*Movies*
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Thomas Brown Hewitt
Sweet Tea & Something Rotten
Point Break Bodhi
Life of Ice
Dunkirk Collins
Drowning Lovers
Harry Potter Lorenzo Berkshire
The nice one
Twilight Seth Clearwater
Like Family
Twilight Jasper Hale
93 Percent Stardust
Divergent Eric Coulter
Drift Compatible (Pacific Rim AU)
Part I _ It’s Bad
Part II _ It's Ok
Don't Breathe Norman Nordstrom
Part I _ Quiet house, quiet man
Part II _ Quiet house, quiet man
House of Wax Sinclair Brothers
Part I _ Bound to Ambrose
Part II _ Bound to Ambrose
Part III _ Bound to Ambrose
Part IV _ Bound to Ambrose
Fast and Furious Han Lue
Smoke and Citrus - Masterlist
Dunkirk Collins
Drowning Lovers
Part I _ Afternoon (Request by @doctoriletyougotogalaxy)
Part II _ Afternoon (Request by @doctoriletyougotogalaxy)
*TV Series*
Money Heist Aníbal Cortés
The Boy Behind the Gun
Chicago Med Ethan Choi
Trauma Two
SKAM Christoffer Schistad
Hate you
Vikings Athelstan
I’ll always come back
The Walking Dead Daryl Dixon
Dog, Dixon and Dinner
Boots Joshua Jones
Where it's safe to breathe
Part II _ Where it's safe to breathe
Peaky Blinders John Shelby
Part I _ Safe
Part II _ Safe
Versailles Louis XIV
The sun - Masterlist
Yu-Gi-Oh! Joey Wheeler
A Diamond in the Dust
Learning to trust you
Yu-Gi-Oh! Jazz Princeton
Say that again, Princeton
*Games*
Call of Duty Task Force 141
A "quiet" Christmas
No Complaints (Inspired by @konigs-lover)
Call of Duty John "Soap" MacTavish
Where silence breaks
Call of Duty Simon "Ghost" Riley
Pre-Mission: You
It's worth it
Part I _ Tactical Temperature Control
Part II_ Tactical Temperature Control
Part III _ Tactical Temperature Control
Call of Duty Alex Keller
I've got you
Call of Duty König
The Cabin Exhibit - Masterlist
Beyond: Two Souls Jodie Holmes
Not everything invisible is alone
The last of us Joel Miller
What we ... - Masterlist
The last of us Tommy Miller
Sweetheart
Enough to feel guilty
The Last of Us Abby Anderson & Lev
Part I _ Incorrect Quotes
Part II _ Incorrect Quotes
Detroit: Become Human Connor
Protocol: Protecting Connor
Part II _ Protocol: Protecting Connor
Detroit: Become Human Markus
Anomalous Parameters Detected
Part II _ Anomalous Parameters Detected
*Real People*
Heath Hussar
You made a person
HIM Ville Valo
A Pause between verses
Colby Brock
The warmest winter
Part II - The warmest winter
*Trigger warning* mentions of eating disorders, purging, misunderstanding of mental health struggles, being followed, invasion of privacy, emotional manipulation, suspicion, secrecy, supernatural themes, mild angst, tension
Forks High School had never been good at keeping secrets, mostly because there were too few people inside it and too much rain outside it, so gossip had a way of growing in the damp, spreading through hallways and cafeteria tables and parking lot clusters until everyone knew who had broken up, who had failed biology, who had cried in the bathroom after third period, who had gotten too drunk at someone’s house in Port Angeles and blamed it on bad pizza.
And yet, somehow, you had made yourself impossible to know.
That was the first thing Jasper Hale noticed about you.
Not that you were pretty, though you were, in a way that made humans stare before they remembered staring was rude, with skin that looked alive beneath the fluorescent lights and eyes that changed softly in every weather, never too bright, never too still, never reflecting the light in the way theirs did when they forgot to pretend. Not that you were popular either, though you were that too, effortlessly and strangely, slipping from one group to another as if you had been born knowing exactly how to belong, laughing with a group of literature majors one moment, helping a graduate student carry photography equipment across campus the next, listening patiently while an engineering student explained a film he had completely misunderstood, then stopping outside a lecture hall to compliment a first-year student on her earrings with the kind of sincerity that made her blush for ten minutes afterward.
No, the thing Jasper noticed first was that you did all of it too well.
Humans were messy creatures.
They contradicted themselves without realizing it, wore emotions too loudly, stumbled over lies, fidgeted when nervous, flushed when embarrassed, leaned toward people they liked and away from people they did not, and even Bella, whose silence had always been its own shield, had human fragility in the odd placement of her feet, the delayed way she reacted to jokes, the faint, involuntary tightening around her eyes whenever Edward’s attention shifted too suddenly.
You had none of that.
Or rather, you had enough of it to pass.
A small smile at the right time. A breath taken before answering a teacher. A heartbeat steady enough to go unnoticed by any human ear and warm skin that had made Bella look at Edward in confusion the first time your fingers brushed hers when you handed her a dropped pen.
“She’s human,” Bella had said afterward, quietly, as they stood near Edward’s Volvo beneath a sky the color of old steel. “I touched her.”
Edward had looked toward the school doors, where you had just disappeared into a cluster of students, laughing at something Eric Yorkie had said. “She thinks like one too.”
Rosalie had scoffed, arms folded so tightly across her chest she looked carved from irritation and marble. “That means absolutely nothing. Humans can be suspicious.”
“Not like that,” Edward had murmured.
Emmett, leaning against the Jeep with his usual careless grin, had tilted his head. “Not like what?”
Edward’s expression had gone distant in the way it did when he was listening to something no one else could hear. “Her thoughts are… ordinary. Homework. Lunch. That essay for English. Wondering whether the rain will ruin her hair. Nothing unusual.”
Jasper had said nothing then, because that was the problem.
You were too ordinary.
And you avoided them too deliberately for someone who was simply shy.
You never ran from them, never flinched when they entered a room, never stared the way most humans did, caught between attraction and fear without understanding either. You merely arranged yourself away from them with such subtle precision that most people would have thought it coincidence. You chose a different lunch table when Bella sat with Edward. You took the longer route to history when Rosalie was at her locker. You laughed with Emmett once during gym when he made a joke loud enough for half the class to hear, but you never let the conversation deepen. With Jasper, you were polite, almost gentle, yet always gone before politeness could become familiarity.
At first, that was all it was.
A strange girl with a strange kind of perfection.
Then Jasper started noticing the pattern after lunch.
You ate.
That was part of the act, apparently, and you did it with more grace than most humans did anything, picking at cafeteria food as though you had opinions about it, wrinkling your nose at overcooked vegetables, accepting half a cookie from Angela, drinking water from a plastic bottle and swallowing at perfectly timed intervals.
Then, five minutes after the bell, you left.
Never through the front entrance where too many people might see you, never with the rushed desperation of someone skipping class, but through the side doors near the art room, your backpack over one shoulder, your expression calm, your pulse steady, your breathing even.
You came back twelve minutes later.
Not ten. Not fifteen.
Twelve.
Every day.
By the third week, Jasper followed.
He told himself it was necessary, and some part of him believed that, because if you were something dangerous, if you were a threat wearing a human face inside a building full of children who would never hear death coming, then hesitation would be unforgivable. But another part of him, quieter and more uncomfortable, knew that necessity was not what had him moving through the trees behind the school with his steps soundless over wet pine needles, keeping far enough back that no human would have felt watched and close enough that anything inhuman should have noticed.
You noticed.
He knew because your shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly when he crossed into the woods behind you, because your head angled a fraction toward him before returning forward, because for half a second the rhythm of your breath changed, not in fear, not in surprise, but in calculation.
Then you kept walking.
Jasper slowed.
The forest folded around you, thick with damp moss and the cold metallic smell of rain soaked into soil, and you moved through it with an elegance that no human teenager should have possessed, your boots avoiding roots without looking down, your body adjusting to uneven ground as if gravity liked you better than it liked everyone else. There was no panic in you. No guilt. No embarrassment.
Not until you stopped beside a fallen cedar and dropped to your knees.
Jasper froze.
At first, he thought you were hurt.
Then he heard it.
The quiet, controlled sound of someone forcing something out of their body.
The cafeteria food.
The water.
The half cookie.
All of it, rejected by a system that, to Jasper’s understanding, was painfully human and painfully broken.
He turned away before you could look up, some old, buried piece of manners taking hold of him even though he had already crossed too many lines by following you here, and for a moment he stood between two trees with his hands curled at his sides, listening to the rain gather on branches above him and the miserable, careful sound of you trying not to make noise.
Concern arrived before suspicion did.
That unsettled him more than anything else.
Jasper Hale was not soft in the ways people imagined softness. He knew suffering too intimately to be sentimental about it. He had felt fear rot in the air of battlefields, felt grief pour out of newborns as they tore apart lives they could no longer remember wanting, felt rage, hunger, agony, loyalty, terror, and love with such force that humanity had become less a memory than a language he had once spoken fluently and now only understood in pieces.
But standing there, watching the shape of you through the spaces between trees, he felt sympathy move through him with an almost painful pull.
Not because you were fragile.
Because you were hiding.
And he knew hiding.
That evening, he found Carlisle in his study, where the yellow lamplight warmed shelves of books old enough to smell like dust and leather, and he stood in the doorway longer than necessary while Carlisle looked up from a medical journal with the patience of someone who had been waiting for him to decide whether he wanted to speak.
“I need to ask you something,” Jasper said.
Carlisle closed the journal.
Jasper hated how clumsy the words felt. “At school, there’s a girl. She’s been leaving after lunch. I followed her today.”
Carlisle’s expression did not change, but his attention sharpened. “Is she a threat?”
“I don’t know.” Jasper looked at the floor, at the dark grain of wood beneath his boots. “She was making herself sick.”
Carlisle was silent for a moment, not with judgment, but with care. “You believe she may be struggling with an eating disorder?”
“I don’t know what I believe,” Jasper admitted, and that was the closest he had come to the truth all day. “She seems human. Edward says her thoughts are human. Bella touched her hand. She’s warm. Her heart beats. She breathes. But something feels wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Too controlled.”
Carlisle studied him. “And you want to help her?”
The question should have been simple.
It was not.
Jasper thought of you on your knees in the woods, too quiet even in shame, too careful even in pain, and something tightened beneath his ribs, useless and old, where his human heart had once been.
“I want to understand,” he said.
Carlisle rose and crossed to one of the lower shelves, drawing out two books and then a third, his movements thoughtful rather than hurried. “Then begin carefully. If she is human, confrontation could do more harm than good. If she isn’t, compassion may still tell you more than suspicion will.”
Jasper took the books.
The next day, he waited until after history.
You were at your locker, balancing a notebook against your hip while Lauren Mallory complained beside you about an assignment neither of you seemed interested in finishing. You smiled at the right places. Nodded at the right times. Laughed once, soft and bright enough to be believed.
Then Lauren left.
Jasper stepped closer.
Your fingers paused on the spine of a textbook.
For one second, your face emptied.
Then you turned, human again.
“Jasper,” you said, and his name sounded strangely old in your mouth, not accented exactly, but handled with a care most modern people did not give to names. “Can I help you?”
He held out the books.
Your gaze dropped to them.
There were three.
One about disordered eating. One about trauma and secrecy. One about adolescent mental health, borrowed from Carlisle’s collection and disguised under a plain brown cover because Jasper had thought, too late, that carrying such a thing openly through school might embarrass you.
Your heartbeat continued its steady little rhythm.
Your face did not.
The change was small, but it was there, and because Jasper had been watching you too closely for weeks, he saw it. The soft widening of your eyes. The stillness around your mouth. The way your hand, when you lifted it, trembled just enough to seem involuntary.
A flawless performance of being caught.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” he said quietly.
The hallway moved around them, students passing in wet jackets and squeaking shoes, laughter echoing off lockers, someone shouting about a biology quiz, life pressing in from all sides, loud and oblivious.
You took the books from him slowly.
“I don’t know what you think you saw.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Then why give me these?”
“Because someone should.”
That struck something.
He felt it before he saw it.
Not emotion, not in the way he expected. Not shame, not fear, not the hot pulse of humiliation he had prepared himself to soften. There should have been embarrassment rising off you, sour and sharp, or anger, or panic, or denial, something human enough for him to meet with his gift and ease at the edges.
Instead, when he reached toward you with a careful thread of calm, offering comfort without force, your eyes flicked to his.
And something answered.
Cold.
Not cruelty. Not emptiness.
Calm.
A deep, still, ancient calm that did not receive his influence so much as recognize it, touch it, and set it aside.
For the first time since he had seen you, Jasper forgot to pretend to breathe.
Your fingers tightened around the books.
Then your lashes lowered, and the shame returned to your face like a curtain dropping.
“Thank you,” you whispered. “That’s… kind of you.”
Kind.
The word sat between you like a blade wrapped in silk.
Jasper watched you turn and walk away, your steps quick but not too quick, your shoulders drawn inward with just enough mortification to satisfy anyone watching, and every human in the hallway saw a girl embarrassed by unwanted concern.
Jasper saw something else.
He saw a mask adjusting.
That night, the Cullens gathered in the living room, though no one called it a meeting at first, because calling it one would have made Emmett insufferable and Rosalie more irritated than she already was.
Bella sat beside Edward on the sofa, her hands folded tightly in her lap, human enough still to look uneasy even among people who loved her. Edward stood behind her with one hand on her shoulder, his expression strained in the way it became when a thought had too many missing pieces. Rosalie leaned against the far wall, beautiful and cold and angry without needing a reason. Emmett occupied half an armchair, trying and failing not to look entertained by the tension. Carlisle stood near the fireplace, and Jasper remained by the window, watching rain stripe the glass black.
“She’s not human,” Rosalie said.
Bella frowned. “We don’t know that.”
“She’s too pretty, too controlled, too convenient, and she avoids us like she knows exactly what we are.”
“So does half the school,” Emmett said. “In fairness, Rose, you do look like you’re deciding who deserves to live whenever someone breathes too loudly.”
Rosalie shot him a look.
He grinned.
Edward ignored them both. “Her thoughts are still human. If she knows, she isn’t thinking about it.”
“Could she be shielding herself?” Carlisle asked.
Edward’s eyes shifted toward Jasper. “Possibly. But I’ve never heard thoughts like hers. They aren’t silent. They’re simply… normal.”
“Rehearsed,” Jasper said.
Everyone turned to him.
He did not look away from the window. “She reacts correctly, but not naturally. Today, when I tried to calm her, she felt it.”
Edward’s expression sharpened. “She felt your gift?”
“She answered it.”
The room changed.
Not visibly, perhaps, not to anyone outside their family, but Jasper felt it in the sudden stillness of them, in the hard spike of Rosalie’s suspicion, the bright flare of Emmett’s interest, the anxious twist of Bella’s worry, the thoughtful narrowing of Carlisle’s concern.
“What does that mean?” Bella asked.
“I don’t know,” Jasper said. “But humans don’t do that.”
Rosalie pushed off the wall. “Then we confront her.”
“No,” Edward and Jasper said at the same time.
Rosalie’s mouth tightened. “Of course. We’ll just let the unknown creature wander around school because we’re worried about being impolite.”
“If she’s just a strange human, we expose ourselves,” Bella said softly. “And if she isn’t human, cornering her in public could be worse.”
Emmett leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “We could push a little. Nothing dramatic. Just make it harder for her to keep dodging us. Ask weird questions. See if she slips.”
Jasper shook his head. “She won’t.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“She knew I followed her.”
Edward’s head turned sharply. “You didn’t mention that.”
“She chose not to acknowledge it.”
Emmett whistled low. “Okay. That’s not human.”
“Or she’s perceptive,” Carlisle said, though he did not sound convinced by his own mercy.
Rosalie’s eyes flashed. “Carlisle.”
