#y’all make me feel less alone on this floating rock in the middle of the milky way

[boneappletits]

Hi there how are you?

hiya c: i just woke up n i’m not a morning person 😂 but i’m doin okay ! how are you doin? ♡︎ i hope you have a wondrous day <33

[clearsuitcasecookienerd]

See You in the Stars (part 1)

hey y’all... so I did a thing... I wrote out one of my brain’s fic babies and here we are. a huge thanks to @lumosinlove for bringing these wonderful characters to life. and a huge thank you to everyone that encouraged me and helped me write this. y’all are truly the best <3 and yes, this is a multipart fic so be on the look out for more :)

Kasey loved to just stare at the moon and stars. He always had, for as long as he could remember. It was grounding. As grounding as having a mini existential crisis about how small and insignificant you really are can be. Staring at the moon and thinking about how a small hunk of rock that is gravitationally connected to the giant hunk of rock you’re living on can influence things like the ocean, it’s wild. It makes all your problems feel just a little bit more insignificant. The way space just expands and expands for literal light years and is full of stars and burning balls of gas and massive hunks of rock and the way there has to be life out there somewhere, because we really can’t be all that special. Space made his problems feel just insignificant enough where he could manage them. And space was always just outside the window. Except for where its day time, but the phenomenon that is clouds and the sun, that is another topic in and of itself. 

As a kid, Kasey would get in trouble for staying up past his bed to look through his telescope up at the stars and moon. He didn’t understand why he was getting in trouble, he was still lying in his bed after all. When just lying in bed wasn’t helping him fall asleep, Kasey had begun to look out the window. Through his window he could see the stars and sometimes the moon. Over time he began to bring home books on the stars and the moon in addition to his hockey books from the library. At night, when everything got too quiet except for his thoughts, Kasey would stare at the stars and the moon and think about how maybe the thoughts running through his head that wouldn’t shut up maybe weren’t that important. Because they sure didn’t affect the moon, or the stars or any of the other thousands of galaxies in the sky. So if a burning ball of gas could have giant rocks circle around it hundreds of light years away then maybe he could pass the upcoming math test, or get his reaction time faster. And maybe it didn’t matter if he let in the goal that lost his team their last game against their rival. Because if it didn’t change the universe was it really that big of an issue?

So a couple months in to playing for the Rangers when Kasey found out Alex O’Hara had a similar fascination with space, grabbing take out and driving to a spot where they could lie on the ground and just stare into the sky after a long practice, or something equally as draining, became second nature. When Kasey had a rough game in goal or Alex was frustrated, all it took was one small jerk of the head to the side to let the other know that time with the sky was needed. 

It was when they were lying in their spot, staring at the stars, when Kasey knew he had to tell Alex. They had called him this afternoon, “Hey Winter, we’ve got some news for you.” Calls during trade season weren’t rare, but Kasey had hoped that maybe he would escape this season without one. But sure enough, here he was, lying in the grass, staring at the sky and trying to figure out how he was supposed to tell the teammate that had quickly become his best friend, that this was probably one of the last times they’d be able to do this. 

After he had hung up the phone, Kasey had slid down the wall he had been leaning against for support. He was leaving. He was packing his bags and headed for Gryffindor. Sure the Lions were a decent team, they had that rookie Black that was really promising, but they didn’t have everything. They didn’t have the family he had created with the Rangers and they didn’t have Alex. Alex who he had quickly grown close with and who knew there was someone under the goalie face that everyone said he was so good at. Alex, he’d have to let him know. Maybe under the stars, where everything just feels so insignificant. Where maybe moving away from everything he knew will feel just a little bit less meaningful.

A simple “stare at the stars tonight?” text and a couple hours later, Kasey still didn’t know how to explain the call he had received.

Alex had been talking about something for a while. Kasey hadn’t meant to stop listening but honestly all he could think about was Gryffindor and what the move would mean. Would he and Alex stay friends, stay in contact? Growing up, most kids didn’t understand what it was like to be so devoted to something the way Kasey was to hockey. But Alex, Alex understood and he understood the pressure to do well and perform.

Alex remembered those nights with Kasey under the stars. When Kasey Winter, the Rangers goalie, would take off his mask and become Kasey, someone Alex had fallen in love with. Lying under the stars and staring at the twinkling lights and the glowing moon, Alex met the man under the mask. But the first time he had stared at the sky with Kasey, Alex had lied. Well not completely. 

Alex’s car had overheated on the way to practice that night and as he had pulled off the road and called the mechanic, Alex realized he would have to catch a ride home with one of the guys that night. After practice, he had gotten lucky and the team decided to grab dinner together at the local sub shop. When Kasey offered up a spot in his car for carpooling to dinner, Alex tried his best to nonchalantly take him up on it. 

Alex loved the sub shop, he truly did, and so when he had realized he’d eaten too much it was already too late. Standing up, with what felt like a stomach the size of Texas, he had never been more glad he had chosen to wear sweats home from practice. As the hockey players began to move the tables they had shoved together back to their original locations, Alex had taken a deep breath and asked the question that would solve the problem he had been trying to figure out all night.

“Hey Winter,” Kasey turned around and gave him a half smile.

“What’s up, Hazard”

Scratching the back of his neck, Alex had completely stumbled over his words “So my car broke down on the way to practice and I called the mechanic and he towed it back to his place but he said he didn’t have a rental on him-” when he had looked up, Alex saw a subdued yet amused expression on Kasey’s face.

“Do you need a ride O’Hara?” Kasey had asked, trying to help the man out of his misery.

“Honestly that would be great if you don't mind,” Alex had said, “my apartments on your way home.”

Kasey had cracked a half smile and turned, swinging his keys on his finger and throwing a, let's go then, over his shoulder.

It wasn’t that Kasey was a bad driver, he was actually half decent. He stopped at stop signs for a full 3 seconds and he had stopped to let a squirrel cross the road. But after countless subs, Alex’s stomach wasn’t feeling too hot. As the shoulder of the road widened, Alex had seen his chance.

“Hey Winter, can you pull over for a second up there? I think I need a breather.”

As soon as Kasey had stopped the car, Alex hopped out, gulping down mouthfuls of the fresh air and staring at the still horizon while bent over with his hands on his knees. He hadn’t even noticed Kasey get out of the car and lean up against the passenger side until his nausea had subsided and he stood up. Kasey had been staring up at the sky. Glancing up, Alex noticed the stars were out and the moon was bright. Alex had simply said he thought the sky was pretty cool and it made him feel like a small little guy on a floating rock in the middle of an expansive stretch of space. And while he wasn’t completely lying, and he did feel pretty small, it wasn’t until he saw Kasey’s eyes light up out of the corner of his eye that he truly found the sky to be pretty cool. That night a bond had formed between the two hockey players. What Alex had thought was just a random comment he made after hoping he wasn’t going to lose his supper, was something that Kasey had been thinking about for years. It was something that grounded Kasey. And to have someone else think that… well Kasey felt slightly less alone on the big rock that exists in a wide expanse of space surrounded by balls of burning gas and other chunks of rock. And maybe feeling a little less alone could be a good thing.

It had started slowly, when the team would get together for dinner Alex would make a point of asking Kasey for a ride. And if they drove by a nice area, if Alex asked Kasey to pull over, Kasey wouldn’t question it. It took a couple nudges but once Alex heard Kasey talk about how staring at the stars caused everything in his life to seem just a bit smaller, Alex knew he was going to have to schedule star staring into his calendar more often. 

Telling Alex had been hard. How do you say, I got traded and I leave for Gryffindor in 2 days. Well maybe just like that but that seemed too big. Staring off into the stars hundreds of millions of miles away it seemed easier.

“-and so then he shakes his head and tries to tell me-”

“That star over there is Sirius. It’s the brightest star in the sky.” Kasey interrupted Alex seemingly out of nowhere.

“Oh that's cool, isn’t it a part of that dog constellation?” Alex had known what was happening. 

Kasey did this when he had something important to say that he wanted to seem a bit less meaningful when you are staring at the stars and realizing how insignificant your existence was. Or at least that's how he put it the one time Alex asked. Kasey would bring up a random star fact Alex knew he had memorized as a kid and Alex would play stupid and ask about it until Kasey was ready to talk about what was really on his mind.

“Sirius Black… that rookie, he’s going to be my new captain” Kasey had trailed off.

Alex had stared at the stars in shock, letting this settle in, “Oh?” he questioned.

“I got traded to Gryffindor.” Kasey had said in what Alex had coined his goalie voice. A stoney voice to match the stoney goalie face. “I leave in two days.”

“Well then,” Alex replied, “I’m glad we got to do this tonight.”

After they had stared into the vast night sky that Alex had begun to appreciate as much as Kasey did, Alex had finally broken the silence. 

“You know, they have stars and a moon in Gryffindor too.” He had said matter of factly.

Kasey scoffed and raised his eyebrows as he had glanced over to look at his best friend, “No really? I wasn’t aware of that.”

Alex sighed and had looked over, “I just meant that even if you’re there… maybe we can still do this when you’re not busy. We can just lay down and stare at the stars and remember how meaningless we are together.”

That had made Kasey smile. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that while Alex hadn’t originally shared his fascination with the sky, they did share an interest in spending time together and clearing their heads.

“And how do you propose we do that?” Kasey chuckled following the first smile Alex had seen of the night.

“I don’t know Winter, why don’t you use that smart head of yours and think us up a plan,” Alex replied with a roll of his eyes. 

“What if…” Alex had responded, with his voice progressively getting softer, “whenever you look at the stars, you remember that you and I, two tiny specks of nothingness, are looking at the same sky and if we can see those flaming balls of gas so many miles away then we must not actually be that far apart.”

“Yeah, that’s nice.” Kasey responded just as quietly. “I’m going to miss you Posie.”

Alex had smiled lightly, “I’m going to miss you too, but you’ll be up there.” He said as he had gestured up to the sky. “I’ll see you in the stars Bear, always.”

