#winter coveralls | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

softlyspector · 3 months

Text

The second crow

Summary: There's not much in your tiny town, and Joel doesn't expect to stay long.

Pairing: coal miner!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Word count: ~13.5k

Warnings: once again writing about grief, mentions of suicidal ideation, small town setting and drama, past death of a parent (reader), past death of a child (joel), avoidant reader, mentions of natural disaster, anxiety, brief smut, smoking, alcohol mention

A/N: She wrote another long ass fic! This took months to write and then collected dust in the drafts because I'm scared. This is the kind of thing I post and run away from because there is so much of myself in it. This is probably the most me you will ever get. Please allow me this little moment to be sappy about it in the author's note. I don't know if anyone even reads these but I'm going to shove my love in here anyway. This fic is very special to me for a lot of reasons. It deals with a lot of personal issues I've been grappling with, and it is very much a love letter to where I'm from. I hope you enjoy this fic, can find something in it to relate to, and can appreciate the little slice of idealized love for home I've indulged in here. Thank you for reading! And as always, I would love to hear any thoughts you have.

And, he will never, ever know it, but this fic is very much dedicated to my best friend, who was the first person to hang on and say I won't let you go this time.

The door clatters back in the wind; the glass rattles in the frame. Snow swirls into the front foyer before it slams shut again.

A man you don’t recognize steps through the archway, and into the front room. A layer of coal dust lays fine and thin over his coveralls, settled into the creases in his face. He carries a battered miner’s helmet, a duffle bag, a rifle, and nothing else.

“Hi,” you say, surprised from your place behind the kitchen counter, plucking down holiday decorations that had long overstayed their welcome. “Somethin’ I can help you with?”

“Sure,” he nods and approaches, eyes flicking around the small front room, overcrowded with furniture that was in style thirty years ago, peeling patterned forest green wallpaper that you’d love to be able to replace one day, or at least fix up.

You can’t be bothered to feel anything but curiosity.

Strangers are a rare thing.

Rarer are strangers that come from so far away that they do not know not to come inside covered in coal dust and snow, before they have cleaned off. It sloughs off him in minute, shimmering waves, fine lines of black that sparkle in the white, winter light.

Rivulets of sweat cut through the dust on his face and neck, and pools at the base of his throat. Snow melts in his hair and along the shoulders of his coat from the blizzard outside.

A chunk of ice falls off his boot with his final step toward you. You watch it slide across the floor and under the edge of a battered bookshelf. “I’m lookin’ for a room. Guy at the bar pointed me here.”

His accent is a drawl and not a twang, the syllables of his words hang long in the air. Not quite southern. It takes you a long second to pin-point its origin. “Tell me, do they have coal mines in Texas?”

He blinks at you, fingers tightening on the rim of the hardhat in his hands. “Yes ma’am.”

“And did you mine coal there?”

“Can’t say I did.”

“And you didn’t get much snow either, I take it?”

He huffs out a surprised, exasperated chuckle. “Not like this.”

“I figured so,” you smile. “With that way you’re trackin’ dust and ice across my floor. You’d know better than to come in the front door like that. Or at least to stomp off the snow a little.”

The stranger looks back at the mess he tracked across the room and then turns back to you, looking sheepish, maybe a little horrified. “I apologize, I shoulda realized—”

“Don’t worry about it,” you shake your head. “It’s all right. But most folks along this street will feel the same, except the bar, so keep that in mind.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“A room you said?”

He nods, then shakes his head. “Well, if I didn’t offend you too bad, that is.”

“You didn’t. But you should know we got a miner’s shower in the basement.”

He just nods again, glancing around the room. You didn’t think someone could get culture shock from your little town, but you think you see all the fixings of it on this stranger’s face. The coal dust and the slushy streets aside, the miner’s shower and kicking snow off his boots seems to have done it.

He looks lost, in more ways than one. Down on his luck, melancholy but different to the kind of sadness you usually see. Tired. Like there's something missing about him.

You go through the motions of asking how long he’ll be staying with you, figuring which room to put him in — end of the hall, you decide, the least drafty of the two. Not like you ever had many guests.

You can’t help feel a little sympathy for him, standing uncomfortable in the middle of the room because you’d pointed out his mistake.

“So, Texas, what brought you to our little town?” You ask and pull on your coat, motioning for him to follow you back outside.

The front steps are slick with ice, in need of another layer of salt. You step carefully over it, the stranger offering you an arm to hang onto as you descend, and lead him around the side of the house, the path already dug out from the snowfall of the previous night.

Dark is falling quick, the sun sinking below the mountains, layering the valley in its usual early darkness, the crests of the hills in the distance cast in an eerie golden orange even through the snowfall.

Texas doesn’t answer you, the tread of his footsteps quiet behind you. When you reach the back of the house, snow up to your ankles padded in from the yard, you turn to face him, snow battering at both of you. “Just work.”

“Why here?”

You like knowing strangers. They’re easy to know, because there’s no chance of them turning and knowing too much, of looking behind your questions and smiles and seeing anything important. You are anonymous to them as they are to you, and that's how you like it. Nothing you might reveal means anything.

He doesn’t answer you and so you leave it. “Well, whatever brought you here, we’re glad to have you. We don’t get many folks from other places.” You turn to the door you’ve led him to, “Now, when you get in from the mines, you come in this way.” You hold up the proper key and let both of you in. “Just to rinse off, y’know? Won’t make you clean up down here, too cold. But otherwise, you can come on through the front door as long as you kick the ice off your boots. All right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

He sounds so serious and polite, brow lowered over his eyes.

“Well, okay,” you smile. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Yours is the first place Joel lands in a long time that he feels comfortable.

Everything has a worn, lived in feel to it, like generations of families and visitors and travelers have passed there before him, like the warmth of their ghosts still linger in the walls and beneath the floorboards.

The front room is cluttered with books and all kinds of knicknacks, postcards that look like they were sent by people who passed through or visited before the town stopped getting so many visitors. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors groan no matter where he sets his feet.

It reminds him of somewhere he’s been before, or something he used to know, and can’t say exactly what.

Maybe it just reminds him of all the comfortable places he’s ever been, that very particular small town intimacy that he’s tried to remain anonymous and separate from for the last year or so.

He means to stay just until the snow storm passes.

And then it does and he keeps on staying.

It’s funny, how quick he takes to you, feels the ache of something settled just at the bottom of his chest, echoed back at him in your eyes. A kind of loneliness and seeking that he tramps down any time it dares raise its head.

“You know,” you had said the second evening he was there. He had been thinking about getting something to eat, and instead found himself letting you pour him a cup of coffee. “You can stay for dinner. We used to feed everybody who stayed here. But that was before the passenger trains quit running. Before my time, nearly. Now it’s just those guys that pass through and wanna go over to the bar anyway.”

“I don’t want ya to go outta your way—”

“Please,” you’d scoffed. “I’d be glad for the company.”

“All right,” he’d found himself agreeing to that smile, the invitation of company he hadn’t wanted or needed in a long time. “Anything I can help you with?”

You’d shaken your head and he sat when you’d gestured at the table. “Very kind of you to offer, though, Joel.”

He hadn't been sure what to say either, that second night, because he’d been alone for so long, and talk had come at a minimum since he left Texas.

The house sighed and Joel sipped his coffee, watching the points of your elbows, the jut of your hip, as you cooked. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been sure what to say, because you had; well versed in quiet strangers it seemed, which would come to bother him.

He would come to hate how easily you get on with strangers and push everyone else away.

But he hadn’t known that the second night.

Maybe he just hadn’t realized how starved for company he’d really been. But he liked you right away and the way you just talk, every thought you ever had floating up and right out of your mouth without a filter.

It takes his mind off the things he tries to forget anyway.

So, he had eaten with you that second night and every night that he can afterwards.

A week passes and you expect Joel to move on, like everyone does. But he doesn’t, he asks for the room for another week, and then another, and another.

Joel clips steadily into your life, until he’s part of your everyday routine.

He gives you extra money for the dinner appointment he keeps with you each night, though you tell him he doesn’t have to.

He makes himself helpful in the evenings even though you suspect he’s always exhausted but never able to get any shut eye. He drinks coffee by the pot full, and though you wonder what it is that keeps him up at night, you don’t ask. You don’t ask anything of him, because it isn’t your place, though your curiosity burns hot.

The stranger is becoming not a stranger and you don’t know how to feel about that. Maybe this time you would manage to let someone in without feeling like the world might cave in on you.

The stranger, Joel, is kind and sometimes funny. He’s handsome and it’s hard not to like his company. He doesn't talk much but you don't mind.

The dark shadow that hangs behind his eyes has nothing to do with you. But it gets hard to remember that when you end up spending so much time with him.

It isn’t long before your neighbor, and friend, starts in on teasing you about him. Each time Janie comes to the back door with fresh bread from the bakery she makes eyes at you and asks after your handsome boarder.

You claim to know nothing of him, despite knowing so much and so little all in one.

You start to worry every Sunday that he goes out on his own into the woods that he’ll never come back, and that all you’ll have left are the footprints he left in the snow, and even those will be long gone when the year eventually and inevitably warms up.

It scares you that it worries you at all. It shouldn’t matter at all if he suddenly disappeared into the snow.

But he always comes back, never with any game even though you told him nobody cares about the no hunting on Sundays rule, and with a look in his eye that says he did kill something, just not something you could see.

When you figure out he’s carrying nothing to work with him to eat, you insist he go next door and get some pepperoni rolls from Janie. “What is it?”

“What’s it sound like?” You ask and roll your eyes. “They’re good to take into the mines with you. You can’t work thousand hour shifts and not eat. Don’t you have a lunch bucket or somethin’?”

“Thousand hour,” he scoffs. Then, “No, I don’t.”

“Jesus, Joel.”

He laughs and it’s the first time you’ve heard it. It’s nice, and sounds surprised in the air, punched out of him in a short burst. “All right,” he agrees. “All right. I’ll figure somethin’ out.”

But he leaves before the sun comes up and comes back long after it’s set and so you can’t just let it go. His whole days are set in perpetual darkness, and the very least he needs to do is eat proper.

You know you shouldn’t, but you worry about him.

“Just do it,” you grouse at him, shooing him away from the coffee pot. “She makes ‘em fresh everyday and it would make me feel better. It’s common, anyway. It’s what a lot of guys take down there. And you wouldn’t want me dying of worry over you, would you?”

Joel grumbles about it, but he does as you ask, and when he comes in in the evenings, he doesn’t look so pale anymore. The bruises under his eyes never go away, the puffy bags of sleeplessness that he supplements with coffee at all hours of the day, morning and night, but he doesn’t look so wan and so it’s better.

Even quiet as he seems to be, he looks at you when you talk and always says thank you when you put a plate down in front of him, and makes it out to be a great ordeal when he asks if he could trouble you for a cup of coffee.

One evening, a couple weeks on, he slumps down at the table with an unusual amount of heaviness. His shoulders are damp with a thousand snowflakes, coal dust rubbed haphazardly off his face, the weight of a heavy sky on his shoulders.

Joel asks for a cup of coffee but he looks like he’s been sleeping even less than usual.

He looks exhausted, purple bags beneath his eyes, and even though it’s none of your business, you ask, “Sure? Might be you won’t sleep.”

“I’ll be all right.” His voice doesn’t leave room for argument, a tad dismissive.

“You’ll eat with it,” you snap. “Or you can go find it somewhere else.”

He blinks up at you, surprised at your tone. “I can be mean, too, Joel Miller.”

It takes a second but he nods. “I’m sorry. I was raised with better manners than that.”

“I know it. It’s all right.”

Almost like an apology, he tells you about Texas that night, about his brother, about what he’s found he actually misses from home, how he used to be a carpenter before he did this, how he can play the guitar.

“What is it you’re lookin’ for?” You ask softly when he stands at your sink with bowed shoulders, washing the dishes, meticulous about it.

He shrugs. “That’s just it,” he says without looking at you, hands reddened with the heat of the water. “There's nothin’ to look for.”

“You’re that Mr. Miller, aren’t ya? Lives over at the inn, right? Have all winter long?”

Joel is in the tiny general store. It’s mid-March and you asked him to get milk. There’s about five shelves total, a freezer, and a refrigerator. He’s been in and out plenty of times without any kind of trouble.

He glances at the man leaning against the cooler door next to the one he has propped open and gives a vague nod. “Sure.”

“Well, we was just wantin’ to know what’s got you hangin’ around over there for so long.”

It ain’t phrased like a question.

Joel glances over his shoulder, finds two women and the owner of the store looking over at them from the front counter.

“Mister?”

He turns back to the man attempting to intimidate him. “That so?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, she don’t seem to have a problem with my stayin’ there,” he grabs the milk you’d asked him for, the least he could do after all those dinners you cooked. He tries to repay you, do things around the place but you’re resistant to it, independent and sometimes angry, and damn stubborn about it. “So I really don’t see what that has to do with you, anyhow.”

The hostility bleeds red in the air. He pays for the milk and doesn’t wait for the change, figuring he wouldn’t get it anyway, and that a few coins didn’t matter anyway.

When he opens the backdoor, snow and ice and street grit knocked carefully off his boots at the bottom of the steps that led up to the porch, you smile at him.

“You got some protective friends.”

“Excuse me?”

He tells you what happened, lets you put a cup of coffee in front of him on the table and press a friendly hand to his shoulder.

And, Jesus, it shouldn’t, but it makes something deep in him ache. If your hand lingered, if it rubbed the top of his spine and between his shoulder blades, he’d be all right with that; he’d lean into it.

But your hand disappears just as quick.

“Oh, honey, they’re just suspicious of anyone that hangs around town for too long.”

“Why’s that?”

“You ain’t noticed? We don’t get people from other places around here, and the ones we have take everything. With not a lot to go around. They just don’t know you.” You smile wryly at him over your shoulder, mouth twisted crookedly. Your gaze flicks over him, lingering for a second, but then you shrug and turn away.

“Make an effort, if you care to. They’ll come around. They just don’t know you, it’s not like you get out,” you rib lightly.

“Cute.”

“Can’t help you go from here to the mines and back and that’s it.” You’re smiling when you say it, the curve of your cheek visible to him even though your back is turned.

He rolls his eyes and you laugh when you catch him doing it.

He can’t figure why it matters to him, but it does.

So, Joel makes the effort, or does his best to.

He makes his way over to the neighbor’s place and offers to fix their front step he noticed was loose, wood rotting through. He fixes someone’s leaking roof. Runs deliveries of groceries to the old folks who can’t get out and regale him with stories that take at least two hours to tell. He shovels snow until he’s so exhausted he does actually pass out at night.

It gets around that he’s handy and not asking for anything in return and a nice young man according to the older people and so he finds he has something to do each evening for almost a week straight.

Maybe that was a mistake, but if Joel knows anything it’s that small, poor towns run on favors. He knows that you smile when he tells you why he’s back so late each evening.

A week or so after the general store incident, he receives a parcel of muffins, and overhears one of the neighbors commending him in your kitchen. “Maybe he’s not so bad. We was worried. No one ever sees him. You should bring him over to the church sometime.”

It shouldn’t matter, but it does. You laugh and say, “I don’t think either of us are the church goin’ type. But I always know a good man when I see one, you should know that by now at least.”

“You sure do. Think he could fix our porch swing before spring comes?”

“Don’t see why he couldn’t.”

He makes an effort to be seen. It’s nice, he guesses, that people know his name again. It’s nice to feel needed somewhere, even if it smarts a little. It’s nice to feel like maybe he isn’t looking for nothing anymore.

Joel tells himself that it just makes things easier for him, just so he can get goddamn milk without being accosted. Milk for you, for dinner.

No, it has nothing at all to do with you, or the way you called him a good man, or the way the tips of his ears went hot with it.

Not getting to talk to you for a week straight in the evenings almost becomes worth it.

It has nothing at all to do with that big lonely hole in his heart, or the memories that snagged like sharp teeth at the edge of that wound.

The mines are way out past the edge of town.

It’s a long damn walk there and back. The morning is pitch black when he sinks into the cold earth, and only dregs of light are left when he comes back up in the evenings.

But the town, when he draws near, sparkles with light, bright with moonlight reflected on the snow that won’t seem to melt, even as April begins to creep in.

Spring should be well on its way, but the world still smells frozen and bruised, like pine needles and coal dust and the enduringly brutal cold.

Most that stay in town are just passing through town, on their way to somewhere else. He finds he doesn’t mind being the only permanent fixture at your place.

Some of them are all right, most of them really, but a few make him wary. He worries about you, though you don’t seem concerned about being alone. He supposes you did it long before he got there, and you’ll do it after he leaves.

They’re gone within days, anyway, so he doesn’t say anything about it. But he wants to, the words like bubbles that want to pop in the back of his throat. He wants to tell you to be careful and not so friendly.

He’s exhausted by the time he makes his way to the basement door, folds away his coal encrusted oversuit and rises off the worst of the sweat and dust quick. He’ll take a proper shower later.

You and him have fallen into a routine the last couple months, the fine sharp edge of April waiting just around the corner, and with it the hopes for warmer weather, that the temperatures will rise and the wind won’t bite quite so harshly.

There’s always something hot waiting for him on the table, even if you aren’t there to see to it. Most nights you’re there, but you are busy. More times than not lately, you’re somewhere else, doing something else, maybe like you’re trying to unstick yourself from him just a little. But you’re just busy, popular in town as a local, a regular nearly everywhere.

He always sits with you when he gets the chance, eats with you. He likes to. It keeps his mind off of what he’d left behind, what he lost.

Just like working himself to death all day does. It’s hard to think beyond the physical, backbreaking pain of the labor to what lay in back in Texas.

You and him create a routine together, solid and steady.