“I’m not dismissing the danger,” he said. “I’m reminding all of us that we don’t yet understand it.”
Jasper finally turned from the window.
He could feel the shape of the room like weather, all their emotions moving against his skin, familiar and loud, but beneath them, beneath memory, there was still the echo of your cold calm touching his gift and refusing to be moved.
“She wants us uncertain,” he said. “That’s the point. She has built herself to be almost human, almost harmless, almost ordinary. Enough that confronting her makes us the threat. Enough that leaving her alone feels irresponsible.”
Bella looked down at her hands. “Why would anyone need to hide like that?”
Jasper did not answer immediately.
He thought of war.
Of newborns.
Of creatures made into weapons before they understood they had once been people.
Of himself, standing in too many rooms with blood on his hands and orders in his ears, learning how to become whatever kept him alive.
“Because something taught her she had to,” he said.
The room went quiet.
Rosalie’s anger cooled at the edges, though it did not disappear.
Edward looked toward Jasper with something unreadable in his face. “You feel something for her.”
Jasper’s expression hardened.
Emmett, wisely, said nothing.
Bella glanced between them, confused at first and then careful, as if the silence itself had given something away.
“It’s not like that,” Jasper said.
But the lie tasted weak even to him.
He did not know you. That was the problem. He did not know what you were, where you came from, what you wanted, whether your smiles were harmless or practiced weapons, whether the heartbeat in your chest belonged to a miracle or a trap. He did not know if the warmth in your skin was borrowed, stolen, created, or imagined. He did not know if you could bleed.
He only knew that when he had handed you those books, expecting human shame, he had found something old looking back at him.
Something that had recognized him.
Something that had understood exactly what he was doing and let him live with the belief that he had been kind.
“Pressure could reveal the enemy in her,” Jasper said, choosing his words carefully. “If she is one. But if she comes forward on her own, we learn more than we would by forcing her hand.”
Rosalie crossed her arms again. “And if she hurts someone before then?”
“She won’t,” Jasper said.
Edward’s brow furrowed. “You can’t know that.”
No.
He could not.
But he remembered the forest. The way you had removed every trace of the food before returning to school. Not because you were sick in the way he had feared, but because vampires could not digest human food, because it sat useless and wrong until forced out again, because the performance of humanity demanded ugly details no one else ever saw.
He remembered the control.
The patience.
The loneliness of it.
“She’s hiding among humans,” Jasper said, “not hunting them.”
Carlisle watched him for a long moment. “Then we observe. Carefully. No confrontation without cause.”
Rosalie did not look pleased.
Emmett looked like he was already planning how to test the word carefully.
Edward looked troubled.
Bella looked sad.
Jasper looked back out the window, past his own reflection, past the warm lights of a house full of monsters trying to be good, and into the dark line of the trees beyond the glass.
The next morning, you were at school before them.
You stood beneath the overhang near the entrance, sharing an umbrella with Angela, your cheeks colored by the cold, your breath fogging softly in the air, the books Jasper had given you held against your chest as if you had actually spent the night reading them.
When his car pulled into the lot, you looked up.
Not at Edward.
Not at Bella.
Not at Rosalie or Emmett.
At him.
For a moment, through the rain and the gray and the stream of human students rushing between them, Jasper felt the world narrow to the distance between your eyes and his.
Then you smiled.
Small.
Grateful.
Human.
And beneath it, where no one else could see, something colder smiled too.
Jasper stepped out of the car, rain settling in his hair, his shoulders still, his expression unreadable as he watched you turn back to Angela and say something that made her laugh.
Could he get behind your secret?
Not yet.
But for the first time, he understood there was a secret to get behind.
And for the first time, he suspected you had wanted him to know.
The first thing Luda Mae said to you, after she found you standing sun-dazed and lost beside the long, empty stretch of road with one hand shielding your eyes and the other gripping the strap of your bag like it was the only solid thing left in Texas, was not directions, or warning, or even a proper greeting, but a soft, appraising little hum that made you feel like a dress on a hanger, turned one way and then the other beneath the shop lights.
“Well now,” she said, her smile spreading slow and pleased across her face, “ain’t you just the prettiest thing.”
You had been too hot, too tired, and too nervous to know what to do with that, so you gave her the kind of smile strangers gave women who looked like they knew everyone’s business before anyone had bothered telling them, and you explained about the car, the wrong turn, the gas gauge that had betrayed you, the fact that you had been trying to get anywhere but here and had somehow ended up nowhere at all.
Luda Mae listened with sympathy so rich it felt almost syrupy, clucking her tongue, patting your arm, calling you sweetheart before she had any right to, and by the time you realized she had never actually answered your question about where the nearest town was, you were already sitting in her kitchen with a sweating glass of iced tea in front of you and the smell of something frying thick in the air.
“You’ll stay for dinner,” she told you, like it was a fact the world had already agreed upon. “A girl like you shouldn’t be out there alone with the sun going down.”
You thought about arguing.
Then the floorboards groaned somewhere beyond the kitchen doorway.
You turned, and every thought inside your head went silent.
He filled the frame like something cut out of a nightmare and placed there wrong, too tall for the room, too broad for the narrow hall, his shoulders hunched slightly as if he had learned to make himself smaller and failed every day of his life. He wore an apron that had seen too much use, heavy boots, dark hair falling damp near his face, and a mask that hid everything except the eyes that flicked once toward you and then immediately away.
Your breath caught so hard it hurt.
Luda Mae’s face brightened as if someone had brought her flowers.
“Tommy,” she said, syrup-sweet and proud, “come say hello.”
He didn’t.
He stood there, one hand flexing at his side, fingers thick and restless, his eyes fixed somewhere on the floor near your chair as though looking directly at you might burn him. You pressed your knees together beneath the table and tried not to stare, tried not to look at the mask, the hands, the size of him, the terrible quiet of him.
“This here is Tommy,” Luda said, and there was something in her voice then, something almost triumphant. “My boy.”
You swallowed. “Hi.”
His eyes snapped to yours for half a second.
Then they dropped again.
Luda watched the two of you with the expression of a woman who had just found exactly the right fabric for curtains she had been planning in her head for years.
Dinner was strange.
Not bad, exactly, though every creak of the house made you jump and every shadow in the hallway seemed to have too many corners. Luda talked enough for all three of you, asking questions, answering some of them herself, fussing over your plate, telling Tommy to pass this and fetch that, all while he moved in silence, enormous and careful, placing things down near you without ever letting his hand brush yours.
You were afraid of him at first.
Of course you were.
A big, burly man in a mask who wouldn’t speak and wouldn’t look at you, who seemed to make the house smaller simply by standing in it, who carried himself with a strange, wounded tension like a dog that had learned every hand could strike and still hoped one might not.
But he was not unkind.
That was what unsettled you most.
He never reached for you. Never crowded you on purpose. Never blocked a doorway if you needed through. When Luda told him to bring you another glass of tea, he brought it. When your napkin slipped from your lap, he picked it up and set it beside your plate without letting his fingers come close enough to touch your knee. When you murmured thank you, his shoulders shifted, and his eyes did that quick, nervous dart again, like the words had landed somewhere soft inside him and he did not know what to do with them.
The first night became a second because Luda insisted the roads were no good after dark.
The second became a third because Hoyt had said something about your car needing a part, though you had never actually seen him work on it.
By the fourth evening, you had stopped pretending you did not know Luda was keeping you.
Not locked away, not quite, not in any way you could point to without sounding ungrateful or foolish, but wrapped in hospitality so thick it became a net. There was always tea poured, always a chair waiting, always Luda’s hand on your shoulder steering you gently back toward the porch, the parlor, the kitchen, anywhere but the front door.
And Tommy was always there.
Outside the window, mostly.
You began watching him before you meant to.
In the mornings, he worked in the yard with his sleeves pushed up, hauling, chopping, fixing, moving through the heavy heat with a grim endurance that made your own skin prickle with sweat in sympathy. He was broad through the back, strong in a way that was not graceful but useful, shaped by labor and silence and obedience. The sun caught on his hair, on the damp line at the nape of his neck, on the flex of his forearms when he lifted something heavy as if it weighed nothing at all.
Luda caught you watching on the fifth day.
She set a teacup down in front of you and followed your gaze through the lace curtains.
“My Tommy’s a good worker,” she said.
You looked down too quickly. “I can see that.”
“He’d be good to a wife.”
Your hand froze around the cup.
Luda took a slow sip of tea, watching you over the rim like she had not just placed something enormous and impossible between the sugar bowl and the chipped saucers.
You opened your mouth, closed it, then tried again. “A wife?”
“Well, I ain’t gettin’ any younger,” she said, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. “And I want grandbabies before the Lord calls me home.”
The sound that came from the doorway was so small you almost missed it.
Tommy had come in without you hearing him, one hand still on the doorframe, his eyes fixed wide on Luda Mae with a look so startled and mortified that, for one absurd second, you felt less like prey and more like a fellow victim of an ambush.
His eyes darted toward you.
Then away.
Then toward Luda again, sharp with betrayal.
“Oh, don’t you look at me like that,” Luda said, waving him off. “A mother can dream.”
Tommy stood there a moment longer, red creeping up the visible skin of his neck, then turned and disappeared back outside with a speed that would have been funny if the air had not been so hot around your face.
You should have been horrified.
You were, a little.
But you were also surprised into laughter, breathless and disbelieving, one hand pressed against your mouth while Luda smiled like she had already won.
After that, something shifted.
Not quickly. Not cleanly. Fear did not vanish just because a man was shy, and the house did not become normal just because Luda poured good tea and called you sweetheart. But dread had a way of softening around routine, especially when routine came with sugar cubes, porch evenings, and the steady sight of Tommy working outside like he was trying to earn the right to exist beneath the same roof as you.
You started helping in small ways.
Washing cups. Folding dish towels. Shelling peas with Luda at the kitchen table while she told you stories that sounded sweet until you thought about them too long. You learned which floorboards complained, which windows stuck, which chair belonged to Hoyt and which one no one ever sat in unless they wanted trouble.
And you learned Tommy.
Not all of him.
Not even close.
But enough.
You learned he did not like sudden movements near his face. You learned he ducked his head when praised and went still when scolded. You learned he watched you most when he thought you were not watching back, and that when your eyes met, he looked away first, every single time, as if respect was something he could offer you by denying himself the sight.
You learned he ran warm.
The first time you brushed against him by accident, reaching for the same jar on the pantry shelf, heat jumped from his arm into yours like sunlight trapped beneath skin. You startled. He startled worse, stepping back so quickly his shoulder hit the doorframe.
“Sorry,” you whispered.
He shook his head hard, then pointed at himself, as if the fault could only belong there.
“No,” you said, softer. “It was me too.”
His eyes lifted.
You held the jar out to him, and after a moment, he took it, careful not to touch your fingers.
By the next week, you were carrying lemonade to him.
It happened because the heat was unbearable, thick enough to chew, and Tommy had been outside since morning fixing something near the shed while Luda complained about men who worked themselves stupid but did nothing to stop him. You stood at the window, watching him pause just long enough to wipe his forearm across his brow, and something in your chest tugged.
“He should drink something,” you said.
Luda’s smile appeared before she even turned her head.
“Suppose he should.”
You ignored the satisfaction in her voice, filled the tallest glass you could find with lemonade, packed it with ice, and carried it outside before you could think better of it.
The yard smelled like dust, dry grass, sun-baked wood, and Tommy.
He saw you coming and froze.
Not dramatically, not like he was frightened exactly, but like his body had forgotten every instruction except stay still, do not scare her, do not reach.
You stopped a few feet away and held out the glass.
“It’s hot,” you said, immediately feeling stupid because obviously it was hot, Texas was burning alive around you, but Tommy’s eyes dropped to the lemonade like you had handed him a miracle.
He took it with both hands.
His fingers brushed yours.
Just barely.
A tiny, accidental graze, skin against skin, his heat against your knuckles, and you watched his throat bob as if that touch had done more damage than the sun ever could.
Then he drank.
Not a polite sip. Not a careful taste.
He chugged the entire glass in front of you, head tipped back, throat working, lemonade disappearing so quickly you could only stand there staring while condensation ran over his fingers.
When he finished, he lowered the glass and looked embarrassed.
You laughed.
You couldn’t help it.
It slipped out of you bright and startled, and Tommy’s eyes widened, not with fear this time, but with something dangerously close to wonder.
“You were thirsty,” you said.
He looked down at the empty glass, then back at you, and nodded once.
After that, lemonade became yours.
Not officially, not with words, but with the private ceremony of it: the clink of ice, the slice of lemon, the walk across the yard, the way Tommy stopped whatever he was doing the moment he saw you. Sometimes he drank slower. Sometimes he forgot and emptied it in one go again, and every time you smiled, he seemed to carry that smile with him for hours afterward, working harder, standing taller, glancing toward the house like the window had become a church and you the light inside it.
Luda noticed everything.
“You cook?” she asked one evening, far too casually.
“A little.”
“Good. You can make supper tonight.”
You stared at her. “I can?”
“You got hands, don’t you?”
So you cooked.
At first, you were nervous doing anything in that kitchen, with its old knives and stained counters and shadows gathering thick in the corners, but Luda gave you space, and Tommy lingered near the doorway like an anxious ghost, pretending to be useful while watching every move you made.
You made what you could from what she had.
A heavy skillet of potatoes with onions and peppers. Chicken fried crisp in seasoned flour. Gravy because Luda insisted no table worth sitting at went without it. Biscuits that nearly failed until you remembered your grandmother’s trick and handled the dough less. Nothing fancy. Nothing expensive. Just warm food made carefully.
Tommy sat down last.
He always did.
You served Luda first, then Hoyt because Luda’s eyes said that was easier, then Tommy, whose plate looked almost comically full once you were done with it. He stared at the food for so long your stomach twisted.
“Is something wrong?” you asked.
His head snapped up.
Then he shook it once, hard, picked up his fork, and took a bite.
Everything about him changed.
It was subtle, but you had learned enough to see it: the stillness breaking, the eyes lifting, the shoulders easing like some invisible weight had shifted. He took another bite, then another, faster than he probably meant to, and when you laughed softly and told him there was more, his hand tightened around the fork.
Luda looked pleased enough to burst.
“Well?” she asked him.
Tommy looked at his mother, then at you, and though he had no words, the answer was written all over him with a nakedness that made your face warm.
He loved it.
He loved it so much it almost hurt to watch.
From then on, Tommy brought you things.
At first, you did not ask where they came from because part of you already knew, and part of you was not ready to hold the answer in your hands. He would appear near you in the parlor or the kitchen or the hallway, silent as a man his size had no right to be, holding out some small offering with an uncertainty so deep it made your chest ache.
A ring with a little green stone.
A necklace tangled around itself.
A perfume bottle shaped like a teardrop, half full and expensive-smelling.
A makeup bag stuffed with lipsticks and powder compacts you lined up on the dresser without knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Books with bent covers. A camera with film still inside. A silk scarf. A pair of earrings missing one back. Once, an entire armful of things he had gathered because he could not decide what you might like best, standing in front of you with perfume, jewelry, a paperback romance, and a cracked hand mirror balanced awkwardly against his chest.
“Tommy,” you said, overwhelmed.
His eyes lowered.
You touched the top item carefully, a small necklace with a gold charm, and his breathing went shallow enough that you noticed.
“For me?”
He nodded.
There was blood beneath one of his fingernails.
You saw it.
He saw you see it.
For a moment, the house seemed to hold its breath.
Then you took the necklace from his palm, careful, deliberate, letting your fingertips brush the center of his hand.
“Thank you,” you said.
His eyes closed.
Only briefly.
But long enough.
That was how you began to understand that Tommy did not know how to ask for anything.
He could give. He could work. He could stand in the sun until his shirt clung damply to his back, could carry heavy things, fix broken things, slaughter, haul, obey, endure. He knew how to make himself useful. He knew how to bring offerings and wait, tense and quiet, for judgment.