And as they lay there in the silence that followed, maybe, just maybe, Alex had meant what he said a little bit more than how he would to any other friend. But also maybe Kasey needed to hear it, to hear that he wasn’t as alone as he thought, after years of feeling insignificant on a floating rock. On a rock where nothing you did really mattered in the scheme of things, where nothing really mattered because you were so small. Where it didn’t matter that Alex was slowly falling deeper and deeper in love with his best friend. Or where it didn’t matter that Kasey was leaving the one person that made him feel grounded in a world that constantly made him question his relevance His relevance on a giant rock that spun around a ball of flaming gas that existed in an endless galaxy of other balls of burning gas and giant rocks where there were likely other people whose lives weren’t relevant in retrospect either.

[stolethekey]

so, what’s the past for? i’ll need it if love don’t last long

notes: this is for @romanogersweek.

it feels a little weird to be posting fanfic right now, but i hope y’all take this as an opportunity to take a break from reading/donating/educating rather than one to leave. 

donate to the bail project here.

read on ao3

-

Steve Rogers, long ago, was the man who never ran. He was the man who faced down his problems and enemies indiscriminately, who spat in the face of both Nazi generals and the very idea that anything could keep him from fighting for a better world. He used to be the paragon of bravery, the man who worked to uphold his reputation as the symbol of courage his country held in the highest regard.

Until that one fateful day, when he’d decided to run—away from the death and destruction, away from the friends he’d seen suffer too much pain to be truly happy ever again, away from time itself. He ran, straight until another timeline, hardly conscious of what he was doing until he ended up standing on the doorstep of a woman he’d last seen lying peacefully in a casket.

By the grace of God, or maybe the devil, Peggy had been home that day. After she’d recovered from her shock, she’d welcomed him in, he’d asked almost clumsily for a dance, and when the music stopped she’d pulled back and said, “I want to introduce you to Daniel.”

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he likes Daniel. Daniel is sarcastic and witty but warm and solid—a safe place for Peggy’s often slightly-chaotic personality to land. So he’d shaken Daniel’s hand and accepted his invitation to stay for dinner and then stayed the night because, honestly, where else was he supposed to go?

And then one night turned into two, which turned into a week, and then Steve ended up staying in their house permanently. They established a general rule that he was not allowed to tell them about the future, but could contribute to strategy discussions about missions he had never heard about. He helped them during the day and tried to stay up helping them at night, except Peggy started chasing him to bed with a broom a few weeks in.

He’s never liked sleeping much, but after—well, after everything, he likes it even less. 

Some of the dreams he’s familiar with: the nightmares and memories full of too much blood and smoke and explosions that rack his imaginary body with tremors come initially, as he expects. Those he can deal with; those he has dealt with for years. The ones that he is markedly not equipped to deal with are the ones that come later: the ones that aren’t vague flashbacks or terrifying possible futures but vivid, specific memories, memories that leave him with an aching heart and stinging eyes when he wakes. 

Steve thinks this distinctly unfair, given that these memories haunt his waking moments too; but his life has never been fair, and so each night he succumbs to more and more detailed recollections of moments running infinitely around in his head. 

The worst ones are always about her. Those run his mind in what feels like slow motion, forcing him to relive even the most minute details of the days they were carefree and alive and happy, at least as much as they could be. He starts seeing flashes of vivid red hair and brilliant green eyes everywhere, and in his dreams, they’re inescapable. In his dreams, she’s inescapable. 

In his dreams, Natasha is always there. Sometimes, she’s perched in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard where he’d always hated them, laughing at him as he steers the car down an open country road, the two of them alone in the car in the middle of the night. He turns the music up to drown out her laughter and she smirks, promptly deciding to sing along to the sounds of Out of the Woods coming through the stereo instead.

“Come on,” she coaxes, her voice still viscerally real in the layers of his unconsciousness. “I know you know this song.”

“I will not,” he says, but a smile is still floating unwittingly to his lips, and by the time he pulls into the open clearing he’s belting are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet, good with a fervor that would impress any concert crowd. 

Sometimes, it starts in that clearing, with him shutting off the car and the two of them lingering in the darkness for a moment. He pulls open her car door, the moonlight filtering into the seat and casting a soft, silver glow over her features. She comes willingly, laying a blanket on the ground with a flourish as she steps out of the vehicle. 

“When did Tony say it was starting, again?”

Steve checks his watch, and he’s seen this dream enough times to know exactly where the second hand is going to be when he does. “Five minutes.”

They settle onto the blanket, side by side, and he glances over at her. “What was the first shooting star you ever saw?”

She meets his gaze, her smile soft and nothing like the cold, calculating grin she’d given a certain arms dealer mere hours before. There is a brief moment of hesitation, and then she smirks. “You.”

His mouth falls open before he digs an elbow into her side, and she laughs. “Get it? Because you had a gun, and that stupid star on your uniform—”

“Yeah, yeah, a shooting star,” he groans, letting his head fall back onto the ground. “Shut up.”

She does, but only because the atmosphere around them tangibly changes—Steve feels it too. A second later, a jet of silver streaks across the sky, and Natasha sucks an audible breath through her teeth. 

He looks over at her, and watches the second meteor through the reflection in her eyes—the silver makes them glean, and she grins at him. 

“Enjoying the view?”

He shoves her, she laughs, and he thinks he could live in this moment forever. 

Sometimes, they’re standing on top of a massive hill, gazing at the city of Rome, beautiful and regal below them. And even though it’s a dream, he can feel the heavy exhaustion of a battle just fought seeping into his bones, can sense the relief of another disaster narrowly averted cloaking his shoulders. 

Natasha reaches for him, the streak of blood on her face looking real enough to touch, and gazes out at the sprawling city beneath the hill. “I almost wish we could stay,” she murmurs. 

She doesn’t voice the rest of the sentiment—that they could stay here, in this world away from the world, and live normal lives. Become normal people, people who window shop and sit in cafes and don’t have to save the world every other day.

She doesn’t say it, because she knows he understands, and also because they both know it’s impossible.

“Me too.”

There are other dreams, too—dreams where they’re both tired and sad and frustrated; dreams where their friends have been snapped into thin air and the ones that haven’t been are gone too. 

There are dreams where they’re the only two people left in the gigantic, designed-for-at-least-fifty-residents Avengers facility, where he walks into a room with zero lights on and her crying. 

“You know, I used to think it was hard to tell when you were scared,” he says, trying valiantly to lighten the mood. “But not so much anymore.”

She looks at him ruefully through her tears. “You don’t have to do this every time.”

He shrugs and gives her the best smile he can muster. “I have no idea what you mean. I’m just passing by, and I don’t want to leave you if you’re crying.”

She glares at him, but gives a half-laugh, and he moves to sit next to her. He doesn’t say that he knows she tries to hide from him when she’s crying, that he actively tries to find her when he hasn’t seen her in a few hours. He doesn’t tell her that he needs her there, by her side, that he’s terrified he’s going to lose her, finally, irrevocably, for real, every time it happens.

Her tears subside, every time, and every time he leaves once they do. She lets him go, turning back toward the screens with a sigh, and he watches her back straighten as she goes back to business. 

Never, in any of the dreams or memories or whatever they are at this point, does he stay. He would if she asked him to.

And then there’s the worst one, from the night before that day, where she shows up at his door before curfew with a bottle of wine in one hand and a key in the other. 

“It’s for my apartment,” she says, placing it gently in his hand. “Just in case.”

She cuts off all of his protests with a sad, firm smile, then uncorks the bottle of wine and pours it into two of his water glasses. 

They talk, about everything and nothing, and at one point she perches on his bed and tucks her knees into her chest. 

“I don’t know if anything is ever gonna go back to normal,” Natasha says quietly. “It all feels broken, somehow. Unfixable.”

“What does?”

“Everything,” she says, gesturing at the walls around them. “Life itself.”

He doesn’t know why that hurts a little to hear, but he shrugs and stands anyway. “We still have to try. For everyone.”

“I know,” she murmurs, draining the last of her wine and standing too. “Trust me, I know.”

It’s the last real conversation they have, and it’s always the last one that plays before Steve wakes. 

For weeks, Steve gets out of bed in the morning with tears staining his cheeks and a rush to the bathroom to collect himself, but Peggy intercepts his mad sprint one day and forces him to sit at the kitchen table and talk. He says he doesn’t want to and she gives him a withering glare that would probably topple a wall of solid rock.

He tells her about Natasha, about the aliens, the assassins out to kill them, the Accords. He doesn’t tell her about HYDRA, or about the midnight drives, the shooting stars, about Rome.

Peggy seems to understand anyway, and for some reason the sympathy in her eyes melts away some of the ache in Steve’s chest.

When he runs out of stories to tell, he starts talking about her past, about the way she was taken from her parents as a child and then trained in the Red Room.

“Those ladies are tough,” Peggy says with an impressed nod. “One of them escaped my locked trunk after I’d tied her wrists and ankles, then shot a policeman with his own gun on her way out. And that was when I was trying to work with her.”

“Nat almost never obeyed orders after she had turned,” Steve says with a laugh. “I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to try and work with her while she was still at the Red Room.”

“Well, she was the only one who could do the job. We needed her.”

Daniel snorts from where he’s leaning against the kitchen counter. “For the record, I thought it was a bad idea,” he mutters, earning him that exasperated but loving Peggy Carter glare that had once been reserved for Steve.

Steve is slightly surprised to find that he doesn’t mind at all. 

-

As the years go by, the memories become gradually less painful. The ache becomes a little duller, the wounds a little less fresh. The Carter-Sousa household adds a third long before children come into the picture, and they slip with only minor hiccups into a routine that works for everyone. Steve’s only allowed in public with a disguise, so while Peggy and Daniel are at work he spends his time drawing, cooking, cleaning, and generally being a good housekeeper. When they get home, he helps them with plans if he can and plays old card games if he can’t.

When the kids do arrive, Steve teaches and nurtures them as his own, and he gets through it with only vague stabs of pain as he remembers the Barton family. They know only that he is hiding from the world and that no one can know about him. They grow into strong, incredible adults, and when they move out Steve wipes away a tear that matches the ones coating Peggy’s and Daniel’s cheeks.

Peggy and Daniel are older, obviously, when the house goes back to holding only the three of them, and Steve starts picking up more of the dirty work. They both retire far later than most people would, finally admitting defeat to bodies that just can’t keep up with their younger colleagues and targets anymore. It’s hard, watching them become unable to do anything but gesture in frustration at the news, but it’s not as hard as it was to arrive at Peggy’s hospital bed, so many decades before. 

