convince her that normal was possible, that, no, not a monster. She had her mother, not alone, not a monster. Clinging to not alone so hard, and in turn clinging to her  mother so hard, that often her fear, or love, or the product of the two, would get her hurt. 

She was hungry for touch as a child, and her mother was unwilling to give it to her in the amounts she wanted for. Her mother, her mother, locking her bedroom door from the inside so she couldn’t turn the handle and slip inside and ask for a palm on her back to calm her nightmares. She would curl up on the pilled carpet of whatever house they were in at the time, back pressed to the door like maybe she could feel her mother’s respiration through the wood, something to soothe down her spine, thumb tucked into her mouth. And in the mornings, bleary, jostled awake by the slow fall backward when her mother would inevitably open the door to her room. Lying on her back in the doorway, blinking up at her mother, grave and grim, who was always frowning, always sighing. Not again, not this again, not you, doing this again. Her mother would step right over her, the hem of her dressing robe brushing against her body as she did, and even that was a relief to her, touch of some kind.

And her mother did love her, in some way. Loved her the way one loves a monster. At arm’s length. That doesn’t mean much to monsters, though. They want, they hunger, just the same. She has wondered, from time to time, if it was the way her mother loved her that made her worse. To go hungry like that for so long, no great working of the imagination to consider how a body might solve that problem in another way. But no, she knows, this is something essential, something curled close inside her. This hunger has been there from the beginning. After all, the finger, the red nail polish, she was just a baby then. She likes to imagine how her mother loved her before that happened. There was a whole year of life before she became a monster. What is love like when people will actually look you in the eye, when every touch does not come tentative as if through the bars of a cage? Sometimes at night, she will wrap her arms around herself and trace her palm along the span of her back that she can reach. Something like that, she imagines, it would feel something like that. 

Something like what she is seeing now, sitting in the pew ahead of her. Husband and wife, and they are very old, the fine threads of age mottled on the back of husband’s hand, spread between his wife’s slight shoulder blades, her pale blue sweater, gold band glinting. His thumb moving back and forth, a smoothing thing, smoothing and steadying thing. The sermon, the prayers, the withering coughs of the staggered crowd all fall away. Small salvation in the steady rhythm of touch, it mesmerizes her. Things like these are always over before she’d like them to be, the husband’s hand falling away as he and his wife both rise from their seats, the sudden shuffle making her blink back into place and space. Plenty of people are getting up, sliding out of the pews to line up down the aisle. Joel, one of them, a gasp of cool air in the empty space he leaves beside her. 

She doesn't know what they are doing in a place like this. She doesn’t think, up until recently, that she had ever been in a place like this, if she’s being honest. Her mother wasn’t religious, and it always seemed to her like churches were somewhere good people went. So no, she had never been in a church before. Not until she started traveling with Joel. 

He tries to find one every Sunday if he can, in between towns and states and strips of road. Usually, he will manage to, he doesn’t seem to care what kind. Last week, Presbyterian, and the week before that, Baptist. This week, Catholic. They all seem the same to her. But then again, she doesn’t listen closely to the sermons, focuses instead on the movement, and making her own like theirs. Here is what she has learned, when you talk to God, look up, and look sad. What else she has learned, at the end, there is always an eating. Bread and wine placed on soft, trying tongues, and some kind of prayer draped over the entire thing. She watches Joel, every week, take communion until she doesn’t even have to watch. Keeps her eyes closed and pictures the drop of his jaw, the slow pull of his throat. She knows it, she knows it. What she doesn’t know is why. Not much room for a God like this one in their particular myth. Though Joel seems intent on it, and she is in no position to challenge this routine. A month traveling together, and still such strange silence between them. But on church days, he is always more likely to speak. 

There’s only a few other people who don’t get in line to receive communion, and all them, herself included, are met with the heavy sweep of eyes, soft shakes of heads that tells them no, should not be here, no, not for you. A childish thought that she keeps to herself, not for Joel either, no matter how he plays pretend at it, gold cross glinting like a rotten tooth rendered good at his neck. A thin flare of jealousy, maybe, that he can believe in good so easily. 

But maybe Joel is good, she thinks, in spite of what they both do. He certainly seems good walking down the aisle, polite words soft in his throat and a nod for her to follow on his heels and out to the parking lot. These people, church people, will never see them again, and that is a mercy. 

“Where are we?” 

“We’ll be in Kansas soon.” He always answers that question with the future rather than where they are in the present, always forward motion. All that he offers her, folding his worn map back up before he pulls the truck onto the road. 

Joel has some money saved from a past staying. And she told him that wherever he decided to stay next, she would stay too, paying him back for what he has already spent on her. He seemed neither moved nor impressed by her affirmation, eyes slipping down somewhere to the side, a sigh. At the very least, it’s a comfort to her, the promise of somewhere for her, for a little while.  

“Should we try to today?” 

“We don’t have to do it together. If you want to, today, that’s fine. I don’t mind.” The words feel stupid in her mouth, and the sharp look Joel gives her before his eyes return to the road tells her as much. 

“It’s safer if we do it together. Less of a mess.” It doesn’t feel that way to her. She knows what he means, but still. Not to her. Shameful to her, that someone else sees her like that. Shameful back when she had been traveling with that girl, that girl who would grin through it, teeth stained and tarred and making her sick up in her throat with shame, with cruel terror turned inside herself. But Joel isn’t like that. No, there is something different to how Joel tends to this. 

Now, alone means go, green light, good for taking. They watch for alone, parked in rest stops, gas station parking lots, all the in between places, places where the loneliest people tend to linger. They’ll spend whole afternoons in some various slump in or against his truck, squinting down in the sun at bodies moving around them, moving through. Today, they pull off at one of those long haul trucker stops, a gravel lot full of slumbering beasts of cars, cargo, men mincing around, stretching length back into their tired bodies. And they watch. And they wait. Teeth aching.

Joel distracts her, sometimes. Her watching him watching the world. It seems like he moves and something pressed beneath the thin crust of the ground moves too. Big man, silent as a fist man. But he is nice and gentle and kind. Small words for a big man. A kind of manners she has never seen before. She watches him now, the soft squint of his eyes under the sun’s cool heat, leaning against the side of his truck with his hands tucked into his pockets, ankles crossed. He looks so casual, but she knows that there’s a wire strung taut in his spine, quick flickers of want, of hunger. She feels it too. 

“Joel?”

“Hmm.”

“Can I ask you something?” He doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no either, ducking his head down in a way that shows her he’s listening. 

“How many others have you met?” Like us, the implicit understanding of like us. Something strange passes across his face, quick pinch, smoothing itself out. 

“A few.” 

“How many is a few?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Well, how many do you think there are in the country?”

“I think that’s a useless question.” He doesn’t say it mean, more matter of fact than anything, though it still feels like a swift loss of breath in her lungs. She pinches her mouth shut, a flume of embarrassment warming beneath her skin. But Joel pays her no mind, his gaze has settled on someone. 

They’ve only done this together two other times, but it’s been enough to know there’s a particular way Joel goes about this. Always alone, always men, trying for the bad ones. And how they decide who is bad is, at best, a childish logic. Alone, for one thing, both of them understanding how that can translate into bad. The loud ones, the brassy, blundering ones, ones that bodies move like they know violence intimately. It is all a game of chance, though Joel seems so methodical. Regardless, it makes her feel messy, smeared and stupid for the way she used to go about this, which is to say, with little thought for anything save the ache in her gut. Yes, she had rules of her own. Never children. Rarely women. As alone as she could find them. It was in the mechanics of it that she always failed, and this failure curdled into something close to cruelty, something she had a hard time stomaching. 

But not Joel. Joel is painfully careful in how this is done. The first step is always the waiting, seeing if a body will stick around in this in-between place. And in that waiting their hunger grows teeth of its own, hunkering their shoulders, making them as small as the curl of their guts. And when a body stays in that in-between place, a trucker who seems to be resting for the night, wandering idly around the lot with a cigarette held loose like a prayer between his lips, that’s when Joel moves. This part is not difficult for Joel, because he is kind and gentle and nice. Quiet, he smalls himself, makes himself anyone that could be anyone else. 

And when he does it, he does it in the night, pale slants of the moon’s watchful gaze washing down on him. And when he does it, he does it with his hands. Not a word, not a whimper or whine, just a final puff of breath when he is done, something absent floating up in his eyes. In the close brush of trees a few yards away from the rest stop, there will be nothing left to find when they are done. Down to the ankles, and then some. 

She hates doing this with him, to have him see her in it, and in the after of it. The sate feels good, but the shame fans a perfect flame up her neck. And she cries, she always cries, and he refuses to look at her when she does. They stumble into the rest stop bathrooms and wipe away what they can from their skin. This is no clean thing. She will feel the stick of it on her for days afterward, she always does. But she will feel good too, full too, and it will only make the shame worse. 

“Why do you cry like that?” It startles her, stops another sniff from hiccuping up her throat. He doesn’t look at her, keeps his eyes focused out on the flare of their headlights eating away at the road, driving back into the night. It’s difficult to look at him, the pearling stains of it that he missed down the line of his throat, the darkening of the front of his shirt, pink-tinged skin, hard to scrub off. Not difficult in that she wants to look away, but difficult in knowing that she should want to look away, though she doesn’t. Beautiful, eyes blown into a sad melt from beneath his brow, his jaw working at some phantom feeling. No, she shouldn’t, but she does. 

“It feels like I should.”

“Well, you don’t have to.” A little sharp, still quiet, but enough to make her heart twist. The rest of their drive is silent, eventually, pulling into the vacant yawn of a motel parking lot. 

Joel goes into the motel office after hastily changing into a new shirt, her eyes slipping somewhere else, but not without a glimpse of bare skin. He’s better with people than she is, and she is still inconsolable, shaking in the passenger seat and trying not to look at her hands, the thin curl of red under her fingernails. She lets her gaze unfocus on the blinking neon sign, vacancy becoming less of a word and more of a throb in her skull. 

“Come on.” He opens her door for her, snapping her back into awareness, and he’s not mean about it, but he is exasperated, dragging his palm down his jaw, already rounding the car to pull their bags out of the bed of the truck. She wishes she could be like him about this, so matter of fact, so mundane. Where did he learn that from? Who taught him to be like that? Who loved him like that? He is far more free than she is, she thinks. She wishes he would show her how. 

This is part of the routine too. They stand, hip to hip, at the cracked sink in the bathroom of their room and they brush their teeth. Their work is meticulous, rounding every canine, making gums bleed with too much pressure. She flosses twice, then brushes again, spitting pink into the porcelain. Joel prefers mouthwash, swallows two stinging gulps of it, trying to kill something from the inside out. It makes her stomach hurt to watch the dip and bob of his throat. 

