flcksin:
he’s pushing her away. everything he does is an attempt to push her away but she always remains here. he always wakes up with her by his side, and she never leaves. twenty three minutes at a time. sometimes he wants her to leave for good. to never return. if only because he thinks he deserves that as a consequence for all the atrocities he’s done within his life. but she still comes back. she still comes back after twenty three minutes, smiling at him, kissing him, trying to dominate him by straddling and pinning him down. he always lets her, as if he is futile in any attempt to make her release him. and his mind is so foggy. so misted by this idea that he does not belong in the world, or belong to be happy. he has been conditioned with the thought of it since he was a boy. since he had experienced all of that trauma and violence. all of those cruel words that inhabit his mind even now.
and he feels her against him. how she touches the scars on his body. scars that have show a lifetime of pain. of experience with pain. of trauma. and he can feel how soft her hands are and her lips that kiss his collarbone. and he wants to remain standing up straight, proudly like a lion with its chest puffed out. looking over its territory. but he can’t. he can feel his walls breaking down with each word she says. he can feel himself breaking down, because what she says are the kindest words he’s heard in his life. and everything she says is something special to him. and she doesn’t even realise it. but it breaks him. sometimes he’ll hide in the wardrobe as much as a grown man can, whilst she’s downstairs. he’ll wipe his eyes because he’s being given an opportunity of happiness, but he can’t quite take it. something stops him. and willow sees this clearer than anyone. she rams against it, like a battling ram. “ n-no ” he says once again trying to protest the idea. but she sounds so insistent, and his voice is weaker than it typically is. than it should be. because she’s winning. for once, she wins against all his insecurities that penetrate his mind.
and she points out what has hurt him. julie. she hurt him more than he lets on. when he speaks to her of his ex-girlfriend, he seems to shrug it off. he grumbles as if it’s meaningless. but she’s seen the sadness in his eyes. the pain that remains there after all of these years. because sometimes pain is permanent. this is what joe has discovered. sometimes it’s simply inescapable. and he swallows hard now, enough to hurt his throat, if only because he’s trying to keep emotion back. from not breaking down into a crumbling mess. although maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. the water from the showerhead would hide him. and he accepts her hold, his own arms envelop around her - tighter than he’s ever held her. it’s truthful. it’s genuine. a hold of a man who doesn’t want to let someone so special go. because she’s a jewel to him. she’s perfect. “ i love you and i…a-and i’m sorry ” he breathes to her, holding her as he buries his face against the crook of her neck. he finds comfort there. he can feel her beating pulse against his cheek. “ i won’t…i don’t want you to go. ever. never ”
it can’t be easy. joe, a man who’s never quite been told of his significance to the world. a man who clings tightly to the vigilante work he does just to give him a reason to exist. an excuse. but it’s different now. he has her. willow, a woman so weightless that she has let the wind carry her for as long as she can remember. it is why none of this has made sense and perhaps it has been unfair of her to assume it would be easy for a man like joe to fall in line with their way of being. it’s only been easier for willow to engage in this whirlwind of a relationship because love is all she’s ever sought after. affection. but joe doesn’t even think himself worthy of this. and she wishes she could give him all that he thinks himself worthy of. but it is nothing. it is death if anything. and she still can’t seem to forget the way she would walk into his room with the tv remote in hand only to find him placing the blade of a knife into his mouth.
her fingertips do not relent in their pursuit to make him feel better. they trace, now, over the scar on the center of his chest. lengthy and jagged. she wonders whether he had received such a nasty gash while in the fbi. or had it been after? one of those disgusting men that work at those playpens, capturing young girls to sell off to rich men who wish to buy them out. “ yes, ” she protests back, looking towards him with saddened eyes. does he not see that this has happened for a reason? that life or god has brought them together for reasons that are beyond them both? and why question it or push such sentiment away when they can both have what it seems they have always longed for. “ you deserve me and i deserve you. ” and she firmly believes this. perhaps this is why it didn’t work out with julie. the hellish woman with no heart. but willow remembered a time or two when something really terrible would happen at home. when her mother would catch her drunken father forcing her and david to play a round of russian roulette. when she would fall ill because the arguments weighed too much upon her weak heart. it didn’t matter what the circumstance was. her mother would always smile sweetly, and place her delicate hand over willow’s. everything happens for a reason. the good and the bad, my willow tree. and maybe fate had only thought it reasonable that joe would be made to wait fourteen years for a woman so unlike him. so unlike julie.
and she closes her eyes as he tugs her closer. she would complain of how difficult he makes it to breathe if not for the fact that she feels her safest when he is so close. “ don’t apologize. ” she murmurs, lifting her other hand to tangle into his mess of curls. “ i won’t go anywhere. i’ll stay with you as long as you want me to. ” all she can hope for is forever.