He’s had enough time, this time, with her. They’ve spent fifty years in the same household, they’ve had a life together. So he cherishes the wrinkles that now adorn her hands and the lines of her face, and he ventures outside to run errands with only the slightest twinge in his heart.

The only time he ever dislikes this whole arrangement is on a single grocery store trip.

He collects everything on his list with little issue, keeping his hood up and his head low as he peruses one particularly crowded aisle for the hot sauce Peggy likes. Nobody pays him any attention, and as Steve wheels his cart into the checkout lane he congratulates himself on a faultless grocery run—God knows he’s had some close calls.

One would think he’d have learned some lessons about celebrating too soon.

He’s aimlessly selecting a pack of gum and skimming magazine covers (Brad Pitt is the sexiest man alive this year, according to People) when he hears a laugh. 

An unmistakable, once life-affirming, thought-he’d-never-hear-it-again laugh.

His blood freezes over in his veins as his hands go slack, the Trident mint in his hand falling onto the conveyer belt and tumbling underneath a couple bags of Doritos. He stares at the fallen gum for a moment, not seeing it at all, before forcing himself to raise his head. 

She’s there, in the flesh, helping the customer in front of him—her nametag says Natalie, and her hair is darker than it was when he met her, but it’s definitely her, and Steve thinks he might faint then and there. His hand tightens around the cart as he fumbles his phone out of his pocket and stares at the date—November 15, 2000. Of course. 

Steve is desperately trying to find a way to get out of this when the woman in front of him takes her last bag and leaves with a grateful wave. Steve swallows thickly as Natasha beckons him forward, smiling brightly at him as she does. 

There is no recognition in her eyes—of course there isn’t—and something about being a stranger to her makes him want to grip the counter in front of him so tightly that it breaks.

She says something, but he doesn’t hear her; his ears are full of a roaring, sharp wind, and suddenly he’s back on a dark, foreign planet, a jagged cliff behind him and a limp body lying broken in front of him. He can feel the cold, tough dirt between his fingers again, can see the ice crystals forming on the strands of red hair he had run his fingers through so many times.

Her eyebrows knit together in mild concern as her mouth moves inaudibly once more, and Steve wrenches his mind back to reality. 

“Sorry,” he manages. “What was that, again?”

Natasha gives him a perfectly practiced customer-service smile and says, “How are you today?”

“Great,” Steve says, trying and failing to keep an edge of panic out of his voice. “Just dandy. You?”

“Well, you know, a little nervous,” Natasha says easily, swiping a can of chickpeas past the scanner. “It’s my first day on the job.”

He remembers. He also remembers her seated at the foot of his bed, playing with her hair while she told him about one of the first missions for SHIELD she’d ever failed.

“I was undercover as a cashier at a Safeway—”

“O-oh,” Steve sputters. “I’m sure you’re doing great.”

“Well, so far, so good—"

 “I had him, for a moment, and then I didn’t—”

“—But, you know, things can always change, right?”

Steve feels curiously as if his head is swimming, and he doesn’t think he can hear anymore. He wonders dimly if Peggy would find him, were he to faint in a grocery store. 

“He’d somehow stolen my nametag while we were scuffling and I didn’t even notice—”

“Um, sir?”

“He picked the lock with the pin—”

“Sir!”

Steve jumps. His hand smacks against his cart on the way up, the rattling of the metal doing nothing to calm his nerves.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head to clear it. “Did you say something?”

Natasha frowns, and the familiarity of the sight almost sends him back into the recesses of his brain. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, trying to sound unconcerned. “Yeah. Long day, sorry.”

She gives him a sympathetic smile and hits the keyboard. “That’ll be two hundred and one dollars and thirty-five cents. Paper or plastic?”

“Uh, paper,” Steve mutters, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Thanks.”

He takes the bags off the counter as soon as she fills them, trying his best not to look like he’s impatient but still trying to move as quickly as possible. When the bags are all in the cart, he grabs the handle and speed-walks away, throwing a feeble “thank you” over his shoulder. 

He looks behind him the entire way out of the store, relaxing slightly only when he turns the corner to a different area of the parking lot. Then, as he spots his car, he almost has his second heart attack of the day.

Natasha is standing next to the trunk with her arms crossed and a half-guarded, half-inquisitive look on her face. 

“Do I know you?” She asks as he shuts his eyes, desperately praying that this is a dream. 

Once it becomes clear that this is not, Steve takes a deep breath and resigns himself to whatever nightmare scenario happens next. 

“No,” he says hoarsely, unlocking his trunk and gesturing at her to move aside.

“But you know me,” she says matter-of-factly, taking a step to the left and watching him place the bags she’d just packed into his trunk. “At least, you seem to.”

Steve stays silent as he finishes loading his groceries and shuts the trunk door, then turns to face her. “I’d rather not do this here,” he says quietly. “Where I’m exposed.”

“Okay.” Natasha shrugs. “Follow me.”

She leads him into a small, dark alleyway behind the store. Steve thinks the overwhelming scent of garbage is going to rot his brains forever, but he does appreciate that they probably won’t be overheard.

“So,” Natasha prompts. “Who are you?”

Steve hesitates. He’s made it decades without telling anyone anything—besides Peggy and Daniel, of course—and a prickle of anxiety is creeping up his spine at the mere thought of saying the words out loud. 

On the other hand, that anxiety is nothing compared to the way he’s pretty sure his nerves are currently fraying at the edges, and he’s sure that Natasha would see right through him if he decided to try and lie his way out of this. 

Besides, if there’s one person who can keep a secret, it’s her.

He settles on a half-truth, one that gets him out of most of the hard conversations but is still hopefully enough to satisfy her.

“I’m, uh, from the future,” he says carefully. “I promise.”

Her eyes narrow, her natural skepticism overtaking her features. He can see her brain working, can see her scrutinizing his facial expression, his body language, anything that might betray a hint of a lie.

“I believe you,” she says finally. “Some of the tech I’ve seen being developed…well. Do you work for SHIELD?”

“I did.”

“So we worked together?”

He gives what sounds like a half-laugh, half-sob. If meteor showers and midnight drives and painful conversations overlooking the city of Rome are “working together”—

“You could say that.”

She bites her lip, assuming the thoughtful expression he knows to mean she’s trying to decide whether she wants to know the answer to whatever question she’s going to ask, then tilts her head slightly. “Can you tell me one more thing?”

Steve nods.

“When I die, have I contributed something good to this world?”

He almost chokes on his breath, staring at her with equal parts wonder and horror. “How—Why—"

“You were a little too surprised to see me,” Natasha says wryly. 

Half a century, apparently, is enough time to forget how well Natasha can read people. How well she can read him. 

“You give more to the world than you could imagine,” Steve says softly. “You save it. More than once.”

Her smile is more relieved than anything, and Steve wants to bask in its remnants forever. This is a younger Natasha, a less-worn Natasha—he’d almost forgotten how she’d looked before the snap, before she’d chosen to take on a burden that was far too heavy for anyone to carry.

This is the Natasha that he’d catch dancing in the early light of dawn, carefree and lost in her solitary art, even if it was just for a moment. The one that’d been lost five years before the rest of her was, too.

“Well,” she says as her watch beeps, breaking Steve out of his reverie, “I should get going. I assume you know I’m not actually here to bag groceries.”

“Of course.” Steve moves to leave, then turns back towards the disgusting, garbage-lined alleyway, suddenly aware that his next words are the last words he’s ever going to say to her. That he has a chance, now, to do what he hadn’t been able to do so long ago. 

He wants to tell her that the key to her apartment is still on his keychain, sandwiched between the keys to his car and his current house. He wants to tell her that his fingers brush against it as he unlocks the door or starts his engine; he wants to tell her that it’s the only thing he has left of her. That everything she has—everything they have—is going to be destroyed in about twenty years, that a big purple titan is going to ruin any hope he has of living a life that he is unequivocally happy with.

Instead, he says, “Take your nametag off before you go after him. Trust me.”

Maybe, in this timeline, she’ll remember. As she makes her decision on that icy, god-forsaken mountain, maybe she’ll think about today. Maybe she’ll think about this mission, the one that went smoothly, and wonder if he’d used his last words to make things a little bit easier. And maybe she’ll think about all the other ones, too, the ones where they fought side-by-side, and realize that this was him trying to do it one last time.

Her soul is hers, he knows—but he’ll help it move if he can.

The corner of her mouth ticks up in a half-smile. “Aye-aye, captain.”

He almost laughs.

[hufflepuffhollander]

Can you do 1. “Babe, I’m trying to talk to you.” - “Do ya’ll hear somethin’?” With Tom Holland? Maybe you give him the silent treatment?

a blurb requested is a blurb answered!

tom x reader(contains language, some real millenial angst™, and some alcohol use)word count: 1,912 (this is a long blurb)enjoy!

———————————————————————–

1. “Babe, I’m trying to talk to you.” - “Do ya’ll hear somethin’?”

He floated through the masses, giving fleeting hellos and getting quick hugs every so often, seeming to acquaint himself with every stranger he passed with just a smile. He held your hand as you trailed behind him, but you were losing his footsteps amongst all the other shoes, getting left behind as people followed behind him; not seeing you as one body moving together, rather, Tom Holland and his incessant puppy dog. You felt his fingers slip out of your small grasp, immediately missing the warmth, but realizing after fidgeting your hand around blindly in front of you that he was long lost into the crowd.

It’s just another movie premiere.

Well, really, it was the afterparty, which made it so much worse. This happened a lot - you’d accompany your boyfriend to his red carpet events, always starting the evening with an amount of confidence that you’d envy by the end. 

Hello world, yes, it’s me, Tom’s girl, don’t trip over your jaws on the floor.

Look at me go. I’m a stunner. 10/10 would recommend. Move out of the way, a queen is walking through.

Hey, everyone, I’m still here –

Has anyone seen Tom? …Who am I? Oh-

They’re all looking at me like I’ll never be good enough.

And that’s just how these things went.

But usually, he was with you often enough so that you didn’t feel like such an outsider. He would stick by your side until you were ready and tipsy enough to handle some conversation on your own. He understood how nervous these events made you - having to meet influential people, look and speak your best, needing to project the idea of perfect - your hair, your makeup, your dress, your life. Everything was under a spotlight here, and you preferred to live your life backstage. You gave up most of that desire when you started dating Tom, seeing him as worth it, because god, you loved him so much, and in a room full of opinions, his was the only one that mattered.