He lets her take a shower first, the faint sound of late night news filtering in through the cracked bathroom door. She scrapes at her skin with her fingernails, scrubbing down until it stings, until she’s certain that a layer has been sloughed off. She uses the soap that he uses. She smells like him. Clean and good when she looks in the bathroom mirror again. 

Cheaper to get one room with two beds, she never sleeps under the covers. If she thinks too hard about what other lives have breathed on this bed, what cellular remains cling to these sheets, she will make herself sick. So she curls close to one edge of the bed, letting the light from the television blur into meaningless shapes. Joel comes out of the bathroom clean as well, the soft ruff of his hair, the stretch of muscle in his back beneath the thinness of his t-shirt. She watches him sit down on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on his knees, the glinting dare of his cross hanging from his neck. 

“Can I ask you something else?” She regrets the words instantly with the sigh that slumps down through his shoulders. Not supposed to speak, not after. Though he still turns his face over his shoulder to look at her, eyebrows jumped in something like assent. 

“Why do you wear that?” Nod of her head that she hopes he understands, and he seems to, pinching the teardrop of gold between thumb and forefinger.

“Because I believe in it.”

“Why do you believe in it?” 

“I’d like to think there’s something that will forgive me when I say that I’m sorry.” And she can understand that, though she gave up on sorry a long time ago. Her mother used to be the one to receive her sorry. Her sorry, met with scorn, with a scoff, the whites of her mother’s eyes rolling with her sorry, the flat of her mother’s palm making contact with her sorry. Much easier, she thinks, to offer sorry to something that will never actually answer. You can believe anything you want that way. 

“I wish I wasn’t like this.” She’s never said that out loud, sighed out loud, her chin propped in her palm where she’s laying on her side. But it is the crux of all her wanting, and there is a sorry threaded through it. Wanting for something else, to be anything else other than this. 

“It’s not your fault, being like this.”

“I should be able to control it.”

“You can’t, Maeve, you can’t.” She knows that, nods her knowing to him before sitting up and curling her chest over her knees. There’s comfort, at least, in sharing this understanding, in finding control in other ways. 

“Why did you let me come with you?” 

“That’s another question.” His words curl with the smallest smile, a rare thing as he turns to fully look at her, something softening, something slipping. 

“Did you follow me, Joel?” She ruined it with that, she knows, his face falling into something darker, shadows dipping and bending around his eyes, something dark swimming in his lashes. But some part of her already knew. There are no coincidences in a myth like this, everything must be chosen. 

“I did, I’m sorry.” 

“Why did you follow me?”

“I was confused by you.” He speaks so quietly that she keeps her body perfectly still so she can collect what little sound there is, the low thrum of it, something cracking in his voice. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I knew you were like me, but I didn’t understand how that could be possible.” She knows that he doesn’t mean the possibility of others, he has met others before her. Her confusion must be evident on her face, because he offers her a weak smile, his hands in an anxious clasp in his lap, working a steady rhythm into his knuckles. 

“I didn’t think people like us could be good like you are.” These words, what finally shocks her, a surprised yelp of a laugh frightening up her throat, though he is serious, unwavering, and she finds herself becoming angry. How dare he tell her what she is. How dare he hope like that, amidst all this rot. The most they have spoken in their month together, and this is what he says? How dare he say good with so much certainty, and lay it at her feet like it is hers for the taking. A sick joke, more cruel than anything else. 

“I’m not good, Joel.” 

“You are, I see it.” She feels tears starting to ache behind her eyes again, and she is too tired for another flood. All she offers in response to him, a quiet I don’t think so, leaving no room for argument when she lays back down and turns out the lamp on her nightstand. With her eyes closed, she can hear his quiet sigh, the slow shuffle of his body laying down, the softening of his breath. 

She hates that she liked the way good sounded coming from his mouth. 

“Alright?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Are you getting that?”

“No, no.”

“It’s nice.”

“It’s not practical.”

“You can get it, if you want.” She considers it, letting the fabric fall between her fingers, a brief wanting that she lets dissolve with a shake of her head, the small pang of it settling in her stomach. There’s no point in getting something nice like this dress, light blue with buttons down the front. It’ll just get ruined anyways. No, instead she sticks to the sensible stack of t-shirts and jeans, some sort of dollar deal at the Salvation store on denim today. Joel takes the bundle of clothes from her, his palm cupping her elbow for a moment, and she thinks he might ask her again if she wants the dress. She’s grateful that he doesn’t, that he takes his hand away, because if not, she might have said yes, might have given into that want, and that would be something she simply could not do. 

They move strangely around each other. Days bleeding weeks bleeding months. Very little progress made in the push west, following a coiled snake of a path, zagging from state to state. Pieces of each other, collected slowly, carefully. Joel is from Texas, and, like her, Joel tried at normal for a very long time. He got further in normal than she ever did. Had a daughter, had a family. Held on long enough to see her into adulthood. He writes letters to her now, though Maeve tries not to watch him working. The shake of his hand, his shoulders, not for her to see. Sometimes the letters get sent, if they are in the right place at the right time to make that happen. Sometimes the letters are left behind in their wake, a prayer to something much larger. 

She tells him a clean version of her own myth, leaving out what she can, leaving out the mother when she can. She is learning the power of deciding for herself where she comes from. She is learning the power of looking someone in the eye, and of them looking back. 

Joel pays for their new clothes, and she sulks, lingering amongst the racks like a despondent ghost. In part, his money comes from the wallets of the people they find in the in-between. It had upset her when she discovered this, and while he had been apologetic, always quick to soften when she prickles, he was still firm about it. She couldn’t exactly argue with his logic, doing far worse things, after all, but she still tends toward steel when money leaves or enters his hands. It makes her nervous, and it makes her sad. Because she knows with no uncertainty that Joel is good, she knows that now. A shame, that all his goodness must get confused in what they must do.

“How much longer do you think?”

“Maybe twenty minutes, we’re close now.” Something that she knows he is doing for her, and only for her, which makes it lovely, and dangerous, and a little dizzying. It had been an idle, errant thing on a morning a few weeks ago, looking at the creased map over the dash of the truck and trying to make sense of what should come next. Arizona had seemed like a tenable answer, and a memory had floated up, something she had seen on the television as a child, something she couldn’t quite believe on a hazy afternoon, turned upside down on a couch they’d be leaving behind soon. A chasm in the earth, somewhere split open, somewhere to look inside of and see whether all wounded things bleed the same way. Sheepish, she had mentioned it to Joel between the cracks of her fingers held over her mouth, hiding the want that was curling at the corners of her lips. And he had said okay, as if it were as easy as that, as if want could ever be as easy as that, asking and receiving. A silly thought, she wondered if he wouldn’t say the same thing if she had pointed up to the moon instead. She thinks that he would. 

The truth, she likes Joel, in a way that makes her nervous. Likes the quiet hum in his throat while he drives, likes his palm between her shoulder blades, an absent-minded touch that she tries hard not to lean into, likes the steadiness of his breath in the middle of the night. Above all, she likes him looking at her, and she likes giving that back to him, looking right back at him with only kindness, a foreign mercy.

“Have you been before?”

“No, never even been in Arizona before.”

“Thank you, Joel, for doing this. I know it’s silly.” His hands flex along the wheel, a light jump in the tendons of his fingers, a glance her way in the passenger seat before his eyes settle back on the road.

“It’s not silly. We needed somewhere to go.” Always needing somewhere to go, the in-between of the in-betweens. But here in the cab of his truck, it seems like time might forgive them, might let them slip by. She’s worked up something that kicks like courage over the months, enough that now, she will often reach across to him and take one of his hands in both of hers. And he will let her. Always that first tensing, touch still tentative, though the lines of his palms will smooth out eventually, pressed close and tight with hers. She likes to hold the pads of her fingers over the soft inside of his wrist, let the beat there lull her into line with the murmuring engine. And he lets her. 

It’s a perfectly normal scene when they get there. Tourists, teeming, tired parents and kids tugging at pants, at hands, at each other. And Joel, clearing his throat a few times, a shake in his hand that she knows well as they walk out to the edge. She hooks her arms over the railing, leans over until her stomach starts to lurch, eyes dizzy from the vast swaths of red and orange grit, crags and peaks and dry brush all around, down into the canyon. 

Because she is so good at leaving, she can do it without even having to move muscle. A little leaving, she watches herself from somewhere suspended, and in her leaving eyes, she watches the small mechanics of her body climb over the rail and leap out into the sinking blankness. But a hand on her shoulder draws her back. She finds Joel looking at her with a cloudy focus, a soft frown that she watches pinch and pull into a thin line. He clears his throat again. 

“Is it what you imagined?” 

“It’s in color.”

“What?”

“When I saw it on the TV it was in black and white. This is better.” Relief, she thinks, something that smooths his brow and the wings of his shoulders. Maybe even a smile. She offers him one of her own, slight slippage when her gaze wanders over his shoulder. Hand in hand, a halo of golden hair like corn silk, a daughter at her mother’s hip, both of them walking away from the edge. Probably back to their car, probably back to their home, to dinner, to bedtime, to mother brushing her daughters corn silk hair with hands that could not even imagine violence. Saying I love you with mouths that could not even imagine violence. 

And Joel turns around to see what she is staring at, and she sees in the planes of his back the same tensing she feels, the same tensing that comes with knowing that something has been lost, and that it can never be retrieved, returned to. When he turns back around to her, steel has resettled in his jaw, but something is swimming hazy in his eyes. 

“We should go.” 

“Okay.” She takes one more look at the open wound, one more imagining of slipping into it, letting it swallow her whole. And then, well, they do what they always do. They leave. Somewhere inside of her, she is telling her mother that she finally got to see the Grand Canyon. 

…

She thinks she might be hurting Joel. Not directly, not intentionally. She’s been trying to wait out her hunger, staving it off, and he in turn has been doing the same. Testing and trying the boundaries of how long she can hold onto normal, and it hurts, and she can see that it hurts Joel too. Waiting like this, going without like this, strings him by a livewire of his want, makes him jumpy, slow to soothe, to sleep. She can hear him shifting around in the night in the close quiet of their motel rooms, restless, wanting. Sometimes, he will sigh, get up, moving quiet in the dark, the thin slice of sound when he opens the door and steps outside. He goes and sits in the truck. She knows, she has stepped into the corner of the motel room window and seen him with his temple propped in his palm, made small in the cab of the truck. This waiting is tiring. This waiting has teeth and claws and growls. This waiting, this hunger, is enough to make an animal stupid, shivering like static. 