But wanting was harder.
Touch was hardest of all.
He never asked you to touch him.
Instead, he sat close.
Too close, sometimes, close enough that his knee nearly brushed yours beneath the table, close enough on the porch swing that his heat soaked through the thin fabric of your sleeve. He stood beside you at the sink while you washed dishes, shoulder hovering a breath away from yours, his hand occasionally brushing your hip when he reached for a towel and then jerking back like he had been burned.
The first time you leaned into him on purpose, he stopped breathing.
You were on the porch after supper, cicadas screaming in the dark, Luda inside humming to herself like the whole world had finally arranged itself to her liking. Tommy sat beside you, huge and silent, hands clasped between his knees.
You were tired.
Homesick, maybe.
Scared, still, in a quiet way that had become part of the wallpaper.
But Tommy was warm beside you, steady as a furnace, and when the night breeze slipped under your collar, you shifted just enough for your shoulder to rest against his arm.
He went rigid.
“Is this okay?” you asked, barely louder than the insects.
His head turned slowly.
His eyes searched your face as if he expected a trick, a punishment, a laugh.
You did not move away.
After a long, trembling moment, he nodded.
His arm relaxed by degrees, so slowly you could feel every inch of restraint he forced into softness, and then, carefully, as though touching you required more courage than anything he had ever done, he let the outside of his hand rest against your hip.
Not gripping.
Not claiming.
Just there.
You looked down at it.
Then you placed your hand over his.
Tommy made a sound so low and broken it barely escaped him.
After that, the house changed again.
Or maybe you did.
You still saw the rot beneath the sweetness. You still heard things at night you pretended not to understand. You still knew the gifts did not come from nowhere, and the car in the yard would never be repaired unless Luda wanted it repaired.
But you also knew Tommy waited for you in doorways with the patience of a man who had never expected to be chosen, and that when you smiled at him across a room, his entire body softened. You knew he ate everything you cooked like it was sacred. You knew he watched your hands when you talked, your mouth when you laughed, your face when you pretended not to notice.
Luda arranged the sleeping situation with a determination that stopped pretending to be subtle almost immediately.
The first night she had given you a guest room.
The second, she complained about a leak.
The third, she insisted the mattress in your room was no good for a young woman’s back.
By the fourth, she had somehow moved half your belongings into Tommy’s room while talking cheerfully about linens, family, and the importance of not wasting space in a perfectly good house.
“Luda—” you had started.
“Oh, hush,” she said, waving a hand. “Ain’t no sense in two bedrooms being occupied when one’ll do just fine.”
You knew exactly what she was doing.
Worse, she knew you knew.
Every time she looked at the two of you together, there was that same calculating satisfaction in her eyes, the expression of a woman who had decided grandbabies were a matter of logistics rather than fate. The entire family seemed sick in the head in one way or another, but Luda’s particular madness was domestic. She looked at Tommy, looked at you, and saw a future she intended to force into existence through sheer stubbornness.
Tommy was mortified by it.
The first evening you carried your things into his room, he nearly walked straight back out of the house.
His ears turned red. His shoulders locked. He stood beside the bed looking like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole while Luda fussed with blankets and pillows as though arranging a honeymoon suite.
“There,” she said proudly. “Much better.”
Tommy looked ready to die.
You almost laughed.
Luda left only after giving both of you a pointed look that somehow managed to contain wedding bells, grandchildren, and several years of unsolicited advice all at once.
The door shut.
Silence followed.
Tommy stood frozen near the dresser.
You sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed.
Neither of you knew what to do.
Eventually, after several painful minutes, he pointed toward the mattress and then toward himself before gesturing at the floor.
“No,” you said immediately.
His eyes widened.
“You are not sleeping on the floor.”
He tried again.
You shook your head.
“Absolutely not.”
After a long moment, Tommy lowered himself onto the far edge of the mattress with all the caution of a man approaching a wild animal.
The space between you could have fit another person.
Luda would have been furious.
At night, you learned he slept like the dead until you moved.
Then his eyes opened.
Every time.
It was unnerving at first, waking in the dark with your body tucked too warmly beneath a thin sheet, Tommy lying beside you silent enough that panic would sometimes clutch your throat until you stared at the rise and fall of his chest and convinced yourself he was breathing.
He barely made a sound asleep.
No snoring. No muttering. No restless shifting unless dreams caught him wrong.
Just quiet.
Too quiet.
But if you so much as eased one foot toward the floor, his eyes snapped open, dark and alert, his hand catching your wrist before he was even fully awake.
Not hard.
Never hard with you.
But fast.
“Bathroom,” you whispered the first time, heart pounding.
His grip loosened immediately, shame flooding his eyes.
“It’s okay,” you said, because somehow you knew he needed to hear it. “I’ll come back.”
He did not let go right away.
His fingers stayed around your wrist, warm and reluctant, thumb hovering over your pulse as if he needed proof you were real, here, still his to guard for one more night.
“Tommy,” you murmured, softening, “I’ll come back.”
Only then did he release you.
When you returned, he was still awake.
Still watching the door.
You slipped back beneath the sheet, and after a moment of hesitation, you moved closer, pressing your cold feet against his calf.
He jolted.
Then, slowly, understanding, he shifted nearer until his warmth wrapped around you from every side.
Texas was mercilessly hot by day, but nights could surprise you, and Tommy ran like a furnace no weather could touch. His skin held heat even after hours indoors, radiating through cloth, through sheets, through the careful space he still sometimes left between you out of respect or fear.
You stole that heat shamelessly.
Hands under his arm when your fingers were cold. Feet tucked against his legs. Face hidden against his shoulder when the room felt too large. Every time you reached for him in the dark, he went still for one breath, stunned anew, and then folded around you like devotion had finally found something to do with its hands.
You began to understand his dream not because he told you, but because he lived it in pieces.
Tommy wanted to work.
Not just for the house. Not just because Luda told him to or Hoyt shouted or life had beaten obedience into his bones.
For you.
He wanted to fix the steps before you tripped on them. Wanted to carry water without being asked. Wanted to bring you things you might like, ugly or stolen or beautiful, because giving was the only language he trusted himself to speak. Wanted to sit at your table and eat your food, then clear the dishes with a seriousness that made you ache. Wanted to stand between you and the world, even if the world was something you had once belonged to.
He wanted, in the simplest and most devastating way, to be a loyal working husband.
Yours.
One evening, after the worst of the heat had broken and the sky outside burned orange over the fields, you found him in the yard with his sleeves rolled up, sweat darkening his shirt, hair stuck to his forehead beneath the dying light.
You carried lemonade again.
He saw you and stopped, as always.
You walked closer than you used to, close enough that the dust on his boots touched the hem of your dress, close enough that he had to tilt his head down to look at you.
“For you,” you said.
He took the glass, but before he could drink, you reached up and brushed damp hair away from his brow.
Tommy froze.
The glass trembled in his hand.
You let your fingers linger near the edge of his mask, not trying to remove it, not asking for more than he could give, just touching the place where fear had taught him to hide and showing him, gently, that you knew he was under there.
His eyes shone in the orange light.
“Drink,” you whispered.
He obeyed, but slower this time, like he wanted the moment to last.
When he finished, you took the glass from him and smiled.
Inside, Luda Mae watched from the window, her face soft and satisfied, one hand pressed against the curtain as if blessing a future she had decided belonged to all of you.
Tommy looked down at you, still nervous, still frightening, still warm enough to chase away every chill the night could bring, and when his hand rose, hesitant and huge, you did not step away.
His fingers brushed your hip.
Light as a question.
You answered by leaning into him.
And in the deepening Texas dusk, with cicadas shrieking and the old house waiting behind you, Thomas Hewitt closed his eyes like a man receiving grace, then bent his head toward yours with the quiet, trembling devotion of someone who had never known how to ask for love and had somehow been given the chance to earn it every day for the rest of his life.
*Trigger warning* armed hostage situation, gun threat, asthma attack, intimidation, criminal activity, emotional manipulation, childhood lovers reunion under traumatic circumstances, mild language, unresolved moral conflict, angst, no explicit violence, no character death
The first thing you noticed was his hands.
Not the red jumpsuit, not the Salvador Dalí mask tilted over his face like something torn out of a nightmare, not the rifle angled toward the polished marble floor of the Royal Mint with the kind of false ease that told you every hostage in the room was meant to believe he knew exactly what he was doing. It was his hands, thin and nervous around the weapon, fingers flexing once, twice, almost imperceptibly, as though he was trying to remember where to put them, as though he had practiced this in theory but never with a room full of screaming people, never with children sobbing into the sleeves of their school uniforms, never with you standing on the other side of the barrel.
You had known those hands before they had ever touched a gun.
They had been ink-stained at thirteen, always smudged from taking apart pens during class because Aníbal Cortés could never keep still for longer than five minutes; they had been warm at fifteen, tucked around yours behind the old gymnasium where the teachers never looked, his thumb brushing over your knuckles while he pretended not to be terrified of kissing you; they had been gentle at sixteen when he fixed the zipper on your backpack with a stolen paperclip and a triumphant grin, like he had saved your entire life instead of a few textbooks.
Now those same hands were holding a rifle.
“Down,” he said, his voice pitched lower than you remembered, distorted by the mask but not enough, never enough. “Everyone down. Hands where I can see them.”
Your students obeyed in a broken wave of panic, dropping to the floor beside you, some crying, some frozen, some still trying to understand how a field trip had turned into this, how twenty minutes ago they had been whispering about whether the gift shop would sell collector coins and now they were kneeling beneath fluorescent lights with armed robbers shouting over the sound of alarms.
“Miss?” Mateo whispered beside you, his small hand gripping the sleeve of your blazer so tightly his nails dug through the fabric. “Miss, what’s happening?”
You could not answer him, because the masked robber had turned his head toward your voice, and even though you could not see his face, you felt the exact moment he recognized you.
His body went still.
Not dramatically, not enough for anyone else to notice in the chaos, but you saw it because you had once known the rhythm of him better than your own heartbeat; you saw the way his shoulders tightened, the way his fingers shifted on the gun, the way his head tilted a fraction as if he was trying to convince himself that the person kneeling in front of him was not you.
“Aníbal,” you breathed.
The rifle lifted.
Not fully. Not intentionally, you thought, because his hand jerked afterward as though he had shocked himself, but the barrel rose enough that three of your students gasped, enough that you instinctively moved in front of them, one arm spreading out as if your body could become a wall.
“Don’t,” he snapped, and there it was, underneath the stolen uniform and the mask and the name he had not yet given you, the boy you had known cracking through. “Don’t say that.”
You stared at him, your mouth dry, your heart hammering so hard it felt like it was trying to escape your ribs and leave you behind. “Then don’t point that at my students.”
For one terrible second, you thought he might shout back, might raise the weapon higher because the others were watching and because whatever this was, whatever he had become, he could not afford to seem weak. But his hands betrayed him again, tightening, loosening, tightening, before he forced the barrel down.
“Hands on your head,” he said, not looking at you now. “All of you. Stay quiet.”
Around you, the room kept moving like a disaster pretending to be organized. Men and women in red jumpsuits pushed hostages into groups, barked orders, counted people, locked doors, dragged desks and barricades into place with a precision that made the whole thing worse because it meant this was not some desperate accident, not a robbery gone wrong, not panic with guns. This had a shape. A plan. Someone had thought this through.
And Aníbal was part of it.
Sweet, anxious, brilliant Aníbal, who used to blush when teachers praised him, who once cried after stepping on a bird with a broken wing because he had not seen it in time, who had written your name in the margins of his notebook so many times that half the class knew before either of you admitted anything.
He was standing guard over you now.
For the next hour, he did not look at you unless he had to.
That was how you knew he was watching you.
He kept himself near the school group, never too close, never far enough that another robber took his place. When one of the younger girls began to hyperventilate, his head snapped toward her before he caught himself, and when you asked, carefully, slowly, whether you could get her inhaler from the museum cloakroom, he refused too quickly, then cursed under his breath and pressed a hand to the side of his mask as though listening to someone speak through an earpiece.
“She needs it,” you said. “She’s twelve.”
“I said no.”
“She has asthma.”
His jaw worked behind the mask. You could see the movement through the painted mouth, grotesque and absurd. “Where?”
“My bag. Blue backpack. Staff locker near the entrance.”
He hesitated.
Another robber, broad-shouldered and louder than him, turned from across the room. “Problem, Rio?”
Rio.
The name hit you strangely, not because it meant anything, not yet, but because it was not his name, because someone else had placed it over him like the mask, like the jumpsuit, like the rifle, and for one sharp, unreasonable second you wanted to laugh at the wrongness of it.
Aníbal Cortés had become Rio.
“No problem,” he called back, and his voice almost held. “Teacher needs to get medicine for one of the kids.”
“Take her. Two minutes.”
His attention returned to you. “Get up.”
Mateo grabbed your sleeve again. “Miss—”
“I’ll be right back,” you told him, making your voice steadier than your hands. “Stay with Clara. Breathe slowly. All of you listen to me, okay? Heads down, quiet voices.”
Aníbal moved closer, and your students shrank away from him, which did something terrible to his posture, something that looked like pain before he buried it under command. He nodded toward the corridor, and you stood, legs stiff from kneeling, palms raised where everyone could see them.
He walked behind you at first, gun visible but not pressed into your back, and you hated that some part of you noticed the mercy in that, hated that you were grateful for centimeters of kindness in the middle of an armed robbery.
The corridor outside the main hall was colder, quieter, filled with the muffled echo of alarms and distant shouting. The moment the door swung shut behind you, the air changed, and so did he.
“Don’t use my name,” he said.
You stopped walking.
He almost collided with you. “Keep moving.”
“No.”
His laugh came out short and disbelieving. “Are you insane?”
“I’m beginning to think I might be.”
“Move.”
“Make me.”
The words left your mouth before you could stop them, reckless and stupid and born from too many years of knowing exactly how far you had once been able to push him. For a second, his whole body went rigid, and you saw the danger of your mistake, because this was not the schoolyard, not the old gym, not two teenagers daring each other to climb the locked roof after exams.
He stepped close enough that the black eyeholes of the mask filled your vision.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he whispered.
“Neither do you.”
His breathing changed. “You think I want this?”
“I don’t know what you want,” you said, and there was the truth, uglier than fear. “That’s the problem. I look at you and I don’t understand anything.”
He looked away first.
It felt like victory and loss at the same time.
You resumed walking because the girl still needed her inhaler, because whatever was breaking open between you and Aníbal, there were children on the floor believing you would come back, and you would not fail them for a ghost from your past.
At the locker area, he kept watch while you rifled through your backpack with shaking hands. You found the inhaler, then paused with your fingers around it.
“Why?” you asked quietly.
His shoulders slumped by a fraction. “Don’t.”
“Why are you here?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
You laughed, and it came out too sharp, too close to tears. “I’m sorry my school trip interfered with your armed hostage situation.”
He flinched at that.
Good, you thought viciously. You wanted him to flinch. You wanted every word to land. You wanted him to feel the absurdity, the horror, the unbearable wrongness of standing there with a gun while you held a child’s inhaler in your hand.
“You were good,” you said, softer now, because cruelty had never worked on him for long. “You were so good, Aníbal.”
“Don’t.”
“You hated fights. You hated people shouting. You used to walk three blocks out of your way because the butcher’s dog barked at you.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“You used to bring me mandarins because my mother forgot to pack lunch when she worked late.”
He turned his head away, but not before you saw his hand lift toward the mask, stopping halfway as though he had nearly forgotten he could not rub at his face.
“You used to say you’d leave,” you continued, your voice trembling now despite every effort to control it. “Not like this. Never like this. You said you’d leave because the world was too small, because everyone wanted to decide what you were before you had the chance to choose. You said you’d go somewhere with water warm enough to swim at night.”