When it’s interrupted, he hates to admit it burns.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that you are profoundly lonely, despite the plethora of people in and out of your life—the visitors and guests, but the townspeople, too. You’re a regular everywhere, and somehow always alone.

You’re friends with the baker next door, at least. As far as he can tell, she’s the only person you’re really close with in the town.

The baker has started coming to the back door in the morning, a sly smile on her face that he’s not particularly keen on. He has started taking the basket from her, answering the knock that never waited to be answered, the door always pushed in before either of you could get to it, a basket of fresh bread and the pepperoni rolls he’d started buying off her weeks before to appease you.

He forgets to eat more than he ever has before. It just doesn’t seem to matter.

A couple times a week, you sit down to cards and cigarettes and drinks with the baker. He listens to the gossip from the front room, a book with words that blur and never sink in propped on his knee. To hear the two of you together, it makes something in his throat close.

He usually has Sundays off, days where he’d climb out into the great unknown of the valleys and hills that surround the picturesque town, almost village-like with all its holiday lights still strung up to keep the long dark days of the enduring winter season at bay, and, rifle in hand, go hunting.

It’s illegal to go hunting on Sundays, but you assure him no one cares as long as it’s after the church services are over.

He never manages to get a shot off anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.

Everytime he thinks he’ll be able to lift the gun to his shoulder and pull the trigger at the creature sighted in the scope, he doesn’t, he can’t. He sees his daughter instead. He sees Sarah’s closed coffin; he sees her bloodied face, shards of glass spread around her like a halo of sparkling snow; he sees her blonde hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, tubes crawling in and out of her mouth and chest and arms.

And all Joel has to show for it is a scar across the bridge of his nose, a tight pinch in his right shoulder that hadn’t been there before.

There are a lot of deer around, but birds, too, ducks and geese, rabbits, foxes. All of them remind him of his kid and so the rifle remains unused. He can’t help but feel like he might be killing his kid all over again.

The basement is dark and chilled when he gets in, but not cold or damp. Snow crumbles from his boots and leaves an icy shine behind. There’s a broom beside the door and he does his best to sweep the mess to the drain in the center of the basement floor.

Something weary weighs on him. He feels heavy all the time, tired beyond belief, and like a hole might open up in his chest at any moment, like the heart of him might slip out, bloody and mangled, right onto the floor.

This isn’t the first town he’s stumbled onto, lost and wandering, unable to stay in Texas without thinking of his girl. It is the first town he’s stayed in longer than a week.

It’s been near a year since she passed in that hospital, machines turned off, chest ceasing to rise and fall.

He thought he could take it, be strong, be there as his child died right in front of him.

He’d had to agree to it after all, sign all the right papers and talk to all the right people, and get a thousand and one second opinions from all kinds of doctors to be sure.

No brain activity. No chance of ever waking up. Hung in limbo forever, and he couldn’t abide that, that maybe she was in pain and trying to move on and leave and find rest and he wasn’t letting her.

They assured him that she would not feel a thing, and that was good, but no one warned him that he would be the one taking it all on. It felt like being carved open, split down the middle, like he was raw and turned inside out and someone was holding a hot needle to his lungs.

He hadn’t been able to help the way he fell to his knees and howled, sobbed.

So, after the funeral, he sold his house and left. Did odd jobs and backbreaking seasonal work for almost a year, a different town every week, until he stumbled on this mining town, deep in the hills of some place long forgotten.

By the looks of the buildings, it might have been busy once, trains and visitors and people, but the mines feel like they’ve been there since the beginning of time. There’s something ancient in the air and down in the deep earth.

Maybe he stays because he got into town on the anniversary of the accident.

He’s goddamn stupid if he doesn’t think it has nothing to do with you, though.

Joel should have already moved on when he heard about your little inn, in the bar down the street, but snow had moved in, so thick and white, he couldn’t see more than an inch in front of his face. The roads would be bad for days after, the least he could do was get away from that shitty company housing while he waited, and get a few more days of pay.

But the roads cleared, and a week passed, and then another, and another, and he still hasn’t met that urge to keep moving, to put space between him and Sarah. He only thinks of her when he’s trying to sleep, and those fateful Sundays.

The kitchen is empty and cold when he closes the basement door behind him, a thin wind spiraling in from the cracked open back door.

The porch is dark but the outline of you is clear, sitting on the plastic-covered porch swing with a cigarette between your fingers. “Those things’ll kill ya they say,” he says by way of greeting, leaning against the siding.

“And what exactly do you go breathing in everyday down in them mines that’s so healthy?” There’s a snap in your voice that usually isn’t there, that mean streak that lashes out from time to time.

Joel pulls the door almost shut, shuts the little bit of light leaking outside away. “Are you all right?”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he says. “Should I leave ya?”

It takes a minute for you to answer. “Get a coat and come sit.” After a second you add, “If y’want.”

So he gets a coat and sits next to you on the swing. The plastic crinkles under his thighs. “Do you smoke?”

“I used to.” He should leave it at that but more words follow that he doesn’t intend. “Stopped years ago, a couple months before my - my daughter was born.” He falters a little on the words.

Joel braces himself, stiffens, all the bone and muscle inside of him going deadly tight, waiting for the inevitable questioning. Maybe you don’t care to ask or maybe you feel him tense or hear something in his voice because you don’t ask.

Something pricks at him, disappointment maybe.

“Well, it’s just us here,” you say simply. “You want one?”

Sarah never knew he smoked.

He takes the one you offer and the packet of matches.

“I don’t usually,” you say without prompting. “Smoke, that is. Sometimes when I drink.”

Joel takes a long drag and holds it in his lungs for a long minute. It feels good and tastes as bad as he remembers. “Card night.”

You smile at him, cigarette slowly brought to your lips. “That’s right.”

He almost asks what it is that has you smoking without your friend, but he figures you’re about to tell him anyway. You talk a lot. He likes that about you.

So he waits.

And you don’t say anything.

There’s just a long melancholy silence where your words normally are.

On a usual evening, he comes upstairs and bothers you about letting him help you some way. You don’t like letting people help you, like it even less when he just does it anyway.

On a usual evening, he’s threatened with expulsion from the kitchen, and then gets caught up on local dramas, some of which he is beginning to understand, while he sits at the table with a cup of coffee and you pretend to never need help.

The snow makes a sound as it hits the piles of the stuff that has yet to melt, frozen hard and unforgiving everywhere.

He’s never been around snow, much less sat outside as it fell.

The whole world goes quiet with it, like he got sucked into a black hole and sound got swallowed up around nothing.

And in the silence, he can hear the individual plunks of each flake settling onto the frozen ground. He wouldn’t have thought it made a sound at all.

“You sure you’re all right?” He asks and slips one arm across the back of the swing, realizing that you never answered him in the first place.

You just draw in another long breath and inch closer to him on the swing.

Maybe he’s not as crazy as he thought. When you look at him, there’s something in your eyes, a grief that he feels reflected back in your eyes, sharp like a tack shoved into the delicate skin between thumb and forefinger.

The ache in his chest is present on your face.

“Just one of those days,” you say and smile. “Sorry I’m not myself.”

You’re plenty yourself, just muted. Quiet.

He does quiet pretty well, so you just sit there and listen to the snow, breathe it in, shudder against his arm until he just wraps it around you, trying not to put too much thought into it.

You don’t look at him. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

He’s not sure how long you sit there. He just knows he’s numb when your hand covers his, your fingers feel hot against the freezing ache that’s set in.

“My dad was a miner. Pretty much everybody is around here, I guess. Those mines,” you say and shake your head. “They give. We wouldn’t exist without ‘em, but they take too. They take what they think they’re owed in the end. You can’t take that much out of Earth that old and expect nothin’ bad.” You hesitate for a long moment but when Joel squeezes your hand, you continue. “My dad died in a mine collapse around this time a couple years ago. So I guess that’s what I'm thinkin’ about today.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and, slowly, your head tips against his shoulder. The cigarettes are stubbed out, the butts deposited in an ashtray. “Usually, this time of year all the snow is already gone. And then the rains come and everything floods. And that spring, the mine collapsed with it.”

He thinks of telling you of his own grief, his own loss, and the way he ran away from it. The way he’s still trying to run away from it. But something sharp twinges in his chest and he stays silent. Layering his grief over yours wouldn’t help no one, least of all you.

Telling someone about her, someone who didn’t know her, having to describe her — he wants to, and can’t imagine doing it, all in one.

Maybe it isn’t right to, anyway.

Instead, he squeezes your hand, tilts his chin against your forehead. “You always run this place?”

“No. Back when there were people still passing through, my aunt did. It’s not like there’s much else to do around here so I just decided to keep it going when she left.”

“It’s nice.”

“Think so? One day it’ll be a five star hotel.”

He chuckles. “I don’t doubt it. Almost too rich for my blood now.”

“Honorary guest,” you disagree. “Always. Room reserved for you, just in case.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious,” you laugh and relax fully against his shoulder; the tension bleeds out of you, the curve of you spilling softly into him.

You sit like that for a long time, until the snow stops coming down.

It’s then that the world does go silent as a grave, like the two of you are the last people alive.

“It’s been real nice havin’ you here,” you say suddenly and quietly, like someone might hear, like you might disturb him. The puff of your breath clouds, crystalizes in front of him like something physical he might pluck from the air and put in his pocket.

Glad to have been here, glad to be here, he wants to say and doesn’t. It feels wrong to be glad to be anywhere at all.

When you tilt your face up, your eyes are soft. He doesn’t even think about it.

He just kisses you.

You taste like blackberries, dark sweet and sour. The cigarette on your tongue is only an afterthought. The sound you make when he cups your head in his hands and tips it back, rehomes itself in his chest.

When he pulls you into himself, you sigh.

Five days later, it’s a Sunday. Another snowstorm is passing through the hills, and any snow that had managed to melt that week comes right back.

Joel only realizes when he’s brushing his teeth—preoccupied with thinking about maybe not going hunting for once, and cleaning the damn rifle instead—that it’s unusually cold. He rinses his mouth out and goes to find you.

The steps creak and crack as he descends them, like they’re covered in a spiderwebbed ice that might split and send him into some achingly cold depth if he isn’t careful.

He finds you bundled up in a coat by the backdoor, a scarf wound halfway up your face, just your eyes visible above the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” you say, voice muffled and eyes wide. “The heating went out and there’s nothin’ to be done about it until the snow clears up a little and it ain’t supposed to until tomorrow.” You shake your head. “Never snows this goddamn much or this late in the season,” you gripe, a bitterness in your voice.

“Well, that ain’t your fault,” he says, watching you wiggle your fingers into a pair of gloves. He thinks you’re just layering up, but when you reach for your boots by the back door it becomes apparent that you intend to go outside. “And just where do you think you’re goin’?”

You pick up a basket next and reach for the doorknob. “I need wood for the fireplace—”

“Then let me get it for ya,” he says, stepping into his own boots, tugging the basket out of your hands as he goes. “You’ll freeze out there.”

“No, Joel, you’re a guest here—”

“C’mon,” he says. “It ain’t like that now and you know it.” You don’t say anything but when he looks up, you’re frowning at him. “We got anyone else around?”

“Just—it’s just me and you.”

He doesn’t know why you sound so upset about it. “Good. Now where’s the wood?”

You blink and glance away, pulling at your gloves nervously. “In the shed. Should be enough little pieces but the ax is by the door if some of it needs broken up.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have some coffee ready for you.”

“You don’t gotta do that.” He opens the door, snow swirls in.

“I’m doin’ it anyway.” Then. “Joel?”

He turns.

“Thanks.”

He’s not sure what he’s being thanked for and you still aren’t really looking at him, so he nods and plunges into the white blur that is the back yard, the whip of blizzard wind harsh against his face.

Inside the shed he finds that more of the wood does need axed.

He can’t get the way you looked at him out of his mind. You’ve been busy the last couple days, always out or taking care of something, pushing away any of his attempts to. . .what? He isn’t sure. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he made things complicated, messed something up along the way.

He fears that pushing has nothing to do with the grief that had made a home on your face that evening you spent on the porch together, but what came after and what he hadn’t said.

You have been different too. Like something wary and stiff.

He chops the wood, feels every lift and swing of the ax. It seems to ache more in the cold. Everything does.

Joel shoves the wood into the basket and stacks the extra pieces back onto the pile. The house is marginally warmer than outside without the brutal slice of the wind. He leaves his boots by the back door and finds you poking around in the grate of the fireplace.

You back away when he approaches and it stings that you do.

“Somethin’ the matter?”

“No. ‘Course not.”

But there is. Some kind of wall went up between you the other night. He should have said something. “All right. I’m, uh, I’m gonna get outta your hair for a while.”

He doesn’t think of being in a blizzard, just that he needs to get out of your house before you ask him out of it, before you kick him out of it.

The only thing he can think is that he doesn’t mean shit to you. Somewhere along the way, things got messed up, like they always do. His ex-wife’s face flashes behind his eyes, all that happened with her, all of it that always seemed to be his fault.

Joel grabs his gear and goes out into the blue-white of the snow and makes his usual trek to a spot up in the hills. He sits with his back to a tree and listens to the way the weather beats down. The metal of the rifle goes ice cold between his knees, the bluster of the wind coats him in a perfect white.

He might just be the only living thing out. The world is quiet apart from that brutal, beautiful shush of wind through trees and snow through air.

He’d be ashamed to admit it, but the only thing he thinks about that day, is you.

Joel’s hair is still damp and curling lightly against the back of his neck when he finds his way to the kitchen.

He’d come back frozen to the bone, ice in his hair and eyebrows and the webbing of his lashes. It’s all melted now, and you have to resist the urge to reach out and touch him there, the back of his neck where you know his skin is soft, the feathery thick hair that grows a little long these days.

“You have a minute?” Joel asks, right hand toying with the strap of his watch. He’s looking at you the way he always does lately, like he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A stab of guilt rakes pointed talons along your belly.

You did that, you always do that.

Stop it, you think. Don’t do that this time.

“Hey,” you nod, trying. “Sure, I do. Was gonna ask you to come sit with me anyhow.”

He pauses, takes the cup of coffee when you extend it to him, fresh brewed, a peace offering of sorts. Peace over what, you don’t know. “Y’were?” He sounds surprised, takes the cup from you, his fingers brushing yours.

“Sure,” you answer, swiping your hand over your thigh. His gaze follows. “It’s just s’cold upstairs. Electricity’ll be out ‘til tomorrow probably. At the earliest. So.”

He nods and looks down into his cup and you feel bad about the last week again. Of how you’re pushing again and don’t know how to stop. You held him at arm's length, made sure you were out and busy and away, watched him stop smiling at you again, replaced instead by uncertainty.

It’s unfair.

He should probably hate you over it.

You wonder why he’s still here.

When he looks up at you, you smile and his shoulders relax marginally. “All right. I’m gonna get more wood, then I’ll be there.”

You show him the bottle of whiskey when he comes back inside, smelling of frozen air and pine. “Just to stay warm,” you promise.

He doesn’t say no to the drink you pour him, or the way you inch closer to him.

Because it’s cold, you tell yourself, just like it had been on the porch that other time.

The pull of longing in your chest hasn’t eased since then. You shouldn’t have let him, you’re bad at hanging on to people and afraid they’ll disappear, and you’d rather hurt by choice. You’d rather be alone and ache.

But Joel is here and real and still in front of you, still looking at you.

It’s terrible because he wants you to know things about him and you want to run away. You want to push him away, until he leaves or hates you or both. He brought up his daughter and even though you think it might have been an accident, you think he might have wanted you to ask about her.

And you hadn’t.

He doesn’t make it any easier on you by being warm and solid and pressing an offering open arm along the back of the couch.

Just like the other time.

You accept it, because it's cold. Just because it’s cold.

It has nothing at all to do with the way he strokes your shoulder and tugs you close to him, the way his head tilts down over yours when you press the cold tip of your nose into his neck by accident and then leave it there on purpose.

You aren’t expecting him to say anything. The guttering of the candles lulls you to sleep, the pepper of white snow against the black swirl outside soothing. “You know,” the sound of his voice rumbles against your ear. “I didn’t know snow made noise.”

You blink. “What?”

“That sound it makes. When it’s real quiet, you can hear it land.”

“Suppose you can, yeah.”

“My daughter,” he starts and your breath hitches. The broken eggshell of memory delicately being pressed into the palms of your hands. You’re being trusted with something. “She only saw snow once, I think. Real slushy and wet. Not like you get around here. And I don’t remember it makin’ a noise.”

You swallow the instinct to change the subject, to say something dismissive, to push and push.

“Did she like it?” You ask after a moment. “The snow?”

“Yep. Got off from school. Made the world’s tiniest snowman. Maybe only a foot high. Made snow angels that turned out to be more mud than snow. My brother thought that was real funny.”

You laugh and lean into his shoulder. He smells like snow and damp cotton and gun oil. “What’s her name?”

Assuming. No, hoping. You are hoping that he’s just missing her, that the chipped china memory in your palm is of a girl he misses and doesn’t mourn. But you could tell the other day, you could tell by his voice and the way he isn’t with her. If he had a choice, he’d be with her.

Joel isn’t like you.

He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

He clears his throat. “Sarah. She was, uh, she was twelve.”

“Oh. Oh, Joel. I’m sorry.”

And you are. That is a loss no one should ever know, and Joel is not the kind to carry it well. It leaves those purple circles under his eyes, burrows deep ruts into the arteries to his heart, half his blood just drained away. It leaves the coffee pot empty, it whispers fourteen hour work days, and still no sleep.

It pushes a rifle into hands that always come back without game.

“Anyway, I think she would have liked this shit,” he gestures to the snow beyond the window with the mug in his hand, coffee and whiskey. “Think she would have liked it here.”