And he has done this nice thing for her, taken her to see the black and white wound in color, and so, she decides that the waiting is done, for now. So they do the thing that they do. They find a place that is in-between, and they begin a different kind of waiting. 

“I want to see this time.”

“No, Maeve, it’s not something you should be seeing.”

“It’s nothing new to me, Joel.” She needs to see, she thinks, needs an accounting of every part of him. In the past, it has always been an unspoken routine. She would catch glimpses of it, of him, of his hands closing around something fragile,  but he wanted her to have nothing to do with it. It’s not like she hasn’t done it herself. The whites of the eyes, and the collapse of the lungs one final time, wretched things she understands.

“I’d rather you didn’t.” His voice borders on the edge of pain, the tendons in his neck playing a hurt tune, and for a moment, she thinks about backing down, letting this go. But she can’t. To do what she wants to do, she must know every part of him, this too. 

“Please.” And he’s not going to say no, she knows that. He has turned her into a terrible king in some ways with how little he says no to her. She grows greedy with it. A child growing up with so much no will hoard whatever yes they can find. 

He doesn’t say anything else, returns to his waiting in the gas station parking lot, with perhaps an edge less patience, shifting in his boots and squinting into the dry shock of the afternoon. She presses her lips together to keep any more from coming out, turns back to the strange landscape surrounding them, the desert, the resilient death of it. And as always, if you wait long enough, someone else will come staggering into the in between. 

It begins like it always begins. They wait until the bruising pall of night washes the cracked earth purple, all the other nighttime creatures starting to yip and titter, working themselves up into their usual routine. But this time, she is there when Joel approaches the man, there to watch something else slide into the place where he is kind and gentle and nice, there to watch him, with the calm strength of a storm, take the man out into the quiet judgment of the desert. 

She stands and she watches a scared animal whimper and wriggle in a merciless trap. Joel’s hands are around the man’s neck, hunched over the strange slump of his body, a thin frown on his face and the slightest pinch between his brows. She can’t look away, her eyes stinging, unblinking, wide and receiving this part of him. And Joel is looking right back at her with the same intensity, eyes lit up in a slash of moonlight. And the man refuses to die. Still struggling, clutching at air and hoping for a savior. And the errant realization that she is someone people need saving from, a quick flash of lightning in her mind. Her stomach starts to churn. 

“Please, please.” It isn’t the man that’s saying it, she realizes. It’s Joel. Quiet and broken murmurings, pleas, prayers, for this to be over. This time is different. Joel, usually so clean and quick and quiet, is struggling. And it isn’t because the man is big or battering, actually quite slight, actually still slumped, but wheezing lost breaths, heart still beating blood and body. Broken cries like an animal caught in a trap. She covers her ears with her hands, but the sounds echo, and the sounds  will echo for a long time. But she can’t look away, not even when thin beads of silver start to fall down Joel’s face, crying, and still pleading for the man to die. And when nothing else works, Joel does turn violent, a quick shock of it in the way he makes simple work of the man’s neck in his hands. She lets out a shriek that she cannot hold back, hot shame following close on its heels. 

Joel is pale, face flushed wan and weary. He swallows hard a few times as he straightens his spine, letting the body curl limp on the ground. Hot salt starts to skate down her face, both of them crying now, shivering with it. 

“I can’t, not this one.” His face crumples at her words, something close to agony that makes her stomach swoop and curdle. She has seen every part of him now. There will be no returning from this.

“Maeve, please, I–” 

“I’m going to wait in the truck.” Already turning her back to him and stumbling toward the faint, fluorescent pulse of the gas station in the distance. He does not stop her, and she is grateful for it. 

The worst part, she is still very hungry. Her shame growing wings that batter against her ribs, because beneath the horror and the guilt, there is still that hunger, made worse now by how close she came to sating it. Like a petulant child, frustrated, and on the brink of going full-tilt. She sits in the passenger seat of the truck and presses her forehead against the window, cool glass providing the smallest comfort. 

And when Joel eventually returns to the truck, he is not covered in it. She knows he is still hungry like her. She does not want to know what was done with the curled body, and he does not tell her. 

They are silent, small, slow moves. She keeps her temple pressed to the passenger-side window, shoulders shaking with the smallest sobs. And she isn’t sure if it’s the hunger, or the shame that is making her cry, and not knowing only makes her cry harder. 

She doesn’t know how long they drive for, but eventually there is a motel, and eventually she is standing in the bathroom of a motel room, and he is standing next to her, and they are moving like they had not failed. She brushes her teeth twice, until it hurts, and like always, he lets her have the shower first. She wants it to burn, and so it burns, coming out from under the water with skin welted and washed thin. And when they pass each other in the doorway to the bathroom, their eyes still don’t quite meet, nothing is said. 

Something strange is settling inside her. She doesn’t lay down, runs her palm across the static fuzz of the television, over the pixel-pocked face of the person delivering the evening news. And when that isn’t enough, she presses her cheek to the low-humming screen, curls her arms around the back of the television, and holds herself there. And for a moment, it’s as easy and as simple as how good that warmth feels, the mumbling drone of sound in her ear. She pulls herself away from it when she hears the water shut off, and there is a moment of reckoning, recognizing, when he comes to stand in the doorway to the bathroom. Hair dark and dripping darker onto his t-shirt. He looks at her, and she looks back, her hands fisted in the fabric of her sweatshirt. He looks small, he looks sad, he looks like he’s about to ask her for something. She would give him anything he could ask for, she would try, the realization as clear and clean as the blade of a knife. 

“I’m sorry, Maeve.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I couldn’t. Not with you there like that.” 

“It’s okay.”

“I wanted to keep good for you.”

“You are good, Joel.”

“Please, don’t.” A monster, broken, a monster, bending, a monster, brought to the ground. A monster in tears. Something seems to split inside him, the fragile threads of his strength flailing and failing. And she surprises herself when she goes to him before the first shaking crack of a sob can rack his chest, curls arm around shoulders like she knows what to do. He’s saying something that sounds like sorry and she’s saying something that sounds like forgiveness, managing enough movement to get them to the edge of one of the beds, to sit down still holding him. 

That cross hangs from his neck like a wretched joke, the small shiver of it. He cries, big man, big strong man. And she holds him, lets him shake with sorry and promises him that he doesn’t have to, that he is okay, that he is good, and in turn, it feels good to give these things to him. 

Eventually, the shake starts to smooth, and when she takes his face in both her hands, he leans into it, eyes heavy and worn weary, but something bright still when he looks at her. 

The thing is, Maeve knows very little about what care looks like. Most of what she learned came from the same black and white fuzz of a television. Beautiful women and beautiful men and their beautiful lives. In the movies, care is a delicate hand at the cheek. In the movies, care is a complete embrace, arms in arms and faces tucked into necks. In the movies, care is having someone to come home to, someone to love. When her hunger was at its worst as a child, she would sit as close to the television as she could get, unblinking, should she miss the moment that the beautiful woman and the beautiful man would kiss. 

And when she got older, she learned a little more about what care is, and more importantly, what it isn’t. There were boys whose violence shocked her, and in turn were shocked by her own violence. There were men that made her feel foolish for expecting care, and there were others who were just plainly mean. One comes to mind, a man whom she got on her knees for. Strange, how women are made gods on their knees, fleeting, foolish gods. And she felt wanted, looking up at him and him looking down at her. And she was wanting too, the thick curl of it in her stomach that was different from any other want. But that had changed very quickly. She didn’t like the way his hand gripped the back of her skull and she didn’t like the crude words he dribbled over her and she didn’t like that it didn’t feel like care, knew that it wasn’t care, it was a cage, and it was too much, and it was all she could think to do because she was afraid, she was afraid, and wanting, and afraid of her wanting, and she was young. So she let a different kind of wanting, different kind of hunger take over. And instead of a god on her knees she became a monster all over again.  

She has not tried for care since then, not for a very long time. But she thinks that she would like to now, with Joel. And so she does, tentative at first, the soft presence of her mouth at his temple, the round of his cheek, the drop of his lashes brushing against her skin, something shy about it. She lays another at the corner of his mouth, and it is an asking, it is a choice, it is a new myth made possible, one in which they can both be good, one that is constructed out of care. An answer in the tilt of his head, in the aligning of mouths, in his palm spanning her jaw, holding her now, holding her still in a kiss that teaches her a new kind of hunger. 

They move like they have both been wanting for a very long time, and they have, after all. The act of give and take, and she wants to take so much, give so much, perfect, pooling pangs of want when she lets his tongue into her mouth, a sharp sigh in her nose. Both turn pliant for the other, his hands at her hips, coaxing and curling her into his lap, and her hands in his hair, tilting his head back how she would like it so she can taste the sharp of his jaw and the soft hollow of his neck. For a moment she pauses, mouth pressed to the jump of his pulse, and she breathes because he smells like him, like that soap he buys wherever they go, like something else human and pleasant and real. And he lets her, runs his palms up the track of her spine, a soothing, steadying thing, only stilling when she lifts her face from the crook of his neck. Breath and beat stop briefly when she looks at him, the dark awe rounding his eyes, cheeks flushed down devastating and lips parted. She has never been looked at like this before. She likes being looked at like this. 

“I think that you’re beautiful, Joel.” It makes him shy, and awful, it makes her smile. She keeps him from dropping his gaze in denial with her hand at his jaw, holding him there and pressing a small thing of a kiss to his lips. And what unfolds afterward happens slowly, something on the verge of timid in how they move, like at any moment, flight, fleeting and fled and gone. But that does not happen, but they both stay, and they both grow more confident every time touch is answered with more touch until they are both bare, and they are curled around each other on the bed, the closest to holy she thinks she could ever get in the sense and sate of skin pressed to skin, a warmth that is so new it stings salt behind her eyes in overwhelm.  His brow pinches at the sight of her first tears, showing her how gentle he can be for her with the fragile presence of his thumb gathering the salt before it can fall. 