Tonight, though, was different. He fell out of your grasp and became the celebrity that he is, that he always has been but hides when you’re together, blending in with the elite so well that you couldn’t pick him out of the crowd. 

After minutes of dizzying searching for him, you caught a glimpse of a mop of brown curls rocking back and forth, caught up in the punchline of a conversation, dazzling the audience with its charm. 

Oh, finally, Tom –

A nameless pretty face cut off your reach, moving herself into his circle of conversation, causing you to miss your one chance to stand with him again, to feel safe again. He started a smaller talk with the girl in a long red dress, leaving little to the imagination, impeccably curled blonde hair. He was enthralled in the conversation, not withdrawing when she touched his arm after a joke. He looked over and saw you just behind the circle of inclusion, and your eyes lit up at the eye contact, your body starting to move forward to meet him. But then his eyes left the conversation, another colleague getting his attention, “you just have to come meet my friend, they want to talk to you about a film,” and he was once again gone.

The night went on like this, finding Tom peppered amongst the crowd, never able to reach him in time before he willingly walked into another conversation, seeming to completely disregard your existence. You nursed the same gin and tonic for a while at first, but the pace of your drinks increased exponentially as the hours passed by. 

Sure, a few somebodies came to speak with you, making friendly chatter, but none of them were him, the only boy you wanted to be posed next to, the only one who made you feel like you could maybe, just maybe, become part of this world.

Eventually, you gave up trying to find Tom, and after hour three had came and went, your lipstick had faded into the rims of your drink glasses, your heels hurt your feet, and it was time to return back to your circle of the Earth.

He’s having too much fun with his people to care, anyway. If he needs me, he’ll come find me.

You got home and kicked off your shoes, changing into your usual track shorts and soft tshirt, only wearing one of Tom’s hoodies because you were cold and lacked a better option. You walked over to the bowl of fish that you’d managed to keep alive since college and sprinkled some flakes into the water.

Eat up, little fellas. At least someone can have a good night.

Curling up with a book, you tried to lose yourself in its fictitious world, hoping it would help you feel a little less alone in yours.

Later that night,

Tom came through the door, the glow of a great night still illuminating his face. You had fallen asleep long ago, but woke up at the sound of the door slamming shut, Tom wincing after the fact because he hadn’t meant to close it so loudly.

He tiptoed into your bedroom, as if it would make any difference now, and saw you sitting in bed with your nose in your book. You had taken your makeup off hours ago, so he couldn’t see that your tears had run through most of it.

“Hey, love,” he said quietly, placing his things down on a chair and untying his shoes, expecting you to have already responded as he busied himself with getting ready for bed. Missing a reply, he said it again, still without turning around to look at you, faced towards the mirror so he could undo his tie. Still, silence.

His third attempt at trying to talk to you had him turned around to face you, eyebrows knit together in confusion. You continued to look down at your book, reading the same sentence over and over again, obviously unable to concentrate on doing anything but actively ignoring your boyfriend.

Tom took his undershirt off and made his way over to you, sitting on the edge of the bed, further away from you than he would normally go. It was impossible not to look up at him sitting there, every muscle in his arms and chest exposed, still looking hot as ever even though he had majorly let you down. 

Well fuck, that’s just not fair.

He caught your glance upwards and took that a sign that there was still life in you, attempting to rekindle some kind of spark that he could feel was missing. You were always so warm and welcoming when he came home, immediately stopping whatever you were in the middle of to run over to the door and wrap your arms around him, peppering his face with little hello kisses. And, god, he lived for those kisses. Right now, he felt strangely empty without them.

“So, uh, good book?” he said, not really knowing how to approach you, knowing something wasn’t right, but afraid to say it outright. You got even angrier at that, his blank expression portraying that he truly didn’t notice that something was off.

Is he really that oblivious?

You fumed at the thought of him throughout the night, flouncing around from party to party without giving you a second thought. And now, here he is sitting in front of you, unable to see that you were visibly upset. Maybe he really didn’t think he’d done anything wrong; maybe he didn’t care if he had.

You flipped a page of the book, tapping your fingers along the covers, filling the static room with a soft drum.

Tom was getting a little frustrated now, understanding that you weren’t just a statue posed in front of him, that you could obviously hear him and were consciously choosing not to respond. He stood up from the bed with a huff, walking closer to you and laying a soft hand on your shoulder. His warmth radiated into your body, and you silently cursed him for still being able to send tingles down your spine with just a touch even when you didn’t want him to.

He expected you to look up at him, to smile, to say something, anything. But you didn’t.

I am way better at the silent treatment than I thought I was.

Tom walked into the closet with a stomp in his step. He flipped through shirts, pants, jackets, not looking for anything, just trying to busy himself with a task to keep his temper at bay. His voice muffled by the hanged clothes around him, he started again. “Did something happen at the party? Did I do something wrong?”

Those were the words that did you in. 

You know damn well that you did something wrong.

You took a sip of water from your nightstand and swallowed the wrong way, coughing a few times. Tom’s ears piped up at the sound of your voice, until milliseconds later when he realized you still weren’t speaking.

He sifted through his head, what had happened that night, trying to play and replay every interaction you’d had that would’ve caused your mood. And then, it hit him.

There were no interactions that night. He’d completely abandoned you. And he knew how much you feared that.

“Listen,” he started, not really sure where his sentence was going to lead. “I’m sorry if I got caught up in the party, you know there were just a lot of people that wanted to see me, and you know I gotta give the people what they want-” his attempt at finding humor in the situation failed miserably, and he’d had enough.

“Babe,” he walked out of the closet and stood right next to you, staring you down. “I’m trying to talk to you.” You looked up and around the room, pretending to search for where that sound had come from. Your eyes stopped on your bowl of fish.

“Do y’all hear somethin’?” you said to them, hoping but not expecting to hear a tiny glub in response.

Tom threw his hands up in exasperation and rolled his eyes so far back that you were sure they’d get stuck that way.

He changed into some sweatpants, still shirtless, and climbed in the bed next to you, turning out the light next to him, the only one allowing you to read. Suddenly immersed in the still darkness, you felt a warm tear slip down your cheek. Tom sighed loudly and flopped his head down onto the pillow, still facing you, hoping you would grace him with the sound of your voice before he succumbed to the exhaustion. You looked at him in the dark, and he somehow saw the hurt in your eyes.

“Please don’t leave me to fend for myself like that,” you whispered, lying down in the bed so you were face to face.

He brought his hand to touch your cheek and rubbed small, soothing circles with his thumb.

“I’m sorry, love. It won’t happen again.”

You let that sentence resonate in the air and closed your eyes, and Tom scooted closer to you, bringing your body into him, wrapping his arms arond your small frame. Suddenly feeling his presence, the comfort you had longed for all night, put your mind at ease, and you fell asleep, promising yourself that you’d hold his hand harder next time.

[sunnybugz]

only fools

chapter: iv

word count: 1968

authors note: this chapter has been finished for over a week, but i’ve been freaking out over whether or not it was good enough hhh. im still super anxious to post this, so please give me some feedback! i love y’all

11:05 AM, Gina Linetti’s car

Rosa had spent a while trying to figure out what to wear. Gina refused to tell her where they were going, so she eventually just decided on a pair of dark wash jeans, a long-sleeved black t-shirt, and her black Docs. She wore a little more makeup than usual, but nothing too elaborate. She worried that Gina would think she was too much, or not enough, but managed to not freak out before Gina showed up at her door. Luckily, she was 15 minutes late, giving Rosa enough time to fix her curly hair.

When Gina had shown up at Rosa’s house, Rosa got a pit caught up in gay panic. Gina looked absolutely gorgeous, wearing an olive-green sweater with the collar of her white button down sticking out and a pair of jeans, and her auburn hair was just down, curled at the ends. She had on minimal makeup, yet still looked absolutely beautiful. Rosa literally stood there frozen for a few seconds before Lillian shouted, “Bye Rosa!” from the couch.

“So, does Lillian know?” Gina asked her as the doors shut.

“Uh, yeah. She heard our phone call through the stupid thin wall between our room. It’s like she’s trying to spy on me sometimes!” Rosa says. Gina smiles at her and shakes her head, her cheeks flushing a slight pink. Gina blushing was probably the cutest thing Rosa had ever seen.

Now she was sitting in Gina’s car, listening to her sing along to some pop song on the radio that Rosa didn’t recognize. It was her new favourite though, not because of the actual piece, but because Gina was singing it, and anything that Gina did was Rosa’s favourite. The song ended, and Gina looked at Rosa with a smile. Rosa had a huge grin plastered on her face, and she felt amazing. She was in the car with her girlfriend, and she couldn’t be happier.

“So are you planning on telling me where we’re going?” Rosa asked. Gina had a mischievous grin on her face.

“Nope, you’ll see when we get there. How have I dealt with you being so impatient for the past five years?” Gina responds. Rosa smiles and gives a slight eye roll.

“The same way I’ve tolerated you breaking out into random dance numbers. You thought it was cute,” Rosa responds. It feels weird to flirt so lightheartedly. She’d never felt this way with Marcus, Adrian, Becky, Aubrey, or even Alicia. It was like she was floating.

“I feel so attacked,” Gina laughed. “I mean, you aren’t wrong, but jeez!”

The two of them drove and flirted for a few more minutes before Gina pulled into the marketplace parking lot. Rosa looked at her quizzically.

“You’re taking me to the market?” She asked. “Not that that’s a bad thing, any place with you is the best.”. She realizes she’s rambling and turns bright red.

“You’ll see,” Gina says. “And by the way, you’re adorable when you blush.”. This causes Rosa to turn an even deeper shade of red, and Gina laughs.

It turns out Gina was taking her to get gelato. They go to a smaller stall in the market, with more flavours than Rosa has ever tried in her life. Gina gets birthday cake, and Rosa gets coffee. The two of them walk back out to Gina’s car, because according to Gina, there’s still more places to go.

Their second destination is a small diner that Rosa has passed a hundred times but never gone to. “You’ve talked about this place like, a billion times,” Gina said. “I had to take you here on our first date”. Rosa’s cheeks flush pink at that D-word. She could barely believe she was on a real date with the girl she’s liked since eighth grade.