“It’s okay, when you get to know the place.” You follow his eyes. “It’s home, anyway.”

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

What part he’s agreeing with, you aren’t sure you want to know.

He looks at you again, and you can’t bear to meet his gaze through the dark that’s fallen on the room, to see too deeply into what lay there. Sharing his daughter with you, that she died so young. A lot of things about him suddenly fall into place in your mind.

The grief and the love with no place to go. It makes sense why he’s there, running away from something that could never be ignored.

You take the cup from him and pull him up by the hand.

He fits against you, pulled in tight, so easily. You feel the brush of his mouth against your cheek, his fingers against your back.

You sway, and there’s no music. You want to say that you’re sorry again. Not for his daughter, because he wouldn’t want to hear it, but for everything else — the running you’re both doing, the snow and the cold, and how clear it is that everything in the world looks like grief and loss and the big hole in his chest.

“I think you should ask Joel to get a drink.”

Janie pauses mid-chop, knife hanging in the air. Your friend the baker turns to look at you over her shoulder. “What did you just say?”

You wince and fiddle with the edge of your sweater. “Joel. You should ask him.”

“Now why,” she starts, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist. “Would I go and do somethin’ like that?”

“Well, I think y’all would be good together—”

She sighs heavy and long, rolling her eyes as she sits down across from you and takes your hand in hers, still wet from rinsing the vegetables off. “You’re doin’ it again, you know.”

“Doin’ what?” You snap, yanking your hand back, accusatory.

“As soon as you think somebody is getting too close you push ‘em away. I know you know what you’re doin’. And I know if I hadn’t had the sense to hold onto you so hard all them years ago, you woulda done the same to me. And we’d just be neighbors.”

She raises a brow at you when you sputter. But it’s true. You know it’s true.

It happens all the time, with everyone. It always hits you so hard, the sudden smothered feeling, the scared, confused, cornered animal feeling, when hanging onto something seemed impossible and wrong.

“You know that man don’t want nothin’ to do with me.”

“He always answers the door to you in the mornings,” you defend weakly.

“As a favor to you. He does everything for you, and I know you noticed or you wouldn’t be trying to pass him off on me. You don’t gotta be so avoidant. Not everything disappears.”

You know, but you what you don’t know is how to stop it. The sharp talons and fangs that spring out whenever someone gets too close are always a surprise. You hate it when people care about you, when you care about them.

It’s like there’s a box around you, growing smaller with each passing second. So, you flee, before the box crushes you, or before the thing trapped in there with you gets to do it first.

That’s what you’re really afraid of, after all, not that someone might care about you, but that they one day might stop.

“I told him about my dad,” you admit.

Janie freezes, blinks, and then looks over at you. You look back at her, miserable about it. “Oh, honey.”

“And he. . .you shoulda seen the way he—” The way he looked at you. You almost tell her about Sarah, but don’t. That loss isn’t yours to tell, no matter what, even if it would tell her exactly how close he’s drifted to you.

You don’t know what to call it, anyway. The way he looked at you the night of the snowstorm, the air chilled and the whole world cold except for the two of you pressed together. His hand in yours, the mocking remembrance that you had forgotten in that moment to feel trapped.

No, that had come later. When you couldn’t breathe before going to bed, when your skin felt pinched and tight. That moment is tinged in your mind with the heaviness of a hand pinching the back of your neck, instead of the gentle press of fingers to your spine, his mouth against your cheek but not your lips, not again.

“He’ll leave soon and it won’t matter,” you dismiss with a shake of your head. “He’s got to be goin’ soon. I know it.”

She pats your hands again, pity in her gaze. “It will matter, and you know it. But it seems to me he’s stuck. And it isn’t this town or those mines that are keeping him here. He wants to hang on. You should, too, for once. He’s looked like nothin’ but a kicked dog lately, and one that might bite at that.”

The snow melts over the next couple of weeks, temperatures rise rapidly. For a while, the sun shines, the weather is nice; the skies a purest bluest blue.

Joel doesn’t leave.

He smokes more on the back porch, his eyes far away and haloed with something distant. He stops hunting on Sundays, and starts going fishing at the lake instead, and unlike before he brings back a haul.

For a minute, it seems like things might be okay. You don’t allow yourself to have any more quiet, secret moments with him, but you don’t push either. You try not to push.

But you wonder if he wants that, if he might have wanted to kiss you again when the heat went out and you were stupid enough to let yourself reel him back to you.

Then, one day, the rains come. Clouds so black they appear blue roll in and sit heavy in the sky for a day, winds whipping the leaves of the trees back so their bellies show. Old warnings about just how bad the weather was about to get.

The skies open up, and the rain doesn’t stop.

For weeks.

Suddenly all anyone can talk about are the floods and the landslides that are likely to happen any day.

You wish they wouldn’t, or at least not to you, or have the decency not to look at you with pity when they talk about it. What if there’s a mine collapse? Well, you think, that too is likely.

The creeks swell until they look like rivers; the rivers glut themselves with so much rainwater the levees threaten to bend and break, the banks of the lake disappear, silt stirred so deeply that the whole lake goes brown with it.

Joel stops fishing.

You expect them to close the mines, at least for a while. But the coal companies have never cared about any of you, and they weren’t about to start.

“Mornin’,” he says, his voice a soft grumbling rumble.

“Hi,” you say, not turning away from your spot by the window, watching the rain pour down seemingly harder.

The rain and all it could wash away, makes you anxious. Makes the whole town anxious. Flooded river plains and lake shores, mountainsides crumbling down to sweep everything away. It’s embedded in you, something your body learned generations before you were born.

A generational curse, a landscape that could steal everything, that had and would again.

“You okay?”

The sound of the coffee pot sliding out of place, liquid being poured, ceramic clicking down onto the counter.

“Yeah. The rain makes me anxious.”

“All anyone talks about are the floods.”

“Same way every year,” you shrug, like it doesn’t keep you awake at night. Like you haven’t stopped sleeping and pace all night long. “Hard thing to forget, once it happens to you.”

Joel makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and joins you at the window. “It’s gettin’ lighter every day, at least.”

You think he means it to comfort you.

“The sound, though.”

The sound of rain tapping at the window is like nails on a chalkboard — warning.

He covers your hand with his for just a second, the squeeze of his fingers around yours barely felt. “I know.”

Too close.

It’s too close.

You don’t want him to know that.

You move your hand before his skin has fully left yours, jerking away like you’ve been stung.

He clears his throat and shifts, floorboards squeaking awkwardly beneath his socked feet.

Socked feet. Hand on yours, rough skin against yours. Tender words, gentle tone.

It all feels like he knows too much, wants too much. You take a step away from the warmth he radiates under the guise of reaching for the handle of the dishwasher. “You think you’ll be movin’ on soon?”

A surprised silence follows your words. “What?”

“It’s just you been here awhile.”

He doesn’t answer and you start to unload the dishwasher, carefully stacking the ceramic on the counter even though you’d normally just put them up in the cabinets. “Big waste of money, stayin’ somewhere like here for so long. If you’re waitin’ for better pay or something, I can tell you it won’t happen. Not even if you talk to the union.”

A long silence follows your words. It’s a buzzing, angry silence. “You ain’t even gonna look at me?”

You shrug and your body continues on autopilot, still not looking at him, stacking dishes one after another.

Clink, click, clink.

The door to the basement doesn’t exactly slam, but it shuts much harder than usual.

You sit the mug in your shaking hands down on the counter and stare at it without seeing.

The pressure in your chest isn’t gone. It never is, after. You push and push and push, until they finally let go. And then the loneliness and pain rub their hands together and slip back into their comfortable home in your chest. It’s almost a relief to have it back.

God, why does someone knowing something about you, caring about you, feel like getting your arteries ripped out, one fine line at a time? Why does it feel like your skin is shrinking and your throat is closing up?

Your eyes sting and you wish you wouldn’t have said it.

But you did and he’d be on his way soon enough and everything would be simple again.

You can remain in your little box all alone with carefully constructed walls that push everyone to the periphery of your life. They belong at arms length where you believe it won’t hurt you when they leave, where you convince yourself you’ll have enough time to recognize the signs and do it first.

He can’t get any closer, can’t see anymore than he already has.

Joel has to leave. You have to push him away, before he makes the choice himself and leaves you bleeding.

But Joel isn’t like you, you think again. He’s not the kind to leave someone behind.

The rain comes down harder.

The house rattles with it.

You think about the mines flooding, and finally cry.

Joel doesn’t leave, but you can tell he’s trying to figure out how to. He’s trying to leave because you want him to, and that’s what matters.

You don’t know how he picks where to roam next and you don’t care. You’re glad he’s going to leave.

He doesn’t eat dinner with you anymore, barely nods at you when you see him though you try to be busy with something else when he comes in in the evenings, or not in the kitchen at all, not in the house at all.

Joel leaves so early in the morning that you don’t see him then either. The ache that slices like a knife through the ventricles of your heart tears open a little wider each day. He makes the coffee now, and always makes enough for you, too, the pot left on to keep it warm for you. One morning you find an envelope in the center of your kitchen table.

Panic overcomes you, until you open it and find a week’s worth of money. Scrawled on the outside, I’m sorry to keep imposing.

You rip the envelope up, angry, because you don’t want to think about what it means that you got scared. Fear that he had already been gone.

Near a week later, late in the afternoon, when the sky is a deep purple, Janie knocks on your backdoor. Her voice is frantic. She smells like raw flour and sliced apples.

There’s mud on her boots and that’s the only thing you can think of as she talks at you, her voice far away.

You think about the mud on her boots and her boots on your floor and how she always takes them off on the porch no matter what.

She’s still talking, words flowing a million miles an hour, and you just think about the smell of bread and how she normally, always, takes her boots off.

She shakes you by the shoulders suddenly, hands clamped tight against your skin. “Did you hear me?” She asks urgently. “One of the mines collapsed.”

“Which one?” You snap, reality snapping sharply into relief. “Which one? They're all shut down but one. Which one?”

One that is empty, or not? The one with people, or not? The one with Joel, or not?

“I don’t know. Nobody seems to know but—”

You pull your raincoat off the hook by the door and shove your feet into the first pair of shoes you see, and dart out and into the rain, the hale of it cold against your skin and your face.

It’s been a cold year. This time last year, it was warm and sunny already, things like a mine collapse a far off, unreal, non-possibility.

The mud sucks at your boots but soon enough you’re on the road and running.

You run and run and don’t feel the burn in your lungs or the pain in your thighs. There’s nothing that will keep you from getting there. The town is small and built in relation to the mines.

You’ve always been a mining town and so it’s not far. It shouldn’t take you long to get there.

Joel walks in the mornings. It’s not far.

But time moves slow, and your body seems to move even slower than that.

Shouldn’t you have known? Shouldn’t you have felt something? The beating heart of the earth tearing something away; that primordial, knowing pit taking back what had been taken from it? What it was owed in return?

Not him. Not him.

He didn’t owe this stretch of Earth anything. And it is not owed him.

The hills and mountains rise up around you, the comforting presence of them, like ancient, silent sentries, suddenly loom a little more sinister. Crumbling and old and vengeful, just waiting to swing a fist down on something you cared about, something you loved, something you always try to push away. Because it would always be destroyed. The town, or a neighbor’s house, or the banks of the swollen river and lake eating up precious farmland.

That’s one thing, though.

Towns and houses can be rebuilt, the banks of rivers and lakes and the sides of mountains reinforced — other things, well, you can never get back.

He has to be okay. When you wanted him to leave, this is not what you meant. This is not what you wanted.

You move backwards in your mind, mapping out all the times Joel has come home. Where he’d usually be in his journey to your house after work.

It used to be he only came home after dark, but spring has arrived and the sun stays longer each day, and you think you should meet him on the road. You should find him at any moment; unless the mine collapsed and he was unlucky, trapped and lost and suffocating; or lucky and already dead.

The road twists and turns. You have to slow because you live in the hills, everything and everywhere is steep. Your chest starts to burn and you wish the trees hadn’t started to get their leaves yet even though it's so late in the season because then you’d be able to see further, you’d be able to spot him earlier.

Maybe it’s too early for him to already be along the road.

Your coat is soaked and so is the little house dress you’re wearing. Your shins and ankles feel cold from the rain and the chill in the air.

But then you bolt around a bend, and there he is.

His name jumps out of your mouth, careens across the gravel road, and echoes around the valley through the din of the still falling rain. It sounds lush against the leaves. It sounds horrible against drain pipes and gravel.

He looks surprised right before you crash into him and lock your arms around his neck. He drops his backpack and catches you, arms circling you tightly.

“Joel.”

“Hey—” The sound of his voice makes your knees weak and you’re afraid for a moment you might slip to the ground, into the graveled mud, and dissolve along with the rain.

“The mine collapsed,” you say, feeling the grit of coal dust beneath your cheek, the warmth and weight of him leaning back into you, strong arms tight around you. His palm slides against the back of your neck, thumb stroking slowly.

“I know it.” His voice is gentle, like you’re a startled, feral dog that might turn on him at any second. “S’why I’m on my way back now.”

You start to shake and cry and he just rubs your back and tugs you more firmly into his chest. He seems to understand what’s wrong. His palm settles against the back of your neck, keeps you tucked in close to his chest as the rain continues to siphon down over you. It’s all right. I’m all right. He repeats and repeats and repeats. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Hey,” he pulls back eventually, the cups of his palms cradling your face, pushing the tears away. “I’m gettin’ you all dirty.”

“I don’t care,” you grip his sleeves, press your hands over his. His face is streaked with gray so deep it appears purple, like there are bruises latticed over his face. “I don’t care. And I’m sorry.”

“All right.”

It’s too late, you think. Too little too late, pushed too far, and by your own hand, so you have no one to blame but yourself.

But he’s alive and he’s okay and something precious has not been reaped by the Earth.

You try to step back but he steps with you, not letting you go. Apologies swim to the back of your throat again, heavy on your tongue, but he’s already shaking his head at you.

Hazel eyes stare deep into yours, rivulets of water snaking down the side of his face, tracing through the coal and dirt. You don’t look away from him this time.

Your words get trapped, congested and clogged, sticky and stuck together.

“Joel—”

“Let’s get outta the rain.” His hands slide down your face, briefly slot against your throat, and then trail down your shoulders and arms. “Let’s do that at least. Before you catch your death.”

“Okay.”

You bend down to scoop his backpack off the ground, surprised because he lets you keep it and keeps his hand threaded with yours. His skin is wet against yours, the crinkle of your fingers together just a little uncomfortable.

The rain comes down harder, lightning sparks, the angry slash of violence through the sky, thunder crackling right after.

The walk goes quicker than your run. Time is moving at a normal pace again, you can breathe again.

“I’ll meet ya in the kitchen,” he says when the town and your street resolves itself. He turns and takes his pack from you, pinches your chin between thumb and forefinger and tilts your face up. “All right?”

You nod and release his other hand, and watch him walk away. You know the moment he reaches the back of the house because you hear the clatter of the basement door opening.

You just stand in the front yard for a long moment as shadow fall, as the rain continues down harder than ever.

The rain pounds against the side of the house, the windows when you step inside. The tree your neighbors have been telling you to cut down for years sways ominously, lashing the front window and the siding. The noise of it is awful.

You stand there, dripping pools of water onto the kitchen floor, anxiously waiting for Joel to come up the steps, like you’d gone and pulled a ghost right up out of the ground. He’s all right, you tell yourself. He’s all right. Real and not some ghost.

When he comes up the steps, his gaze flicks slowly over you. He holds a hand out. “C’mon. ‘S get you cleaned up.”

You’re shivering. The material of the dress clings to your skin like webbed silk.

It’s so pathetic, the way he comforts you and the way you want him to. You shouldn’t let it happen. You feel stupid, all that worry after all that pushing.

He follows you up two sets of stairs, to the third floor, the loft where you reside even though so many of the rooms below always remain empty.

Joel settles you on the edge of the bathtub in your little bathroom and fishes around in the cabinets until he finds what it is he’s looking for. He doesn’t ask you where anything is and you don’t offer.

He smells like earth and pine. He doesn’t complain or pull away when you touch that hollow place in his cheek, when you stroke his beard and watch the muscle jump, jaw clenching and releasing.

“Joel,” you say when he kneels in front of you with a washcloth in his hand, a first aid kit open on the bathroom counter. “I’m not hurt.”

He just pats the water away from your face and hands and arms. “Y’are. Musta ran through brambles or somethin’. Legs are all torn up.”

The surprise is muted when you look down and find you have been scratched all to hell.

“I’m sorry,” you offer.

He shrugs. “Nothin’ to apologize for.”

The way he takes care of you is meticulous. Disinfectant and ointment and bandages wrapped around and around. You probably would have just rinsed the cuts out and slapped the biggest band aid on and called it a day, but that’s not good enough for him and that makes you want to cry.

There’s only so long you can handle sitting there, shivering, feeling the press of his very warm hands into your cool, bruised skin, before you’re slipping to the floor too, kneeling with him, asking for forgiveness for something that doesn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry. And that’s not enough.”

“No.” Hands cupped around yours, stilling the anxious twist of them. “Shouldn’t’ve got so comfortable. I ain’t anyone to you—”

“But you are.”

The words bleed. They are red and bone white and raw and drop like stones between you. He thinks he means nothing. He doesn’t know. “You are. You are. And that’s why.”

Thunder rumbles, and this time, you kiss him.

There’s only a brief second of hesitation.

But then he pulls you in and doesn’t let go, doesn’t complain of the cool tiles and your cooler hands or the way you pull at his clothes.

Joel does jump when you press your hands to the small of his back, when your iced over fingers skim his belly, when you finally get to rake your nails against that coarse chest hair that makes your mouth go dry.