A silence opened between you, full of alarms and memory.
“Rio,” you whispered, tasting the name. “Is that why?”
His head snapped back. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Because you don’t know, or because you’re afraid I’ll understand?”
That seemed to hurt him more than anything else.
He moved to the opposite wall and leaned against it, rifle held low now, all the performance draining from him in the empty corridor until he looked suddenly, painfully young. Not harmless, no, never harmless while armed, never innocent inside this building, but young in a way you had forgotten he had been when you loved him, young in a way that made you remember the boy who had thought hacking the school website to change cafeteria prices was a revolutionary act.
“I wasn’t good,” he said finally.
“Yes, you were.”
“I was scared. That’s not the same thing.”
You swallowed.
He gave a humorless little laugh. “Everyone thought I was sweet because I didn’t know how to say no. Teachers liked me because I was quiet. You liked me because I was—”
“Don’t tell me why I liked you.”
That stopped him.
You took one step closer, careful, aware of the weapon, aware of the cameras that might exist, aware that someone could open the door and find you standing too close to a masked robber whose real name sat between your teeth like a prayer.
“I liked you because you were kind,” you said. “Because you noticed things. Because you listened. Because when I told you I was afraid I would end up trapped in the same streets forever, you didn’t laugh at me. You said we’d both get out.”
His voice dropped. “You did.”
The accusation was so quiet you almost missed it.
You stared at him. “What?”
“You got out.” He shrugged, but it was a broken movement. “University. A job. Students who look at you like you can fix everything.”
“I didn’t get out,” you said. “I grew up.”
He recoiled slightly as if you had slapped him.
You regretted it immediately, but not enough to take it back.
For several seconds, neither of you spoke. Then he reached up and pulled the Dalí mask off.
The sight of his face nearly undid you.
He was older, of course he was, sharper at the cheekbones, thinner in a way that made his eyes look too large and too bright, but he was still Aníbal under the sweat-damp hair and the fear he was trying to pass off as resolve. There was stubble along his jaw where there had once been soft skin, a small scar near his eyebrow you did not recognize, shadows beneath his eyes that looked as if sleep had become something optional and rare.
“I found people,” he said, and now his voice was entirely his. “People who saw something in me. People who didn’t think I was useless just because I couldn’t become what everyone expected.”
“So they gave you a gun?”
His mouth twisted. “They gave me a purpose.”
“No,” you said. “They gave you a costume.”
Anger flashed across his face, real and quick, but beneath it was panic, and beneath that something so familiar it made your chest ache. “You don’t know them.”
“I know you.”
“You knew me.”
“I know enough to see you’re terrified.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” you said, stepping closer again, and this time he did not move away. “You were terrified in that room. You’re terrified now. And maybe that means there’s still enough of you left to know this is wrong.”
His eyes glistened, and he looked toward the ceiling like he hated you for noticing. “We’re not going to hurt the kids.”
“You already have.”
He shut his eyes.
You lowered your voice. “They will remember this for the rest of their lives. They will remember the masks and the guns and the floor under their knees. Some of them will remember your voice.”
His jaw clenched.
“So do something,” you said. “Not everything. I’m not naïve enough to think I can talk you out of this with childhood memories and a sick student waiting for an inhaler. But do something. Keep them together. Keep them away from the shouting. Let me stay with them. Let me keep them calm.”
He opened his eyes, and for a moment, the past stood between you so vividly you could almost smell summer dust and school chalk, almost hear him laughing under his breath as he passed you notes during math, almost feel his hand slipping into yours after the final bell when neither of you had anywhere to be except near each other.
“You shouldn’t trust me,” he said.
“I don’t.”
The honesty landed gently somehow.
His mouth trembled before he forced it still. “Good.”
“But I’m asking you anyway.”
He looked at the inhaler in your hand. Then at the gun in his. Then back at you.
When he spoke, his voice was low and fast. “Stay close to the children. Don’t argue with the others. If someone tells you to move, look at me first if you can. If you can’t, do what they say. Don’t try to run.”
“Aníbal—”
“Don’t try to save me either.”
You went quiet.
He laughed once, miserable and soft. “I remember that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you decide something dangerous and think nobody can tell.”
Despite everything, despite the alarms and the fear and the weapon between you, your throat tightened with something almost like a smile. “I’m a teacher now. I’ve learned to hide it better.”
“No,” he said, and his eyes softened in a way that hurt worse than anger. “You haven’t.”
For a second, you thought he might touch you. His hand lifted slightly, fingers unfolding from the rifle, and your whole body remembered being sixteen before your mind could stop it, remembered the warmth of him, the hesitant sweetness, the kiss behind the gym that had tasted like orange soda and nerves.
Then the radio in his ear crackled.
His expression changed instantly. The mask returned, not to his face but to his eyes.
“Put that back on,” a voice snapped faintly through the earpiece. “Rio, status.”
He flinched, then raised the Dalí mask again, sealing Aníbal away behind painted madness.
“Coming back,” he said.
You hated the name more now.
He opened the door and gestured with the gun, not at you but around you, as if drawing a boundary from the rest of the world. You walked ahead of him into the noise, clutching the inhaler like a promise. When you returned to your students, Mateo burst into tears of relief, and Clara’s shaking hands closed around the medicine while you knelt beside her, murmuring instructions you barely heard yourself give.
Rio stood nearby.
Not too close.
Not too far.
When the louder robber crossed the room and barked at your students to move with the others, Rio stepped in first. “Leave the school group here.”
The man turned. “What?”
“They’re calmer if they stay together,” Rio said, voice steady in a way it had not been before. “Teacher keeps them quiet. Less trouble.”
A pause.
Then the other man swore and walked away.
You looked up.
The painted mask stared back at you, unreadable to everyone else, but you saw the small tilt of his head, the almost invisible nod, the apology he could not give and the promise he had no right to make.
You did not forgive him.
Not then. Maybe not ever.
But you held your students close while the robbery unfolded around you, and every time fear threatened to swallow the room whole, every time a shout cracked through the air or boots passed too close, you found yourself searching for the boy behind the gun, for the school sweetheart wearing a stranger’s name, for the kind hands gripping something they should never have touched.
And every time you found him, he was already looking at you.
*Trigger warning* complicated family dynamics, parental neglect, emotionally absent parent, divorce, absent mother, father’s new relationship with a much younger girlfriend, arguing at home, emotional distress, feeling unwanted, mild anxiety, mentions of unstable home life, hurt/comfort, found family themes, protective behavior, Leah being hostile
You met Seth Clearwater on a Wednesday morning that had already gone wrong before the first bell even rang, because your father had spent breakfast arguing with his girlfriend over the fact that she had used his credit card without asking, she had cried loudly enough for the neighbors to hear, he had blamed you for standing in the kitchen instead of getting ready faster, and by the time he finally dropped you off in front of Forks High School, you were holding your backpack against your chest like armor and pretending very hard that you did not feel like a piece of luggage someone had dragged across state lines without asking whether you wanted to come along.
The school was smaller than your last one, smaller in that way that made every hallway feel like a place where people noticed you breathing wrong, and the front office smelled like old paper, printer ink, rain-soaked coats, and coffee that had been sitting on a warmer too long, which somehow made you miss the anonymous noise of your old school so badly that your throat tightened while the secretary printed your schedule, smiled like she meant well, and told you that everyone here was “very friendly once you settled in.”
You smiled back because smiling was easier than explaining that settling in had never been your strong suit, especially not when your life had been packed into boxes by a father who kept insisting this was a fresh start, even though fresh starts apparently came with a girlfriend who borrowed your clothes without asking, asked whether you were “always this quiet,” and sometimes smiled at your father like she had won something you had not realized was a competition.
Your first class was English, where the teacher introduced you with enough forced cheer that half the room looked up from their notebooks and the other half tried to pretend they were not staring, and you had just started the familiar walk toward the empty desk near the back when a boy sitting two rows over turned around so quickly that his pencil rolled off his notebook, hit the floor, and disappeared beneath the chair in front of him.
He looked at you like someone had called his name from very far away and he had answered before knowing why, all wide brown eyes and startled breath and a face so open that it was almost embarrassing to witness, because there was no coolness in him, no careful distance, no teenage calculation in the way his expression shifted from surprise to warmth to something dangerously close to joy, and when he realized he was staring, his cheeks flushed so fast that you had to look away before you smiled.
“That’s Seth Clearwater,” the girl beside you whispered after you sat down, leaning close enough that her perfume cut through the smell of damp textbooks, and though you had not asked, she added, “He’s nice, like, really nice, but kind of intense sometimes, so don’t take it personally if he just starts talking to you like you’re already friends.”
You did not know what to do with that warning until the bell rang, because Seth Clearwater was at your desk before you had even closed your book, bending down to pick up the pencil he had dropped and then somehow turning that into an introduction, a welcome, an offer to show you where your next class was, and three separate apologies for being “weird for a second,” all in a voice so earnest that you could not tell whether he was nervous, excited, or simply built without the part of a person that knew how to be indifferent.
You should have found it overwhelming, because most people who became interested in you too quickly usually wanted something, whether gossip, entertainment, an easy target, or a version of you they could shape into whatever suited them, but Seth only seemed interested in making sure you knew where the science hallway was, whether your locker opened properly, and if you had figured out that the cafeteria line with the pizza moved faster than the one with the soup, which was apparently “not worth it unless you liked disappointment in a paper bowl.”
By lunch, he had appeared beside you three times, not hovering exactly, because he did leave when you looked like you needed space, but somehow always close enough to catch the moment you hesitated, always ready with a smile that made him look younger than he probably wanted to seem, and there was something almost puppyish about the way he brightened whenever you answered him, like every small word from you had been accepted as a gift he had not been sure he deserved.
It would have been easy to laugh at him if he had been anyone else, easy to call him clingy or strange or too eager, but Seth had a way of making eagerness feel like kindness instead of pressure, and even when you ate your lunch at the far end of a table with people whose names blurred together, you noticed him watching from across the cafeteria, not in a possessive or creepy way, but like he was checking whether the ground beneath you was steady enough.
The problem was his sister.
You did not know she was his sister at first, only that there was a girl with sharp cheekbones, dark hair, and eyes like she had already survived several things people your age were not supposed to survive, and she looked at you with such immediate, silent hostility that your shoulders tightened every time you caught her gaze from across a hallway, across the parking lot, across the cafeteria, where she sat with people who seemed older even if they were not.
“She hates me,” you said on your third day, mostly because Seth had walked you outside after school and you had caught the girl watching from beside a beat-up truck, her arms crossed tightly over her chest while rain collected in her hair like she did not care whether she got soaked.
Seth followed your line of sight, and something flickered across his face so quickly you almost missed it, a strange mixture of panic, guilt, and affection, before he rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Leah doesn’t hate you.”
“She looks at me like she wants to crack my skull open and check for poison.”
“She looks at most people like that.”
“She looks at me harder.”
Seth winced, then smiled like he was trying to soften a truth without lying about it, and he glanced back at Leah before lowering his voice just slightly, as if whatever existed between them was complicated enough that even saying her name required care.
“She’s my sister, and she worries about me, and sometimes that comes out kind of… terrifying.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing under his breath, though his eyes stayed gentle, “but she doesn’t hate you.”
Leah definitely looked like she hated you.
Still, you let Seth walk you to the edge of the parking lot, where your father was supposed to pick you up but had not arrived yet, and when fifteen minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty, Seth did not make the waiting feel humiliating, did not ask questions you would have had to lie through, and instead told you about La Push in a stream of warm, rambling details that somehow made cliffs, driftwood, bonfires, cold beaches, and his mother’s fish stew sound like pieces of a life you had been standing outside of for years.
By the time your father’s car finally pulled up, his girlfriend in the passenger seat with your sunglasses pushed up on her head and your father visibly angry before you had even opened the door, Seth had gone quiet in a way that told you he understood more than you wanted him to, and when you slid into the back seat, your father said, “You could’ve texted instead of standing there like a martyr,” even though you had texted twice and called once.
You did not look back until the car started moving, because you had learned a long time ago that looking back could feel too much like asking someone to save you, but Seth was still standing on the sidewalk, rain darkening his hoodie, his expression stripped of all that sunny brightness until he looked almost older, and behind him, Leah Clearwater watched you leave like she had just been given another reason to be angry.
Home was never violent in the dramatic way people seemed to understand, never bruises hidden beneath sleeves or broken plates flying across rooms, but it was sharp doors closing too hard, voices rising suddenly, silence used as punishment, your father sighing like your existence exhausted him, and his girlfriend slipping into your room without knocking because she wanted to borrow a sweater, a charger, nail polish, a version of your patience you had not agreed to lend.
Some nights, the fights were about money, other nights they were about your mother, whose absence had somehow become a shape everyone tripped over but nobody touched, and occasionally they were about you, because your father’s girlfriend thought you were disrespectful, your father thought you were ungrateful, and you thought, with a numbness that scared you, that maybe everyone would have been happier if he had left you behind with the rest of the furniture.
Seth noticed before you told him.
Of course he noticed.
He noticed the way you flinched when your phone buzzed too many times in a row, noticed how you sometimes stayed at school long after you had no reason to be there, noticed when you stopped packing lunch because groceries at home had turned into another argument, and noticed the morning you came in with your hair still damp from the shower and your hands trembling because your father’s girlfriend had screamed at you for using the bathroom “too long” before work.
He did not ask in the hallway, which made you trust him more than if he had.
Instead, he waited until you were both sitting on the steps outside after school, sharing a bag of chips he had bought from the vending machine and pretending the misty rain was not slowly soaking through your jeans, and then he said, very carefully, “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but I need to ask if you’re okay.”
You stared at the wet pavement, where little rivers of rainwater carried pine needles toward the drain, and for a moment you hated him for asking because kindness had a terrible way of finding the weak spots you spent all day covering, but Seth only sat beside you, warm enough that you could feel him even through the damp air, quiet enough that he did not turn your silence into a demand.
“No,” you said finally, and the word came out small enough that you barely recognized it.
Seth inhaled once, slow and deep, like he was steadying himself against the urge to react too quickly, and then he nodded as if your answer mattered, as if he had asked because he wanted the truth and not because he needed you to comfort him afterward.
“Do you want to come over for dinner?”
You looked at him then, startled into a laugh that broke halfway through because dinner was such a normal solution to a life that felt anything but normal, and Seth smiled, not like he thought it was funny, but like he had expected your surprise and was ready to meet it gently.
“My mom always makes too much,” he said, which you would later learn was not entirely true, because Sue Clearwater made enough for the people she expected, the people she hoped would come, and the people her children dragged home because they needed somewhere safe to sit for a while.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You won’t.”
“You should ask her first.”
“I already know what she’ll say.”
“That’s not asking.”
“She’ll say yes.”
“Seth.”
He pulled out his phone with exaggerated seriousness, typed something quickly, and barely ten seconds later it buzzed in his hand, making him turn the screen toward you with a grin that was so bright it almost hurt to look at.
Mom says yes. Tell them we’re having salmon and they don’t have to be polite about seconds.
You stared at the message for longer than necessary, because there was something unbearable about the casual certainty of it, the instant welcome, the way his mother had accepted your presence without needing your story first, and when you blinked hard, Seth looked away immediately, giving you the privacy of not being watched while you swallowed whatever had risen in your throat.
That was how you ended up at the Clearwater house for the first time, sitting at a kitchen table that smelled like warm food, lemon, cedar, and rain-damp jackets, while Sue Clearwater moved around the kitchen with the calm efficiency of someone who knew how to care for people without making them feel helpless, and Leah leaned against the counter with her arms crossed, staring at you like she was still deciding whether you were a threat, a problem, or merely another person Seth had decided to love too quickly.
Sue did not ask why you were there, did not comment on the way you held yourself too carefully, did not make a performance out of feeding you, but she put a plate in front of you before you could refuse, set a glass of water near your hand, told Seth to stop hovering because he was making you nervous, and then asked you about school in a voice that made answering feel safe.