The two of them get a booth right by a window. Rosa orders a burger and Gina orders nachos. They get a strawberry milkshake to split. The two of them are sitting, waiting for their food to come, while Gina gossips about the girls in her dance class. Rosa just sits there, staring into Gina’s beautiful blue eyes. She could listen to that girl talk for hours. Even though Rosa doesn’t know who Natasha is or why she’s allegedly pregnant at 19, or even why Gina cares so much about exposing her for faking her pregnancy, but the one thing Rosa does know is she loves Gina. She loves how passionate she gets when she talks, she loves how her face scrunches up when she smiles, she loves how she knows she’s always the most beautiful girl in the room.

Rosa is laughing at a stupid joke Gina made when their food comes. Rosa tries to stop herself from inhaling hers, because even though she’s known Gina since the eighth grade, she’s still embarrassed about eating in front of her or anyone really. She eventually gives into the delicious burger in front of her, stopping to make silly quips during Gina’s story. They take turns sipping from the pink milkshake between the two of them, but after Gina finally finishes her story, the two of them lean in at the same time, and they almost kiss. Rosa turns beet red and hides her face in her hands, smiling behind them. Gina giggles. “C’mon, stop hiding, you’re cute when you’re embarrassed,” she says, but this just makes Rosa’s face burn red, and she’s pretty sure she’s blushing down to her neck. Somehow, she can make out with Gina in a dressing room and be perfectly fine, but putting her face close to Gina’s on a date nearly kills her? “Rosa, if you don’t move your hands in the next three seconds I’m eating your food.” Gina says. She starts counting down from three, and on one, Rosa finally takes her hands away from her face, and Gina smiles big. “See, I told you that you were cute.” She says, making Rosa smile.

“I am not cute,” Rosa says. Gina just rolls her eyes.

“Of course you are Rosie. You’re adorable and pretty and I know you’re a badass but badasses can still be cute.” She says in response to Rosa. Rosa feels her face heat up, but not in the good way this time.

“No, I’m not pretty or any of that stuff. I don’t look anything like those pretty girls in magazines and on TV,” Rosa says, her voice getting quieter as she looks down at the table. She doesn’t know why she’s getting so emotional in the middle of a diner. She’s always been insecure of how she looks, but she usually just hides it with her badass attitude and a stoic face. Only around Gina does she really feel like she can be open about how she feels.

Gina looks at Rosa with sad eyes, slightly shaking her head. How can she not see how perfect she is? Gina has literally never seen a more stunning person in her life, and no matter who she’s been with, she’s always wished it was Rosa. She scoots into the booth with Rosa, putting her arm around her girlfriend.

“Baby, you’re right. You don’t look like the girls on TV. You look better. You’re absolutely beautiful, and gorgeous, and stunning, and elegant, and every single synonym for those words in existence. You’re perfect,” Gina whispers, rocking her girlfriend slightly, kissing her hair. Rosa begins to cry, tears spilling over her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I’m being so stupid-” She starts, but Gina cuts her off.

“Don’t say that. You’re the smartest person I know. You aren’t stupid,” Gina reassures her.

“Gina, we’re friends with Amy Santiago, you can’t say that.” Rosa laughs a little.

“No, you’re definitely smarter than her. Don’t tell her that I said that though, she’ll probably beat me to death with one of her binders.” Rosa actually laughs at this, wiping tears away from her face. She grabs Gina’s hand, who gives hers a squeeze, and they finish their meal like that, sitting in the same booth, holding hands. It feels safe, and Gina’s heart swells a little every time she sees Rosa sneak a peek at her. This girl was so beautiful, she really would be the death of her, Gina thought. She hadn’t felt this much for any person in her life, except for her mom and Jake, both of which were family love. She’s never truly been in love other than with Rosa, and it felt nice to be a little less alone.

When the bill comes, Rosa goes to pull out her wallet, but Gina grabs her wrist. “Nuh uh, I asked you out, I’m paying,” She says. Rosa rolls her eyes.

“You already paid for us to get ice cream!” Rosa says, but Gina just gives her that look, and Rosa knows there’s no arguing with her. “Fine, but I’m getting you next time.”

The waitress smiles at the two girls, wisps of blonde hair framing her face. “You two are cute together, I’m glad you’re able to be out at such a young age. I’m still not out to my parents, but I’m happy you girls are able to do it,” She says. Rosa’s stomach drops a bit when she says this, but she smiles anyways.

“Thanks,” she says to the pretty waitress. Gina looks at Rosa, and can tell something is off. Rosa shakes her head a bit, and Gina knows that means she doesn’t want to talk about it. Rosa isn’t in the mood to talk about more sad things at the moment, she’s already cried once. Luckily, Gina understands. The two of them have always understood each other like that, despite how different they are.

The two of them are walking back to Gina’s car, holding hands. Gina is swinging Rosa’s hand and Rosa is going along with it. God, if anyone from school saw them doing this, Rosa’s reputation would be completely different. However, she doesn’t really care all that much. She would give up everything if it meant she got to be with Gina. When they reach Gina’s car, Rosa holds the door open for her. “Wow, Rosa Diaz is a gentleman, who would’ve guessed?” Gina says. Rosa smiles and pecks her on the lips. Gina grins and looks at the ground for just a moment before getting into the car.

Gina and Rosa drive around for a while, just talking. They talk about school, and the play, and their friends, and all the while holding hands and making googly eyes at each other.

“Do you wanna go chill at my place?” Gina asks. Rosa smiles.

“Is this the intro to some cheesy porno?” She responds. This sends Gina into a fit of hysterics, and it’s lucky the two of them are stopped at a red light, because otherwise, Gina most definitely would have crashed the car.

“No, it’s you using up all my gas money bitch! Although…” she trails off. Rosa rolls her eyes and laughs.

“Sorry, I’ll pay you back for the gas. How long have we been driving anyways?” Rosa says, completely ignoring the last part of Gina’s sentence.

“An hour, and you don’t have to worry about paying me back babe, this is a date,” Gina says, and Rosa kisses her on the cheek.

“Best first date I’ve ever been on,” Rosa replies. Gina just smiles. “Also, you’ve got lipstick on your cheek.”

“Diaz, if you aren’t kidding I’m going to kill you,” jokes Gina. Rosa actually has no clue if Gina is joking or not, but hopes for the best.

“No you aren’t, because I’m pretty sure I owe you a second date,” Rosa flirts.

Gina shakes her head and smiles. “Oh, Rosie. if only you knew what you were getting yourself into.”

[gazeboeddiespaghetti]

Panic Attack! At The Quarry Pt 2

Part One

Title: Panic Attack! At The Quarry only bad puns here y’all

Fandom: IT (taking elements from both the book and 2017 movie)

Ship(s): Reddie, billverly, Stanlon,

Tags/Warnings: none for this chapter 

Summary: It has been two years since the summer of IT, but some demons still chase the Losers. Eddie still can’t shake his inhaler, Bill’s stutter is worse in Summer, Stan still can’t talk about his bar mitzvah. Mike still can’t go to the water’s edge alone, Beverly feels phantom touches if her hair is past her shoulders, Richie refuses to play loogie anymore, Ben avoids bridges if possible, yet somehow, in all of this there is healing and love and friendship.

Reddie centric (for now. Who knows, this might turn into something of a series? It was suppose to be two pages you guys.)

Tagging: @star-light30 @beepbeep-losers

Eddie had been holding his fanny pack when he went over the cliff, but lost it during the fall, along with whatever calm he had left inside him; and while he knew he would hit the water and be fine, maybe a little harder than usual but not by much, he couldn’t stop screaming the whole way down. He fell in the water head first, still screaming. He struggled break the water’s surface but now he was panicked and his body wasn’t listening to his head, his arms and legs useless as they allowed him to simply sink down. He was sure he was going to die in this pathetic way,all because his fight or flight reflex decided floating in any form wasn’t acceptable, when he felt the water wave around him then arms surround his middle.

Richie pulled Eddie out and onto the rocks, panting as he looked the boy over. Eddie was gasping for air, choking on water and air and fear.

It only took a few moments for the others to notice that something was wrong and soon there were five dripping bodies surrounding Richie and Eddie as Eddie struggled for air. He gasped out, fingers fisting together and releasing and fisting together in an endless cycle at Richie’s wrist, “I-In- fuck.. My inhal…” he managed to get out, even though his logical brain pointed out that he didn’t need it.

“W-wheres your fa-fanny pack?” Bill asks, kneeling beside the two boys. Mike, Beverly, and Ben turn and look at the ground as Stan frowns, face twisted with concerned, “I think he left it on the cliff.”

“Drop…” shaky inhale, labored exhale. He feels Richie’s hand on the back of his neck, he closes his eyes and leans into it slightly, “Dropped it… the fall…”

Bev curses at this, and Mike mumbles something that Eddie can’t hear over his own breathing but it earns him a glare from everyone and an elbow from Stan. Eddie feels Richie tense up beside him and this sends a whole new wave of panic to run through him. He wheezes.

“I-I can go get S-Silver and rid-ride to the ph-pharmacy.” Bill says and beside him Ben nods, a little too eager.

“Just like the day we met,” Ben adds softly, encouraging

“No. He’s fine.” Richie says, stopping Bill in his tracks as he starts to make his way up the cliff. Eddie turns, giving Richie a pathetic smack to his chest.

“I..beg.. Your-” Eddie is cut off, and he whimpers when a voice overpowers his own.

“You’re fine, Eddie. I promise you that you are fine. You just need to fucking breathe.” Richie says, voice much too serious.

“Richie….” Bev says, softly, and there is a warning in her voice that makes Eddie shiver.

“He’s fine, Beverly. I’ve got him, ok? You all go swim and I’ll-”

“If...If I die.. I’ll kill you… you..-” Eddie says between wheezing

“Eddie, look at me. Look at me,” Richie cups Eddie’s cheek in his hand and gently forces his head to the side until they’re eye-to-eye, “I’m really sorry I pushed you into the river but you do not have asthma. Ok? You need to remember you don’t have asthma and just breathe for me, ok?”

“I don’t think it’s that easy for him….” Stan says, softly and matter-of-factly, eyes trained on Richie.