“Hey,” he’s cradling you to him, mouth desperate and eyes wild. “I’m here.”

Go easy with it, his voice asks. Go easy with me.

You knock your forehead against his. “I know.”

Joel nods and his fingers skim up your thighs, beneath the clinging material of your dress. He’s so warm, even though he’d been in the rain too, and his skin feels like it's burning, like the tips of his fingers might sink right down into your flesh.

Cloth parts beneath desperate hands. He cups your breasts in his palms, follows with his lips. Fingers tug your underwear down your legs, and then slide through the core of you, circling and stroking.

It should be a surprise that he’s so delicate with you, but it isn’t.

He kisses you again, his beard scratching pleasantly along your skin. You gasp into him and let him lie you back against the bathroom floor.

The rain continues outside, the lashing the house is getting a far off dream.

The only real thing in the world is Joel, his shoulders beneath your thighs, the clench of your belly, the ache that spreads everywhere.

He presses his forehead to yours when he’s inside you, eyes closed, jaw clenched.

Joel’s mouth parts, he groans into you.

It’s enough.

“Did you know that crows mate for life?”

Joel looks over at you.

Morning is sitting heavily on the windowsill, watching.

His limbs are heavy, sleep pulling at the corners of his vision, darkening the room and dampening the sound of the still falling rain. Your bed is comfortable, and your naked skin pressed to his even more so. “No,” he answers after a minute, just looking at the picture of you, plush curves, the soft spill of softer skin. “Do they?”

You roll onto your side, watchful eyes riveted to him. Slowly, maybe a little shyly, you stretch your arm across his belly. Your fingertips brush his side, and you use the grip to pull yourself even closer. The light is kind to you. You glow in it, lips swollen, the discoloration on your throat from his lips and beard highlighted.

Joel touches you there. You close your eyes for a moment.

“They do. They’re real social creatures, and when their mate dies they make this god awful noise. Sometimes they’ll carry sticks and stones and stuff to leave with the body, like a burial.”

“Mm. Not so different from people.” He thinks of Sarah, the last rise and fall of her chest, the noise that came out of him like something wrenched out of the bottom of his soul. He clears his throat but his voice still cracks a little. “Yeah, reckon we’re the same that way.”

You prop your chin on his shoulder. “Yeah,” you say, voice soft. “There used to be a flock that came around. Or, whatever they’re called, a murder, I think.”

“Murder?” He chuckles and you smile and it’s enough.

“Never heard of a murder of crows? Well, it’s true. The backyard was full of ‘em. For a long time, I fed ‘em. And they’d bring presents to me. Eventually they musta moved on, but a pair stayed. I know I sound crazy but I could tell they were in love. They were mated anyhow, even if they don’t feel love like people do.” You lean into his hand when he presses it to your cheek, like his skin isn’t rough and dry from working so hard, from the long, bitter winter; you lean in like it means something, like the pass of his thumb against the crest of your cheek means more to you than he can know.

He doesn’t know a thing about crows. It doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t, he has a feeling he already knows what you’re going to say.

The limbo he’s been in for weeks has finally ended, of knowing you wanted him to leave but not able to figure out how to give you what you wanted and feeling guilty for it. Just another person he couldn’t figure out how to love right.

Maybe this time hanging on was the right thing to do.

Your eyes flutter closed, head tilted close to his on the pillow, the swell of your body pressed to his. “It went on like that for years. I fed them and they brought me little gifts and everything was fine. And then one morning, there was only one. They mate for life. I never saw the other one again, and it was only a couple weeks, before the other one was gone too. It died.”

Joel leans in, presses his forehead to yours, the rain a painful tattoo against the roof and the windows and the whole wide world. You push into him, returning the comforting pressure, your skin still tacky with sweat. “So you see, I try to avoid being the second crow. But it just means I end up alone and wondering why there was never another crow in the first place.” Your eyes flick open and search his. “So, I’m sorry about everything. I never realize I’m — I don’t know I’m pushing until it’s too late. And I’ve never been good at holdin’ on.”

“I guess I’ve never been too good at lettin’ go,” he admits. “I’m the second crow.”

“I don’t want you to be,” you say. “I don’t want you to be the one left behind. And I don’t want you to leave.”

He nods and looks up at your ceiling. Carefully, you slide closer, until your head is heavy against his chest.

Things change a little.

The rain stops and with it you stop pacing through the nights. Before, he’d listen to the pace of your footsteps against his ceiling, the crack of old floorboards and the snaking sound of water down window panes.

You make every pretense of things being the same until night comes along and you ask him to stay with you. “I just won’t be able to stand it,” you say, nervous hands fisting around the edges of your sleeves. “If you go back to being just a guest. You mean more than that.”

He’s embarrassed to hear it, and likes to hear it all the same.

So, now, he listens to the long overdue hum of springtime insects nestled down into long sweet grass and between the branches of gently swaying trees, like all that snow and rain and blizzards and flooding never existed in the first place.

Most of all he listens to your breathing, slow and even, to replace the sound of your footsteps. The curve of your spine rests against his bicep, the ridge of it like the comforting heel of the mountains beyond your windows.

When he turns and tucks his arms around you, you relax and melt into him so easily it’s like it’s always been done.

So it goes, every single night.

Winter is over, spring arrives quiet.

Joel agrees to go to the town festival with you. Tiny, even by your standards, apparently.

Just some drinking and dancing and live music from a local band. A few games, for which the prizes are all donated.

Things go fine.

He doesn’t mind crowds, though he does prefer to hang on the edges of them.

The night is mild. Your arm repeatedly brushes his.

Joel finds he doesn’t mind that either, the way you stand so close and look at just him. There’s no shortage of eyes on either of you. And when you kiss him, he can practically feel the small town gossip sparkling and wasping in the air like lightning gold, like a thousand bees.

You don’t seem to notice, or maybe you don’t much care. Maybe you’re used to it.

Either way, you’re happy, and that matters to him. It matters to him that you’re happy, and safe, and that you feel those things with him.

“If you’re still here when its warm enough,” you say, “you’ll have to go swimming in the lake. It’s real nice down there.”

It already feels like summer. The air is balmy, the sinking, fading sun he feels like he hadn’t seen in months a red blaze on the horizon.

“Where else would I be?”

You give him a funny look and sip your drink, enthusiastically greeting a couple who approaches. Joel nods at them, takes a swig of his beer, and thinks of his kid. Sarah would have loved this kind of thing, all the people and noise.

He hasn't been hunting in weeks.

“You wanna dance with me?” You smile at him. “Just for one song.”

“Think I’ll say no?”

“I’m actually sure that you’ll say no, Joel.”

He just sets his drink down and offers you a hand. You grin so wide, it looks like it must hurt your cheeks. You don’t dance so much as sway together, pressed tightly together.

“Where else would I be?” He asks again.

“Somewhere else, I guess. Back home.”

Home. He hasn’t had one of those since Sarah died.

This place, as brutal an introduction as he’s had to it, is starting to feel like home. He wants to see the lake in the summer and the trees thick with leaves. The hills probably look beautiful, emerald forests not yet torn up for the things that laid beneath.

It only feels a little like a push.

Instead, he just says, “Yeah. Sure.”

You tip your chin heavily against his shoulder, the weight of your head comforting in its press there.

You aren’t always good about it. There’s a mean streak in you when you feel trapped. Today, you try.

“I’d like it if you stayed.” You say it against his throat, your fingers tangled into his hair, the movement of your hand fond. “If you wanted this to be home for a while.”

He nods, squeezes your hips. “And you should come see Austin. Instead of hearin’ about it. Reckon you might like it.”

“I think I probably would.”

The next morning, he calls his brother for the first time in over a year.

If you read this far, you have no idea how much I appreciate it. Thank you for reading and being here, and as always would love to hear anything you have to share. 💕

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction

563 notes · View notes

hybbart · 10 months

Text

Day 1904: The spread of sculk is too much to just clean. After salvaging what they could, the ranch is taken down...

Bonus short story below.

Jimmy watched as the last of the house blazed in the twilight. Around the edges of the flames Pearl and Sausage marched, searching for anything flammable that might catch. It was the beginning of winter, and the constant rains had kept everything soaked, but they couldn’t risk it in the middle of the forest. Lizzie had stayed closer as well, securing the last of their belongings to take away in the morning. It was only a few metres down the driveway, but the ranchers couldn’t even get that far.

Tango let out a low growl. His grip on Jimmy’s sleeve tightened, pulling the thick fabric further over his eyes. Puffing up his feathers, Jimmy pulled his rancher closer into his side. Tango only stayed because of Jimmy, and because he couldn’t bring himself to leave the ranch behind. It was what he’d said yesterday, before the first burning. But he couldn’t watch. He could barely help them clear it out before the sledgehammers came in. Sparks flickered through his hair in lieu of tears in his eyes as he kept his face buried.

Jimmy, though… He was entranced. Every crack in the beams that cause a burst of sparks or shift in the wind that billowed the smoke in a new direction. The smoke made his eyes water, but none fell. Maybe he’d finally grown numb. Maybe it looked too different. There was a pile of flaming rubble where his home once was, his first home, but his chest only felt hollow. All that was left with a twitch in his wing, the desire to run and keep far away.

Pity in her eyes, Lizzie approached them from the trailer. Reins were pushed into Jimmy’s hand against his protest. “Take a horse and head back to my house before it gets dark.” She said.

“But-”

“No arguing.” Despite the firmness of her words her voice was low and sad. “You need to sleep in a real bed, Sausage is going to stay here tonight. The last of your things will be fine overnight with us.”

Even after years, Jimmy was never able to argue with Lizzie when she said something reasonable, and he’d given up trying. Jimmy glanced to Tango, who was still hiding from the world in Jimmy’s sleeve. A small tug on his hem was all he got in response. “We’ll be back in the morning with more water.” He assured. They rounded up Bullseye and began the long, quiet ride to Lizzie’s.

By the time they arrived it was dark, the home illuminated from within the kitchen. Though half the house was cloaked in tarps to save unfinished work from the rain, they’d moved into the completed half already. A bit of smart planning on Scar and Joel’s part.

One of the kids must have spotted their lantern, as the door opened before the ranchers could get down from their horse. Tom came rushing up with Revy on his tail. He took Bullseye's reins from them and led him to the cow pen. It was more cramped than it should be, since the rain had flooded the rancher’s outer pastures. Revy whined and licked at Tango’s hand until he gave the dog a weak pat.

Joel shouted something after him before guiding the men inside. “We just started eating if you want to sit down.” He explained as he took Jimmy’s coat. One glance at Tango was enough to answer.

“I’ll grab some in a bit.” Jimmy tried to smile gratefully, but it came out as a grimace. Joel let them be with a nod, hand held out to the hall down which Sausage’s room awaited.

It was colourful, though the furniture was rudimentary, with a mattress stolen from Scar’s hospital. The bed so much smaller than they’d gotten used to, but Jimmy doubted it would matter for tonight. Norman and Flick waited on the windowsill, and Joel had already set up Jimmy’s breathing machine. It took some coaxing to get Tango to change out of his coveralls - which went into a plastic bag to be washed separate - and take off his arm. Even more coaxing was needed to get him to let go long enough for Jimmy to also change. When Jimmy turned back around the blazeborn had Revy wrapped up in his lap instead. The dog’s tail beat against the bed, happy to be held, but whining, nonetheless.

“Do you think you can eat?” Jimmy asked quietly. Tango didn’t respond. He grabbed only one bowl from the kitchen, unsure he could eat much either without it coming back up. Smoke still clung to their skin and hair, dragging them back to the ranch every time it filled their nostrils, but it was much too dark to run a hot bath. Still, Jimmy knew he had to eat something, even if it was in silence.

Tango migrated behind Jimmy at the end of the bed, tail wrapping around the avian’s waist. Its tuft flicking with agitation. Jimmy could feel the heat rolling off his rancher. “It’s not fair.” He rasped.

Jimmy’s wings flattened. “It was an old wood house. It would have had a mold problem eventually unless we rebuilt completely.”

“But why did it have to be sculk!” He snapped, tail sparkling in Jimmy’s lap. Jimmy tried to smooth it down, but it had little effect. “Why’d it have to make it here?”

There wasn’t an answer, not one Jimmy could provide. Maybe Doc or Zed could explain. It was probably in the well and washing into the surrounding water supply now. Would it be washed away? They should have listened to Grian’s worries back when Jimmy’s feathers had been infected somewhere. Or, maybe, back when they’d first found that infested corpse, they should have done something more. It didn’t matter now that their home was already gone. When nowhere felt safe.

His wings itched while his rancher bristled. Tango couldn’t cry, but he was made to fume. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“There’s no one to be angry at.” Jimmy shrugged.

“The stupid sculk! The idiots who let it loose! The world!” The bed creaked as Tango kicked off it to pace the small room. Revy whimpered, shifting his nose into Jimmy’s lap. “It’s been half a decade. It was supposed to get better. We live out in the middle of nowhere. And the end of the world still found us! We build our own home and make our own food and do everything we can, and it still comes and finds us!” The blazeborn was consumed in his spiral. Flames burst like firecrackers along his tail, startling Flick when it whipped past the poor cat.

“Tango…” Jimmy sighed, giving the man a miserable look. When he continued to pace, threatening to scorch their hosts’ possessions, Jimmy finally put a hand up in front to stop him.

A hiss escaped Tango, narrowed eyes glaring at the hand which proceeded to latch onto his shirt and drag him off course. Tango tried to shake it off, but Jimmy kept his hold. “It’s not fair that there’s nothing to fight back against.” He lamented, voice cracking. “I just have to sit here and hope tomorrow it doesn’t get in your wings, or start growing into Revy’s brain, or infest another basement! That it doesn’t get everywhere and take everything. At least the stupid zombie I can punch in the face!” By the end his voice was so shrill and watery Jimmy could barely understand it.

“Me and Revenge are okay. We’re right here.” Jimmy assured, pulling Tango back down beside him.

It made something finally break. Tango curled into himself across Jimmy’s lap, heaving dryly. Talons raked gently through the blazeborn’s hair. Between sobs Tango mumbled incomprehensibly while Jimmy cooed to keep himself from crying as well. There were too many things roiling just beneath his impulse control. If he let one out, the rest would follow, he was sure. So, he focused on Tango. His rancher needed him.

“I don’t think we’d win if it was someone you had to fight, to be honest.” He whispered half-jokingly as the sobs died down.

Tango stilled, then slumped further into Jimmy’s chest. “I could at least try, instead of this.”

Jimmy hummed. Even if they could, Jimmy wasn’t so sure he would in the moment, and he knew Tango wasn’t all that dissimilar. Unlike Joel or the downtowners, their talent was for running and hiding. That wasn’t the point though, Jimmy knew, so he didn’t argue. “What do we do in the spring?” He asked instead.

“… I dunno.” Tango mulled, head tilted out to look at his thoughts. “It’s not safe to rebuild there.”

“Scar has most of the grain safe, and Lizzie has our animals. We could find another plot, there’s plenty around.” Though, most of them had been stripped of their valuable supplies and building materials over the years or rotted away from lack of care. But the land was still good, and they and Pearl didn’t need much room.

Would Pearl stay with them? They’d lived with her much longer than without her – if the time before her arrival weren’t so chaotic, he might not recall so well what it was like without her – but she always seemed to keep her distance. A guest, even after she was given her own room. Having someone there to take care of things even when they couldn’t let them grow the ranch to almost thirty cattle, but without her...

That Lizzie’s family would have their own ranch soon was the only thing that calmed the nervous itch in his wings recently.

“We’d have to move closer.” Tango’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Huh?”

He was no longer curled up, though he hadn’t bothered to remove himself from Jimmy. There was that look in his eyes, where his brain was moving far too fast for Jimmy to keep up. At least it had occupied him with something other than the sculk and fire. “We can’t rebuild around the ranch, we won’t know how bad the infection around it is until next winter, and the water probably isn’t safe. If we rebuilt we’d have to move further west down the mountains towards the city, OR-” Tango raised his hand before Jimmy could protest. “We move closer to the hospital, somewhere around here, or maybe further into the interior on the other side.”

Jimmy clamped up. They’d all had more than a few conversations about this, between them and the hospital, other settlements, and over the radio. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Keep spread out. Far enough that, if something happens, everyone else is safe, but close enough to reach neighbours relatively quick. Like a long chain snaking across the mountains. By now everyone had horses or bikes and access to the recap radio, and it helped them cover more resources. A farm needed land, anyways, especially to keep up with how many people there now were within the network.

That thought seemed too much right now, though. He could feel the ash in his wings turning to lead. Losing the ranch didn’t just affect them. The cattle were saved but almost all their stores were gone, including two cows’ worth of beef that was to be sent out. It would take weeks, if not the whole season, to get things back in motion, in the months they were relied on most. Would people starve? Would the sculk spread from the ranch? It was a responsibility that seemed natural and seamless just weeks ago, but now felt suffocating.

“I’m not sure-” Jimmy finally replied. “I’m not sure I can rebuild the ranch right now.” Flashes of the burning rubble filled his mind, along with that numbness he’d felt. There was at least three months before they could begin, plenty of time to get over it. But right now… “I don’t even know if I want to.”

He expected perhaps a gasp or shouting from Tango. ‘We’re the ranchers!’ Maybe. But the blazeborn, to Jimmy’s surprise, nodded. Laughed, even. “We’ve been running one for years, why’s it feel impossible now?”

It was probably just nerves. Anxiety. In a few weeks it would wear away. But for now, Jimmy leaned his head against the top of Tango’s and entertained other things. “We could move back to the hospital.”

“That’d drive you insane, and Revy would kill Grian.” Tango chuckled.