“I’ve never met someone good like you.” Awful, she believes him when he tells her this, hope unfurling in her chest and flushing up under her skin, a terrible heat that flickers and flumes when he begins to shift down her body, moving muscle how he would like it to move until she is splayed for him, her knees falling to the sides to allow the breadth of his shoulders to settle between them. He rests his open mouth over the soft inside of her thigh, his eyes flaring up to hers beneath the dark fan of his lashes. And this is care, she thinks, soft jaw and soft teeth where they could turn so violent. Soft only for her. He holds her in the soft bleed of his mouth, dragging heat to her cunt. He takes from her, eats at her pleasure, pulling muscle and bone into a taut line of want, her whole body strung in a snarl as he takes and takes and takes, his mouth, and his fingers, and yes, she thinks, anything else she could ask him for. He would give it to her. Gives and gives and gives until it’s his name in the back of her throat, something that borders on pain with the way he continues to mouth at her through it. She tugs at his hair, begging mercy that he finally allows, up and up and up until she’s tasting herself on his mouth and the solid weight of him is smoothing the kick of her pulse, her chest. 

The roll film starts to melt and pop at that point. Not like the movies, some myth of their own, making myth out of their want. She opens for him, a high, animal keening in her chest when his hips settle against hers. And it is not grace, it is not beautiful or merciful. It’s want distilled, and it makes them move ugly, animal, accepting and open to each other, a little bit frantic, frenetic and fizzing. Skin slicks with salt, turning everything hazy, everything close and cloistering and she likes it, the feeling of overwhelm, blatant and battering and him, all she can think about is him saying her name, saying his want and calling his want by her name. And in the aftermath, they barely move, remain pressed close like stained glass starting to melt into syrup. 

He holds her in a way she didn’t think she’d ever be able to ask for, tucked close to the steadiness of his heart, a sound that soothes and reassures her that yes, this is real, yes, this is shared. 

“This is a good thing.”

“Yeah, it is.”

Want is whispered on broken exhales, and accepted into willing mouths. Monsters that are no longer monsters in each other’s company. 

Some things make the hunger easier to stomach. This is one of those things. This is care. She is learning how to receive it, and she is learning how to give it. She is learning that she might like giving it more than she could’ve ever imagined. She didn’t know how to for such a long time, after all, that it is something entirely new, something that feels good. 

And in that care there has been a staying. Small, but still, she can’t remember the last time she spent a week, let alone two,  in a single place. They get a motel room with a kitchenette, and she knows that money is starting to become more of a question than an expectation, because neither of them are doing the thing that makes them monsters. Playing chicken with each other’s hunger, but filling in the ache with other things.

Joel buys her that dress, light blue with buttons down the front, watches her put it on for the first time in the peeling mirror next to the bed, sheepish and smiling, rubbing his palms down his thighs. She flushes, and any hunger is smothered beneath a fine flume of want, and of something else. Something like power, being seen like this, and seeing him like this, his eyes heavy and lingering. And how easy want like this becomes, him reaching out and her responding with two steps into his arms. He drops to his knees before her, sweet in his supplication, bunches the fabric up at her hips, and gives a little more to her from the soft hinge of his mouth. A fine fissure splits and snarls in the mirror that day from the way her skull makes contact with it, perfect arc of pleasure and she doesn’t even mind the pain. 

They go to the grocery store that’s ten minutes away and pretend at normal. They buy white bread that’s so soft, she watches the easy give of it with the press of her thumb, how it reforms itself around the indent through the crinkling plastic. Tomatoes, and mayonnaise, and salt, and they sit in the back of his truck, and she watches him slice into the perfect, red skin, juice dribbling from the clean break. The end of summer, sun flirting and flaring on their curled backs in the motel parking lot. He makes them sandwiches, and she sighs at the taste, golden and the grit of salt, and the soft stick of bread to the roof of her mouth. A hum in her throat when the sense of it all slips down. She watches his jaw work. 

How nice, to let days go by in something close to stillness. She learns his body, lays him out on the coarse sheets and puts her mouth wherever she would like to. Because she gets to have him, however she would like to have him. And so she does. Lips to the center of his chest where she can feel the kick of his heart, to the soft catch of his stomach where he holds his breath, watching her beneath the shy fan of his lashes, light and shadow flickering with the trying twirl of the fan. And she’s so soft for him, only for him, soft jaw and teeth and tongue, taking him into her mouth and humming at the salt and sense of it. That gold cross glints above her with the rise and fall of his chest. And she could, and he could. As easy as exhaling, as easy as the hinge of the jaw. Though they don’t, though they don’t. They sate each other in different ways. 

He coaxes her up and up and up, squeezing at the soft of her hips, a preening laugh getting stuck in her chest when he pulls her down onto the open heat of his mouth. Sweat beads and bends in all the soft places in the close swelter of the afternoon and she exults in it, watches her hips move in the sliver of mirror caught in the corner of her eye. His hands splayed against her ass, making flesh give, animal mouthings that make her shiver. She feels beautiful. Looks back at the woman in the mirror and the woman looks back at her and she feels beautiful. 

And when they settle down around each other, when his hips press close to hers and she’s looking at him and he’s looking at her, she can begin to believe that they aren’t monsters at all. Monsters couldn’t love like this, at least she doesn’t think so. 

“Can I have one of those?”

“Mmm.” This is the way most afternoons go. Bare, they don’t leave bed again, making a game out of reaching whatever they could possibly need. She stretches one leg out, toeing at a carton of cigarettes strewn on the floor until it’s within arm’s reach, Joel’s hand held steady on her hip to keep her from slipping. Smoking, she has found, is an excellent way to press the hunger down and away, tendriled tempering. She curls back into his side, plucks the lighter from where it was tucked in the carton and settles a cigarette between his lips. The pull he takes once it’s lit jumps and jags the tendons of his throat. She lays her mouth there, feels the thrum it drags from him, and like divine machinery, it makes a smile start to curl and round her cheeks. 

He offers her a drag, and she takes one that is a little too much, makes her eyes water while he rubs his palm up and down the bare breadth of her back, soothing, all easy, easy, Maeve. Sheepish, she tucks her face down along the line of his clavicle, a small sound of protest in the back of her throat before she can stop it when his palm stills, though he’s quick to pick up the smooth circuit. She flushes, because he has made her greedy with all this touch, all this give and take, ask and receive. A different kind of monstrous, what he has made her with want made real. 

“Maeve?” She already knows that tilt to his words because he has tried this a few times now, that little edge of pain that comes with hunger. She sighs, but she does lift her head so she can look at him, the slight pull of his frown, waiting for the question that’s coming. 

“Will you eat?”

“I don’t need to.”

“Maeve.”

“I don’t, Joel.”

“I know you do.” And the unsaid of it, because I do too, because I am in pain too, because we are the same, and we must not forget that. Yes, she can set the hunger down, but there is always the picking it up, always the remembering. It turns her quiet, turns her stomach too, making her sit up, Joel’s hand falling from her spine. He sits up with her, ducking his head to catch the slant of her gaze, eyes rounding and wet. 

“Baby, all you gotta do is eat. I’ll take care of the rest.” She sighs, letting her cheek fall into the cup of his palm, fighting a question that is threatening in her throat, and that has been for a while now. She wants to know how long, just how. He held onto normal for a very long time, and if he could, maybe she could as well. Maybe this could be enough, her cheek in his palm. But, at least for now, she will not ask that, will not try that, because she can see that she is hurting him again, dark wings beneath his eyes, jolting with unanswered want. She knows that hurt, and was fine with hurting herself for a very long time, so long as it meant a gentle hand from her mother, a promise of staying. But this is different, because even when she isn’t hurting, even when she isn’t hungry, Joel doesn’t look away from her, doesn’t leave, doesn’t punish or preach. Relief, she thinks, is all he feels when she’s full. And that’s a kind of care that is new to her as well. 

She lays her hand over his, turns her face into his palm to the fated lines there. 

“Okay, we’ll eat.” 

Eating means leaving, and they both know that, but just the promise that this hurting will soon be over is enough to ward off any worry with skittering fingers. They slink out of bed, get dressed in the wavering light of the single lamp in their room. By now, night, dark and close when they step outside, that late summer cooling that comes when the sun slips down beyond the horizon. 

They haven’t, not since she refused to, not since Joel wept. And she feels a fine thread of worry tugging in her stomach, trying not to look at him too hard as they drive through the night toward some in-between place. But there is nothing to worry about, because Joel takes care of it. And so they are full again, and so they aren’t hurting any more, stumbling through the desert brush beneath the merciful glow of the moon, dark, dark, dark. 

It is amazing how little time something so monstrous takes when it is done so carefully like this. In the passenger seat, she presses her palm over her mouth, feeling the dried stick there. And in turn she reaches over to him, lays her hand over his mouth in the same place, feels the same tack there. Like her, like her, like her. He kisses the cup of her palm without ever taking his eyes off the road, the jump of muscle in his forearms, in his knuckles curled around the steering wheel. 

They are quiet when they get back to the motel, curling around themselves to conceal the truth of the stain, of the darkening damp smeared down their fronts. And this routine starts the same. At the sink, the toothpaste and the floss and the mouthwash. But there is no separation when the steam of the shower starts to seep. They both strip down and step in together. Before he can, she is already pressing her palms against his chest, holding him in the stream of the shower. She cleans what remains from his skin, water pinkening in the drain. And when she’s satisfied with that, she takes his skull in her hands and tips his head back so she can thread her fingers through his hair. He hums, eyes slipping shut in pleasure made pure. And she is so gentle for him that even now, so dizzyingly full, she has a hard time convincing herself of her own monstrosity. 

He surprises her when he takes over, beginning his ministrations with his hand holding her chin, fingers tucked at the hinge of her jaw to hold her steady, hold her mouth open so he can run the pad of his thumb over her teeth, pressing at the sharp of her canines, something dark laying heavy over his eyes. She tries for a grin, though it is only a crook of the corners of her lips with the way he is holding her face. And when she bites, just a little, holding his thumb in the merciful pressure of her teeth, he laughs, a quiet murmuring sound as he watches her from beneath his lashes. 

“Be good, please.” And she is good for him. Good means not biting down. Love means not biting down, at least not too hard. Instead, taking his thumb into her mouth and curling her tongue around it. She sucks, and he groans, and it sends a new want stuttering up her spine. Close to frightening to want and be wanted so regularly like this. The cool tile is holy against her spine, shivering down a perfect prayer. He holds her there, and she lets him, and they do something about the hunger that remains. 

When the water runs cold and clean, they get out, continue a routine that looks normal, settle down around each other in bed. Joel puts on the evening news and she keeps her ear pressed over his heart, lets the flooding beat of it drown at that slick slither of shame, still there, always there. But then, but then.