“Just- please, guys. If it doesn't let up I’ll fucking carry him to the pharmacy myself, ok? But you all need to back the fuck up and just go swim. I’ve. Got. This.” Richie is clearly talking to the group, but his eyes stay on Eddie’s face, eyebrows drawn together and he only borrows a glance their way for a moment.

There is a long pause in which the only sounds are the lapping water from the river and Eddie’s labored breathing. Finally, Bill speaks, slow and calm, “You sure about this,” another pause, as he swallows, “Richie?”

“I hate when you make things too important to fucking stutter over it,” Richie says back, not unkindly, followed by, “I’m sure. I’ve got this.”

.....

“You’re…. You’re going.. To… kill… me.” Eddie says, hand shaking as he reaches for the place where his fanny pack would usually lay. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice calls him weak and his lungs close up a little more.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Eds,” Richie says, shifting so he was sitting even closer to Eddie. Bill’s question rings in his head but he pushes it away because he knew Eddie, maybe better than anyone, and he knew how fucking strong the shorter boy was and he knew that if he would only get him to listen him long enough to breathe that everything would be ok. He moves some wet hair from Eddie’s face, smiling at him a little, “Come on now, you’re just going to let me get away with calling you that? Getting soft on me, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“Can’t…. Breathe… yo-you.. Asshole….” Eddie says, and he wants to cry but can’t. His lungs feel like they are on fire.

“No one ever taught you how?” Richie jokes, but it sounds empty, and even almost cruel even to his own ears. He sighs softly when it gets no response and he shifts even closer to Eddie now, one hand coming up in rest on Eddie’s bare chest. He can feel the boy struggling to make his body work under his the skin and it makes his own chest heavy. “I know how hard this-” He shakes his head, corrects himself. He recalls when Ben showed him where in the library to find books about breathing exercises and getting frustrated only a few chapters into the second one. He curses himself now, himself but also the knowingly way Ben had looked at him when he walked Richie down the aisles until they arrived to the right section.

“Ok, so I don’t know. Ok? I don’t know how hard this is or how this must feel for you, Eddie. I have no fucking idea. But I can imagine it and I’m so sorry, but this isn’t real. You need to-” He’s cut off by Eddie’s hand coming up to his face, covering his mouth and nose and Richie gasps in surprise. Then he gasps for air, but Eddie’s hand is blocking most of it from entering and Richie feels a burning in his chest. He tries to inhale but can’t.

Richie swears in the next few seconds he is going to die. After another moment that feels like an eternity, Eddie drops his hand and whimpers a little. Richie inhales deeply, mumbling out a curse and fighting his initial urge to push Eddie away and call him an asshole but when he finds Eddie’s eyes, they are wide and so close and utterly terrified that it makes Richie’s chest hurt for a whole new reason.

Eddie’s voice cuts through the space between them, “Feels… l-like.. That… feel like.. That...but...forever…”

Richie curses again, softer this time, and part of him wishes he had let Bill go on ahead to get another light blue inhaler for Eddie, but he pushes the thought away, nodding a little, “Ok, ok, fair enough.”

“But… its.. It's not.. Real.”

“No. It isn’t real.” Richie agrees, “But it also is. You just need to try and relax. You panicked and now you just need to breathe.”

“Easy… for… you...to..say…” Eddie says, but he knows Richie is right. He also knows that no matter how many times he tells- screams- at his lungs to just do their job and his body to stop fucking with him, nothing changes. He starts to feel lightheaded and reaches out for Richie, who comes closer easily and quickly, letting Eddie grab onto his shoulder and side, nails digging into flesh uncomfortably. Eddie drops his head a little, closing his eyes tight as he tried to will his body to behave.

“Eddie, you are the strongest fucking person I know,” Richie says, chuckling softly at Eddie’s whimpered protest, “Shut up, you are. And I’ll even list out the reasons if you want later but right now I need you to get out of your own fucking head and just breathe with me, ok? Just- just try, Eds, please.” It’s how soft and genuine and serious and, mostly, how worried and scared that one word sounded - please- that made Eddie snap his head up to look at Richie. He nods once and Eddie can feel the sigh that escapes Richie’s lips on his cheek.

Richie closes in, impossibly close, and leans his forehead against Eddie’s, his wet curls making Eddie shiver as the hand on his shoulder moves to behind him neck, shaking less now, but still noticeable against Richie’s skin. “Breathe with me, ok? In…. and out….” Richie says, slowing down his breathing, hand pushing Eddie’s chest in gently with every exhale he tried to get the other boy’s body to listen in some small way, “Just like that gross birthing video Mr. Morses showed us in Sex Ed, yeah?” This earns Richie a whimpered chuckle and he beams at that, still breathing slowly and as surely as he could manage. Behind them somewhere, Richie could hear splashing and talking, but he knew the others were still watching as they put on an act of playing.

“There you go,” Richie says after a few moments when he can feel Eddie’s breathing change just slightly. Still labored, still making Richie worry and adding fuel in the fire that was Richie’s hatred of Eddie’s mother, but his inhales were more even now, and Richie smiled, “Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom, Will Eddie’s lungs have enough room?” He jokes, and Eddie opens his eyes at that, frowning.

“I… hate you.” He says, but he was smiling a little and Richie sticks his tongue out, laughing a little when it touches grazes Eddie’s upper lip and makes the shorter boy recoil a little, “Gross…” He rasps out, and Richie rubs Eddie’s back as he laughs harder.

“I’m going to write an actual children’s book, copyright and all, with that title. I’ll get rich off of your pain, little Eds. I’ll be living it up in New York or LA or anywhere but Derry, milking it off of your phantom pains. Then you’ll sue me and all the Losers will have to take sides and it will rip our entire group apart. It’ll be magical, Eds, just you wait.”

“You… have a fucked… imagination..” Eddie responds, eyes closing again as he tries to breathe in rhythm with the flow of Richie’s words. He can feel his head again, but his chest still feels heavy and the changing of Eddie’s breath ghosting on Richie’s lips make something click in him and a silence falls over the two as Richie returns to his slow breathing, trying still to guide Eddie.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Over the next few minutes Eddie’s breathing gets worse instead of better and Richie is getting worried, thoughts of bailing and admitting he was wrong, begging Bill to please go ahead and get Eddie his stupid inhaler starting to blossom in his head when Eddie’s voice surprises him, making him jump just a little, “Not… working. This isn’t….”Eddie drops his head a little, forehead falling to Richie’s shoulder now and Richie feels the shaky air on his neck, feels his heart drop and is about ready to pull away when Eddie takes a shaky inhale and counties, “talk. It was… fuck… it was.. Was.. helping when… when you ...were…talking.”

“You’re usually telling me to shut up,” Richie jokes, fingers combing through Eddie’s still damp hair, followed by a softer, “What do you want me to talk about?”

“An-anything… just… spilling non- nonsense.. Is t...the one...thi-thing...you’re…. Good… at.”

“God, you’re stuttering worse than Bill on a full moon,” Richie jokes before letting out a shaky breath and letting his mouth take over. He talked about how much he hated the summer project they were assigned and how he got into his father’s liquor cabinet with Bev when she returned from Portland last winter break and they both had the worst  hangover ever and he told Eddie about how Stan tricked him into bird watching with him the weekend before and how boring it was and how many times Stan snapped at him and he told Eddie about every little thing he could think of, even repeating stories that he knew Eddie knew, a few that he was even there for, and slowly Eddie started to breathe close to normal again.

It took almost 20 minutes after Richie started talking, but finally Eddie felt ok, and he knew that Richie could feel his lungs working again because the taller boy trailed off, his words dying out as his hands kept on playing with Eddie’s hair. Richie places a kiss, ever so lightly to the top of Eddie’s head, making sure Eddie wouldn’t be able to feel it, but from where they were sitting at the water’s edge, both Bev and Stan notice, looking away when Richie spots them. He clears his throat.

At the sound, Eddie tenses before pulling away a little, hands dropping from Richie’s skin. His lungs felt fine now, breathing only a little shaky, but in the place of sheer panic and burning of a moment ago, Eddie now feels embarrassed. He can’t look at Richie, he feels so silly and small and weak.

“I’m sorry-” Eddie says, at the same time that Richie says, “Thank God you didn’t die.” Their words overlap then hang between them. Eddie starts to stand but Richie takes his arm, stopping him.

“You sure you’re ok?”

“There was never anything wrong…” Eddie says, still not looking at Richie. He hates himself, more than a little bit, and he feels an itch to pull away from Richie and run for his house and his bed where he can hide away for a while

“Eds-”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie fires back on instinct and while he can’t see it, a smile pulls at Richie’s lips at the words, “And I’m breathing fine. You can stop babysitting me now…”

“Eddie…” Richie says, softer than Eddie would like. In fact, thinking it over Richie has been so much softer than Eddie was used to this whole time and instead of making him feel warm, like it usually does, it makes Eddie feel like a fragile child. A whimper leaves his lips without his permission and Richie shushes him, a hand rubbing at Eddie’s arm, “You didn’t answer my question.”

Silence, followed by a defeated sigh.

Eddie wants to tell Richie that he is fine, that it was stupid and they are wasting daylight, to shove Richie away before racing him to the water, but Richie’s hand is still moving up and down Eddie’s arm. The same way Eddie’s hands sometimes worked on Richie’s when he climbed in Eddie’s window at 3 am, hiding from his parents’ drunken negligence, “No. I don’t think I’m ok. But I am better. A little bit. I’m better than I was when I fell in the water, better than I was two years ago. I’m not fucking like critically not ok.”

Richie nods, but doesn’t say anything right away. Behind them, there is a loud splashing followed by Stan cursing and then Beverly and Mike’s laughter fill the air. Eddie turns to look at them and when Ben spots him, he waves, beaming. Eddie waves back.

“Ready to get your asses kicked in Chicken?” Mike shouts their way and Richie looks to Eddie, question in his eyes.

“In a little bit, but be sure to save me a game!” Eddie says back and turns to Richie, smiling at him a little, “You can go ahead, if you want. I promise I’ll be fine.”

“Bullshit,” Richie says, throwing an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, pulling him closer, “Billy there put me in charge of your heres health, he sure did! I ain't leaving you alone to die in this harsh wilderness all by your lonesome!” Richie says, voice changing, causing Eddie to roll his eyes.