So would you, Jimmy thought. He was sure if Tango had to see more sculk every day he would lose it. “What about visiting Gem and Impulse then?” He suggested instead. “I heard they’ve been doing a lot of forestry. It might be good to learn from them. Or we could finally go to the coast.”

“We never did make it that far, did we?” Tango recalled. “… Why not both? Go back up the mountain and race back down until we hit the coast. Maybe find some more people outside the recap’s range and bring them in.”

“If they’ve survived this long then I doubt they’d want to move now.”

“They might. Or maybe we can help extend the radio range for them.”

Jimmy smiled. “Maybe we should go east, instead. Find a ranch in the prairies. Be real cowboys.”

“Never been out there, even before all this.” Tango relaxed back against Jimmy, patting his leg for Revenge to come lay across. “You could stretch your wings.”

“That sounds nice.” He admitted with a sigh.

The pair continued to chatter, naming everything and everywhere. Making plans they’d likely never use. Anything to take their mind off the ranch. Just for one night.

#solidaritygaming #tango tek #ldshadowlady #pearlescentmoon #mythicalsausage #rancher apocalypse au #team rancher #fanfic #fanart #bioppunk #spooky #character #scene #background #writing #art #sketch #colour #Hybbart

1K notes · View notes

steddielations · 6 months

Text

Flight of Icarus lore dump part 2:

Part 1 | Character List

- Wayne has a green thumb. He reads Gardener’s Weekly magazine. It doesn’t say what he grows, but it says he buys vegetables from the store so I’m going to say that gruff old man Wayne has the prettiest petunias in the whole trailer park.

- Eddie sneaks into the Hawk with his best friend Ronnie to watch action movies and thinks Snake Plissken, Han Solo and Conan the Barbarian are cool.

- Eddie talks for hours about the intricacies of Elven politics in Tolkien.

- Eddie read comics as a kid and hid them all over the house "like a little squirrel" under the bed, behind the nightstand, under the rug. Wayne found his Uncanny X-Men in the freezer between stacks of tv dinners. Also, "Hellfire Club" comes from these X-Men comics.

- Floor time! There's a part where Eddie is literally just lying on his back on his bedroom floor counting down from a million. When Wayne comes home, Eddie army crawls on his belly to the doorway to see him.

- Eddie reads Gormenghast paperbacks, gothic fantasy novels. It mentions that Wayne saved them from the house fire along with Eddie’s guitar. It never says how/when Eddie originally got his guitar.

- Eddie says lots of cc’s original songs have D&D references. It's implied that he writes them. One is called “Fire Shroud” after a spell

- Eddie is called Freak King at school and Munson Junior or just Junior around town and he hates all of it

- Eddie talks about having anxiety a lot and it's implied he has had panic attacks in the past

- Eddie is the lead singer and guitarist of cc. He started the band with Ronnie specifically because it was required to participate in the school talent show.

- Neither Wayne or Al graduated high school. When Eddie (temporarily) drops out, Al celebrates.

- Eddie doesn't cook. He doesn't even own a spatula. The smell of cooking in their house actually shocks him and gives him a deep longing for family meals, which Al uses to manipulate him

- Eddie jokes about being into Saturday Night Fever and strikes the pose a couple times.

- Eddie knows how to hotwire and how to pick locks. Al taught him this at the age of ten. Eddie is "disgusted" with himself any time he does either of those things.

- Eddie "drives like a monster" when he's upset about something.

- Eddie smokes cigarettes occasionally. Weed is mentioned a lot in the book but it never says anything about Eddie smoking it or doing any drugs. He either doesn't smoke much or he hasn't tried anything yet in the book. Also, he’s just now meeting Rick. But It’s pretty clear after everything he went through why he would start

- There's lots of mentions of PBR and Bud Light. Though Eddie says he doesn't like to drink after his shifts at the Hideout (where he's a barback). He mostly drinks off-brand Big Buy soda in the book (he calls it "pop")

- Eddie's parents were married on March 12th, 1966. The date is inscribed on the bottle of their wedding wine. Eddie asks what kind it is and Al says they only had 'red or white' kind of money

- Al breaks out the wedding wine (to manipulate Eddie, you guessed it) it's red wine and Eddie really, really likes it

- Eddie went to War Zone with his dad for supplies for the truck heist (spike strips, coveralls, etc)

- Eddie's band played Exciter by Judas Priest at the talent show. The song was only approved because they emphasized the "priest"

- There was another (?) talent show in Winter of 1981 where Eddie's band played "Prowler" and they were kicked off stage halfway through because the song was considered Satanic, and the PTA visited all their parents for trying to convert everyone to Satanism.

- Eddie imagines hitting his dad twice. Once with a glass bottle and once with a metal wrench. (He should've- oops who said that)

- The only hug Eddie gets in the book is when his dad first comes back, Eddie knows it's the first step in his cycle of showing up, using Eddie and leaving, but Eddie still accepts the hug and feels guilty for enjoying it.

- It's implied Eddie gets close to tears a couple times in the book, but the only time they actually spring up is when his mom's favorite song (from Muddy Waters) comes on in the truck radio while Eddie is doing the heist with his dad and feeling awful about it. Eddie has several flashbacks of dancing with her to this song, it seems like his happiest memory that he always returns to.

- Whenever Eddie is doing what his dad wants (hotwiring, charming a person into their plans) he puts on what he calls his "best Al Munson smile" and he's terrified that it will eventually take over his whole face. There's a part at the end where Eddie is sitting in a jail cell and says "All I want to do is tear my face off. If a new one grows in it's place, maybe it'll make me a different person. Someone who isn't such a complete fuckup."

#eddie munson the nerd that you are #steddie writers eddie recites tolkien purposely to be annoying so write that down #these always get progressively sadder oh boy #eddie munson #flight of icarus #wayne munson #al munson #ronnie ecker #stranger things #i'm gonna do one more of all the places name dropped and then a deep dive into eddie's d word issues #mp

531 notes · View notes

not-neverland06 · 2 months

Text

One More Spring

One-shot

Tagging: @dumblittlebunbun bc you’d commented on a previous slasher post

Bo Sinclair x fem!reader A/N: This was a strange little Drabble I came up with when I was experimenting with a different writing style. Summary: You only have one wish, to make it to one more spring in Ambrose. You know that the women don’t last long, used and tossed aside, you don’t have big hopes. Just one last prayer.

You could always tell what kind of day it would be by how the door closed. Maybe it was because you’d grown up with strict parents, but you could read a mood based off their footsteps.

For now, you felt comfortable and remained lounged on your crappy lawn chair, trying to get some sun back on your legs after winter. The screen door closed lightly behind Bo as his heavy boots made their way to you.

You didn’t bother lifting your sunglasses as you felt him hovering over you. “What’re you doing?” His voice was gruff and he sounded like he was panting.

“Trying to get some color back.”

You could hear him scoff and glanced to the side to see him stealing a swig from your beer. “Don’t have better things to be doing?”

“Like what?” You snarked, rolling over and huffing when his eyes immediately went to your ass. Probably a good thing you chose a skimpy pair of bottoms, he was always more agreeable when he was horny. “Playing housewife?”

He chuckled under his breath, kneeling down beside you and flicking your sunglasses up. “Yeah, maybe.”

You rolled your eyes and swatted his hands away. You propped your head up on your arms and glared at him. “I’ll put on an apron for you later, for now, buzz off.”

He shook his head and stood up. “Don’t know where all this attitude came from.” You yelped as his hand came down on your ass. He laughed loudly, walking away much too smug for your liking. “Better not be a damn thing under that apron later!” He shouted as he went back into the house.

You looked up to tell him off and finally caught a glimpse of his coveralls. Blood coated the bottom of his pants and you shrank back into your chair. You put your head back down on your arms, closing your eyes and ignoring the way your stomach twinged in anxiety.

As requested, you’d made dinner in an apron and nothing else. Bo had subsequently banished Vincent from the kitchen. You’d felt bad when you’d woken up in the morning, you hadn’t gotten a chance to slip him any food. You’d passed out pretty much the second Bo was done with you.

Your eyes darted to the bloody coveralls on your bathroom floor. You sighed, legs aching as you got off the bed. You collected his dirtied uniform and the laundry basket and made your way downstairs.

You got started on the laundry, kicking the old washing machine a few times to get it going. It had been on its last leg for a decade, it was a matter of months before it finally conked out. You threw the clothes in, fingers snagging on a lacy number at the bottom.

You frowned, tugging it out and holding it up to the light. You’d never seen this before. It certainly hadn’t come from your bag. “You like it?”

You jumped, whirling around with the shirt clutched to your chest. “Jesus, Bo, you scared me.”

He chuckled, face still slightly mussed from sleep. He was only in a white t-shirt and pajama pants, rare to see him in anything other than working clothes. “Snagged that off a tourist yesterday, thought you’d look good in it.”

I thought you would like it.

I know you’ve got a few shirts like that in your closet.

You always look pretty in this color, baby.

You’d heard it all a thousand different ways. The same sentence over and over and over again. You were haunted by the women of Ambrose. The ones who came before you, who’d tried and failed to play house with him. The ones who were yet to come.

And the woman who would inevitably replace you when you messed up for the final time.

Your nails dug into the lace, feeling it give beneath them as you smiled at Bo. “I love it, thank you.”

He hugged you, lips lingering against your forehead before he wandered off to start some coffee. You turned around, eyes going back to the shirt. You’d burn it if you could. Rip it apart and scream, instead you tossed it in the wash with the rest of your clothes. You let the lid slam shut, the noise jarring you out of your stupor.

You forced on a happy face and walked into the kitchen. Vincent was lingering near the entrance and you offered him a gentle smile. “Sorry about dinner,” you whispered as you passed him. He shook his head and took a seat at the table.

You grabbed the ingredients you needed, rustling through Bo’s ancient cookbook for the French toast recipe you’d found the other day. One day, you’d run out, you wouldn’t have any more delicacies to surprise them both with.

Bo would tire of the same repetitive food. The same face every morning. The same sounds and movements in the bedroom. You’d become used up, lose the new shine everyone loved on their toys.

You clenched the spatula in your hand, gritting your teeth as you cooked some eggs for the both of them. You brought it over to the table, scooping it onto their plates, Bo got the bigger serving. Bo always got what he wanted.

Your mind flashed to the garage, the straps there waiting for you. “Hey!”

You jumped, pan nearly dropping out of your hands as you stared at the dropped eggs on his lap. “Sorry, I’m sorry.” You rushed to the counter, grabbing a towel and kneeling down, frantically trying to get them off his pants.

A calloused hand landed on your head, you jumped and looked up at Bo. Your heart raced, expecting malice or a sneer that meant the last nail had fallen and your time was up. Instead he was smiling gently down at you, hand smoothing the hair from your face. “Just a spill, darlin’, get the bacon ‘fore it burns.”

You backed away instantly, taking the egg filled rag with you as you went back to the stove. You flipped the bacon, turning off the burner and risking a glance over your shoulder at Bo.

He was sipping his coffee peacefully, not a worry in the world. But you could see how tightly Vincent had his fork gripped, the way it shook slightly as he placed it back on his plate. Seems you weren’t the only one who’d thought your time was up.

When would it happen?

When spring returned and the birds started chirping their early morning song again?

You wouldn’t mind if that was when it ended. If you got to make it to another birthday, that would be even better. You’d like to experience another holiday, or Halloween. Perhaps that was too much to ask for.

You’d settle for just seeing the buds return to the trees in Ambrose once more. Pink blooming in the absence of death. That would be lovely.

Alright, you’ll take that.

Make it through one more spring and you can happily let go.

You could hear the women screaming as you walked down the stairs of the house. See glimpses of who they used to be. Hair clips you knew weren’t yours, underwear buried in the back of drawers that you’d never touched. Necklaces and jewelry that didn’t match yours.

You could hear their voices, disorienting and panicked as you hung the laundry on the line. Felt like the birds echoed their mourning cries in their melody.

You saw the red lines around your wrist as you pulled off the dry sheets. You tried not to look at them too much. Bo liked to touch them, rub his fingers along your wrist and admire them. He thought it brought you closer, linked you together somehow.

You hated looking at them. Hated the sight of the worn skin. All it reminded you of was the time below. Your pictures that were tacked above the others.

You heard a scream further away from the house, bloodcurdling and echoing through the air of Ambrose. It would never make it out. Never travel past the forest bordering the ghost town. You wondered if it was a product of your own fractured psyche or another masterpiece in the works.

Your question was answered when you sat on your knees in the bathroom that night, trying to scrub the crimson out of Bo’s coveralls.

You liked your time with Vincent. You like the candles he kept scattered around his studio, nails dug into them to help him keep time. He’d sit you down on the couch and would position you like a doll. You’d let him, mind going numb as you lost time for as long as he wanted to draw you.

You knew he liked you the most out of the other girls. You learned sign language for him, communicating with him when Bo got sick of both of you. He enjoyed your face the most. It wasn’t model perfect or the type of beauty people wrote songs about.

He liked the normalcy of it, the slightly blandness. He’d told you once, on a nice night, that it was your eyes that gave you life. Not the color of them, but the light behind them.

You wondered if he would draw you again when Bo snubbed them out.

You folded Bo’s clothes, tucking them neatly into his drawers and tossing the basket back into the hall. You moved towards the bed, straightening the sheets and tucking them in tight. You liked it tight, he hated it.

Your one act of rebellion.

It honestly wasn’t hard to fall into this role with Bo. You’d known if you’d wanted to survive the only chance you had was to make him happy. In a way it was peaceful here. It was quiet and you never had to worry about anything.

You cleaned the house, cooked the food, were the perfect housewife and he’d be content and so would you. He let you have your own time, surprising you with journals to write in. Or he’d dig through tourists bags and bring you back books he’d thought you’d like.

You didn’t get to go into the city with him, doubted you ever would, but you were okay with this.

You picked up his watch, opening up his night table’s drawer to tuck it away. Your eyes landed on a bright splash of red and your fingers froze from where they hovered above the handle. You glanced over your shoulder, heart thrumming.

You turned back towards the drawer and carefully slid the Polaroid out.

A picture, a woman with gorgeous red hair splayed along her pillow. She looked beautiful.

Or she would.

If it wasn’t for the gash across the neck, so deep it showed you the inside of her throat. Crimson dripped from the wound, pooling around her and onto the bed below her.

Your eyes darted to the bed to your left, hands wrinkling the pristinely kept picture. Without thinking your hand dove further into the drawer, probing, digging, searching for something.

You didn’t know what until you hissed, hand jerking back as blood blistered out of the gash on your finger. You placed the picture back, popping your finger into your mouth and licking up the metallic taste of your blood.

You used your other hand to wrap around the handle of the blade, tugging out the large kitchen knife and staring down at it blankly.

One more spring.

You put the knife back, straightening out his drawer and leaving the haunted bedroom to clean your wound.

You woke to the sound of birds chirping. To your left was the window, pink buds blooming across the branch of the tree across from the house. Above you was Bo, straddling your waist, a knife held tightly in his hand.

“Well,” you wrapped a hand around his, calmly pulling the knife down to your throat. You’d thought you’d be more upset. Fight, beg, plead for one last winter, or just another day. One last good day. But you were tired, you’d been slipping since summer. Bits and pieces of yourself floating along the wind, joining the cacophony of lost women. “Aren’t you going to do it?”

Bo stared down at you, his brows furrowed. The whites of his eyes were red and you knew he’s been struggling with this for a while. You weren’t sure how long he’d been sitting above you, but you knew it had been before you’d woken.

You were thankful, at least, that he had let you see the spring morning before he did this.

He yanked his hand out of yours, “Crazy bitch,” he muttered. He scoffed and shook his head, jumping off of you. Your head lolled to the left, you opened up the window, inhaling the fresh smell of new life.

You made it another winter and another spring. Your face was plastered along Vincent’s wall. Statues of you adorned Ambrose but you didn’t occupy a single one of them.

On the outside MISSING flyers with your face faded and fell from lamp posts. Your name was forgotten from the minds of those who’d been alive to mourn you. You became another statistic, another lost soul. An old news story that would be used in classrooms.

What happened to her?

Is she still alive?

Was she the first?

Will we ever know?

No. They wouldn’t. You were the girl on the paper trampled beneath frantic feet as they rushed to work. Tossed aside in the garbage when they were done with the morning paper. To the rest of them, you were forgotten.

To Ambrose, you were their muse. Inspiration behind their every move.

Every morning you’d wake up to a blade pressed against your throat. And every morning Bo would leap away from you and shake his head. He’d never do it, you knew that now, and it provided you with a careless freedom that freed you from the shackles you’d placed upon yourself.

You didn’t spread your legs and let him take what he wanted anymore. You didn’t submit under his temper, you fought back, raised your voice and threw glass bottles right back at him. You didn’t let him bend Vincent under his thumb or scream at him just because he could.

You pushed, every day, that invisible line that separated you from the other ghosts in town. Yet, somehow, you never breached it, only managed to extend it.

“I want to go with you.”

Bo froze, after a moment he fixed his cap and grabbed his keys from the tray. He didn’t look at you as he spoke, “Well, come on then.”

You followed him through the front door, hopping in the truck when he opened it up to you. The engine rumbled, vibrating the seat below you and his hand slid from the keys to your thigh. He squeezed, as if reminding himself you were there, he was really doing this.

You could hardly believe it yourself.

Bo rounded the bend from the gas station and you felt your heart racing. A hummingbird flitting through your chest, frantically trying to break from the cage of your ribs. He pulled through the old campground, the one you’d been on before your car had mysteriously broken down.

You couldn’t remember who it was you were with. What their names were.

You’re halfway certain one of them had been a lover. His name lost to the past.