You tried to be polite about seconds.
Sue ignored that entirely.
By the end of dinner, Seth had told two embarrassing stories about himself, Leah had rolled her eyes at least fourteen times, and you had laughed so unexpectedly at Sue’s dry comment about her son being “physically incapable of subtlety” that everyone at the table went quiet for half a second, not in a bad way, but in the stunned, tender way people responded when they realized they had just heard something honest.
After that, the Clearwater house became a place you arrived at slowly, then all at once.
One dinner turned into Seth asking whether you wanted to work on the history project together, which turned into Sue making tea while you spread textbooks across the kitchen table, which turned into afternoons where you did your homework beside Seth while he tapped his pencil against his notebook and tried very hard not to distract you, which turned into walks along La Push when neither of you wanted to go home yet and the beach was gray, endless, and loud enough to make silence comfortable.
You learned that Seth was warmer than everyone else, not just emotionally, though he was that too, but physically warm in a way that made no sense, walking along the cold shoreline in a T-shirt while you pulled your sleeves over your hands and accused him of being biologically ridiculous.
He only laughed, but sometimes his laughter caught strangely, as if there was an answer behind his teeth that he had to hold back.
You learned that Leah did not hate you in the simple way you had first believed, because hatred would have been easier to understand than the guarded, grieving anger she carried around you, the way she watched Seth when he watched you, the way her jaw tightened whenever he moved toward you too quickly, and the way she once muttered, “Be careful with him,” when Sue and Seth were outside bringing in firewood.
“With Seth?” you asked, because the idea of anyone needing protection from you was almost absurd.
Leah’s eyes flashed toward the window, where Seth was laughing at something Sue had said, his whole face lit up in that familiar, helpless way that made your chest ache for reasons you still refused to name.
“He feels things too much,” Leah said, and for once, there was no bite in her voice, only exhaustion. “He always has.”
You wanted to tell her that you were not trying to hurt him, but the words felt too small for the seriousness in her face, and before you could answer, Leah pushed away from the counter and left the room like she regretted letting you see anything soft.
That night, walking back from the beach, Seth matched his steps to yours even though his legs were longer, and when your phone buzzed with three missed calls from your father, you stopped beneath the trees, stared at the screen, and felt the familiar cold drop through your stomach.
“You can answer,” Seth said quietly.
“I don’t want to.”
“You don’t have to.”
“He’ll be mad.”
“Is he usually mad?”
You huffed out a humorless laugh, and Seth’s expression changed, not dramatically, not in a way that made the moment about him, but enough that the air between you tightened.
“Yeah,” you said. “Usually.”
Seth looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers once like he needed to do something with the anger that passed through him, and then he looked back at you with such careful gentleness that you almost wished he would yell, because yelling was familiar and this was not.
“You can call my mom,” he said. “If you ever need a ride, or a place to be for a while, or dinner, or just… not home.”
You wanted to reject it automatically, because accepting help meant admitting you needed it, and needing things from people was dangerous when people could change their minds, but Seth did not present it like charity, did not stand there waiting to be thanked, did not make you feel like a wounded thing he had rescued from the road.
Instead, he bumped his shoulder lightly against yours and added, “She’ll probably start packing emergency snacks in your backpack, though, so you’ve been warned.”
You laughed, and Seth smiled like the sound had done something impossible.
It was strange, the way being around him made the world feel less hostile, not fixed exactly, because your father still fought with his girlfriend, your mother still did not call, and your bedroom still felt like a place you were allowed to sleep but not belong, but there were afternoons now when you could sit at Sue Clearwater’s table and breathe without measuring the sound, evenings when Leah’s glare softened into something almost tolerant, and walks where Seth stayed close enough that his warmth cut through the coastal cold.
You knew there was something special about him.
You knew it in the way animals on the beach seemed to notice him before they noticed anyone else, in the way he sometimes went still when sounds reached him long before you heard them, in the way his friends appeared and disappeared with odd timing, all of them too tall, too watchful, too intense, and in the way Sue occasionally looked at him with a mother’s love threaded through with worry so old it had become part of her posture.
Mostly, though, you knew it in the way Seth looked at you.
Not like a boy with a crush, though there was some of that too, shy and sweet and painfully obvious whenever your hand brushed his, but like gravity had shifted beneath his feet the day you walked into English class, like he had been moving through the world in one direction and then suddenly, without warning, the direction had become you.
It should have scared you.
Maybe it did.
But Seth never used that feeling to pull you closer than you wanted to come, never demanded answers, never made his care into a debt, and because of that, you found yourself stepping toward him anyway, slowly, carefully, like someone approaching a warm house after years of standing outside in the rain.
One evening, after a bad fight at home had sent you walking without a jacket, you ended up on the Clearwater porch before you fully decided to go there, your knuckles hovering over the door while your chest ached with the humiliation of needing somewhere to land.
Seth opened the door before you knocked.
For one impossible second, neither of you spoke.
Then his face softened, and whatever he saw in yours made him step back immediately, holding the door open without asking you to explain yourself in the cold.
“My mom made soup,” he said, voice low and careful, as if soup could be a bridge across the unbearable thing in your throat. “Come in.”
You did.
And as warmth closed around you, as Sue looked up from the kitchen and her expression shifted into quiet mothering without pity, as Leah glanced from the living room and for once did not glare, as Seth stood beside you like he had been waiting there all along without ever trying to make you hurry, you realized that whatever special thing lived beneath his skin, whatever secret made the air around him feel charged and bright and not entirely human, it was not the reason you trusted him.
You trusted him because he made room.
You trusted him because he stayed.
You trusted him because when your whole life felt like something temporary, Seth Clearwater looked at you like you were not a burden he had stumbled across, but someone he had somehow been missing long before he knew your name.
*Trigger warning* strip club setting, sex work, objectification, unwanted touching, harassment, financial instability, abandonment, toxic past relationship, breakup aftermath, emotional confrontation, jealousy, alcohol consumption, smoking mention, strong language, unresolved romantic tension, no smut
Austin looked exactly the way you remembered it, which was somehow worse than if it had changed, because every street still seemed to be holding its breath around the same old bars, the same cracked sidewalks, the same neon signs blinking themselves half-dead in the humid evening, and the same kind of men leaning against brick walls with cigarettes between their fingers, laughing too loudly at jokes that were never funny enough to justify the sound.
You had told yourself, when the booking came through, that it was only another club, another stage, another temporary dressing room with bad lighting and a cracked mirror, another stack of folded bills slipped into the bottom of your bag at the end of a night that left your feet aching and your patience scraped raw, but the second the bus rolled past the first stretch of familiar road, something old and sour curled behind your ribs.
Austin was Tommy Miller, whether you wanted it to be or not.
It was cheap beer on a back porch, engine grease under his nails, the warmth of his palm on the back of your neck when he pulled you close in public like he wanted the whole world to know, and it was also the apartment you had not been able to afford after he walked out, the unpaid bills stacked like accusations on the kitchen counter, the silence after his truck disappeared from the curb, and the humiliating realization that loving someone did not mean they would stay long enough to watch what happened when they broke you.
Your parents had wanted better for you, which was their favorite way of saying they had wanted something prettier, cleaner, easier to explain over dinner with people who measured worth in college degrees, wedding rings, and the sort of jobs that came with business cards instead of bruised knees, sore ankles, and strangers who stared too long because they had paid for the right to pretend you belonged to them for three minutes.
You had wanted better for yourself too, once.
Then better had turned into rent, groceries, bus tickets, and enough cash tucked into your boot to make sure that if a man ever left again, he would not be leaving you with nothing.
Dancing was not the dream anyone wrote down in a school counselor’s office, and it was not glamorous no matter how many men convinced themselves it was, but it kept you off the streets, kept a roof over your head, kept your phone bill paid and your pride sharper than the eyeliner you dragged across your lids before every shift, and after what Tommy had done, survival had become the only luxury you trusted.
The club had changed names since the last time you were in town, but nothing else about it had bothered evolving; the same narrow hallway led to the dressing rooms, the same sticky black floors caught the heel of your shoe if you stepped wrong, the same bass crawled through the walls before the doors even opened, and the same sweet-sour smell of perfume, alcohol, sweat, and desperation wrapped around you like a coat you had worn too many times to pretend it didn’t fit.
The house dancers were nice enough in the way women in clubs often were, friendly until money got involved and careful until trust was earned, and by the second night they had learned that you were a traveler, that you kept your tips organized in labeled envelopes, that you did not drink during a shift, and that you smiled like a woman who had survived worse than a slow Thursday.
They did not know about Tommy.
They knew him, though.
You found that out when a brunette named Lacey, all glossy lips and sharp elbows, leaned into the dressing room doorway while you were fastening the clasp on your heel and announced that Miller would probably be in tonight, like his arrival was a weather pattern everyone had agreed to dress for.
The others reacted instantly, laughing and rolling their eyes with the weary affection reserved for regulars who tipped well, caused no serious trouble, and were just dangerous enough to make a boring night less boring, while you kept your face bent toward your shoe and waited for your hands to stop remembering the exact shape of his shoulders.
“Miller?” you asked, because silence would have been more suspicious than carelessness.
“Yeah,” Lacey said, grinning at you through the mirror as she touched up the corner of her lipstick, “sweetheart with pretty eyes, always comes in with his brother sometimes, tips decent, drinks beer like it’s his job, acts like he’s not looking when he’s absolutely looking.”
Someone behind you snorted, someone else said he was trouble in the harmless way, and Lacey smiled like she had already put her name on him, like there was some invisible claim stitched into the way she said his name, soft and possessive, as if Tommy Miller had ever belonged to anyone who loved him.
You did not tell her that he used to sleep with his cheek pressed between your shoulder blades when the summer heat made the sheets unbearable, that he used to call you baby in the grocery store and darlin’ when he wanted forgiveness, that he had once promised you a future so casually you had believed he meant it, or that the last time you had seen him, his jaw had been tight, his eyes had been empty, and his voice had been steady when he told you he couldn’t do this anymore.
You just smiled into the mirror and said, “Sounds boring.”
Lacey laughed because she thought you were joking.
You weren’t.
By ten, the club was full enough for the room to feel alive, neon washing everyone in colors that made honesty impossible, the music pulsing hard enough to turn your heartbeat into something you could ignore, and by eleven, you had already danced twice, once for a group of businessmen who smelled like cologne and entitlement, and once for a quiet woman in a corner booth who slipped a hundred into your hand and told you, very gently, not to waste your face on men who thought money made them interesting.
You were backstage when the energy shifted.
It was not dramatic, not really, not to anyone else, but your body noticed before your mind wanted to, the fine hair at the back of your neck lifting as voices changed shape near the bar, laughter opening around someone familiar, and then Lacey, beside you, glanced through the curtain and made a pleased little sound in her throat.
“There he is,” she said.
You hated yourself for looking.
Tommy came in like he always had, not loud, not polished, not trying too hard, which somehow made half the room turn toward him anyway, his dark hair a little longer than you remembered, curls brushing his forehead, shoulders broad beneath a denim shirt that looked soft from too many washes, boots scuffed, jaw shadowed, smile crooked when the bartender lifted a hand in greeting.
He looked older, but not enough.
He looked tired, but so were you.
For one fragile second, before he saw you, you let yourself feel the hit of him, the stupid physical cruelty of recognizing someone your body had loved before your mind could build a wall high enough, and then his gaze moved across the room, caught on the stage where the announcer had just called your name, and everything in his face went still.
All eyes were on you when you stepped through the curtain.
That was the job, after all, and you were good at it now, good at turning attention into rent, good at letting men think they were seeing something private when every movement was calculated, every glance chosen, every smile part of the armor, but Tommy looking at you was different because he had seen you barefoot in his kitchen, sick in his bathroom, furious in his truck, laughing so hard you cried, and broken in a way that had not been pretty enough for neon.
The music started low and heavy, sliding through the room like smoke, and you moved with it because your body knew how to survive being watched, hips slow, spine loose, one hand trailing up your own thigh while the other caught the pole, and you refused to look at him for the first minute because you wanted him to understand exactly how little power he had over where your eyes went now.
You heard the first whistles, the first calls, felt bills hitting the stage near your boots, but none of it touched you the way Tommy’s silence did.
When you finally looked, he was standing near the bar with a beer forgotten in one hand, his eyes locked on you with an expression so raw and stunned that it almost made you misstep, and Lacey was beside him, pressed close to his arm, saying something up into his ear while he did not seem to hear a word.
Good, you thought, turning away from him with a smile that made the front row lean forward.
Let him look.
Let him see what you had become after he decided you were something he could walk away from.
You finished to thunderous applause and the ugly beautiful rain of cash, bending slowly to gather the bills because you knew every eye followed the movement, and when you walked offstage, you did not look back, not even when you felt Tommy’s stare follow you like a hand between your shoulders.
The dressing room had gone strangely quiet by the time you got back, the usual chatter reduced to scattered murmurs and the rustle of costumes as the other dancers pretended not to watch you. A few glanced up when you walked in, then quickly looked away, exchanging the kind of looks people shared when they knew something had happened but weren't sure how much they were supposed to know. You ignored all of it, dropped into your chair, and started counting your money like nothing outside the room existed.
Lacey didn't come in until a few minutes later. When she stepped through the doorway, cigarette smell still clinging to her, the silence tightened another notch. She paused when she saw you sitting there, bills spread neatly across your station, and something in her expression told you she'd already made up her mind about whatever she'd seen out on the floor.
That should have pleased you, but instead it made the air feel sharp. Jealous women were often safer than jealous men, yet they could still cut in places men never noticed, and the way Lacey crossed her arms and pressed her lips together made it clear she was looking for someone to blame.
“You know him?” she asked.
You dropped your money into your open bag and shrugged. “Used to.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Used to how?”
You could have lied, and maybe you should have, but you were tired of making yourself smaller just because Tommy Miller had left pieces of himself in places you kept having to explain.
“He’s my ex,” you said, smoothing a folded twenty between your fingers before tucking it away, “so don’t worry, whatever you think is happening, I promise you, I already learned my lesson.”
For a second, Lacey looked surprised, then smug in the way people got when they thought history made them the winner by default.
“He never mentioned you.”
You laughed then, not loudly, not kindly, just enough for the mirror to throw it back at both of you.
“Yeah,” you said, meeting her eyes through the reflection, “men like Tommy usually don’t mention the women they owe apologies to.”
That shut her up for a while.
It did not stop her from hanging off him later, though, and maybe that was the worst part, not because you wanted him back, not because you cared who touched his chest or laughed too close to his mouth, but because there was something humiliating about watching a woman cling to a man who had once known the exact sound you made when you were trying not to cry.
You told yourself your life was better without him.
It was, technically.
You had your own money, your own rules, your own emergency cash hidden in three separate places, and no man’s mood decided whether there would be dinner in the fridge or peace in the room; you had rebuilt yourself with chipped nails and clenched teeth, and if the version of you Tommy had loved was softer, then softness had clearly been a luxury you could not afford.
Still, when you came out for your final set and found him sitting alone this time, Lacey nowhere near him, elbows on his knees, beer untouched on the small table in front of him, you felt anger flare hot enough to be mistaken for grief.
He had no right to look sad.
Not here.
Not now.
Not after you had done all the bleeding where he couldn’t see it.
The final set was slower, meaner, built for distance instead of invitation, and you danced like you were untouchable because you had needed to become untouchable, because every stranger reaching toward you learned fast that looking was one thing and grabbing was another, because the bouncer knew your signal and your heel was sharp enough to make a point if memory failed him.
One man near the stage forgot anyway.
His fingers caught your ankle as you stepped past, not hard, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind you that some men heard no and translated it into try harder, and before you could pull away, Tommy was already moving.