“I hate you, I hate all  your voices, and I was right here, Rich, you are the one who went and took charge of making sure I didn’t die. All on you.” Still, Eddie leans into Richie, side pressed flush against his chest. The skin contact makes Eddie heat up a little.

“You love them, you fucking liar. Besides, there is no way I’m leaving you here when you just admitted to not being ok.” Richie’s voice takes that serious air again and Eddie feels most of the fight inside of him die.

“Can you please just drop it, Richie? It hardly matters.”

A long, comfortable silence falls over them. They stay like that for a few minutes before getting up to join their friends in the water.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sky is starting to darken as the Losers all lay out on the rocks, drying off. Stan and Mike were the only ones dressed yet, Stan having brought a towel with him and now the two were laying together, not a whisper of space between them as Mike brings Stanley’s hand to his lips, kissing his knuckles softly as Stan talks, something soft and quiet and clearly just for Mike. Richie ruins the moment by walking past and ruffling Stan’s hair and Stanley tosses his rolled up swim trunks at him.

Richie catches them and whoops, earning groans from nearly everyone, “Look at this, I’ve got myself a pair of Stanley’s pants, newly wet. I’m the luckiest man alive!”

“Sit down and shut up, Tozier,” Beverly says back, and Richie pouts but listens, tossing the pants at Bev before finding a place next to Eddie on the rocks.

Softly, Richie turns to Eddie, “Is that really what it feels like?” Richie asks, and his question is met with a look of confusion from Eddie, so he goes on, waving his hand out between them, “Before, when you stopped me breathing. Is that really what it feels like for you?”

Eddie swallows hard, biting his lip guiltily before nodding, “I’m sorry for doing that.”

“But that is what it feels like? When you’re having one of your attacks, is that what it feels like?”

Eddie nods again, “Only it’s not a hand. It’s like that without knowing the source.”

“That really fucking sucks.” Richie says, and Eddie doesn’t disagree.

Richie snakes an arm around Eddie’s middle, pulling him close and the smaller boy comes easily, resting his head on his shoulder.

A small silence falls over them again. Richie thinks maybe Eddie fell asleep when suddenly he speaks, and Richie has to bite back a shocked scream, “There’s a word for it.”

“For what?” Richie asks, frowning down at Eddie.

“For….. um, for the kind of not ok I am,” He starts, and sighs. Richie shifts his arm to better look at Eddie as he speaks again, “Psychosomatic,” Eddie breathes out, the word cranking at the end. It feels heavy, to say out loud and he finds his body curling into Richie’s all on its own. 

When he looks at the other boy’s face he finds a puzzled expression. Richie is unnaturally silent against the sounds of  their friends speaking and the crashing waves on the riverbank somewhere behind them. “That’s what it is. It means when you’re not sick but you are. When your body has no illness but you get all the symptoms of being sick. It means- mans in your head. It means crazy.” He is whispering now, voice flat, factual.

Eddie had read all about it after he remembered the time he was in 3rd grade and left the gym red faced with his mother. He had forgotten about it until the day at the pharmacy and then again, this time almost on purpose, until a few months ago. He had gone to the library and took book after book to a hidden corner between the adult and children’s wings. He spend five hours reading about it, hands shaking and lungs useless by the time he left.

He thought there would be a relief in knowing, in having a word and definition for all of it. He was wrong. It made things so much worse, somehow.

He wants to tell Richie all of this, wants to say how he wants to blame his mother but that doing that feels too easy and too mean, that it would mean admitting to failing, in some way. It would mean admitting to falling for her lifetime of lies, even after the lie was exposed.  Instead, he lets out a sigh, resting his forehead against Richie’s shoulder again, where it is warm and safe.

Eddie feels tired, ashamed. Mostly, he feels like he did when he first learned about the falseness of his life, like everything was made out of paper and was on the verge of crumpling. He swallows, “There are people who get so sick- fake sick- that can never leave their house again. That they get send to loony bins or convince themselves they’re dying and then just do it- they crazy themselves to death. I don’t- I don’t feel crazy, Rich. I feel like I’m- I know I’m ok. I saw the test results. My body is fine. But it feels like my lungs are....”

His voice gets a little high pitched and frantic before he trails off, and his throat is sore from all the heaving and the yelling in the water, and the talking. Mostly the talking. He wasn’t use to talking so much. He thinks for a moment how Richie isn’t use to listening this much, that being still is as hard for Richie as breathing is for himself. However, he knows Richie is listening by how Richie’s hand is rubbing his back when his words get heavy, he knows he’s so fully there that it scares Eddie a little. He keeps waiting for a punchline. When none comes he hushes out, “I’m not ready to be crazy. It’s so much easier to have asthma than be a nutter. I- does that make sense? Is that- is that ok, Richie?”

There is a heavy and painful silence  before Richie asks, “Did I ever tell you about why I pushed you that day on the playground?”

“You mean when you fucking shoved me off the swing set into the mud pile below like a jerk?” Eddie asks, confused at the turn of the conversation, and his tone makes Richie laugh a little.

“In my defense, I was 6.”

“Still a jerk move. And I don’t understand what-”

��- shut up. It all connects, I promise. Also, if I had known you were going to cry for a half hour or that I was about to be chewed out by stuttering kindergartener I would have pushed you in the other direction.” Eddie laughs but hits Richie all the same before Richie talks again, quieter this time, “Anyway, that day I was so mad. Stan couldn’t hang out and my dad was too drunk to take me to the park. I threw the biggest tantrum, but my mom just turned the TV up-”

“-God, I just want to slap your parents…” Eddie cuts in, but Richie waves him off.

“Yeah, well, your mom is her own bundle of issues I would like to slap, so just shut up and listen to the story, Eds. So, I just wanted to go to the park. I just wanted them to notice me. So I thought that maybe if I hurt myself that they would turn the TV off. But I was a chickenshit and also 6, so I wasn’t about to actually hurt myself. Instead I went into my room, threw a few books on the floor and screamed. Nothing. So I did it again. Finally my mom comes running it, all redfaced and shit. And I pretended to have hurt my foot. Only I wasn’t a good liar. And my mom saw through it and was pissed. So she told me to fuck off and go to the park. Which, you know, sucked but I did get what I want.”

“I’m so sorry, Ric-”

“-Don’t you dare. And besides, you’re missing the point.”

“You have a point?” Eddie teases, shifting closer to Richie’s embrace without meaning to

“The point is that I wanted them to notice me. I wanted them to notice me and so I pretended to be hurt. And the funny thing is that, walking to the park I swear that my foot was hurting. I started to limb, even.” Richie’s voice got this high and flowy quality it sometimes did when he was getting into a story he was telling and Eddie frowns a little as he listens to him, eyes locked on his face now, “I was mad and upset and somehow I had convinced my body that my foot was hurt even though it was fine. I wanted so badly for someone to just fucking notice me that I yelled at a random grown up at the park and pushed a kid off his swing, but before that I made up a pain that my body mistook for real, you know?”

There is a long beat of silence before Eddie replies, “Yeah, I know…”

“My point is that there is clearly something wrong, Eddie.” Eddie makes to cut him off, but Richie rightfully assumes what he’s going to say and is faster, continuing, “I know that you don’t know what it is. That whatever is wrong isn’t- that you don’t really know what it is. But my point is that you don’t have to fucking try to figure it out by yourself. You have the Losers, Eds. You have me.”

Another beat of silence. “Because you made me cry when we were six?”

Richie laughs, full and loud enough to draw the attention of Bill and Stan from a few feet away, “Yes, Eds, you have me because I was a jerk at six years old.”

There is something in Richie’s voice that Eddie can’t trace, and it makes him turn to look at him more fully, frowning slightly. Being this close to Richie wasn’t new for Eddie, the two of them never being shy about their affection, but there was something so very jarring about the way Richie looked at him now. It makes his breath hitch, which Richie catches, echoing Eddie’s frown back at him. There is concern in that expression and it takes Eddie a second to realize where Richie’s head has gone, “I’m not having another attack. You can relax.”

Richie doesn’t look convinced, “Your breathing got all weird on me…”

Eddie is about to reply when Ben’s voice cuts through, somehow both amused and annoyed, “The rest of us are heading out but you guys are free to stay.”

“You fuckers aren’t leaving us behind like that!” Richie says, pulling away and Eddie tries to ignore the strange ache in his chest at the emptiness that filled the space Richie used to sit

[h0ldthiscat]

April in Austin

There is literally no need for anyone to write fanfiction for The Leftovers because it’s honestly the most perfect thing that’s ever existed, but because I do The Most, Always, I got this idea and it wouldn’t let me be. 

So enjoy this! Or don’t. 

X

The tile floor in the dealership is so shiny she can see her own reflection. There she is again, just below her sneakers. Alice through the looking glass. Herself and not herself. How would anyone tell them apart? Nora gone topsy-turvy. Both pairs of her simple, white sneakers are scuffed around the toes, shoelaces greying. The heels are reddish from the Texas dust.

The climate had taken some getting used to. She’d had a cough for weeks, a terribly dry, hacking cough that would wake her up in the middle of the night. She remembered the fire, being shaken awake by Matt, being pulled from between her stuffed animals weeks before she’d started second grade. She’d sit upright on their mattress, and take in deep, gasping breaths, splash her face with water in the bathroom, and rock Lily, who she’d inevitably woken.

But she’s used to it now.

She doesn’t miss the winter. She thought she might pine for snow, that it might make her a little melancholy to walk outside in February and not need a jacket. But two winters have come and passed in Jarden and she doesn’t miss March in New York, with clumps of greying snow still piled high in strip mall parking lots. She doesn’t miss the colorless skies and the days that end at 3pm.

“I didn’t know there were this many Garth Brooks songs,” Kevin groans, inclining his head to the speaker above them.

It takes her a moment to realize he’s spoken. “What?” Nora asks.

“It’s like the fifth one they’ve played.” He sings along tunelessly, “I’ve got friends in low places…” She manages a half-hearted smile that’s meant to encourage him, but he stops, clears his throat. “What time did you make the appointment for?”

Nora checks her watch. “Noon. It’s been nearly an hour.”