There is a woman on the news. A woman who is crying. A woman who is surrounded by the small flicker of candles held in hands, held in vigil. And the woman is crying because her husband never came home. Three weeks ago, and her husband didn’t come home, and her husband isn’t, wasn’t, the type of man who would just leave because they had children. They had children, and their father never came home. And Maeve sits up because when they show a photo of the husband, the father, she recognizes him. That night when she refused and Joel wept. She recognizes him, and her stomach starts to curdle. And Joel recognizes him too, sits up too, a careful, quiet call of her name, low, so as to not scare her into flight. But she is already shaking her head no, no, no, no, shirking and shrinking away from his touch, curling up on the end of the bed, all her angles tucked up close as panic turns into sickening white noise in her mind. 

They had been careful, hadn’t they? Always careful, always the in-between, always people that couldn’t possibly have someone waiting at home for them. After all, it isn’t hard for like to recognize like. And they were careful, and they were kind, and they always tried very hard to be gentle when they had to do what they always have to do. Not enough though, none of it, enough, and it was never going to be. 

Joel turns off the television, his movement fragmented in the melt of her tears, catching stained-glass glimpses of him kneeling in front of her, pleading, or praying, or something in between the two. Please, baby, please will you look at me? It’s not your fault, it’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine. You’re good, you’re so good, please, I’m sorry, please. And it’s please over and over again, and she’s shaking her head no over and over again, trying to wrench away from his hands holding her face steady. 

In the perfect cradle of a pain like this, there is a regression, something childlike in the logic of making it better. Something young in the way he unclasps his cross from around his neck and tries to give it to her, tries to lay it against her sternum. And something young in her too, throwing a perfect fit when he tries to make this right the only way he knows how. She shows him her snarl, thrashes and tears the chain away from her skin, throws it across the room. Terrible, she regrets it immediately, regrets the way his face falls, the way he sinks back into himself. She has hurt him, and this time, on purpose. 

He gets up with a sigh that sounds very tired, doesn’t say another word as he crosses toward the bathroom. She can’t look at his face right now because it will make her cry even harder, so instead she lets her vision blur and unfocus around his form, a silhouette with his forehead resting against the bathroom door frame. 

“I’m sorry, Maeve.” All that he offers, slipping away, slipping out of sight and into the bathroom, and that young part of her panics. No, needs him to be where she can see him, where he can see her, needs to fix this. She gets down on her hands and knees in a blind stutter, runs her fingers along the grimey baseboard trying to find where she threw that wretched chain. And it’s no use because when she does find it she sees that the clasp is broken clean off, golden bones in pieces, glinting in the faded carpet. She picks up what she can find of it, feeling small, shivering small when she pads into the bathroom. 

He’s sitting on the edge of the bathtub, big man made small just like her, curled over himself with his head in his hands. And now would be a good time for her to leave, she thinks. Leave the cracked pieces of his faith on the counter and start walking in any direction away from here. She is familiar with this kind of leaving. All those years ago, and her mother in a similar posture of prostration, of surrender to this thing that she could not fix for her daughter. Her mother, asking her to leave. And Maeve, finally given an opportunity to succeed in what her mother asked of her. Yes, she is very good at leaving when people get tired of her, or frightened of her, or tired of being frightened of her. She has done it many times now. 

“I’m sorry, Joel.” And the rest is said too, in a sodden slur when she holds out her cupped palms to him and shows him the broken pieces, something about her fixing it, with money that doesn’t exist, and in a place she doesn’t know, and with hands that seem to only be good for greed. But he accepts her sorry, curls his palms around hers to close her fingers over the wreckage, a prayer that she is relieved to partake in. 

They are ruinous. But they are in love. 

A strange, slow slump over the lip of the tub, and he pulls her with him. The porcelain, or whatever it is, is still pearled damp from their shower earlier and the bare skin of her shins sticks and slips as she settles in his lap. She holds his face in her hands, thumbs stroking at the soft skin beneath his eyes. And he’s beautiful, and she’s already forgiven him, and she never wants to hear him say sorry again because she would continue to forgive him for any and all of it. She wants a world for them in which they never have to say sorry.

“Joel?” He is listening, though he doesn’t say anything, and she allows something like hope to lurch hot and hazed in her chest.

“Do you think we could be normal together?”

Silence, for a long time. The sink faucet drips.

“We could try.”

Two years pass. 

It is the longest she has ever managed normal.

The truth is there was money, because her mother did love her in her own strange way. She had never touched it before though, there never seemed a good enough reason for it. But this seemed good, like the best possible reason, really.

They get an apartment in a town in New Mexico with a name that doesn’t mean anything to either of them. Something they could both agree on, the hard bake of the sun and the dry air. 

They both get jobs in the first months. She works at a grocery store, smiles bright at the mothers that bring their daughters along on their weekly errands. He works with his hands, and comes home in the slow slump of the afternoon smelling like cedar and salt. She licks it off his skin and runs her fingers through his damp, darkened hair most nights. 

Those first few months, there is a mattress, and not much else. It is enough. They put it in the middle of the apartment. They eat and they sleep and they talk and they laugh and they fuck and they watch the sun rise and fall in the harsh way it does from that mattress. They are very happy. 

And then they get some more furniture, and then they start saying hello to their neighbors when they pass them in the hall, and their neighbors start saying hello back. Normal slips into the corners of their lives like the most gracious guest. 

At the end of that first year, when it seems like normal is going to stick, Joel sends a letter to his daughter with a phone number scribbled in hope at the bottom of the page. He waits by the phone the whole week after it’s sent like an anxious ghost, makes himself sick with waiting. And when she does call, Maeve catches glimpses of him from the end of the hall, a smile, and quiet wonder in his voice. He’s not interested in going to church any more because now his daughter calls every Sunday. He sits down on the floor with his chin tilted to the side to accommodate the stretch of the coiled phone cord and he talks all morning with her. 

In the second year, Maeve finds that she likes to paint. There’s an art supply store in town, so she quits her job at the grocery store and goes to work there, gets enough of an employee discount that she can buy paints and brushes and canvases and an easel over the span of a few months. She likes the desert, likes its colors and its quiet assertion of life, so that is what she often paints. And Joel likes to watch her in the evenings, she sets up her work in front of the crooked palm of windows in the living room, an errant hum in the back of her throat to whatever song is playing on the radio. Eventually, every night, when she is doing more swaying than painting and her eyes are starting to squint shut, he gets up off the couch and pads over to sway with her, her head falling back to rest against his shoulder as he coaxes her tired body into his arms. And from the faint glow of the windows stacked and ordered alongside a few dozen other glowing windows of the apartment complex, it looks like love, because it is. 

She finds that she likes routine, likes being bored and boring. She likes that the things she worries about now are small things, like what they're going to have for dinner, or whether they’ll go to the weekly tenant meeting on Thursday nights. She likes waking up in the same bed every morning, and she likes that he sleeps on his stomach when he’s actually comfortable in a space, splayed and cheek rumpled on his pillow, an arm always extended toward her, draped over her. She likes the weight, the reassurance of it. And in the mornings he is slow to wake, all soft murmurings and soft eyes, still shut even when she presses her lips to his temple, though a smile will usually start to curl smug when she does. Good morning, good morning. It is good, all of it, so good that it makes the dormant hunger hurt a little bit less.

They eat breakfast together, leaning against the kitchen counter. Eggs and their golden tears splitting and spilling on their plates, strong coffee that he takes black and she takes with cream. Their mouths work hard around normal. She packs lunches for them both, late summer again, tomatoes again, sandwiches again, the way that he made them. And on her break at work she does her best to get it down, pinching the crust off first before eating the rest. But no, that other hunger doesn’t go away. It makes sounds a little sharper, and lights achingly brighter, it makes the steady beat of the sun fierce. But she thinks she can manage it, because she wants all this normal so much more, hunger for hunger, and want for want, a careful game of tipping the scales. 

Joel’s birthday is in a few weeks. She’s been working on a painting for him, difficult to keep it a secret with the way he is always over or under her shoulder, a hum in his throat because that’s beautiful, baby, you work so beautiful. But somehow she’s managed to keep it hidden. And today she picks up two fresh tubes of paint, pigments that she needs to finish her work. She’s painting a sunset for him, a landscape that they both know, a wound in the earth, that canyon that they visited once. She hopes he’ll like it. She thinks he will. 

She always gets home later than he does these days because he got a promotion, baby, big man, good man who got a promotion, baby, who’s a boss now, baby, working with his hands, baby, good, honest work, baby. He's already showered, hair damp and dripping dark down the back of his t-shirt, the small slide of muscle as he stands over the stove and stirs something that smells good. That same hum in his throat when she twines her arms around his stomach and presses her face into the back of his neck, deep inhale because he smells like that good, clean soap he always uses. 

And it’s all the quiet, normal things, greetings, and how was your day, and it was good, baby, how was yours, and mmhmm, good, this looks good, you look good, good, good. He turns in her arms and smacks a kiss to her mouth that makes her laugh, makes her hungry. 

“I got some new paints.”

“Oh yeah?” Somehow, squirreling around each other, he tucks her into his side, arm easy and slung around her shoulders while he continues to stir pasta and sauce in simmering pots, steam and savor washing over their faces and turning skin tacky and flushed. 

“Mmhmm.”

“Gonna paint something beautiful, baby?” Baby, baby, baby, his cheeks round with the word every time. She especially likes it, usually late at night, or early in the morning, when he slurs and stumbles over Maevey baby, Maevey, Maevey, Maevey. Heavy and sweet like thick syrup in his throat and it nearly brings her to tears it’s so nice coming from his mouth. 

“I’m gonna try.” 

“Always beautiful, always make things so beautiful.” It’s almost absent-minded the way he says it, intent on getting food on plates with only one free hand, but it still makes her stomach swoop and buoy something awful. 

They eat dinner, and they sit on the couch, and he watches her work on a different painting until the sun slips under and washes everything down dark. And they get ready for bed, moving around each other in a routine they don’t even have to think about, settle down around each other and turn out the lights, quiet whisperings of love, touch that expects more of itself for a very long time, easy, patient, soft. When she feels and hears his breath slip into that slow resonance of sleep, she moves as quietly as she can in getting out of bed. She’s been hiding his painting in the hall closet where they keep their winter coats tucked. They have winter coats now. 

She works in the quiet clutch of the night, eyes squinting in the dim light she allows for herself, working partly from memory, and partly from  mythology of a place in their shared past. The painting will be finished soon. She thinks she’ll have to give it to him early if that’s the case, giddy with the idea of finally sharing it with him. 

When she’s satisfied with her progress, still night, still close and dark and quiet, she tucks the painting back into the closet, careful not to let anything brush against it while it dries. And when she returns to bed, Joel is still asleep, on his stomach now with his arm outstretched toward her side of the bed. Nothing is easy like it is to slip back under with him. 