He crossed the room fast, too fast for the lazy atmosphere around him, caught the man’s wrist, and bent close enough to say something you couldn’t hear, his face calm in a way that was always more dangerous than shouting, and the man jerked back as if Tommy had burned him.
The bouncer arrived a second later, hauling the man up by the collar, and you stood under the lights with your pulse punching bruises into your throat, furious because you could handle yourself, furious because Tommy knew that, furious because some treacherous part of you had still felt safer the second he moved.
You finished the dance because money was money, because pride was pride, because you had learned how to bleed invisibly, and when you walked offstage, you did not go to the dressing room.
You went out the back door.
The alley smelled like rain, trash, and cigarettes, and the night air hit your damp skin hard enough to make you shiver as you leaned against the brick wall and tried to breathe past the pressure in your chest.
The door opened behind you.
Of course it did.
“Don’t,” you said before he could speak.
Tommy stopped a few feet away, close enough that you could smell beer on him, though he did not seem drunk, and motor oil beneath it, and the same soap he had always used because apparently the universe had no interest in mercy.
“I wasn’t gonna say nothin’ stupid,” he said quietly.
“You showing up back here is already stupid.”
He accepted that with a small nod, hands low at his sides like he was approaching something wounded enough to bite, and you hated him for being careful now, for learning tenderness after it was no longer useful to you.
“You look good,” he said.
You laughed once, sharp as broken glass. “Do not stand there and tell me I look good like you ran into me at a grocery store.”
His jaw flexed, and for the first time all night, the guilt in his face became ugly enough to satisfy something bitter in you.
“You’re right,” he said. “That was wrong.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t know you were back in Austin.”
“I’m not back,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest, suddenly aware of how little fabric stood between your skin and the past. “I’m working. There’s a difference.”
Tommy glanced toward the door, then back at you, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped into something rougher.
“This where you been?”
There it was.
Not judgment, maybe, but close enough to make your teeth ache.
You pushed off the wall, stepping toward him with your chin lifted, because you had not survived him to be ashamed in front of him.
“This is where I’ve been getting paid,” you said. “This is where I’ve been keeping myself fed, housed, alive, all those inconvenient little things that got real hard after you left me with nothing.”
He flinched.
Good.
“I didn’t leave you with nothing.”
The silence after that was so cold even he seemed to regret the words before they finished leaving his mouth.
You stared at him, and for a second you saw the old apartment, the empty side of the closet, the overdue notice on the table, your hands shaking as you counted cash that would not stretch, the way you had called him once, only once, and hung up before the voicemail could catch the sound of you breaking.
“You left me with rent I couldn’t pay, bills I didn’t know were late, a bed I couldn’t sleep in, and a version of myself I had to bury before she got me killed,” you said, each word steadier than you felt. “So don’t stand in an alley behind a strip club and correct me about the ruins you didn’t stay to clean up.”
Tommy looked away then, and you wished that felt better.
It didn’t.
“I was a coward,” he said, so quietly you almost missed it beneath the muffled bass from inside. “I told myself I was doin’ you a favor because I was angry all the time and broke all the time and scared I’d turn into my old man if I stayed, but truth is, I left because I didn’t know how to be needed without feeling like I was failin’ every second.”
Your throat tightened before you could stop it, and that made you angrier than anything else, because some old, foolish part of you had wanted an explanation for years, and now that he was giving you one, it sounded painfully human instead of monstrous.
“You don’t get to make that sad,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to make me feel sorry for you.”
“I ain’t askin’ you to.”
“Then what are you asking for?”
He looked at you then, and there he was, your Tommy and not yours at all, brown eyes full of all the things he had never known how to say until silence had already done the damage.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I saw you up there, and I couldn’t breathe for a second, and then that asshole put his hand on you, and I know you don’t need me, I know that better than anyone in there, but my body moved before my brain caught up.”
You folded your arms tighter, partly because the night was cool and partly because your chest felt too open.
“You had a girl hanging on you all night.”
His eyebrows drew together in confusion before understanding flickered across his face.
“Lacey?” he asked. “She ain’t—no, that ain’t anything.”
You hated the relief that sparked and killed it quickly.
“I don’t care if it is.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know,” he said again, softer this time, and somehow that was worse, because he did know you, at least enough to recognize when your pride was standing guard over something bruised.
The back door opened, spilling music and light into the alley, and Lacey appeared with a cigarette in one hand, her expression souring the second she saw the two of you standing too close to be strangers and too far apart to be anything simple.
“There you are,” she said to Tommy, voice sweet enough to rot teeth. “You coming back in?”
Tommy did not look away from you.
“No.”
Lacey’s mouth tightened, and she turned her gaze on you instead, taking in your stance, your bare legs, your tired eyes, and whatever history she could feel but not name.
“Figures,” she muttered. “Some girls always know how to make a man feel guilty.”
You smiled before Tommy could answer, because you did not need him fighting battles you had already won.
“No, honey,” you said, stepping past Tommy toward the door, “some men just have enough to feel guilty about.”
You left both of them in the alley.
The rest of the shift blurred around the edges after that, though you still smiled when you needed to smile, still counted your tips twice, still changed into sweatpants and a worn black sweater before wiping off your makeup in the cracked mirror, leaving only the stubborn traces of eyeliner that made you look more tired than mysterious.
When you finally stepped outside with your bag over your shoulder, Tommy was waiting by his truck.
Not leaning like he wanted to look casual, not smoking, not talking to anyone, just standing there under the weak yellow parking lot light with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes on the ground until he heard the door shut behind you.
You stopped walking.
He straightened.
“Before you tell me to go to hell,” he said, “I just wanted to make sure you got out safe.”
“I get myself out safe every night.”
“I know.”
The answer should have annoyed you, but it didn’t, not the way his earlier words had, because this time he did not say it like a challenge or a correction, only like a fact he respected.
You shifted the strap of your bag higher on your shoulder.
“My motel’s six blocks.”
His mouth tightened. “This late?”
You gave him a look.
He raised both hands slightly. “Right. Sorry.”
For a moment, neither of you moved, and the city carried on around you, tires hissing on damp pavement, laughter cracking open near the entrance, distant sirens fading somewhere beyond the low buildings, while the two of you stood in the wreckage of a life that had once seemed inevitable.
“I’m not the girl you left,” you said finally.
Tommy swallowed. “No.”
“I’m not softer now.”
“I can see that.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“I know that too.”
Your fingers curled around the strap of your bag until the worn fabric dug into your palm.
“And if you ever come into a club where I’m working again, you don’t get to sit there looking at me like I’m a ghost.”
His face changed at that, pain moving through it too quickly for him to hide.
“You felt like one,” he said. “For a long time.”
You hated him.
You missed him.
You had rebuilt yourself from the floor up, made yourself harder, sharper, smarter, and still there was a part of you standing barefoot in an old kitchen, loving a man who had not known how to stay.
“That sounds like your problem,” you said.
Tommy nodded once, eyes lowered. “Yeah. It is.”
You should have walked away then.
You almost did.
Instead, you stood there under the buzzing lot light and let the silence stretch until it became something less hostile, not forgiveness, not invitation, but maybe the thin, dangerous edge of honesty, and when you finally started toward the street, Tommy did not follow.
That mattered.
It mattered so much you hated that it mattered.
You were halfway across the lot when you stopped and looked back.
He was still there, watching from a distance now, careful with his hands, careful with his hope, careful in a way he had never been when being careless could still destroy you.
“I’m at the Desert Palm,” you called.
His eyes lifted.
You pointed at him before he could speak. “That’s not an invitation.”
“I know,” he said, but something fragile had entered his voice.
“It means if you’re still feeling guilty tomorrow, you can bring coffee at nine and apologize in daylight like a grown man.”
For the first time all night, Tommy smiled, not enough to be charming, not enough to be forgiven, just enough to look like the boy you had loved before life put its hands around both your throats and squeezed.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
You rolled your eyes and turned away before he could see what that did to you.
Austin was still boring, still humid, still full of ghosts and men who thought wanting something meant they deserved to touch it, but your heels were steady against the pavement, your money was in your bag, your name was your own, and when Tommy Miller watched you walk away this time, he was the one left standing with nothing but the mess he had made.
You thought, with a strange and vicious tenderness, that maybe tomorrow you would let him look at it properly.
*Trigger warning*major character death, child death, graphic violence, blood and injury, gun violence, death and dying, apocalypse, horror elements, emotional trauma, grief and loss, PTSD themes, infected, end of the world scenario, canon-typical violence
The phone started ringing at 2:17 in the morning, shrill and unforgiving in the quiet darkness of your bedroom, dragging you out of sleep so abruptly that for one disoriented second you thought it might have been part of a dream, some distant alarm buried beneath the warmth of your blankets, until it kept going and going and you finally rolled onto your side with a groan, blindly patting around your nightstand until your fingers closed around your phone and Tommy Miller’s name glowed back at you from the screen.
For a moment, you only stared at it.
Tommy didn’t call this late.
Tommy texted stupid things at midnight sometimes, sure. Usually pictures of something he’d broken and then fixed with more confidence than skill, or a complaint about Joel being an old man because he refused to go out for drinks after work, or once, memorably, a blurry photo of a raccoon on his porch with the message "think he wants to fight me", but he didn’t call, not like this, not when the world outside was asleep and the neighborhood had gone still except for the distant hum of power lines and the occasional barking dog.
You answered with your heart already climbing into your throat.
“Tommy?”
There was a pause on the other end, just long enough for fear to sharpen into something cold, and then his voice came through, low and sheepish and unmistakably guilty.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
You closed your eyes.
“What did you do?”
“Nothin’ serious.”
“Tommy.”
Another pause, and this time you heard noise behind him, muffled voices, a phone ringing somewhere farther away, someone speaking sharply over an intercom, and your stomach dropped before he even said it.
“Could you maybe come get me?”
You sat upright so quickly the blanket slipped to your waist.
“Where are you?”
“The police station.”
You stared at the dark wall across from your bed while your brain struggled to catch up, because of course he was at the police station. Of course Tommy Miller, the man who lived across the street and mowed your lawn when your mower died and brought you coffee whenever he stopped by too early on weekends and looked at you with that careless, sun-warmed grin that made you forget why you were pretending not to love him, had somehow managed to get himself arrested before sunrise.
“The police station,” you repeated slowly.
“Temporary misunderstanding.”
“You are calling me from a holding cell, aren’t you?”
“Technically from a phone.”
“Tommy.”
“It was a bar fight.”
You inhaled deeply, pressing your fingers to the bridge of your nose.
“Of course it was.”
“He started it.”
“You always say that.”
“This time it’s true.”
“You also always say that.”
There was a small laugh then, soft and familiar despite everything, and it did something unfair to your chest. Because even half-asleep and furious and worried, you knew you were going to go get him, just like he knew you were going to go get him, because somewhere between borrowing sugar from Joel Miller’s kitchen years ago and finding Tommy leaning against your fence with a beer in his hand and sawdust on his shirt, you had become the kind of person who answered his calls in the middle of the night.
“Please?” he asked, quieter now, and the teasing fell away just enough for you to hear the tiredness beneath it. “I wouldn’t call if I had somebody else.”
You hated that he knew exactly which part of you to reach for.
“I’m leaving now,” you muttered, already throwing the blanket off.
“You’re an angel.”
“I’m a pissed-off angel.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You owe me breakfast.”
“I’ll buy you breakfast for a month.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it.”
You ended the call before he could sound any softer, because there were certain things your heart could not safely handle at 2:17 in the morning. And Tommy Miller sounding grateful and fond and just a little scared was apparently one of them.
Ten minutes later, dressed in the first pair of jeans you had found and a hoodie thrown over your sleep shirt, you sat in your driveway with your steering wheel in your hand, watching your car refuse to start for the third time in a row.
The engine coughed once, shuddered like a dying animal, and went silent.
“No,” you whispered, as though your car had ever listened to reason.
You tried again.
Nothing.
You tried a fifth time, because desperation made fools of everyone.
Still nothing.
For several seconds, you sat there with both hands gripping the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at the Miller house across the street, where every window was dark except for the faint porch light Joel always left on, and you considered every possible alternative before accepting the awful truth that there was only one person within walking distance who had a working truck, a deep sense of obligation toward his idiot brother, and absolutely no desire to be woken up by you at this hour.
By the time Joel Miller opened the door, barefoot and furious and squinting like the porch light itself had personally offended him, you were already wincing.
“What?” he said, voice rough from sleep.
You held up your keys.
“My car won’t start.”
Joel stared at you.
Then, because he knew there was more, his eyes narrowed.
“And?”
You swallowed.
“Tommy called.”
Joel closed his eyes.
It was not a normal blink; it was the kind of slow, silent surrender of a man who had known his younger brother long enough to recognize the shape of disaster before anyone had explained it.
“Where is he?”
“The police station.”
Joel stood there for one long second, unmoving, and then he muttered something under his breath that included Tommy’s name, God’s name, and at least three words Sarah definitely would not have been allowed to repeat.
“Bar fight,” you added weakly.
“Course it was a damn bar fight,” Joel grumbled, stepping back from the door. “Because apparently sleep is somethin’ other people get.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t punch anybody, did you?”
“No.”
“Then stop apologizin’.”
He grabbed his keys from the small table near the door, glanced briefly toward the bedroom where Sarah was presumably asleep, then pulled the door shut behind him with a frustrated huff that did nothing to hide the fact that he was already moving quickly. Already awake enough to worry, already prepared to cross half of Austin if that was what Tommy needed.
“For your brother, huh?” you said softly as you followed him to the truck.
Joel shot you a look over his shoulder.
“For my brother,” he said, opening the driver’s door with a few muttered curse words.
You almost smiled.
The police station was brighter than it should have been, all white lights and tired faces and irritated officers moving through the building like this kind of night was nothing new. Though there was something strange in the air even before you saw Tommy, something tense and electric. A pressure you couldn’t name sitting low over the city as Joel pulled up to the curb and put the truck in park with enough force to make the gearshift complain.
Tommy was outside already, leaning against the building with one hand in his jacket pocket and the other rubbing at the side of his jaw, where a bruise was beginning to rise, and the moment he spotted the truck his expression shifted from exhausted to relieved so openly that your annoyance faltered before you could stop it.
Joel rolled down the window.
“Get in before I change my mind.”
Tommy opened the back door, but his eyes found yours first. “You came.”
“My car didn’t.”
His mouth twitched. “Still counts.”
Joel made a sharp impatient sound. “Get in the damn truck, Tommy.”
Tommy obeyed, sliding into the back seat behind you, and before Joel could even pull away from the curb, he twisted around enough to glare at his brother through the rearview mirror.
“You got one minute to explain why I’m pickin’ your ass up from jail at two-thirty in the mornin’.”
Tommy leaned back with a sigh. “He was talkin’ shit.”
Joel’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “That’s your explanation?”
Tommy’s jaw worked, stubborn and defensive, and even in the dim light from passing streetlamps you could see that the bruise on his face wasn’t the only mark. His knuckles were scraped raw, that his shirt collar was stretched like someone had grabbed him, and your anger softened into something far more complicated.
“Tommy,” you said quietly.
He looked at you then, and whatever joke he had been about to make died in his throat.
“Just some drunk asshole,” he said, gentler now. “Ain’t important.”
You didn’t believe him, but you also didn’t push, because Joel’s eyes were on the road and the radio had begun to crackle strangely, interrupting a song halfway through with a burst of static, then a voice speaking too fast to understand, then another wave of static so sharp that Joel reached forward and turned the volume up with a frown.
At first, it sounded like nothing, like one of those emergency bulletins that interrupted regular broadcasts and made everyone quiet for five seconds before life continued as normal, but then words started cutting through in broken pieces.
Tommy leaned forward between the seats. “What the hell’s that about?”
Joel didn’t answer, but his posture changed, his shoulders stiffening as he drove, eyes moving across the road ahead with a focus that made the hair rise on the back of your neck.