“We’re gonna have to reschedule with Jill.”

“No, don’t do that. She’s looking forward to seeing you.”

Kevin reaches over and squeezes her hand. “And you.”

She’s sure he’s right. Jill had taken to her quickly and without question two years ago, seeing Nora less as a stereotypical stepmother and more as a confidant. Things had never been awkward or terse between them, even after Nora had needed her space. Jill seemed to have an infinite well of forgiveness and understanding inside of her, something that most people would be lucky to have even a fraction of.

She thinks of the drive to Jarden, the four and a half interminable days in the truck, all of them buzzing with the energy of people starting a new life. While Kevin pumped the gas, she and Jill would take turns walking the dog--god, that fucking dog--around the perimeter of whatever concrete square they’d stumbled upon. Jill would speak freely, words coming out of her like she hadn’t spoken for a year, like her mother. Like her real mother.

“You should call her,” Nora says, taking a deep breath. “Tell her we’ll be late.”

“No, you call her,” Kevin sighs, checking his watch. “She won’t answer if it’s me.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Nora hadn’t gone with them to move Jill to Austin last year. They’d shopped together for a duvet cover and dorm room decor, searched online for cheap textbooks; she and Kevin had gotten into an argument loading the truck with those ugly clear storage bins. And then she just kept picturing the car ride up there: her and Kevin and Laurie and John and Jill all squeezed into the cab, a cut-and-paste family that they’d slapped together in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Would Jill sit up front with her dad? Would she want to sit with Laurie, sandwiched in the backseat? It made Nora’s head hurt, so she’d ultimately decided to stay home, said she wasn’t feeling well, and kissed Jill goodbye on the forehead.

Jill doesn’t pick up and the voicemail beep catches Nora by surprise.

“Hey, Jill. It’s Nora. Um, your dad and I are running a little behind at the car place, will you be okay if we don’t do lunch until 3? I know that’s a little late. Do you have class? Just call me, let me know. Bye.” She hangs up and chucks her phone into her purse. “Voicemail.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Kevin runs a hand over his face.

Nora checks her watch. “We made an appointment for a reason, this is ridiculous.”

“Maybe they’re just backed up or something--”

Before she can think twice about it, Nora marches to the front desk. “Excuse me,” she says loudly, making the young woman seated there jump. “Hi. We had an appointment an hour ago and no one’s come to check in with us.”

The woman smiles tentatively, her dark eyes wide. “I can look up the appointment for you, what’s the last name?”

She feels Kevin at her side, sliding a hand across her shoulder. “Everything okay?”

She gives him a quick smile. “Yeah honey, we’re fine.” She turns back to the counter girl. “It should be under Durst.”

“Durst…” The woman mumbles to herself and types it in the computer. “I’m sorry Mrs. Durst, we don’t have any records under that name…”

“That’s impossible, I made the reservation two weeks ago when we knew we’d be in town.”

“I’m sure you did ma’am, but--”

“Don’t call me ma’am.”

Kevin’s hand is at the small of her back, rubbing tiny circles. He’s so gentle she could punch him. “Nora.” His voice is quiet, so quiet she’s almost the only one who can hear it.

A headache throbs at the bridge of her nose and she tries again. “Can we, uh--Is there someone else who can show us some options today?”

“Y’all don’t want to reschedule?”

“No, we don’t. We’re only up here today, and I need to buy a car today because I start work next week.”

“Well if y’all are in a hurry I can show you some models that are ready to go. You can walk away with one of them today.”

“I know, that’s why we made an appointment.”

“Nora…” Kevin squeezes her shoulder.

She sighs. “That’d be great. Please.”

���Great! Well my name’s Lily, and I’m so excited you’ve chosen--”

For a moment Nora thinks she might pass out. She wonders if she’s fallen through the floor, become the Other Nora under her feet, her reflection. The girl’s lips move, but Nora doesn’t hear her. Her ears ring like someone’s fired a gun beside her head. For an instant, her chest is leaden, a huge weight crushing her, pulverizing her into the red dust stuck in the soles of her sneakers. She remembers reading once that the symptoms of a heart attack are different in women, but she can’t remember what they are.

“I’m--I’m sorry,” she hears herself say, though her tongue is thick and awkward in her mouth. “Can we--is there someone else who we--who can--”

“Honey, she’s the only--” Kevin stops. She feels his hand come to rest at the small of her back, grounding her. She comes back to her body, amazed to find herself still standing. Her chest loosens, her breaths rise and fall normally. Conscious and vertical, a professor of hers used to joke when he was asked after.

“You know what,” Kevin says, “why don’t we show ourselves around and we’ll come grab you if anything catches our eye?”

The girl nods and smiles; Nora thinks she feels her glare at her but she can’t tell. Kevin guides her away, out into the parking lot, and the heat hits her right in the back of the throat, like opening the dryer. Like her smoke-filled childhood bedroom. Like a bike ride on a very cold day. There aren’t really any cold days in Jarden.

Kevin takes her hand and they walk up and down the aisles, trying to find something new-ish that won’t break the bank. Before everything, on the days when she’d wanted some time alone, she’d pictured herself, hair tied up with a printed scarf, waving out the window of an old convertible on her way to god knows where. Now she’d settle for a sunroof and good gas mileage.

“You okay back there?” Kevin asks.

“I’m great,” she says airly, not meeting his eyes.

“Everyone here drives white trucks, you notice that?” Kevin says, pointing at the row as they walk past.

“They don’t get as hot, I guess.” Nora shrugs.

They stroll past shiny SUVs, past station wagons with their little hatchbacks and sedans that somehow all boast they were MotorTrend’s car of the year, and stop at the end of an aisle in the back, mostly older models that wouldn’t look as good out front.

“I haven’t shopped for a car since I was pregnant with Jeremy,” she says, hands on her hips. She squints into the Texas sun and Kevin shifts uncomfortably beside her. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “I don’t mind talking about it.”

“You just--you don’t say their names very often,” he says.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t think about them.”

Years ago when she’d tried therapy, her therapist had told her that grief was a river, and her loss was the current: constantly moving, shifting, but always in the same direction. She pictures her children in little bubbles atop the water, like Alice after she drinks the potion, floating along with 140 million other bubbles. Is Lily there with them? No, she thinks bitterly, Lily isn’t in the water, because her real mommy decided she wanted her back.

“Hey,” he says, “if you’re--nervous about going back to work…”

“I’m not nervous. I liked my job. I’m thankful to have it back. It’ll be good.”

Kevin nods. “Yeah.”

Nora kicks at a huge tire on one of the trucks in the row. “What if I got one of these things? How small do you think someone’s dick has to be to have a truck like this?”

Kevin laughs. “You don’t have a dick but you’ve got pretty big balls, I’ll give you that.”

“You sure know how to flatter a lady.” Swept with a sudden burst of affection for him, she kisses him hard, standing on tiptoe in her sneakers. “Wanna check this thing out?” she asks, inclining her head toward the ridiculously huge truck beside them.

“Is it unlocked?” Kevin asks.

She hoists herself up and tugs at the handle of the back door, and gets a rush of giddy delight when it opens. She’d been a pretty well-behaved teenager, with only the occasional burst of impulsive recklessness. No late night jumps out the window to meet boys at parties. No joints behind the dumpsters at school--well, not many. Her circumstances had been interesting enough, she hadn’t needed that thrill like the other kids did.

But now, in a used car lot in Texas, she gets why people break the rules.

“Nora, we--”

“Shh, get up here!”

From the backseat she extends her hand down to him. He looks at her the way he always does, with one eyebrow raised and a smirk in the corner of his mouth, like maybe he doesn’t believe anything she says. Or maybe he believes all of it. It’s been nearly three years, after all. Two and a half? Is that all? She’s not sure where she should start counting from.

Last year in bed, Kevin said, “Do you think we should get married?”

She’d shrugged. “I was married once and I don’t think I’d like to be again.”

“I don’t need it. I was just wondering if you wanted to.”

“A marriage to you would almost certainly end in divorce,” she’d teased. When he looked stung she’d laughed and kissed his shoulder. “I mean, historically speaking.”

“Your track record’s not so great either.”

“Kevin, all I’ve got are happy memories of you in divorce court and I’d never want to ruin those.”

In the backseat of the truck, he puts his hand on her knee, rubs his thumb at the apex of her patella. “Whatcha thinking about?” he asks.

She blinks a couple of times, almost heady with new car smell. “Who wants leather seats in a truck?” she asks. “Wouldn’t they get ruined?”

“Okay. What are you really thinking about?” Kevin asks.

Nora reaches over and picks at a hole in the leg of his jeans. He’s so warm all the time. “Divorcing you.”

He kisses her quietly, almost nervously. Like they’re teenagers in the back of someone’s dad’s car. Like he’s never lifted her off the floor of the shower when she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to move again. Like he’s hopeful.

“What do you think?” he asks against her cheek. “A big truck for the lady with big balls?”

“I don’t wanna buy this one,” she says, “but let’s see how roomy this backseat is.”

Kevin smirks. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

She takes his hand and puts it on her thigh, just below her jean shorts. When she kisses him she tastes the sweat on his upper lip, feels his stubble against her chin, her cheek. He’s growing it out, but she knows he’d never say it’s for her.

He’s pulling her shirt from the waistband of her shorts when her phone buzzes in her back pocket, vibrating against the leather seat she’d mocked moments earlier.

“That’ll be Jill,” she mumbles, and thinks, fuck your daughter. She smirks against his mouth.

Kevin’s hands still at her waist. “Yeah.”

“Hey honey,” she says, answering the phone. “Did you get my voicemail?”

Jill’s voice is tinny on the other end of the line. Wind whips past the speaker, making her hard to hear. She’d totally gotten her days mixed up, she’s so sorry, couldn’t they do it the next time they’re in town? Her next class is in thirty minutes anyway. She’s really sorry. How’s Dad? How’s--

Jill stops, catching herself before it derails the conversation. Nora pretends not to notice. She nods and assures her that it’s fine. Kevin grumbles something about it not being fine and that he misses her, he’ll call her later. Nora gives a cheerful, upwardly-inflected goodbye; she hears herself like she’s at one end of a tunnel, like she’s racing uphill towards daybreak and the only desperate thought in her ragged mind is, just keep me where the light is.