Bo pulls onto the highway and you brace yourself. You’re not sure for what. Perhaps for him to change his mind, a blade buried in your gut. To start pouring blood down the front of your shirt. Or maybe the car will wreck, divine intervention deciding that neither of you get another day.

Nothing happens. Bo slams his hand against the truck’s stereo and rock crackles through the speakers. His hand returns to your thigh and he hums along to the music. After a moment you relax, rolling the window down and letting the breeze cool you down.

He makes it to the city, smaller than where you used to live, but a mammoth compared to Ambrose. You buy groceries, marveling over products you’d forgotten even existed. You finally manage to buy the tampons you like instead of getting lucky that another woman has them in her bag.

You harass him into letting you go to a secondhand store, buying a shirt for you. Yours and yours alone. It’s simple, long sleeved and white, nothing special, but it means everything to you. When you make it back to Ambrose, the familiar stifling air and aged walls, you bury the shirt in your dresser.

You’ll never wear it and never part with it. This shirt will never be anyone else’s but yours. You’ll never allow another woman to get her hands on it. Even when you’re gone you’ll protect it.

“What do you think?”

Bo shrugged, taking another swig of his beer as his eyes roved over the journal in his hand. You sat on the edge of your seat, eagerly watching him read. Perhaps a bit too eagerly, he sensed it, pouncing on the chance to make you vulnerable.

“You know I don’t read much, baby.”

You rolled your eyes and moved to sit next to him. “I’m aware, it’s real sad, Bo. Now,” you nudged his shoulder with your own. “What do you think?”

He chuckled, marking the page and tossing it on the coffee table. His legs spread and you took the invitation, slotting yourself in his lap and wrapping your arms around his shoulders. He grinned up at you, “It was good. Real fuckin’ good.”

You smiled, cheeks puffing out with the force of it. “Really?”

He nodded his head, “Mhm.” He leaned forward, taking you with him, and placed his beer on the table. You reached behind yourself, blindly readjusting it onto a coaster. He rolled his eyes, but you saw the fondness in them.

His hands moved down your back, squeezing your ass before they landed on your thighs. Rough calluses spread along smooth skin and goosebumps prickled under his touch. You don’t know why you let him read the strange disjointed novel you’d been writing.

Maybe because you knew no one would ever see it. Maybe you wanted some part of yourself permanently embedded into his brain. Either way, you enjoyed the way his face changed as he took it in. The expressions shifting with each new sentence.

“You got a fucked up little mind, you know that?”

You hummed, nodding your head and leaning forward to slot your lips against his own. It was his own fault you were like this. He’d bent you, broke you down, used you until you were a shadow of the woman who used to exist within your body.

Maybe he had won.

There was a part of you, a spirit, floating somewhere beneath his garage, that had once belonged to you.

You ground your hips down against his, biting down on his lip until copper flooded your mouth. He didn’t get angry, just gripped your hair and moved you both to the cushions. He groaned into your open mouth, pinning your body below his and manipulating you how he wanted.

Then again, maybe you’d ruined him too.

You shouldn’t be alive. You shouldn’t still have a throat to drag air down, but here you were. Shoving against him and forcing him to submit to your whims. You weren’t the only one who’d changed, and you both knew it.

#bo sinclair x reader #Slashers x reader #house of wax x reader #house of wax 2005 #Slasher x reader #slashers x y/n #Slashers x you #bo Sinclair x you #bo Sinclair x y/n

217 notes · View notes

ares857 · 1 year

Text

internet find

If you want this project to continue, you can use the Paypal donation button on the web page of the blog. Any donation is welcome.

4 notes · View notes

birgittesilverbae · 1 year

Note

Prompt: just a highly tattooed Beatrice. Anything. Maybe she’s in a band, maybe it goes to her teenage rebellion, maybe it’s your dads au and Bea always wears sleeves and one day Ava finally sees her ink… idk. Anything with tattooed Bea.

thanks for the prompt!

Beatrice hasn't worn short sleeves in the time Ava has been back.

True, it's closing in on winter, but Malaga in November is barely any cooler than Brienz had been in June, and back then Beatrice had taken every possible opportunity to go sun's out, guns out.

Ava watches, curious, for some sort of sign, some clue to what Beatrice is keeping under wraps. She's been back for a week, almost, and they've kissed in quiet corners and in the back of the chapel, and once, in a fit of daring, in the confessional, Ava in Beatrice's lap admitting to myriad sins ("the Bloody Marys sold well, I just hated making them" and "I bought us new towels because I used ours to try and smother a stovetop fire" and "I spent half our time in Switzerland trying not to touch myself to the thought of you").

But they haven't gone any further than furtive makeouts and some over-the-clothes heavy petting – which, she has to remind herself, would be a mind-blowing development for June Ava. And Beatrice hasn't even rolled up her sleeves, which… The thought of Beatrice's forearms had constituted, like, a solid 64% of Ava's will to live while on the other side, but it's fine. She's fine. She can be very cool, very normal and definitely would absolutely not suffer if she never got to see Beatrice's forearms again.

She'd be totally fine.

It's on day seven post-return that Beatrice slips up. She's been waist-deep in a van's engine compartment in between shouting matches with Mary across the garage, and stray curls of hair are slicked to her forehead with sweat. She rubs at her face and then frowns, unbuttons the placket at her wrist and starts to roll up her right sleeve. Ava feels like a Victorian gentleman about to pass out over the mere sight of a sliver of skin. She doesn't mean to, but she takes a step forward over the threshold of the garage, drawn towards the revelation of Beatrice's bare skin like a moth towards a flame.

There's a faint blue glow that grows brighter as Ava approaches, and Beatrice's head snaps up. She fumbles with her sleeve for a moment, an adorable crease between her eyebrows, but the cuff is caught on the knob of her elbow. She settles for linking her hands behind her back instead.

"Ava!" She chirps far too brightly for someone Ava had heard calling Mary a 'piece of fucking work' not two minutes past.

Ava takes another step closer. "Beatrice," she replies, soft. She'd raise a hand, but this already feels far too much like approaching a wild animal.

Apt enough, though, as Beatrice's eyes very noticeably flick towards the exit. "Show me," she says, just as gently.

Beatrice's shoulders droop. "You would have found out sooner or later," she concedes. "It was only a delay of the inevitable in the hopes I would be better prepared to discuss it by the time the conversation arose."

She swings her arms forward, left hand finding the pocket of her coveralls, right coming out in front of her until her forearm is on display for Ava.

It's a starburst shining divinium blue, a double handful of lines broken by tick marks emanating from a central black point. Ava can't help herself, doesn't want to stop herself from reaching out and dragging a fingertip down one of the lines. Beatrice's skin is warm beneath Ava's touch and the divinium sparks bright in response to the Halo's nearness.

"What is it?"

Beatrice clears her throat. "Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that blink on and off like lighthouses. When the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were launched, they were sent bearing a plaque with this map on it – a map of the position of known pulsars relative to our sun. A map of lighthouses, guiding the observer here." She taps the central dot. "That's here, that's home, that's us," she says, in that slightly removed tone Ava associates with the oh-so-common occurrence of a 'Quotes with Beatrice' event. "On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives." Beatrice inhales shakily. "It was stupid, really, but I thought maybe it would help guide you back to us. Back to me. Back home."

#warrior nun #mywn #myfic #sister beatrice #ava silva #ava x beatrice #avatrice #if you saw me butchering the pulsar metaphor no you didn't #still getting a hang of writing Ava POV

692 notes · View notes

vibgyorworkwear · 1 year

Text

How do FR clothing options help improve workers' comfort?

Fire can create a dangerous situation for many people who works in these industries daily. Staying alert and avoiding the situation can be easy when you have clothing from FR Inherent Coverall India. Multiple excellent suppliers in India manufacture & supply flame-resistant clothing. This clothing can save you when danger is around the corner! So, here we share some factors that prove how it helps workers.

Why is it advisable to wear FR uniforms on site?

When you choose Fr Summer Coverall Manufacturers in India, you can buy FR clothing or jackets that won’t melt onto the skin. Unlike regular fabrics, it doesn’t melt and reduces the chances of burning. FR clothing helps to offer thermal insulation from the heat flames. These types of clothing are much stronger than regular materials because it is made of high fabrics that are non-flammable.

FR clothing is an essential tool for multiple professionals because it protects the wearers from burns caused by electric arcs, flash fires, and dust. It allows several industries to tackle dangerous tasks. FR clothing has saved the lives of countless people from serious injuries. These clothing are designed in such a way that they can protect the wearer from thermal injuries & flames. It helps users to avoid burns from the initial exposure to flame and heat transfers. This type of clothing is used in many industries, including research labs, oil & gas, electric utilities and fire service industries. Contact the Lightweight Anti-Static Flame Retardant Coverall India if you rely on any of these businesses.

How does the FR clothing work?

Most of the FR clothing or Industrial Jacket in India is made of a material designed to be heat resilient. The materials like Kevlar & Nomex offer amazing flame-resistant qualities. The manufacturers widely use this fabric for preparing FR garments. Material like cotton is also used to treat certain chemicals that boost heat resistance & improve protective qualities. It helps to avoid long-lasting damage to the skin. FR clothing made with different clothing materials holds different benefits.

FR clothes from Vibgyor Workwear always come with a baggy fit because a tight fit is not the right choice. The skin-tight clothes transfer the heat more easily to the skin & which can result in severe burns and injuries. When you wear loose-fitting clothes, it creates a layer of air between your skin and the cloth.

Investing in the ideal FR clothing brings lots of benefits. It helps to keep your professionals safe while dealing with fire-related tasks.

#FR Inherent Coverall #FR Coverall #Fire Retardant Coverall Manufacturer in India #Arc & Flame Resistant Coveralls #Flame Resistant Safety Coveralls #IFR Fire Retardant Coverall #Inherent Fire Coverall Manufacturer #Arc Flash IFR Shirt and Trousers #Cotton Jacket #Industrial Winter Coverall

0 notes

pisupsala · 4 months

Text

Of All The Stars in The Sky | 16 | Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw

Summary | War looks different from high above in the sky. But when Bradley finds himself on the ground, far behind enemy lines, it becomes a race against the clock to get out. And try not to look back at what he’s leaving behind.

Pairing | Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw x fem!reader / Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw x fem!oc (no use of y/n)

Warnings |Mature content | 18+ only[WWII AU] swearing, war, violence, death, explicit smut

Words | 9.1k

Library

Chapter 16 - The End of The World

That summer of 1943 that you spent with your parents will be the last light before the long and dark night that follows. The war is going badly — for your occupiers, that is. The Allies have taken Sicily, and the Soviets have booked a major victory at Kursk. News coming in is sporadic, the censors working overtime to downplay military setbacks, but rumors persist. The pincer is closing from the south and east; they whisper: Stalin’s Red Army will punch through the Eastern front after winter, and the Allies will be crossing the Alps.

More tangential proof of how the war is going is how more and more men disappear from public life — Hitler must be getting desperate, drafting reinforcements from the traitorous country that assassinated his right-hand man. And where the men disappear, women take their place.

Registered as unemployed, you received a summons in the late fall of 1943 to report for labor in support of the war effort. At the outskirts of the capital, a car factory has been converted to produce army trucks — massive 3-ton personnel carriers. Every morning, when the sun is barely up, you get on a bus with about fifty other women of all ages, all dressed in the same drab, dirty blue coveralls. The only splash of color in the early morning twilight is the scarves everyone ties around their head to protect their hair.

Your nimble fingers earn you a position wiring the dashboard and ignition systems; your once soft hands and manicured nails are definitely a thing of the past now. Your fingertips start forming blisters and calluses from twisting the copper wires into place; your nails are chipped and broken, caked in dirt and thick black grease. The harsh degreaser soap cracks the skin on your palms, leaving them sore — the cold winter air stinging the raw skin.

You haven’t heard from anyone in the resistance since your last encounter with Jan — he probably reported you as compromised to Emil, and everyone has been steering clear of you since then. Rationally, you know it’s not personal. But in your heart, you cannot help but be bitter: after all you’ve done, after all the risks you have taken, you end up on the assembly line building trucks for the enemy. And not a peep from your comrades.

But you don’t need them, you think sourly. You took your first steps into resistance activities by yourself, stealing food stamps here and there to help the people you knew. It grew from there, but it wasn’t until late 1941 that you actually got in contact with the resistance proper and your activities were scaled up. And now that you’re on your own again, you’ll just do what you always did: as much as you possibly can.

The factory is run tightly. Hawk-eyed supervisors check every aspect on the line, writing up workers for faults, deficiencies, and mistakes. They are supported by the armed guards — young boys with large guns and on an even larger power trip — that patrol the grounds and the factory floor and gleefully punish poor performance.

Poking and prodding, trying to find cracks in the system, you knew you’d push the envelope too far at some point. It’s a risk you’re willing to take — you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you didn’t at least try. So you experiment: wiping sand on the fine gears behind the fuel gauge, making the cursor stick. It’s simple and subtle enough not to get noticed during inspection. The first time you get caught, it’s for cross-wiring to the headlights with the windscreen wipers — which, in terms of sabotage, is mostly harmless, at most an inconvenience. A warning and compulsory study of the manual is all you get. But you know you probably overstepped when you get caught not tightening the contact cables in the ignition system, which would cause them to fall out sooner rather than later, stalling the whole machine.

“With me, missy,” Your supervisor sneers, her red-painted lips twisted into a scowl, knuckles whitening as she clutches her clipboard. It hasn’t escaped your notice how your supervisor has dressed quite nicely daily: makeup, well-fitted dresses, nylons.

“It was a mistake,” You lie, defending yourself. “It’s cold, and my fingers-”

You don’t finish your sentence as the supervisor grabs you by the collar of your coveralls and pulls you out of the factory hall. “Are you insane?” She hisses. “Sabotage is treason.”

“They’re going to kill us anyway,” You choke out, stumbling after her.

Harshly pushing you out the factory door into the snowy courtyard, she stares after you, coiled with anger. “I’ll take my chances,” She spits after you. “Stay there until I come get you!” She adds, yelling.

Folding your arms, you shuffle your feet in an attempt to get warm. It’s still early in the day, and it’s freezing cold. Your breath is coming out in puffs of opaque smoke, and within a minute, you are shivering. Opportunistic bitch, you seethe.

You nearly scream out when you are suddenly doused in ice-cold water, your sopping coveralls now so cold it’s practically burning on your skin. From the boyish laughter behind you, you know these are the guards, joking in German — there’s nothing you can do.

You stand frozen in place, the cold water trickling from your wet hair down your spine — it’s like you’ve just run a marathon; you struggle to catch your breath, thoughts running through your head in a blind panic. Finally, you sink into a squat, your legs almost giving out from under you — you need to hunker down, tucking your hands under your arms, desperately trying to preserve your core temperature. You are shivering so hard it’s making your stomach hurt, like your intestines themselves are violently shivering too.

It’s impossible to say how long you sit there. You notice it starts snowing again, but you can’t feel it. It’s like you’re frozen into place, your insides still quaking. The snowflakes stick to your lashes, making your lids heavy and your movements even more sluggish. It feels like your blood flow has slowed down to a crawl. You want to cry from pain, from humiliation. From anger. But your tears are frozen solid with the rest of your body.

When you are forcefully pulled up back onto your feet, no sound makes it out of your mouth. Your lungs hurt — your throat is so dry it’s numb. Whatever sound of pain or protest you try to make only comes out as a puff of air past your ice-cold lips. Your legs are stiff and barely cooperating, but the supervisor, who is holding you by your arm, nails digging through the layers of freezing fabric, doesn’t stop pulling until she shoves you down by the coal furnace near the offices.

The moment she lets go of you, your legs immediately give out again — your knees skid over the concrete floor. The warm air is like relentless pinpricks on your skin.

“Let this be a lesson for you and everyone that has any ideas,” She hisses at you venomously, grabbing your chin to force you to look up. “Warm up and return to your place on the line.”

It’s a lesson, alright.

Next time, you won’t get caught.

The winter of 1943 into 1944 is long, and the cough you’ve developed doesn’t disappear until late spring. Miraculously, you never really got sick after your punishment besides the persistent coughing, but as your grief wanes, a wave of new anger emerges in you. You never wished ill, hurt, or even death on specific people — your ultimate goal was always freedom. But now you find a macabre kind of glee as you sprinkle sand on the fuel gauge and fray the cables in the ignition.

I hope your truck stalls as you run. I hope you run out of fuel. I hope it kills you.

When you catch sight of the supervisor, you smile sweetly at her. You’ll get yours too, you think.

At night, you sit with your ear pressed against the radio, listening to the BBC news on the lowest possible volume, running Bradley’s bracelet between your fingers like rosary beads. You are desperate for any news of the advance. Southern Italy is so far away — is Bradley there now? The reports say the fighting is heavy; progress comes at great cost. You stopped being scared for yourself, but the more you are scared for Bradley. Alone in the dark apartment, tears roll down your tired face.

Talking during work is forbidden, but on break, huddled together in the corner of the factory courtyard, whispered rumors swirl out of the earshot of supervisors and guards. When one of the armed guards passes, everyone dissolves in a fit of giggles, not from nerves but as a carefully honed defense mechanism. The bored guards don’t bother with women’s gossip.

Soon, rumors and gossip are the only things to go around: rations are tightening, and more and more is getting diverted to the war effort. Cigarettes get passed around after a single puff, soup becomes more water than anything else, and you even resort to sharing mugs of ersatz coffee. The less there is, the more you care for each other. During breaks, you brush each other’s hair, braiding it or pinning it into curls. Sometimes, someone procures some hand cream, and you take turns massaging it into each other’s sore hands. It establishes a strange sense of normalcy in a world that steadily feels like it’s in free fall.