She’s going to finish the painting tonight. The thought makes her rush a bit in closing the store. It takes her three tries to finally get the key to click into the lock. If she does finish it, she thinks she might have to wake him up right then and there to show it to him. And she floats home on the prospect of that, smiling, easy greetings to the people she passes on her way up to the apartment. 

“Joel?” A fine whisper of worry when she doesn’t find him in the kitchen making dinner. He must have had a longer day at work, she figures, just now getting home and getting cleaned up because she can see the light slipping down the hall from the bathroom. 

And the rest happens in a strange, slow unraveling. 

Later, much later, he will tell her that she screamed when she opened the bathroom door. She will not remember that. What she will remember, the awful resignation, that understanding like a small death, that she was never going to be able to walk out of her own myth. And the blood on clean, white tile that had never seen blood before. And blood on him, on his hands and on his face and down his shirt and all over and all over and all over. 

Later, much later, he will tell her that he thought he was going to die when she told him not to touch her, when she skittered back so hard she tripped and fell in the hallway when he reached for her. What she will never tell him, she sometimes wishes she died then and there.

From the glimpse she caught, there is very little left of what he has done, only remnant viscera in the bathtub. But she doesn’t see any more than that, because she is on the ground and she is pressing her back up close against the wall as far from him as she can get and she is sobbing and yes, she is screaming. Ruinous, wretched ribbons of sound ripping through her chest. It is a mourning sound. And he drops down to his knees, reaches in the space between them, but thinks better of it with the way she shrinks away from him. Pink streaks of tears down his face, he pulls at his hair in something that looks like agony. He cries with her, and he prays to her. Like a chant, like an invocation, like one last plea for salvation, I’m sorry, I’m so tired, I’m sorry, I was so tired, I’m sorry, I couldn’t, I’m sorry, I love you, please, I’m sorry, please. And she cries harder at the broken sound of his wails, fingernails clawing at her chest like she might be able to plunge through skin and muscle and find the sick, stuttered beat of her heart that is in such perfect pain. The horrible truth is she had already forgiven him the moment she opened the bathroom door. The horrible truth, they are in this myth together. 

Eventually, when there is little left for her to mourn, the cries stop, everything swollen and slumped and sodden. She doesn’t wince or recoil when he reaches for her now, crawling to her on his knees, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing the crown of his head into her stomach, still shivering in his sobs. And because she has already forgiven him, it is hardly difficult for her palms to find the shake in his spine. She doesn’t even have to think about it, holding him a little tighter when his hands grasp at the fabric of her shirt. 

Still, pain. Later, much later, she does not let herself think of that day too often. Of the painting that was never finished. That was left in the hall closet to dry with a sunset that wasn’t yet complete. Because if she does think of it for too long, that pain will tear open inside her all over again, and it will turn her hateful, and she doesn’t want that, not for him, not when he tries to show her how sorry he is every day. Sorry that normal ended like that. Sorry that there was always going to be another leaving. 

They leave, together, the next morning, silent as a grave. And in all the years of wandering that follow, they never return to New Mexico, a space sealed off like a tomb of the past, of a promise that could never have been kept. 

…

“Are you cold?” 

“A little, but it feels nice.” Still, he doesn’t think twice about offering his shirt to her from where it had stayed dry and folded at the edge of the lake, warmed by the sun and clinging to the pearling damp on her skin. It’s summer again, and they are in some in-between like they always are, and he is trying to find what joy he can for her like he always is. And it is a good day, one of their better ones, so she tries for what she can of a smile from behind the tuck of her knees up against her chest, squinting in the bright halo around him. He smiles too, a shy, small thing that looks like relief, and when he curls his arm around her shoulders, she lets him, tucks  into his side, and they sit at the edge of a lake in the in-between, soft grass and mud and the mild kippering of insects all around them, baking in the sun. When he holds her like this, when normal starts to creep in, so do the tears, but she tamps them down with a hum in her throat, some song that he sighs at, tucks his face into the hollow of her neck so he can feel the thrum of it from the source. He holds her like he is waiting for her to shatter, something desperate, but something fragile. And she drags her fingers through his hair, now drying in fine waves beneath the sun, and it is a moment that will have to be enough. She is learning what to hold onto, and what to let go.

“Joel?” He hums his listening, though he keeps his face ducked down to let her continue her ministrations. 

“We should probably leave soon.” 

“Yeah, we should.” And it is this string of words over and over again, the finely stitched pattern of their lives held in the cradle of these few words. She thinks that she has accepted this, settled around this, grown around the rot until it has become something else. Sometimes, she wonders if they are real, if she is real. Watch two myths walk away from the edge of a lake. It is summer, and  two myths are holding each other in their arms. It’s only real if you watch. The rest of the time, they define real for themselves. Real in touch, in sun on skin, in mouths and hands on skin. They make each other real within their own myth. All of the time, they are in love. Some of the time, they are happy. 

But before this, before now, before all the miles they have crawled in the time following that staying that turned into a leaving, she refused to eat for another two years, despite his coaxing and cajoling. And it weakened her, made her mean and sharp, and eventually withdrawn, curled like a corpse in the coarse sheets of motel beds, letting her eyes glaze and glass in the glow of the television. Lover turned patient, any care and keeping was done by his hands, moving her in a pleading pattern of preservation. Please, baby, I need you to eat, I love you I know you love me so eat, all you have to do for me is eat. All she offered in response when he would start to pray to her like that, her palm lifting in the air, and dropping back down as if judgment had been passed.  In the night, he curled his body around hers, and it was the strongest she got to feel, him weeping against her spine.  And in the waking day, death seemed inevitable, seemed like grace, and one day, she told him in what voice she had left that she would like him to, to her, of her, if the time came soon. And she hoped the time would come soon. And he got very angry, it shocked her how angry he got. Voice like thunder and lightning in his hands, shattering whatever would break against the walls of their motel room. The vision of a man who did not know what else to do. The vision of a man losing. And that broken, beating thing inside of her lurched because she loves him. Loves him, loves him, loves him. And so she eats with him. And so she lives with him. And so they walk through this myth together. Her in the passenger seat and she takes one of his hands in both of hers and keeps it for herself in her lap and he lets her. How could they be monsters? How can this be called monstrous? They are in love. They are in wretched love.

And before this, before now, when a new couple moved into that apartment in New Mexico, clean, white tile clean and white again, ready to fill the rooms with their own kind of love, full and good, they found a near-finished painting in the hall closet. A painting of a wound in the earth, and the flame of a sunset. They thought that it was beautiful. 

[kekaki-cupcakes]

hi! hope you're well!

could you please do one where jason breaks up with Piper because he realises he's in love with reader since he was little?

like reader and jason are the bestest friends with mutual crushes but were too oblivious to do anything about it and the seven have to drop the fact that reader likes him back?

Thanks

heya! I combined this ask with someone who was asking for a Jason x reader songfic with the song Bad Idea Right? by Olivia Rodrigo <3

Romeo and Julieting---Jason Grace x reader [soundtrack: Olivia Rodrigo]

»»————-　★　————-««

“It’s a bad idea, Pipes!”

Piper pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “You are going to go to their cabin, you are going to make them sit down, and you are going to tell them that you have a crush on them, okay? And then you can both have a cutesy little romantic moment or whatever you're supposed to do in a relationship, okay?” 

“What do you mean, ��whatever you’re supposed to do in a relationship’?” Jason asked with a confused frown. He glanced up at Piper who was pacing back and forth as he sat cross legged on her bed, picking at her Olivia rodrigo doona cover. “We were in a relationship, like, five minutes ago.” 

Piper cocked her head at him with a raised eyebrow, “that didn’t count and you know it, now go kiss them!”

“Not with tongue though,” Leo added, slurping a juice box as he spun in circles on the chair by Piper’s desk. “At least not the first time, it’d be a bit over the top. I mean unless you’re into that I guess-” 

“What are you even doing here?” Jason asked him, not unkindly. 

Leo smirked and then became distracted by the make up box on Piper’s desk, pulling out a dark lipstick and uncapping it with wide eyes. He turned back to Jason, “oh I’m watching you fail at both of your relationships.”

Jason frowned, “I just got dumped, why are you making fun of me?” 

Leo twisted the base of the lipstick and then proceeded to lick it. He screwed up his face and put it away quickly. “You two forgot you were dating for an entire week, I had to remind you when you started drooling over a certain demigod that you already had a girlfriend.” 

“Okay, that’s fair,” Jason muttered. Piper chuckled and moved her things away from Leo’s curious grabby hands, quickly taking her eyeliner off before he tried to taste test that as well. “But… but I can’t just walk up to them and be like, ‘hey, you’re my best friend, wanna kiss?’”

Leo blinked. “Why not?”

Jason wasn’t sure how his friend was still alive, but then he remembered that Leo had died already anyway. Piper shrugged, “don’t blame him, he doesn’t know how romance or social situations work.”

“Hey!” Leo hissed, pointing at her with a contour brush he’d managed to find, “that’s homophobic!”

“How can I be homophobic?” Piper screeched, pointing to the rainbow flag pinned up lopsidedly above her bed, next to the hello kitty poster and the giant banner that read ‘i fucked your mum and all i got was this stupid flag’. 

Leo just stuck his tongue out at her. Then he turned to Jason. “If you don’t go romeo and juliet your way into a make out session, I will personally turn your stash of musk sticks into soot.”

Piper fiddled with her portable speaker, connecting it to the demigod proof phones Leo had managed to whip up in under three days after he discovered the Pokemon Go map reached CHB. “

“What do you mean Romeo and Juliet?” Jason asked.

“You gotta go up to their window and pretend it’s a balcony, Grace,” Piper said. SHe looked away from Olivia Rodrigo’s spotify and to the window. “It’s even raining outside. Perfect.”

Jason crossed his arms stubbornly, “I can think of a million ways it could go wrong.”

“Well I can’t,” Leo said as he started curling his eyelashes. The speaker next to him skipped a few beats and staticked it’ way through the music for a moment. Piper grinned. 

“It’s a bad idea! I’m not doing it!”

Seein' you tonight, it's a bad idea, right?

»»————-　★　————-««

Jason sucked in a breath and shut the Aphrodite cabin door behind him, hitching up his checked purple pajama pants and plodding through the dirt between the cabins lined up. 

Seein' you tonight, it's a bad idea, right?

Even if he didn’t work up the courage to tell you how pretty he thought your eyes were when you smiled and how endearing it was that you wrapped and arm around his shoulders every time you were walking together and how that thing you did with your tongue on your lip drove him crazy, he’d still get to see you. So technically he was just visiting his best friend, what was wrong with that?