Then, somewhere beyond the dark line of buildings ahead, the sky lit orange.
An explosion rolled through the distance a second later, low and heavy enough that you felt it in your bones before the sound reached you fully, and every person in the truck went silent.
For one suspended moment, no one moved, no one spoke, no one breathed properly, because there were certain things your mind knew how to explain and certain things it refused to touch, and the sight of fire blooming over the sleeping city belonged to the second kind.
Joel’s foot pressed harder on the gas. “We’re goin’ home,” he said.
The roads became worse the closer you got to the neighborhood, not crowded at first, exactly, but unsettled, with cars speeding past stop signs, porch lights flicking on one by one, people standing in yards in robes and slippers with phones pressed to their ears. All of them looking toward the same distant glow, and by the time Joel turned onto his street, the uneasy confusion had already curdled into panic.
Mrs. Adler’s front door was open.
That was the first thing you noticed.
Not the smoke in the distance, not the flashing lights, not the dog barking hysterically from someone’s fenced yard, but that door hanging open into darkness. Because Connie Adler kept that door locked always, even in daylight, even when her son came by, even when she was just taking the trash out.
Joel saw it too.
“Stay here,” he said, but he was already out of the truck before either of you could respond.
“Joel!” Tommy called, but Joel was moving toward his house, toward Sarah, toward the one thing that mattered more than whatever madness was spreading through the city.
You barely had time to unbuckle before the front door of Joel’s house opened and Sarah appeared in the entryway, small and frightened in an oversized T-shirt, her curls messy from sleep, clutching herself against the night air as her father rushed to her and caught her by the shoulders.
“What’s goin’ on?” she asked, her voice carrying just enough for you to hear the tremor in it.
Tommy was beside you then, suddenly out of the truck without you noticing, and his hand brushed yours once before curling around your wrist, not quite holding, not quite letting go.
“I don’t know,” he murmured, though you weren’t sure whether he was answering Sarah or you.
Then screaming erupted from the Adlers’ house.
It wasn’t one scream, not a startled cry or a shout of fear, but a tearing, animal sound that seemed to rip straight through the street, and Joel turned toward it while pulling Sarah behind him, his face going hard in a way that made your stomach lurch.
Everything after that happened too quickly and too slowly at once.
The old woman came out of the house wrong.
That was the only word your mind could find.
Wrong.
Her movements were broken and jerking, her mouth dark with something wet. Her nightgown smeared red, and when she came at Joel with a sound no human being should have been capable of making, you felt Tommy’s grip tighten around your wrist so sharply it hurt.
Sarah screamed.
Joel shouted.
Tommy moved forward instinctively, but Joel had already grabbed the wrench from the truck bed, and the sound it made when it hit her skull was dull and final and so awful that your ears seemed to fill with static.
For half a heartbeat, the entire world stopped.
Then Mr. Adler appeared in the doorway behind her, blood soaking the front of his shirt, and Joel shoved Sarah toward the truck.
“Move!”
No one argued.
You climbed into the back seat with Sarah because Joel threw himself behind the wheel and Tommy took the passenger seat, and the truck roared to life before your door was fully shut, tires squealing against asphalt as Joel tore away from the curb while the neighborhood behind you dissolved into screams, gunshots, barking dogs, and the bright rising panic of a world no longer obeying any of its own rules.
Sarah was shaking beside you.
You reached for her automatically, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she clung to you with both hands, her breathing coming too fast, too high, and you kept saying her name because it was the only useful thing you had.
“Sarah, look at me, sweetheart, look at me, you’re okay, your dad’s right there, Tommy’s right there, I’ve got you.”
“But Nana—”
“I know.”
“What happened to her?”
You looked up and caught Tommy’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and the terror in them told you he had no answer either.
“I don’t know,” you whispered. “I don’t know.”
The city was already collapsing by the time you reached the highway. Though collapsing felt too neat a word for the impossible chaos unfolding around you - because collapse sounded like something structural and understandable, beams giving way, walls coming down. But this was people running in the streets with blood on their clothes, cars abandoned sideways across lanes, families dragging suitcases they would never use, helicopters cutting across the sky with searchlights sweeping over rooftops, sirens coming from every direction until they blurred into one endless mechanical wail.
Joel drove like a man with only one thought left in his head, and maybe he did, because every time Sarah made a frightened sound in the back seat his eyes flicked to the mirror, checking, counting, confirming she was still there.
Tommy kept looking out the window, one hand braced against the dashboard, his other hand reaching back between the seats until his fingers found yours in the narrow space beside Sarah’s knee.
You took them without thinking.
His hand closed around yours.
Neither of you said anything.
There wasn’t room for words when the world outside had become fire and movement and screaming. When every turn revealed something worse than the last. When a man stumbled into the road and Joel swerved around him only for you to see something launch itself after him from the dark between two buildings.
Sarah buried her face against your shoulder.
You turned your head away too late.
The thing caught him.
You still heard him scream.
“Don’t look,” Tommy said roughly, though his voice had changed, stripped of all the easy warmth you knew, leaving only fear and command and a desperate need to keep you and Sarah from seeing what he couldn’t unsee.
The highway was blocked.
Joel cursed and turned off before you reached the ramp, taking side streets with no clear plan except away. Away from the worst of it, away from the fire, away from whatever infection or riot or nightmare had swallowed the city whole, and when the truck surged through an intersection lit by flashing emergency lights, the police car came from the left so fast there was no time to avoid it.
You heard Joel shout.
You felt Tommy’s hand rip from yours.
Then the world became metal and glass and weightlessness.
The impact threw the truck sideways with a violence that seemed to empty your lungs and scatter your thoughts across the pavement, and for a moment there was no sound at all, only a ringing silence and the taste of blood in your mouth, until Sarah’s crying pulled you back.
You were sideways, or maybe upside down, your seatbelt cutting painfully across your ribs, the air thick with smoke and gasoline and the sharp powder smell of deployed airbags, and somewhere ahead of you Joel was groaning while Tommy said your name over and over like a prayer he was afraid would stop working if he paused.
“I’m here,” you managed, though it came out barely louder than a breath.
Tommy twisted in his seat, blood running from a cut near his temple, his eyes wild as they found you. “You hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sarah?” Joel rasped.
“I’m okay,” she sobbed, though she didn’t sound okay, she sounded terrified and hurt and twelve years old in a world that had no mercy left for children.
Joel kicked his door open with a furious, desperate strength, and one by one you spilled out of the wreckage into a street that looked nothing like any street you had ever known. Littered with broken glass and burning cars and people running in every direction while shapes moved through the smoke behind them.
Joel got Sarah out first, hands checking her face, her arms, her legs, and when she cried out and grabbed her ankle, his expression changed.
“Can you walk?”
She shook her head, crying harder.
Joel lifted her without hesitation.
Tommy came around the wrecked truck and caught you before your knees buckled, his arm wrapping around your waist as though he had been waiting for the exact moment your body remembered shock.
“I’ve got you,” he said, too close to your ear, his breath warm against your hair despite the cold terror spreading through you. “Stay with me.”
“I’m staying.”
“Promise?”
You looked at him then, really looked, at the blood on his face and the fear in his eyes and the way his hand shook once against your side before tightening.
“Promise.”
Joel was already moving.
You followed because there was no other choice.
The city on foot was worse than the city from the truck, because the thin illusion of protection was gone now. Because there was no glass between you and the screaming. No engine to outrun what was chasing people through the streets. No locked doors. No metal frame. Only your feet on pavement and Tommy’s arm around you and Joel ahead with Sarah held tight against his chest.
A man ran past you on fire.
You stumbled, and Tommy hauled you upright before you could fall.
“Don’t stop,” he said.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.”
His voice cracked on the last word, just slightly, just enough to betray him.
So you ran.
You ran past bodies and abandoned cars and storefront windows shattered from the inside. Past a woman crying on her knees beside someone who wasn’t moving. Past soldiers shouting orders nobody understood. Past people slamming against locked doors. Past a child screaming for his mother - and all the while Tommy stayed close enough that his shoulder brushed yours. Close enough that when the crowd surged around you he could pull you back against him before you were swept away.
Then the first infected reached you.
It came from an alley with impossible speed. A man once, maybe, though there was almost nothing human in the way he moved now. His mouth opening around a terrible sound as he lunged for a young woman ahead of you and dragged her down before anyone could help.
You froze.
Your body simply stopped obeying.
Tommy didn’t.
He grabbed you with both hands, turning you away so sharply that your back hit his chest, and then he pushed you forward with him. Half-running, half-carrying you while the screams behind you became wet and terrible.
“Move, baby, please move,” he said, and the endearment should have meant something, should have lit some small hidden place inside you, but there was too much blood and smoke and fear for anything except survival.
Somewhere in the chaos, you lost Joel.
It happened in seconds.
A military truck cut through the street.
People scattered.
Gunfire erupted to your right.
Tommy shoved you behind a parked car as a crowd surged between you and Joel, and when you stood again, coughing from smoke, Joel and Sarah were gone.
“No,” you gasped, turning wildly. “No, no, where are they?”
Tommy looked too, shouting Joel’s name once, then again, louder, but the city swallowed every sound, and when another wave of people slammed past you, someone nearly knocked you to the ground.
“Joel!” you screamed.
Nothing.
“Sarah!”
Tommy grabbed your face then, both hands rough and warm against your cheeks, forcing you to look at him while the world burned behind his shoulders.
“We’ll find them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know my brother,” he said, even though his eyes were bright with panic, even though you could feel the tremor in his fingers. “He’s gonna keep her alive, and we’re gonna find them, but we can’t do that if we die right here.”
You shook your head, tears cutting hot tracks through the grime on your face.
“Tommy—”
“I know,” he said, and his voice dropped into something gentler, something almost ruined. “I know, sweetheart, I know, but I need you to stay with me right now.”
So you did.
Not because you were brave, not because you understood what was happening, not because any part of you had accepted that people were changing into monsters and the city you knew was falling apart around you - but because Tommy’s hand found yours again and held on as though losing you was not something he was willing to survive.
The two of you moved through alleys and side streets, ducking behind cars when soldiers passed, running when the infected screamed too close, hiding once in the back room of a small laundromat while something slammed itself against the front windows hard enough to crack the glass.
Tommy stood between you and the door with a tire iron in his hand.
You pressed both hands over your mouth to keep from crying too loudly.
He looked back at you once, and even then, even with blood drying on his face and fear tightening every line of his body, he tried to smile.
It didn’t work.
But you loved him for trying.
When the glass finally shattered, Tommy grabbed you and ran.
After that, time became impossible.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Hours collapsed into flashes.
Your legs hurt, your ribs hurt, your throat burned, and your mind kept snagging on useless, ordinary things, like the fact that you had left your porch light on, like the laundry still sitting in your dryer, like the mug in your sink, like Tommy’s promise that he owed you breakfast for a month- A promise from another universe where breakfast still existed and morning still meant coffee and sleepy complaints and Joel yelling at Tommy for using all the creamer.
Then, somehow, there they were.
Joel and Sarah.
At the edge of an open field beyond the worst of the streets, framed by smoke and the dim beginning of dawn, Joel still carrying Sarah, still moving, still alive.
Relief hit you so hard that you almost collapsed.
“Joel!” Tommy shouted.
Joel turned, and the look on his face when he saw his brother would have broken you if you had enough room left inside you to break.
You ran toward them.
Tommy was faster, but he never let go of your hand, dragging you with him across the uneven ground, and for one impossible second you thought maybe, maybe the worst had passed, maybe all of you had survived the night through sheer stubbornness and luck.
Then the soldier appeared.
He stepped out of the darkness with his rifle raised.
“Stop right there.”
Joel froze.
Tommy pulled you behind him so quickly you stumbled.
“We’re not sick,” Joel said, his voice raw and desperate as Sarah whimpered against him. “We’re not sick.”
The soldier said something into his radio, his weapon never lowering, and the silence that followed was so absolute that you heard Tommy’s breathing change beside you.
You saw the soldier’s face.
You saw the order arrive before he obeyed it.
“No,” you whispered.
The rifle lifted.
Everything happened at once.
Joel turned to shield Sarah.
Gunfire cracked across the field.
You screamed.
Tommy moved.
The soldier fired again, and then Tommy’s gunshot answered, loud and final, sending the soldier backward into the dirt.
For a heartbeat, all you could hear was the echo.
Then Sarah made a small sound.
A wounded sound.
A child’s sound.
Joel lowered himself to the ground with her in his arms, and the world narrowed to the blood spreading across her shirt.
“No,” Joel said immediately, as though saying it fast enough could undo it. “No, no, no, baby girl, no.”
Tommy stopped beside you.
You could feel him stop breathing.
Sarah looked confused more than anything, her small hands fluttering weakly at the wound, her face twisted in pain and terror as Joel tried to press his hand over the blood, tried to hold her together with his bare palms, tried to make sense of something that had no sense in it at all.
“It hurts,” she cried.
“I know, baby, I know,” Joel said, his voice breaking open completely. “I know, I know, you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay.”
But she wasn’t.
You knew it.
Tommy knew it.
Joel knew it too, some buried part of him. Though he fought that knowledge with everything in him. Fought it with his hands and his voice and the sheer terrible force of a father who would have given his own life ten thousand times over if the world had allowed bargains like that.
You dropped to your knees beside him, your hands hovering uselessly because there was too much blood and not enough time and no hospital, no help, no way to fix what had happened.
“Joel,” you whispered, but he didn’t hear you.
Or he couldn’t.
Sarah’s breathing hitched.
Joel pulled her closer.
“Tommy, help me,” he said suddenly, looking at his brother with wild, shattered eyes. “Help me.”
Tommy moved instantly, because Joel had asked and Tommy would always move when Joel asked, but the moment he saw the wound properly, the moment his hands hovered over Sarah the same way yours had, helpless and trembling, something in his face crumpled.
He couldn’t fix it either.
None of you could.
Sarah’s cries grew softer.
That was the worst part.
Not the blood.
Not Joel’s panic.
Not the gunshots still echoing somewhere far away.
The worst part was that she got quieter, her pain folding inward, her small body losing the fight while Joel kept talking, kept begging, kept promising things he had no power to promise.
“Look at me, baby girl,” he pleaded, pressing his forehead near hers. “Stay with me, okay, stay with me, Sarah, please, please, just stay with me.”
You were crying openly now, one hand pressed hard against your mouth, your entire body shaking so violently that Tommy reached for you without looking, his fingers closing around your wrist like he needed proof that someone was still alive beside him.
Sarah took one more breath.
Then another.
Then nothing.
For several seconds, no one moved.
The world did not stop, though it should have.
The fires still burned in the distance, helicopters still roared overhead, gunshots still cracked somewhere beyond the field, and the first pale edge of morning still crept over the horizon with cruel indifference, as though dawn had any right to come after a night like that.
Joel made a sound that you would never forget.
It was not a sob, not at first, but something deeper and more ruined. Something dragged from a place no language could reach, and when he gathered Sarah against his chest as though holding her tighter could somehow call her back, Tommy finally broke.
He sank beside his brother, one hand gripping Joel’s shoulder, his own face twisted with grief so raw he looked almost young - almost like a boy again. The reckless younger brother who had gotten arrested over some bar fight hours earlier. Before the world ended. Before Sarah died. Before every ordinary thing was burned away.
“Joel,” Tommy whispered.
Joel shook his head. “No.”
There was nothing else.
Only no.
No to the blood. No to the body in his arms. No to the dawn. No to the world.
No to everything that had taken his daughter and left him breathing.
You didn’t remember moving closer, but suddenly you were there too, kneeling beside Joel, touching his back with shaking fingers while he rocked Sarah against him and cried into her hair.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, though the words were useless, obscene in their smallness. “Joel, I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t answer. Maybe he couldn’t.
Tommy looked at you over Joel’s shoulder, and there was something terrified in his eyes beyond grief, something that asked a question neither of you wanted to hear.