***

Every key Bradley touches on the creaky piano seems to be the wrong one. He can hear the melody so clearly in his head, but when he tries to play it or even just hum or whistle it, it’s like he cannot find the right tone. It sounds off.

He can remember the moment so clearly: the starry spring night along the river bank, the melody floating down from the open window. Flexing his hand, he can almost feel your fingers threaded through his, your body pressed against his as you followed his lead. Just like he tries to remember the melody, Bradley tries to remember your smile.

He knows he remembers, but he just can’t recall it. When Bradley tries, he is unsure if he remembers you correctly. It’s like it all happened in a dream, and he remembers shapes and colors, but the more he tries to grasp the details, the vaguer they become.

It’s January 1944, and the last six months have been one frustration after another for Bradley. At least he’s no longer grounded, but he hasn’t felt like himself since returning to England. It’s like Bradley woke up, and reality wrapped around him like a coat he had outgrown — constricting his movements, leaving him uncomfortable in his own skin. He can forget that only when he flies, at least for a moment.

Except it’s making him forget everything, he desperately wants to hold onto.

“I thought I’d find you here, Rooster,”

Bradley sighs lightly before turning to the voice. Mav stands at the door opening, in his crisp dress uniform, an easy grin on his face. As he saunters into the empty pub, a gust of cold air follows him from outside.

“Long time no see,” Mav continues as he pulls out a chair, still grinning, plopping himself down across from Bradley.

“Yeah, good to you again, Mav,” Bradley responds neutrally as he closes the lid on the piano, slowly turning around to face Mav. “How are Penny and Amelia?” He asks conversationally.

For a moment, the older man’s looks soften, his cocky grin faltering. “Good, good,” He nods. “Amelia sent you a letter to thank you for the postcards. Did you get it?”

“I’m not sure; it might have gotten lost in the mail,” Bradley replies vaguely. It’s probably somewhere in the packet of unread mail piling up in Bradley’s footlocker. Writing letters has been a chore because he cannot talk about what he wants to. The censor would not allow it, so putting pen to paper and pretending that everything is just okay is something Bradley rarely can summon the energy for.

He feels guilty. He knows this makes him a terrible friend, and he cannot explain why he can’t just write a short message home.

Mav just nods but doesn’t reply. An uneasy silence falls between the two men. They haven’t seen each other in a good two years, since before Bradley went on detachment to the UK. For a while, Bradley thought it would do them good — the distance would soften the sharp edges of their fraught relationship a bit more. Maybe he put too much stock in it.

“So,” Bradley starts, tone forcefully light. “What brings you here, Mav?”

“Mass mobilization,” Mav shrugs in response. “You know that something big is afoot.”

“I meant here,” Bradley’s voice is a little bit sharper as he gestures around him vaguely. He ignores the jab of guilt in his gut. “In this empty pub.”

“Oh, yes-” Mav pulls an envelope from this heavy woolen navy coat. “You are getting recalled to the US Navy Fleet.”

Bradley reaches out and plucks the envelope from Mav’s outstretched hand. He scans the letter's contents — he’s due to report at Navy command for the European theater in five days. There’s nothing odd about the order in the larger scheme of things.

“Why are you the one delivering it?” Bradley looks at Mav, eyes tight. Is he getting picked up like a small child?

Mav’s eyes widen for a split second, before his easy grin returns. “Wouldn’t want to get this lost in the mail,”

Another moment of silence.

“And I have shore leave, so I thought…” Mav trails off, face suddenly serious. He looks at Bradley intently, who meets his gaze almost defiantly. “I wanted to check in on you. See you are doing okay.” Mav adds levelly. Bradley sighs.

“I’m fine,” He replies softly. Even to his own ears, it sounds like a lie.

“So I thought…” Mav starts again.

“It’s funny,” Bradley cuts in, unable to stop himself. The burden of guilt is weighing him down — leaving you behind, failing his friends and family, forgetting — so he lashes out. From guilt. From shame. From pain. He wants to pretend it makes him feel better. “It’s really funny how you always tell me not to think, and yet that’s all you seem to do.”

Mav stares at him, face neutral, unimpressed. The lack of reaction is making Bradley angrier. “So you thought — you thought what? That you know better? That you know what I need?”

“Calm down, lieutenant,” Mav simply replies, suddenly and simply pulling rank, effectively ending the conversation. Knuckles white, Bradley grits his teeth. Deep breaths.

Mav gets up, dusting himself off, not a tremor of anger in his movement. He is the picture of calm, not sparing him a single look. Bradley stands up automatically, as he would for any ranking officer.

“Something is in the works,” Mav simply says. “Something big — bigger than we’ve ever seen.”

Finally, he meets Bradley’s eye again. Mav’s expression betrays little, but his eyes are full of hurt. “I th- I had hoped we could make amends,”

Before it’s too late.

Bradley nods — the guilt now like a stone around his neck. No one knows what is happening, only that ship upon ship of American armed forces is being unloaded and stationed in England. There are whispers of an attack on a scale never seen before. A landing. A suicide mission.

“I trust no one in the air more than you, Mav,” Bradley finally admits, the last of the frustration finally ebbing away. Why does he keep getting so angry? “It’ll be an honor to fly with you again.”

Mav cracks a smile — a genuine one. “Thank you, Bradley, and welcome back to the fleet.”

Bradley chuckles, but inside, he knows he’s not ready. Forgiveness is more difficult than a few words.

But does it really matter?

In the end, when he will inevitably fly to his death, the very fate Mav tried to shield him from — will it matter?

“How long are you staying, Mav?” He asks instead, grabbing his coat. “Enough time for a drink or two?”

***

It’s dark in the small, crowded room. You sit on the floor, packed in like sardines. The bare bulb that had been burning in a harsh yellow light earlier spluttered before softly popping out of life. The noises from the outside are disorientating — you hear screaming and yelling, doors slamming and shots. You have your arms around a girl younger than you, softly stroking your fingers over her hairline as she cries into your shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, you hear the whine of Stukas as they fly towards the capital. You think.

The thing is, you haven’t been allowed to leave the factory for over a week now. After the news broke that Berlin had fallen and the Führer was dead, all the guards, the young boys with rifles too big for them, went into a blind panic. They locked the gates, screaming orders, pointing their surely loaded guns at the sacred factory workers.

Since then, you’ve been sleeping on the hard concrete floor as the next shift picked up. You suppose you should be happy it’s May, so the floor is not so cold anymore.

The winter of 1944 into 1945 had been the harshest you’ve seen in years: it was bitingly cold, rations were lower than they’ve ever been, and there was no bread, milk, or flour. Soup was more water than anything else, more potato peel than vegetable. Even if you still had extra ration books, they wouldn’t do you any good — there simply wasn’t anything to trade them for. Gas and coal became a rarity, turning the city into an unforgiving ice-cold hellscape. You had never been so cold for so long in your life.

The ugly blue coveralls were increasingly ill-fitting, hanging off your frame awkwardly.

It shouldn’t have brought you joy, but as production was being pushed into overdrive, supervisors were forced to join the line, leaving behind their clipboards and clean clothes. More shifts were added, the factory now roaring day and night — sometimes shifts were scheduled in such quick succession there was no time to go home. You would huddle up with the other girls in the corner of the factory on the cold floor (because god forbid you’d use the now-empty offices), so exhausted you couldn’t even hear the noises of the line anymore.

The guards were getting rotated out quickly, replaced by seemingly younger and younger boys — some almost dwarfed by the rifle on their back; their too-large uniforms make it look like they're playing dress-up.

In the end, this also meant that since winter, all regulations were out the door — no more clipboards, no more testing before the trucks as they joined the motor pool, ready to be distributed over the rapidly approaching front. It made sabotage a lot easier: the majority of trucks that rolled off the line in your factory were faulty in one way or another. Knowing looks were exchanged: nuts and bolts were not fully tightened, hoses were not fully screwed in, and contacts were not fully connected.

Everyone is doing their own part — their own small resistance. There was no discussion; there was no structure or organization. Just a hope that every little bit helps bring the war to an earlier end as the Allies and Soviets are approaching.

You hear gunshots now — the wave of terror that moves through the room is almost physical, as everyone recoils as one. You tighten your arms around the girl as she chokes out a sob.

“Shhh, it’s okay, sweetie,” You console her softly despite wanting to cry yourself. You’ve been cut off from the world, and there’s no guessing what has been happening since the fall of Berlin. Are the Allies here?

Naively, your heart feels a little bit lighter at the thought. Far from any sea or ocean, Bradley wouldn’t be there, but — and you hate yourself for hoping it so fiercely — maybe you could ask someone to contact him? Tell you where to send a letter. If only to find out that he is still alive. To let him know you are still alive.

That you are waiting.

In the dark room, shaking from fear, the small fantasy brings you comfort.

More shots ring out — you hear shouting, but you cannot make out what language through the thick concrete walls of the factory. When the heavy door suddenly rattles violently, like someone is trying to force it open, the room suddenly erupts in a flurry of chaotic and panicked movements; the air is pierced by crying and screaming. Everyone is scrambling up, trying to get away from the door. In the crush, you fall back, awkwardly wedged between bodies—the girl you had been holding before has disappeared in the darkness. The door rattles again; it sounds like someone is trying to break it down.

More screaming, the mass of people moves back even more. It’s getting hard to breathe and the uncomfortable angle of your body—upper body leaned back, feet barely touching the ground—makes it hard to push back. It’s getting hot.

The door explodes open—the last oxygen is pushed from your lungs—light streams into the room. You aren’t sure if the spots in your vision are from the sudden blinding brightness or it’s your consciousness slipping. Just when you think you’ll lose grasp, eyes fluttering closed, the bodies disperse. Stumbling forward, you follow the flow of the crowd out the door. All the noise seems far away as you try to catch your breath.

A tall figure is motioning sternly at the door opening, commanding everyone to come out. You do your best to keep pace with the rest, coughing dryly, trying to keep yourself from tripping over your own feet.

Hurrying out the door, tearing up from the bright May sunshine stinging your eyes, you’re stopped dead in your tracks by someone calling out your name.

“Anya? - Anya!”

You haven’t heard that voice in so long, for a moment, you are confused. You should know who that is. Turning toward the voice, eyes still struggling to focus — your breath stocks mid-cough.

“Emil!” You choke out. It’s been almost two years now since you last saw him. Blinking, you stare at him — he’s dressed in his pre-war military uniform, looking more clean-cut than you have ever seen him, two rifles slung over his back. It’s making you acutely aware you are standing there in dirty coveralls and messy hair after sleeping on the floor for the past week.

He pulls you into a hug, clapping his hand a little too hard on your shoulder, rattling your skeleton.

“I’m so glad you made it,” He admits.

“I’m glad to see you well,” You reply with a smile. “What’s the occasion?” You motion to his uniform as you pull away, awkwardly straightening your coveralls as if that would hide the grease stains.

Emil smiles at you — and it’s probably the most genuine smile you’ve ever seen on him. “We’re liberating the city.”

“I want to fight too.” The words are out of your mouth before you fully realize the implication — but you are determined.

“I didn’t expect anything less from you,” Emil laughs, not in an unfriendly way, but in the way a big brother humors his younger sibling. “And I could use your help right away.”

A dizzying amount has happened since the fall of Berlin, since you’ve been locked away in the factory — the Allies under Patton are crossing the border into Bohemia, while the Soviets have punched through the eastern defensive line at the Dukla pass. The Wehrmacht and SS are retreating from the oncoming fronts on both sides — which is, unfortunately, driving them straight into the valley of central Bohemia and straight into Prague.

“We will not allow them to have their last stand here,” Emil concludes as you follow him through the motor pool. You nod fiercely. If the Nazis are allowed to build a final stronghold here, the Allies and Soviets will not hesitate to raze the entire city to the ground if it will end the war.

“But first, we need trucks,” He states, looking around pensively. “Unfortunately, the guards were probably warned of the government army mutiny in the city, and they’ve gotten rid of all the keys.”

“You need mechanics first,” You cut him off. “Most of these trucks were sabotaged in one way or another.” You add sheepishly. Emil shakes his head, laughing.

“Again, I wouldn’t expect anything less from you in a factory where they had the misfortune of putting you to work.”

“How many do you need?” You get straight to business. “I can put together teams to check the trucks and-”

“And how will we start them, Anya?”

“Lucky for you,” You frown, trying not to sound arrogant as you pull the cabin door of the truck open. “I’m quite the expert on ignition systems now.”

Clambering in, you waste no time ramming the heel of your boot repeatedly into the metal plating under the steering wheel. The ongoing shortages of almost everything meant that the overall quality of factory parts had decreased. The screws are weak — you’ve turned so many of them just but simply trying to affix the plating, you know that a few well-placed kicks will shake them right out of their holes.

Emil has climbed up the steps and is looking at you skeptically. But you are right; at the fourth kick, the metal plate practically pops out of place. Prying it away with your fingers, the small screws scatter over the cabin floor. Now for the best part. Reaching into the hollow under the steering wheel, you gently tug at the contact cables. One comes out so easily; you know it would have probably disconnected at the first large bump in the road. The other one needs a little bit more cajoling before it releases from the ignition.

Triumphantly, you show the two cables to Emil, stepping on the clutch as you twist the exposed copper ends together. The truck roars to life.

“So, how many did you need?” You reiterate lightly. Emil claps you on your back as he laughs again. You cough uncomfortably. Spending several years traveling in partisan groups has robbed Emil of some of his gentler habits.

You have a renewed energy as you pull out your toolbox and direct the women who decided to stay, check over any trucks in the motor pool and ready them for rollout. You work until your fingers bleed — but it doesn’t matter. Liberation is close, and you're determined to speed up the process in any way you can.

It’s late afternoon as the last of the trucks rolls out from the motor pool. Emil climbs into the cabin; you are hot on his heels.

“What’s next?” You ask almost breathlessly, so wired in anticipation you can barely feel the pain in your hands and the tiredness prickling behind your eyes. Emil smiles down at you from the passenger seat, as you balance on the bottom step of the truck cabin. “Go home, Anya,” He tells you, in that same borderline patronizing voice that a big brother would use for their annoying sibling.

“I want to help,” You defend yourself. Haven’t you proven again and again that you are capable enough? Why are you being sent home like some small child? “I can help.”

“Go home, eat, and rest up,” Emil re-iterates, undisturbed by your acerbic tone. The truck rumbles impatiently. “When you are ready, come find me.”

You deflate a little. “Find you where?” “Do you remember where old Vineyard Street is?”

“Of course I do!” You bite out, almost offended. It’s one of the main streets on the eastern side of town, leading from the river valley over the large hill and ending somewhere on the far outskirts of the metro area. It was renamed to Schweiner Street at the start of the occupation, like so many streets, but you never forgot.

“Then I’ll see you there!” He grins, hand on the door, slowly pulling it close. You jump back onto the ground.

“Wait!” You call out over the roaring engine sound. “Where on Vinyard Street?”

The longest fucking street in the city, half of it steeply uphill.

“You’ll know it when you see it!”

Fuck. As the trucks roll away, the energy leaves you, too. Dragging your heavy feet, you finally start getting ready to get home.

You’ll know when you see it? Fucking riddles are the last thing you need now.

***

It’s pitch dark when you finally reach the bottom of Vineyard Street. A warm shower, hot gruel, and fitful sleep strangely make for the best few hours you’ve had in weeks. Dressed in fresh clothes, hands buried deep in the pockets of your increasingly threadbare green wool coat, you keep your gaze down.

It’s chilly for a night in early May when the sun takes all the warmth with it as soon as it goes down. But you can smell the blooms in the air, and the first lilacs are dotting the streets in happy colors. There are no stars in the sky; only an occasional flicker of the moon peeks out between the heavy clouds rolling by.

It’s eerily quiet. The streets lights are off, and most buildings are dark. The whole city looks like this. As a precaution, you have been moving through side streets, keeping out of sight from patrols. Small groups of people are moving through the dark — you can’t tell if they are friend or foe, so you’re not staying around to find out.

There is a strange buzz in the air. It has you on edge.

Before leaving home, you emptied the old cardboard box you had wedged deep behind the heavy wooden armoire in your bedroom. It’s where you kept everything you never wanted anyone to find: the old fake identities, your gun, and Bradley’s identification bracelet. The cold metal of the gun presses uncomfortably against the small of your back.

Ironically, what feels even stranger is the foreign weight of Bradley’s bracelet on your wrist. You’ve never worn it before — it was always tucked in your pocket or twisted around your fingers. It feels odd as it’s a bit big on you, almost sagging down your hand. But more than anything, it feels right. There’s a reason you still have it; there’s a reason you put it on tonight. If anything, it makes you feel less alone as you make your way through the darkness, preparing for the battle ahead. The road ahead of you goes up at a steep angle. From your vantage point at the bottom of the hill, the street disappears into the darkness before you. It’s eerie, like you are looking at a ghost town. Not a single light is on as far as you can see, the buildings flanking the road looming.

You’ll know it when you see it.

As you trudge up the street, you can’t help but feel hesitant. See what? What are you on the lookout for? What if you miss it?

You hear the faint echo of voices. It stops you dead in your tracks, heart beating frantically. Hands sweaty, you can fumble open your coat, reaching back for the gun tucked in your waistband. Back flat against the wall, you edge up the street.

You can’t see over the top of the road, where it flattens out for about a block before it the way pitches up at a severe angle again. But the flicker of lights, reflected in the dark windows around you, catches your eye. Someone or something is just over the edge.

Holding your breath, afraid to make the smallest sound, you shuffle up the sidewalk. The light becomes brighter, growing from small sparks reflected in the dark windows, to a soft flickering glow cast on the walls. You hear the echo of whispers. It’s hard to pinpoint where they are coming from, the sound strangely, hauntingly, bouncing down the barren street. Craning your neck, trying to peer up, catch a glimpse of some movement at the top of the road. The closer you get, the more you expect to see over the bend, see where the voices and lights are coming from.