Seein' you tonight, it's a bad idea, right?

Maybe the fact that if said best friend asked to kiss him Jason wouldn’t even hesitate.

Seein' you tonight, it's a bad idea, right?

»»————-　★　————-««

You pulled your curtains shut and waited for your younger siblings to finish putting all of their teddies to bed before the lamps were clicked off. After a few minutes, only the snores of your cabin mates and the rain on the roof were audible.

Hypnos dragged away everyone else in your cabin quickly, but you lay awake staring at the roof, your doona pulled up to your chin. A few polaroids were stuck to the walls next to your head, and the axolotl Squishmellow Leo had bought you for your birthday was in bed with you. You hugged it to your chest and shuffled around, trying to get to sleep.  

You ignored the first tap at your window, which was probably just a Harpy checking everyone was tucked into their beds and not planning to sneak out. 

The second one however, roused you from the warmth of the blanket Annabeth had crocheted as she discovered her skills with weaving. You paused in front of the window, sitting cross legged on your pillow. Whoever it was outside tapped again, so you pulled back the curtains and peeked out with narrowed eyes. 

A grin spread across your face before you could help it, and you heaved the frame up, poking your head out into the night to whisper shout. “What are you doing dude? It’s pouring!”

Jason blinked up at you with soggy hair and muddy pajamas. He plodded through the puddles up to your window. Luckily he was tall enough that you were eye level when he hopped onto a little boulder. “Um…”

“Gimme a second,” you muttered, and crawled out of bed to the shoe rack by the door. Avoiding the floorboards you knew would creak, you hopped back into bed and slid the pink spotty umbrella through the window, opening it up above Jason. 

He smiled, the scar on his lip twisting. You restrained yourself from reaching out to touch it and instead held the umbrella for him. “Is there a reason you’re Romeo and Julieting?” 

Jason eyes were wide and pale blue, like the sky behind a thin veil of clouds. “How am i the only one who- never mind. Uhm… I need to tell you something. 

The rain made it hard for you to hear whatever your best friend was muttering, so you beckoned him closer with a confused smile, “yeah? Did you forget how to use the toaster again? Because honestly I don’t know why you’re opposed to Leo just-” 

“Because of hygiene, for one,” Jason started, “but that’s not why I’m here.”

You gave him a second to think, not used to the genuinely fearful look on his face dripping with rain you hoped wouldn’t turn to tears. You didn’t really know where this was going.

He took a deep breath, his fingers curling around your window sill. “If this goes wrong, please blame Leo and Piper.”

“I could blame them for anything, and I’d be right.” 

Jason ducked his head and spoke to the ground. “I kind of… really like you. I’ve liked you for a long time, actually. I didn’t realize for a while, but it’s sort of…Yeah. It’s you.” 

So it wouldn’t be Jason crying, you realized. It would be you. 

You took a second to try that deep breathing thing someone had told you about, and smoothed out the front of your mickey mouse pajama shirt, blinking rapidly. The reality hadn’t really set it, you were in a sort of shocked state, so you tried to talk before you burst into tears. 

“Uhm,” you said weakly. “I think you might’ve forgotten about your girlfriend again, Jase.”

He went pale. Then he started shaking his head like a wet dog, which he sort of was, really. “No, no not like that. I mean, yeah I like you like that, wait- okay. Piper broke up with me, like five minutes ago, and-”

You took another deep breath and then handed Jason the umbrella. He took it with a lost expression, and you shut your window quickly, breaths turning as shaky as your hands. You were your childhood crushes rebound. You sort of wished you hadn’t opened that window, actually.

Jason tapped again, a lot quicker this time, and urgent. 

Ignoring him was the obvious choice, but that felt too kind. You yanked open the curtains again and then the glass, sticking your head out with a sharp glare. “I will not be your rebound-”

“She broke up with me because of you.” Jason blurted as soon as he realized you could hear him. 

He paused then, and you took in the holy depressing sight that was Jason Grace in dirty pajamas standing outside your window in the middle of the night, rain and tears dripping down his cheeks. “Well, not completely. We never really liked each other, it was all because of Hera, really. We just, well… neither of us could be bothered to figure out our feelings so we stayed together.”

Jason looked down at the ugg boots covered in grass and soil he was wearing. You were pretty sure they were Drew’s. “Apparently she got sick of me pining over you, so she dumped me so that they could make me come here and well, yeah, tell you.”

You blinked in shock for probably too long.

“I don’t wanna make you do anything, and you don't have to say anything, ever, actually.” Jason said quickly, with only honesty on his cute face. “You don’t have to keep being my friend, if you don’t want to, but I won't be weird, I promise. We can pretend this didn’t actually happen. I just sort of wanted to tell you, so I didn't have to hide it forever, I guess.” 

“They?” You asked.

Jason glared in the direction of the Aphrodite cabin. He spoke in a hollow voice. “It was an ambush. There were no survivors.”

You grinned, and then reached out into the pouring rain and held the umbrella, your hand over his. Jason whipped around with red cheeks and a frozen expression. “Uh-”

“Jason,” you began softly. “Did you want to Romeo and Juliet me?”

He blinked. 

“That means come here so I can kiss you,” You muttered, and dragged the son of Jupiter closer by the front of his shirt. Jason’s eyes widened and he made a shocked little sound.

He hopped back onto the boulder and reached up to your window sill though. His eyes were that bit lower than your own in that way you knew exactly what he was thinking and of course you’d oblige. 

“Just c’mere,” you whispered, trying to hold in your smile. Jason leant forward eagerly, and you held the umbrella in one hand tightly, the other sliding up to cup his jaw. You’d wondered what the scar on Jason’s lip felt like. 

Turned out it was just as soft as the rest of him. 

You tilted your head as heat seemed to build in your veins, making your head light. You couldn’t help but pull him closer, if that was even possible, and kissed him firmly. He made another odd sound and opened his mouth slowly.

From what you’d heard from your older siblings, kissing was awesome. You’d always thought it sounded a bit gross though, I mean, someone elses mouth? Their tongue?

This badly timed badly worded fucking adorbale boy in front of you proved that theory wrong. Jason threaded his fingers through your own and you leaned further out the window, drawing him back in and pressing your mouth deeper into his own, lungs burning.  

“Oh my gods,” Jason croaked, opening his eyes a little when you finally pulled away, gasping for air and trying to straighten out your thoughts. 

“Oh my gods,” you agreed, slipping your hand around the back of his neck and holding him close, fingers fiddling with the baby hairs there. Jason grinned, his cheeks as red as his lips. 

“Oh my gods! Go Jason!”

You both turned to see Piper and Leo cheering from behind another cabin, holding a barbie umbrella between them. 

Jason blinked at them, and then turned to you, “I told you, it was an ambush.” 

»»————-　★　————-««

[wisteriagoesvroom]

schools of thought: part 2 🦊

A landoscar college AU, told through social media

to catch up, check out part 1 here

author's notes

thank you for your patience and the kudos on part 1 🤧 irl stuff happened and i worked on a different story for a while before getting back to this one

ignore timestamps, they don't really matter

if you enjoy it, please consider liking / reblogging / commenting! 💙

—————we pick up at the federation U library———————

lando's studying late. it's a tuesday, and there aren't too many people there - just him, linda the librarian who isn't particularly impressed at anything or anyone, and a couple of other students on other islands of desks, stuck in their own world.

lando doesn't find academic work impossible per se, it's more the sustained attention that gets challenging. and contrary to how he seems, he does actually work hard at his core modules. even if he isn't sure exactly to what end, yet.

the screen's blazing bright and lagrange's theorem is starting to make his brain statick-y, so lando rubs his eyes. one of those advice pages on tiktok said changing tasks could help sometimes to refocus on his studying. something about crop rotation or switching channels of the brain or something. if it's on social media, it must be true.

so he opens his design software instead and makes a party invite.

he sends a prayer to the holy trinity of tiesto, guetta and darude for his very basic photoshop abilities. and an extra hail-van-helden for the free software that he pirated off charles.

the party playlist is already whirring in his head. definitely some garage smashed with some old school hip hop, and he's sure there's a way to get some hans zimmer piano in there. whatever, it'll work.

satisfied with his efforts, lando sips from his hydroflask. (the drink is one part instant coffee, one part spicy honey, and a lot of hot water. carlos gives him shit about it all the time, but carlos is spanish and generally prone to dramatics when it comes to coffee and just about everything else.)

still focused on his important task of Procrastinating His Stabilizer Equations, lando texts max.

linda, to her credit, only glared at him once when he started humming kid cudi under his breath.

and judging from experience, max and charles are going to be a while, so there's nothing for lando to do but stare at the wall and keep working on his playlists. oh, and his math assignments.

meanwhile, oscar gets a ping from logan.

what is there to say about the meeting really, oscar thinks. uneventful. ———————earlier——————————

the first project catch-up with lando, they'd met under the campus bee statue. a sunny afternoon, but the campus was quiet, half of them having decamped to the nearby hills or beach for a change of scenery. it was just the pleasant and tolerable buzz of other students enjoying the warmth and doing university student things. he'd spotted a couple of people with picnic blankets out. he hadn't brought a picnic blanket, thinking this would be a quick meeting.

lando had appeared in a blur of white and orange, like a y2k elf. ear piercing, music festival rubber bracelets and all. in a t-shirt that said i'm acute angle.

"'sup osc!" lando said.

"that t-shirt's gramatically incorrect. technically." oscar had replied.

"whaa-aat. but more to the point, it's funny."

"i guess. did you do the reading yet? thought it'd be good to talk roles and responsibilities and maybe a project timeline."

"timeline?" lando said, as he tossed his backpack down and flopped on the lawn. lando extracted two heinekens from a side pocket and went through a complicated manouvre of opening them with his room keys. "thought we'd maybe crack open a beer and just chat, matey."

i'm not your matey, oscar thought. i'm a passenger to whatever train of chaos it is that you're driving and i'd like to get off.

oscar's skin prickled as he realised the double meaning of get off. he also tried to not think too hard about how overfamiliar lando was acting towards him. the worse thing was: there was a bigger part of him that was probably willing to let lando get away with it.

lando seemed to be ignoring whatever existential crisis oscar was going through. instead, lando was going on and on about philosophical youtubers and sparknotes. lando was so animated when he spoke, too: hands always in gestures, as if excitement buzzed directly out of his fingertips and onto oscar. there was a sparkle in his eyes, blue sliding into grey, that made oscar want to sit on his hands. because they were the kind of eyes they wrote about in regency novels, the windows to the soul kind of melodramatic nonsense. that would make him want to do stupid shit. like, get-in-the-way-of-the-project-grade kind of stupid shit.

so it took oscar a lot of energy to focus in that first meeting. he thought he did a pretty decent job picking up the thread of conversation, around the part where lando had called foucault's theory "the indiana jones thought thingy."

"i think you mean archaeology of knowledge."

"right! right." lando said, as he beamed up at him.

oscar had suddenly felt overly warm, then. probably just the sun on the quad, he thought to himself. he was from australia, so technically he should've known better, and worn adequate SPF. he'd have to set a phone reminder for that at a later point. he refused to be fooled again by the european summer and its apparently hypnotic effects. even if those hypnotic effects were probably mostly caused by a menacing parallel phenomenon that oscar would call solarus landonitus.

—————————————————

later, oscar's cooks dinner, and tries to decipher the instructions on the back of a frozen bag of beef mince. pato and logan are away at a football game across the border in italy, an overnighter thing.

his phone vibrates. it's lando.

oscar's hands hover over the letter keys. a party? he couldn't think of anything worse. but lando said a couple of friends, and it's true oscar hasn't really partied, and he thinks hanging out with his D&D friends doesn't really count. there had been that one instance in first year when oscar had gone to try and meet logan and pato at the ministry of sound, and he'd accidentally ended up at the ministry of state government building. after that, he'd figured parties weren't really fated for him.

but. lando, social butterfly lando, campus personality lando is the one asking. and logan's right, oscar probably does take himself too seriously.

osc types and deletes at least four different responses before be replies. he is an eng lit major, he tells himself. surely he should be better at crafting his words than this. but sometimes it is what it is.

so it isn't a commitment, and it isn't a hard no, either.

oscar stares at his phone. it's gone quiet. lando's moved on – probably uploading an instagram story. or smashing his too keyboard loudly in a public space as he solves a polynomial. or making a new and unlikely EDM song out of radiator noises, or whatever it is that lando "i'm so cool" norris decides to do with his free time.

oscar is studying the dorm kitchen tiles, thinking about not thinking about lando, when his pasta water boils over. it hits the induction stove with a loud hiss.

"shit!" osc yelps. he grabs a nearby dish towel to wipe it up.

the pasta ends up both soggy and under salted, but he eats it anyway. mind turning all the while.

——————stay tuned part 3 (hint: party party)————————

p.s. if you want to be tagged/notified on the next part/updates just lmk in comments or DM and i'd be happy to!!

[insert-stupid-username]

gosh I never understand what the drivers are saying if its just the radio with no words underneath. Are we cheering or crying whats the vibe can I get more than just sdifhwoeifhclndso and statick.

[oleander-nin]

Flirting and Feelings(Rise! Leo x Reader)

A/N, not important: Hate this with all my heart. I can't write. Going to scream. This was going to be so much longer, but if I have to spend any more time on it, I'm going to rip my hair out. Any criticism is welcome, constructive or not. This is supposed to be a gender neutral reader, so if I screwed up somewhere, please tell me.

-Ollie

Tw: bad writing, emotions, Leo gets really anxious for a minute there

Words: 1485

Summary: ROTTMNT Leo decided to boldly flirt but the reader thinks he's making fun of them.

Leo keeps his gaze on the human in the doorway, a dreamy look in his eyes as he watches them laugh with Mikey in the kitchen. It was hard for Leo to stay silent, wanting nothing more than to go up to his crush friend and start talking to them. Being able to only watch the two talk, the two cook, hurt. Leo had talked to Mikey earlier to confirm they didn’t each have a crush on the same person, Leo almost giddy with joy when Mikey denied feeling any romantic attraction towards (Y/n). Leo was confident Mikey remembered the plan, Mikey having felt bad for Leo’s inability to converse with his crush. All Leo needed to do was wait for the signal, and he could go talk to (Y/n). Alone. Leo gulped, taking in a deep breath trying to calm his nerves. He’d have to wait for them to put whatever they were making into the oven first anyway, he had time. He just had to memorize what to say.

Leo looks back to his phone, a light dust of red across his snout and spreading to his cheek bone refuses to fade, the anticipation making his heart beat furiously. The wikiHow article wasn’t the most helpful, but it was better than Donnie’s advice.(He appreciated it, but Leo had the feeling that ignoring (Y/n) and not talking to them at all wouldn’t help.) The only thing that resonated with Leo was to flirt. Leo was confident he could do that, and most likely do it well. Leo was the face man after all, smooth talking was his thing!

Leo’s head perks up once more as he hears the shut of the oven, Mikey saying something to (Y/n) Leo couldn’t quite hear. Leo watches carefully as Mikey exits the kitchen with his hands behind his back, whistling the opening tune to the Jupiter Jim 8 episode mini series: The Galactic 7. Mikey winks at Leo before going down one of the many adjoined tunnels in the lair, leaving Leo’s sight. Leo beams, his hands tapping his thighs nervously. The whistling tune was the signal, he had around 30 minutes to go do what he wanted. A romantic confession between two people who were certainly destined to fall in love. At least, that’s what Leo hoped.

Swallowing his fear, Leo stands up and rubs his sweaty palms on his bike shorts, making his way to the kitchen. Knocking slightly on the wooden cabinet by the entrance to alert them to his presence, Leo shoots (Y/n) the smuggest grin he could muster. (Y/n) gives Leo a small wave return, acknowledging him before returning back to their phone. Leo’s confidence crumbles slightly at this, having wanted a more definite confirmation that he was welcome in their presence. Leo shrugs it off though, his wide grin still plastered on his face despite the vice around his chest.

Leo leans against the island counter, drumming his knuckles against the hard surface. (Y/n) glances at Leo, their eyes scanning his as they attempt to decipher what the turtle mutant was doing. Leo picks up one of his hands, halting the small rhythm being beaten into the faux wood surface and gives (Y/n) a small wave. Leo’s face softens as the human rolls their eyes, chuckling softly. The butterflies tormenting his stomach calm slightly, his chest filling with air once more.

“You feeling okay?” The sudden sound of their voice makes Leo jump slightly, the haze lifting off his brain. Leo lets out a small laugh, a brighter, softer smile replacing the previous smug one.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Do you have a Band-aid though?” Leo’s confidence quickly returns as he asks his question, his brain staticky as he tries to keep his hands from shaking. This was it. He was going to tell them. Sure, he was going to tell them through a dorky pick-up line, but tell them nonetheless.

(Y/n) shifts in their position, putting their phone on the island as they pat their pockets. They frown slightly, looking up at Leo with concern that made his heart melt. “Nope, sorry. Do you need me to run to the bathroom to get you one?”

Leo just about died at that, feeling touched they cared enough to offer to go get one for him. He felt slightly guilty now, knowing he wasn’t actually injured. “No, it’s fine. I just scraped my knees when I fell for you.” Leo accompanies the delivery of the line with a wink, a small blush adorning his face once more. It felt off to Leo, he knew he said it wrong. It didn’t flow out of his mouth the way he wanted it to, and he felt his chest tighten up again. Leo scans their face, his bright smile seeming more nervous as he awaits (Y/n)’s response.

And waited.

And waited.

Leo’s smile falls completely at (Y/n)’s reaction, or lack thereof, as he starts twiddling with his fingers laughing nervously. (Y/n)’s face is blank, their forefinger tapping the counter as they look at Leo with their eyebrows furrowed. Leo didn’t understand. He expected a reaction at the very least, not judging silence. Leo chewed on the inside of his cheek, laughing nervously as he opened his mouth to speak. “Hey, look I’m-”

“Don’t say something you don’t mean.”

Leo’s taken aback by their sudden words, their face not changing from the annoyed look. Leo sinks slightly at the interruption, not knowing how to respond. “Excuse me?”

(Y/n) sighs, their body shifting to lean on their right arm while their left hand pinches the bridge of their nose in frustration. They let out a tired sigh, and Leo’s heart sinks into his stomach. Leo didn’t understand what he did wrong. Were they mad at him? Why was their first thought that Leo was lying? Did they really dislike Leo this much?

“The pick-up line. Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.” They finally clarified, their arms now crossed. Leo pats his thighs awkwardly, feeling stupid and pathetic. How did he mess up so badly he made the one person he finally loved believe his feelings were a joke? Leo regretted trying, regretted not listening to Donnie. Maybe this all would’ve gone better if Leo just ignored his feelings until they disappeared.

Leo racks his brain, trying to find the best way to explain why he did what he did. In the end, only four simple words popped out. “I meant every word.”

(Y/n) gives Leo a look he can’t quite decipher, his mask mimicking furrowing eyebrows as he scans them. (Y/n) visibly chews on their cheek, huffing slightly. “Do you mean it?”

Leo nods, swallowing nervously as his fingers tap out a nonsensical rhythm into the counter. (Y/n)’s face finally has a smile, small chuckles falling from their lips. (Y/n) reaches their hand out, setting it on top of Leo’s own shaking appendage. Leo’s eyes softened, his face one of worry but it was starting to settle. Leo meets (Y/n)’s eyes, trying to figure out the meaning of anything (Y/n) was doing.

“I like you too, Leo.”

Leo freezes at this, his brain frying for a moment as he processes (Y/n)’s words. They like him back. They like him back. Leo’s face finally breaks from the stress filled gaze as a large smile kicks his frown out of place. Leo pats the counter, his brain buzzing with excitement. Leo rounds the island while (Y/n) watches with a smile, a loud laugh coming from their mouth when Leo pulls them into a tight hug. Leo feels their arms wrap around him, their hands resting in the middle of his carapace. Leo was shaking slightly, his brain running a mile a minute as he held (Y/n) close. (Y/n) pats Leo’s back, pushing him off slightly as they let out an awkward laugh. Leo lets go, an embarrassed blush tinting his green cheeks red. Leo pats his thighs twice, looking around the kitchen to avoid (Y/n)’s gaze. 

“So….” Leo starts, still avoiding (Y/n)’s eyes. Leo watches them lean their back against the wall, the dopey grin on (Y/n)’s face making Leo’s heart flutter. (Y/n) motions one of their hands in a circle, prompting Leo to continue. “Would you like to become my partner?”

(Y/n) snorts at this, laughing at his choice in wording. The human flashes Leo a wide smile, looking at Leo endearingly. “In crime, or romantic? Because both are a yes.”

Leo quickly pulls (Y/n) into another hug, rambling on and on about how happy he was, his voice loud as he cheers. (Y/n) just hugs Leo back and lets him ramble, happy to be in the moment.