But there is just darkness. If it weren’t for the surrounding buildings, you’d be sure the way up was simply vanishing in never-ending darkness. Your hands are shaking, fingers gripping the gun tightly. The more you try to calm yourself down, the harder the tremors become. The strange sense of impending terror has been creeping up on you with every step, slowly completely devouring you, until your breath is stocking in your throat, your chest is tight, and your legs feel like they are filled with jello.

You can’t stop the small whimper escaping your lips. You have to keep going. Standing on an unlit street, by yourself, with a gun in your hand in the middle of the night, is bound to get you into trouble. You have to trust that you will find Emil.

Willing your legs forward, almost tripping as your ankle gives out as you put weight on it, but it doesn’t deter you. If anything, it makes you angry enough to keep going.

It’s only another minute before you reach the top of the road, and it’s like a bubble pops and you’re stepping into a completely different world.

The cobblestone street is dug up, the stones built high in three-line deep barricades — cars, trams, and furniture are haphazardly piled between the cobblestones. The whispers are clear now, yet as unintelligible as before — there is no one source of light, just flashes of lanterns between the barricades.

You are stunned. For sure, there is no way you could have missed that, but of all the things you were expecting to find — this, whatever this is, wasn’t it. Even after years of living under occupation, bombings, and soldiers marching down the street, Bradley; you feel wholly unprepared for walking into, well, a battlefield.

Aimlessly standing before the first barricade, eyes wide, you only belatedly notice you are starting down the barrel of a rifle perched just over the top of the pile of stones.

Shit.

“I - I,” The words barely make it out of your mouth between the shaky breaths. You put your hands up more by instinct than by rational purpose. Bradley’s bracelet is heavy on your wrist.

“Get down!” A voice hisses from behind the barricade. You practically fall to the ground, your knees buckling. Breaking your ungraceful movement downward with your hands, the gun you have been holding all this time clatters loudly against the stones. A few moments of silence pass before a hand, holding a burning cigarette between the fingers as the only source of light, beacons you with a simple wave.

“Stay low!” The voice hisses again. You scramble, clumsily cramming the gun in your coat pocket, before crawling on hands and knees to a lower spot in the barricade. Just when you start crawling over, someone grabs you by the arm and pulls you over forcefully. You yelp as you vault over the pile of rocks, landing on your elbow.

“I almost thought you wouldn’t make it, Anya,” Emil grins at you, a lit cigarette loosely hanging from his lips. His uniform still looks crisp but has a vague whiff of mothballs. Rubbing your elbow, you sit up, frowning.

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” You deadpan, trying to save some of your dignity. Looking around, there are a lot more people than you anticipated. Now that you are inside the barricade, small groups of people are crouched down, huddled together. You realize that the flickering ghostly lights you have seen are matches lighting cigarettes.

Keeping low, you follow Emil to the far end of the barricade.

“Did you sleep before you came here?” He asks, shrugging the rifle off his shoulder and sitting down, leaning against the smooth wooden surface of a dinner table jammed into the barricade as structural support.

“A couple of hours,” You reply, still glancing around, trying to understand what is happening around you.

“Good,” Emil yawns as he hands you the rifle before making himself comfortable. “You’re on night watch.”

Hesitantly, you reach for the rifle. You notice Emil’s eyes flash towards your wrist as you grab it from him. A little bit too fast, you pull the rifle from his hands, covertly trying to pull the sleeve of your coat further over your wrist before he can ask.

You’ve done nothing wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s your business and yours alone, you think tersely. So why are you so afraid of getting questioned?

Mercifully, Emil has already pulled his cap over his eyes.

Before you manage to settle, trying to find a comfortable spot while leaning into the high barricade, rifle aimed over the top, you hear soft snoring.

Peering into the darkness over the river valley, distressingly few lights spread throughout the city; these are the last moments of peace and quiet you will know for a long time. Before the sun comes up, someone comes to relieve you from the watch. Emil is still fast asleep. Handing the rifle on, you huddle beside Emil, burrowing in your coat.

You don’t feel tired at all, you think. You are wired with anticipation. This is it. This is the last stand.

Freedom or death.

Your body catches up before your brain does — you don’t know how long you have been asleep. It could have been a catnap or hours. Whatever it is, it wasn’t enough. Your eyes feel so heavy. So much so it’s a struggle to open them. You sigh tiredly. Around you, voices are chattering — you can’t really hear what they are saying, just the shape of words and sounds that reach your ears.

When you realize that you won’t fall asleep again, your brain finally starts up, and you become much more aware of your surroundings. There’s something heavy on your head, pulled over your eyes. Lazily shrugging it off, you blink heavily against the sun, still bleary-eyed.

“Anya, are you awake?” Emil materializes next to you, crouched down. He deftly picks up his cover from your lap, where it fell, neatly setting it on his head again. Did he put that on your head to shield your eyes from the morning sun?

As aloof as Emil always has been, awkward in friendly gestures, he is kind.

However, following Emil as a shadow is Jan. He’s hard to miss, but you didn’t notice him last night. You look at him pointedly, daring him to say something. He meets your gaze shortly before huffing and turning away. Emil doesn’t notice, or isn’t interested in noticing, as he unfolds a map in front of you.

The battle is beginning.

***

You are running. The ground is shaking under your feet; you’ve never felt something like it. Things you are pretty sure shouldn't move, like whole buildings, are quaking. The sound of the artillery shells tearing through stone and flesh is deafening, but somehow, your heavy breathing is louder than anything else in your head.

As a shell hits so close, you almost skid down the stairs you’re running up, as it turns the whole world into jello for a moment—the paper map of the city in your pocket crinkles as your hip collides with the wall. Between the explosions and screams, it’s such a mundane sound it sticks out. You clutch onto the railing for dear life.

Is it possible to be so scared you just stop being scared?

You are not sure if you’re feeling anything right now.

All you can think about is that you need to get to the roof. High up on the hill, you and several others were sent sprinting up the road, looking for an even higher vantage point to see where the guns are. You hesitate to really think why some doors to buildings are open: the windows smashed, the facades charred. The silence, the complete lack of human sound in the buildings, is far more chilling than the hellfire raining down on you.

It’s quiet now.

You wait for almost half a minute, frozen on the stairs you almost slipped down, hands still around the railing so tightly your knuckles have turned white. The explosions don’t return.

They may be recalculating their trajectory, picking new targets.

You scramble up, not even bothering to dust yourself off. Part of you wants to start running again to get to the top of the building as fast as possible. But your gut tells you to tiptoe, not betray your position.

Trust your gut.

It has gotten you this far.

Threading lightly in your heavy boots, holding your breath intermittently as you make your way up the next two flights of stairs. Outside, it’s still quiet; you can even hear the birds twitter in the trees again — it’s completely surreal.

But then you hear it. At first, so softly, you think you must be imagining it. There is no one here. But it sounds like a voice. Not like someone in conversation but someone dictating — flat inflection, clipped tones.

You tiptoe up the next flight of stairs. On the landing, you see one apartment door open. Someone is here — no one should be here. This is dangerous. Should you be scared? But try as you might, you can’t really recall the feeling: the icy grip on your heart, the knot in your stomach. Is it because you haven’t felt anything but fear in the past few days? Is it just part of you now?

You pull out your gun with a calmness you hardly thought you could possess in a moment like this. Carefully, you click the safety off. The soft click echoes through the hall, but the voice drones on undeterred.

Creeping past the entry door, the house you enter is in disarray. Whoever lived here fled — afraid of the Nazis feeling from the east, afraid of the Soviets following them or the Allies closing the pincer from the west. Who knows.

People spent the war in many ways. Someone was always going to lose. Those who chose to support the Nazi regime are already being rounded up—those who flee run west. The Americans are kinder captors than the Russians, they say.

A small twinge in your soul. Will the Allies beat the Red Army to Bohemia? Could it be that…

You bury the thought as you move deeper into the apartment.

Now is not the time for dreaming.

You hold the gun pointed at the ground — grip firm, not frantic. Breathing steady, not panicked.

The voice becomes louder. The door between you and the voice is slightly ajar, muffling the sound. It’s definitely a man’s voice. And he’s speaking… German?

You falter for a moment, coming to a standstill in the hallway.

What are you about to walk in on? A scout? A spy? A group left behind?

Holding your breath for a moment, you close your eyes. Focus.

You can only hear one voice — that much you are sure about. But as you listen, that is not what stands out. It’s that low buzz, the crackle of static. It’s a sound so etched into your mind you are almost surprised you didn’t hear it earlier.

You’re only hearing one voice because whoever is in there is relaying something through radio in German.

With the tip of your boot, you gently push the door open. The hinges whine softly. You slink through the opening.

It looks like a bomb went off in the sitting room. The floor is covered in books and broken glass. The windows are wide open, the curtains billowing into the room. And there, by the window, crouched between the chaos, is a figure dictating coordinates he is reading from a map.

Suddenly, it all makes sense, but you also don’t understand anything about what you see.

Glass breaks under your boot.

Jan turns around, eyes wide. Within a fraction of a second, his face turns red, like a kid that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

That moment might have been less than a second; it might have been ten. You don’t know. You can’t feel. You can’t think.

You just raise your arm, pointing your gun at his head.

Not a single tremor in your aim. Not a hitch in your breathing. You squeeze the trigger.

The recoil is the only thing you feel. Jan slumps against the wall, the radio still buzzing. Blood gushes from this head, quickly pooling around his lifeless body.

Methodically, like it’s just your physical form going through the motions, you simply brush past the body, turning off the radio and wrenching the Nazi map Jan had been holding.

Every barricade on the hill is marked on it. Jan had been calling in the positions of the uprising strongholds to the artillery battery on the other bank.

Your blood should run cold. You should be angry. One of your own.

Instead, you tear off the tricolor resistance armband off Jan’s arm. He’s not one of you. He will not be remembered as one of you.

When you return to the barricade Emil is commanding, he’s waiting for you already. Wordlessly, you hand him Jan’s map and armband. Emil doesn’t say anything — he just looks at you. At first, you think it’s with pity. When he claps his hand on your shoulder a little too forcefully, somewhat awkwardly, you realize it isn’t pity in his eyes. It’s sympathy.

Someone hands you tea in a chipped enamel mug. Sitting down on an upturned apple crate, the enamel too hot against your fingers, you catch sight of Bradley’s bracelet on your wrist. In just a few days, the weight has become so familiar, such a constant, you almost forgot it’s there.

Your stomach twists. It’s the first thing you’ve really felt in hours. Bradley was the first person you ever pointed a gun at. It’s very vivid in your mind how much your hands shook, how breathing in the icy mountain weather hurt your lungs, and how the terror coursed through every fiber of your body.

You felt so much, you felt so deeply then.

It’s strange. Alien. You know it happened to you but in a different lifetime. It’s like you’re fragmented. The you who was a student wasn’t the you who met Bradley. The you who said goodbye to Bradley wasn’t the you who sabotaged trucks. The you that has killed… you’re not even sure if there’s anything left of you, really.

In the hours and days to follow, you barely get the time to ponder the changes in yourself when the world is rapidly changing around you. A world born from flames and blood. The artillery batteries pound resistance positions and soon get support from the air. The high whine of Stukas, in broad daylight, rain bullets and incendiary bombs down on the city. The plumes of smoke obscure the sky. The smell of fire, burning houses, fabric… bodies, permeates.

When a breeze picks up, you think, you hope you can still smell lilacs. Just to assure yourself that the putrid smell of burnt rubber, scorched flesh, and hair has not settled in your nose permanently.

“Why aren’t the Allies coming to help?” A young man, his old uniform jacket dirty, sleeves slightly too short, peers out of the broken cellar window into the street as a sortie passes low overhead. Emil, after days of fighting, is not looking as crisp anymore — streaks of dirt cover his face, his uniform dusty, tired look in his eyes. “After all we’ve done -” The young man turns angrily. “Where is the RAF?”

You don’t bother looking up; instead, you inspect your dirty fingertips and broken nails. Idly, you wonder if your hands will ever be clean again. Mindlessly, you tug on your coat sleeve — the seam is fraying — gently brushing your calloused fingertips across Bradley’s nameplate. Every ridge and divot of his embossed name and the insignia are a comfort, a constant. Every time you remember to feel the weight on your wrist, your heart skips a beat — it’s still there, it’s still real. It’s your final tether to him. Your final tether to you.

“The weather over the channel still hasn’t cleared up,” Emil finally replies, voice monotone.

“And the Americans are stopped at the demarcation line in the west,” You add, closing your eyes and leaning your head back against the bare cellar wall. When you first heard that Patton’s army crossed the border and liberated the city of Pilsen, you were so sure it was only hours until they’d make it into Prague.

That was two days ago.

“And we are stuck here, in hellfire, no air support, and cut off from supply lines by an entire Army Group and the SS,” The young man spits. “We are left to die while the Red Army takes its sweet time — they skipped liberating us to get to Berlin first, and now we’re the last defense for every Nazi in Europe!”

“To fight is to die, soldier,” Emil intones mildly, in that same bored tone as he plays with his lighter. “You knew that, and yet you picked up a gun.”

Silence falls in the cellar. Outside, the explosions rumble, sending tremors through the ground. You are not scared of dying. If you ever were, then you can’t even really remember anymore. Fear, anger, happiness, you know what they are, you know you’ve felt them, but now it’s like a thick fog has taken its place. All you feel is kind of nauseous, tired, and the chill from the wall behind you.

Before you know it, you are back on your feet, clambering into a truck, tearing down the hill toward Resistance HQ in the old town. Someone dumps a glug of clear alcohol over your hands, in a vain attempt to clean them. You wince as you desperately wipe down your hands with a rag, the alcohol penetrating every crack and cut in your skin. There is no running water anymore. This will have to do.

The uprising is only a few days old, but the horrors you’ve witnessed are more than you have seen in the years of occupation. The carcasses of burned-out residential buildings barely stop smoking before a new salvo of artillery lands. Bodies — fighters, civilians, enemies, limbs — litter the street. Fireballs light up the night sky so brightly it almost looks like daytime in a terrifying, incredible display. The smell is unbelievable.

A jumped-up schoolgirl playing at war.

Maybe there was more truth in that than you’d like to admit.

However, you don’t have time to dwell on it as the truck finally comes to a violent halt. In the first few seconds, you barely recognize where you are. It’s like walking into a wasteland that was once the old town. You used to walk down this street every day, from the tram to class. The town hall, which was used as the HQ for the uprising, is… no there anymore. The air is thick with smoke and dust. The ground is strangely hot, and everything is cast in a strange orange glow from the surrounding fires.

Pulling a rag from your pocket, you tie it around your face. It does little against the smell, but it at least stops some dust and smoke from choking you completely. After that, you move on autopilot.

Save whom can be saved.

Note who didn’t make it.

Get out before the Luftwaffe returns.

Your heart is beating a mile a minute, adrenaline coursing through your veins. But you aren’t scared, focusing only on your task: pushing away rubble, helping victims up, trying to stop the bleeding on a too-deep leg wound, grunting in exertion as you push the stretcher with the man above your head so he can get pulled into the back to the truck—a flash.

You blink, disorientated. Colorful spots fill your vision.

Turning, you try to find the source of it in the chaos and the smoke. More flashes. Finally, your sight refocuses — someone is taking pictures. Through all the noise, you hear it clear as day.

“Let’s go; we need to get out of here.”

It’s an American.

Your feet start walking before your brain catches up. The man is walking quickly to another truck with a Red Cross. The Red Cross is here? Your breathing is rapid now. You need to talk to them. You have no idea what you will tell the photographer, but you need to speak to him.

You pick up your pace. The Red Cross photographer is disappearing quickly through the smoke.

“Wait!” You yell out, pulling the rag from your face. He is already climbing into the truck cabin. “Hey! Wait!” You yell louder, more desperately.

He looks over his shoulder, straight at you. It looks like the Red Cross photographer waits for you to catch up for a moment, but then he slams the truck door shut. You break out into a sprint, almost reaching the truck before it tears away.

“Fuck you!” You scream, tears suddenly stinging in your eyes. Breathing heavily, you stay behind, seething, on the torn-up street, watching the Red Cross truck disappear in the mess of the medieval maze of the old town.

The desperate anger is the first thing you have felt in days. It’s overwhelming. Suffocating.

Distracting.

It’s only when someone almost knocks you over as they run past you in a mad dash, it’s like you wake up from the wash of madness that had you rooted in place.

A high-pitched whistle pierces the air, closing in on you at frighting speed.

You run, scrambling over the broken pieces of stone, slipping over pools of blood.

Don’t look back.

The truck with the wounded is behind you.

Don’t look back.

You need to get out of here, find any place to hide.

Don’t look back.

It must be a mere second before impact now; the whistle of the bomb is so loud your eardrums scream along with it.

In a fatal moment, you turn your head.

A sea of flames melts the truck from sight. The pressure wave, so hot your mouth is drier than cotton on the first breath, is powerful it lifts your feet from the ground and carries you up like a feather in the wind.

“I’m flying,” Is all your brain manages to conjure up in the split second, almost with a sense of wonder and joy, before your body is flung against a wall. Crashing to the ground, you lose consciousness as fire rains down on you.

note | good news: war is almost over. bad news: everything else

#bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #bradley bradshaw x female reader #rooster bradshaw #top gun maverick #rooster fanfic #rooster top gun #rooster x oc #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #rooster x you #rooster x female reader #top gun fanfiction #bradley bradshaw imagine #rooster bradshaw x female reader #rooster bradshaw fic #bradley bradshaw x oc #rooster bradshaw x oc

63 notes · View notes