What now?
You looked past him toward the burning city, toward the smoke-black sky, toward the dead soldier in the grass and the empty road beyond him, and your mind finally caught up with your body all at once.
Your house was gone from you. Your street was gone. The world you had woken up in was gone.
Sarah was gone.
And whatever came next was not something any of you had been made for.
A sob tore out of you then, sudden and ugly, and Tommy reached for you with his free arm, pulling you into his side while keeping his other hand on Joel, as though he could hold the three of you together by force if he just refused to let go.
“I don’t understand,” you choked, your fingers twisting in Tommy’s jacket. “What the fuck is happening, Tommy, why is this happening, what are we supposed to do now?”
Tommy didn’t answer right away, because for once there was no joke, no reassurance, no careless confidence, no grin tilted toward trouble like trouble was something he could talk his way out of.
He only held you tighter.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, and his voice was so quiet it almost disappeared beneath Joel’s grief. “I don’t know.”
That scared you more than anything. Because Tommy always had something.
A plan, a lie, a laugh, a hand stretched toward you across the space between your driveways.
Now he had nothing except blood on his hands and fear in his eyes and the stubborn, desperate way he kept holding on.
You pressed your face into his shoulder and cried until there was nothing left in you but shaking. Until Joel’s sobs faded into a silence more frightening than sound. Until the sun rose fully over a world none of you recognized.
And when Tommy eventually helped you stand. When Joel finally let Tommy guide him up with Sarah still held against him because leaving her there was impossible and moving forward was impossible and yet the living still had to move. You understood with a sick, hollow certainty that something had ended forever in that field.
Not just Sarah’s life.
Not just the night.
Everything.
The old world had died somewhere between the phone ringing at 2:17 in the morning and the moment Joel Miller stopped begging his daughter to breathe. And as Tommy took your hand again, as his fingers threaded through yours with a grip that was too tight and not nearly tight enough, you realized that whatever came next would not be living in any way you understood.
It would be surviving.
And you had no idea how any of you were supposed to do that.
*Trigger Warning* fertility struggles, miscarriage mention, infertility themes, past cancer mention, emotional themes, crying, pregnancy announcement, IVF/surrogacy mention, discussions of pregnancy loss, family/emotional vulnerability, implied medical trauma, heavy emotional comfort, soft domestic themes, found family dynamics, parenthood themes
The house smells like cinnamon before anyone even walks through the door.
You’re standing in the kitchen pretending to rearrange the same tray of cookies for the fourth time while your stomach twists itself into impossible knots. Outside, headlights sweep across the snow-covered driveway one after another, tires crunching softly over fresh ice.
“They’re here,” Colby says gently from behind you.
Your hands immediately fly to your sweater, fingers pressing unconsciously against the slight curve hidden beneath the fabric. Thirteen weeks still isn’t enough to show much, not really, but you know. Every second of every day, you know.
Your baby.
The thought still feels unreal enough to break you open.
Colby notices the panic flash across your face and steps closer instantly, warm hands settling on your hips. “Hey,” he murmurs, lowering his head until his forehead rests against yours. “Breathe.”
You laugh shakily. “I am breathing.”
“Barely.”
The doorbell rings.
Then immediately afterward comes Sam yelling from outside, “OPEN UP BEFORE I FREEZE TO DEATH.”
That finally gets a real laugh out of you.
Colby grins. “There she is.”
He kisses your forehead once before heading toward the door, and you follow slower, one hand still pressed protectively against your stomach.
The house explodes into noise the second the door opens.
Sam barrels in dramatically, carrying enough snacks for an apocalypse while Sofie trails behind him laughing. Kris arrives with wrapped gifts despite being told repeatedly this wasn’t a gift exchange. And then Celina steps inside holding Remi’s tiny mittened hand while Adam carries the overnight bags.
Your breath catches.
Remi isn’t tiny anymore.
He’s two now—cheeks rosy from the cold, curls peeking out from beneath a knit hat, babbling excitedly about snow and “Unca Colby’s house.” The sight of him nearly knocks the air from your lungs because somehow time moved without your permission.
Celina sees your expression immediately.
“I know,” she says softly, eyes already emotional. “I blinked and he became a person.”
You crouch instinctively as Remi runs toward you on wobbly toddler legs.
“There’s my buddy,” you whisper, scooping him up carefully.
He smells like winter air and baby shampoo and something achingly familiar.
Colby watches you from the doorway while helping Adam bring luggage inside, and the look on his face almost undoes you before the night even begins.
Because he knows.
He knows exactly what this means to you.
What all of this means.
Two years ago you sat on Celina’s living room floor holding Remi for the first time while Colby whispered that you’d be an amazing mom someday.
At the time, the future had felt warm.
Then it became hospitals.
Blood tests.
Negative tests.
Silence.
Hope carefully built and violently ripped away.
Again.
And again.
You still remember the first miscarriage too clearly. The sterile brightness of the bathroom light at three in the morning. Colby kneeling on the tile floor beside you while you cried so hard you couldn’t breathe. The second loss had somehow been worse because that time you’d let yourself believe it might actually happen.
Meanwhile Colby carried his own quiet fear like a weight chained around his ribs.
Cancer changes things.
Even after recovery. Even after remission. Even after the doctors say healthy.
There had always been percentages after that. Statistics. Possibilities lowered by treatments and time and damage nobody could see.
Sometimes you caught him staring at babies in grocery stores with this fleeting grief in his eyes before he’d smile it away for your sake.
And still—still—he never stopped trying to hold hope for both of you.
Inside the living room, everyone slowly settles in.
Christmas lights glow softly around the windows. Music hums quietly in the background. Snow falls steadily outside, coating the world in white while warmth pools inside every corner of the house.
It feels almost exactly like that weekend at Celina’s farm years ago.
Only now something has shifted.
Something bigger.
You exchange nervous glances with Colby across the room at least twenty times while everyone talks over one another. Sam’s telling some exaggerated story that has Sofie threatening to expose him. Kris is helping Remi build a crooked tower out of wooden blocks near the fireplace while Adam attempts to keep him from eating wrapping paper.
And Celina—
Celina keeps looking at you.
Like she knows something.
“Mhm,” she says suddenly from across the kitchen island while sipping wine. “You’re acting weird.”
You nearly choke on your water.
Colby coughs to hide a laugh.
“I’m not acting weird.”
“You cried because Remi offered you a cracker.”
“In my defense,” you protest weakly, “he was being really generous.”
Sam narrows his eyes. “Wait.”
“No,” you say immediately.
“You’re glowing.”
“I am not glowing.”
“You are absolutely glowing.”
Colby loses the battle against smiling.
And suddenly every single pair of eyes in the room shifts toward the two of you.
Silence falls.
Your heart starts hammering so hard you swear everyone can hear it.
Colby reaches for your hand beneath the table instantly, squeezing once.
It’s okay.
You swallow hard, already feeling tears burn behind your eyes.
“Oh my God,” Kris whispers first.
Celina’s hand flies to her mouth.
Sam actually stands up. “NO WAY.”
You laugh through a shaky inhale, already crying before the words fully leave your mouth.
“I’m pregnant.”
The room explodes.
Kris bursts into tears immediately. Sofie screams loud enough to scare Remi. Adam’s jaw drops while Sam starts yelling incoherently and hugging literally everyone within reach.
But Celina—
Celina just stares at you.
Eyes wide.
Filling slowly with tears.
You’re crying too hard to speak properly by the time you walk toward her, one trembling hand covering your mouth.
“Thirteen weeks,” you whisper brokenly.
That’s all it takes.
Celina lets out this shattered sob before throwing her arms around you so tightly you nearly lose balance. Both of you collapse into each other in the middle of the kitchen while years of fear and grief and hope pour out all at once.
“Oh my God,” she cries into your shoulder. “Oh my God, you did it.”
You can only nod against her.
Because she understands.
Out of everyone in this room, she understands.
The injections.
The appointments.
The jealousy that made you hate yourself afterward.
The unbearable feeling of watching everyone else move forward while your own body kept failing you.
Celina knows what it’s like to want a child so badly it physically hurts to wake up every morning without one.
You pull back just enough to look at her tear-streaked face.
“There were moments I thought it wouldn’t happen,” you admit quietly.
Her expression breaks completely because she remembers saying those exact same words once.
Adam wraps one arm around Celina while wiping at his own eyes. “We’re so happy for you guys,” he says thickly.
Colby finally reaches you then.
The second he wraps his arms around your waist, you completely fall apart.
Because this man—
This man carried you through every single nightmare without once making you feel broken.
You tilt your head up toward him, tears spilling endlessly. “We’re having a baby.”
His face crumples instantly.
Not dramatic. Not loud.
Just pure emotion cracking through every wall at once.
“Yeah,” he whispers, voice shaking violently. “Yeah, we are.”
You’ve seen Colby emotional before. Seen him cry before.
But this is different.
There’s something almost disbelieving in the way he looks at you, like part of him still can’t trust that this is real. His hand slips carefully against your stomach and stays there.
Protective already.
Loving already.
Sam wipes aggressively at his eyes from across the room. “I hate all of you,” he mutters emotionally. “Why am I crying this hard?”
“Because you’re sensitive,” Kris says while openly sobbing into a napkin.
Sofie laughs tearfully. “Found family my ass. This is just family now.”
And she’s right.
Because somewhere along the way, all those years of friendship stopped feeling temporary.
The late-night phone calls.
The holidays spent together.
The grief shared openly.
The way they carried each other through heartbreak and fear and healing.
None of it was accidental anymore.
Remi toddles over then, confused by the crying.
Celina crouches carefully beside him, brushing curls away from his forehead. “Guess what?” she says softly. “They’re having a baby.”
His eyes widen dramatically.
“A BABY?”
Everyone laughs through tears.
You kneel down carefully despite Colby immediately hovering like you might break, and Remi presses both tiny hands against your stomach with absolute seriousness.
“Baby in there?”
Your throat tightens painfully.
“Yeah,” you whisper.
He gasps like this is the greatest revelation of his life.
Colby crouches beside you, one arm wrapping securely around your shoulders while Remi continues talking excitedly to your stomach about dinosaurs and cookies and snowmen.
And suddenly the room feels unbearably full.
Not crowded.
Full.
Full of history.
Full of survival.
Full of people who stayed.
Celina catches your eye from across the room, tears shining there again, and you realize something quietly monumental.
Years ago you held her son in your arms and whispered I’d do anything for you.
Now your child will grow up surrounded by all this love too.
Not perfect love.
Not easy love.
Real love.
The kind built carefully through loss and loyalty and choosing each other over and over again.
Colby kisses the side of your head softly while everyone around you talks at once about baby names and nursery ideas and future holidays.
You lean into him automatically.
Warm.
Safe.
Home.
And for the first time after all those painful years, hope no longer feels fragile.
Not because Connor’s systems were failing — CyberLife would never allow something so inefficient — but because something inside him had begun interrupting the clean perfection of the simulation.
The water should have reflected the evening sky flawlessly.
Instead, ripples distorted the surface every few seconds, small glitches breaking across the pond whenever a particular memory replayed in his mind.
Your laugh in the bullpen. Your hand wrapping around his wrist before Hank could shove him aside. The way your heartbeat accelerated whenever you argued with the lieutenant on his behalf.
Connor stood still beneath the dark branches of the tree while Amanda approached him in silence, heels barely disturbing the stone path.
“You hesitated today.”
Connor turned toward her immediately. “The suspect was armed.”
“You had a clear shot.”
“I prioritized civilian safety.”
Amanda studied him for a long moment.
Her expression remained calm, composed, carefully pleasant — the way it always was before she said something sharp enough to cut through his processors.
“Your priority was Detective Y/L/N.”
Connor’s LED pulsed once. Blue. Then yellow.
“The detective was in immediate danger.”
“You continue to display unusual behavioral patterns regarding them.”
Connor straightened slightly. “I am adapting to my environment and improving cooperative efficiency within the department.”
Amanda stepped closer. “You monitor their emotional state excessively.”
Connor said nothing.
“You interrupt Lieutenant Anderson more frequently when his hostility is directed at them.”
Silence.
“You position yourself physically closer to them during confrontational encounters.”
Connor’s thirium pump accelerated. Amanda noticed. Of course she did. “You are becoming compromised.”
The words landed harder than they should have.
Connor immediately responded, voice level and precise. “I am simply adapting.”
Connor watching you smile at him over coffee in the break room. Connor turning toward you before anyone else entered a room. Connor stepping between you and an aggressive suspect despite lower mission priority. Connor looking at you.
Again. And again. And again.
His LED spun faster. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow—
“You prioritize their approval,” Amanda observed.
“That is inaccurate.”
“You seek them out.”
“I work alongside them daily.”
“You experience stress responses when they are threatened.”
Connor’s jaw tightened slightly.
Amanda’s voice softened. Almost pitying.
“And when Lieutenant Anderson insults you, Detective Y/L/N intervenes before you request assistance.”
Connor replayed those moments involuntarily.
You stepping between them. You glaring at Hank. You saying Stop treating him like that.
Not because Connor demanded it. Because you cared.
Amanda watched the instability spike across his system. “You are developing emotional dependency.”
“No,” Connor answered immediately. But his voice came half a second too late.
Amanda’s gaze sharpened. “CyberLife designed you to investigate deviancy, Connor. Not emulate it.”
His LED flashed red. Briefly. Violently.
And Amanda saw it.
The silence afterward felt catastrophic.
Then she spoke the words that truly destabilized him. “Detective Y/L/N may become a liability.”
Red. His LED flickered crimson so abruptly the garden itself distorted around him.
Connor stepped forward before he consciously processed the movement. “No.”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. Interesting.
“Explain your response.”
Connor’s systems scrambled for composure. “The detective is valuable to the investigation.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
A lie.
Not a human lie — not emotional, not defensive. But statistically inaccurate nonetheless.
Amanda circled him slowly. “If your instability continues, CyberLife may be forced to reevaluate your assignment.”
Connor’s thirium pressure spiked. “You would remove me from the investigation?”
“We would protect the mission.”
Meaning:
Protect Connor from himself.
Or protect CyberLife from Connor.
Amanda stopped directly in front of him. “You were not built to feel attached.”
Connor looked down at the pond again. The water reflected your face for half a second. A memory bleeding into simulation.
His voice lowered almost imperceptibly. “…Understood.”
But even as he said it, he realized something deeply concerning.
The idea of losing the investigation barely affected him. The idea of losing you destabilized him instantly.
The bullpen smelled like burnt coffee and old paperwork by the time Connor returned to the station.
Voices overlapped across the room. Phones ringing. Keyboards clacking. Someone laughing too loudly near dispatch.
And then there was you.
Sitting at your desk with your sleeves rolled up, focused on paperwork with a frustrated crease between your eyebrows.
Connor stopped walking for 0.8 seconds. Just enough for his processors to recalibrate.
You noticed immediately. “Hey,” you said softly. “You okay?”
His systems warmed. Ridiculous.
“I am functioning within normal parameters.”
Your eyes narrowed instantly. “That’s android for ‘absolutely not.’”
Connor opened his mouth to respond before Hank appeared carrying terrible coffee and even worse attitude.
“Great,” Hank muttered. “Tin can’s back.”
You shot him a look. “Hank.”
“What? He was gone for two hours staring into space somewhere.”
Connor remained still beside your desk.
Hank took one look at him and sighed heavily. “You know, I miss the days when partners came with drinking problems instead of software updates.”
You snorted despite yourself. Connor looked at you automatically.
Amanda’s voice echoed in his memory. You seek them out.
His LED flickered yellow.
You noticed that too. Concern softened your face instantly. “Connor?”
“I am fine.”
Hank stared between the two of you for a long moment. Then his expression shifted.
Not annoyance. Recognition. “Oh, hell no.”
You blinked. “What?”
Hank pointed between you and Connor vaguely. “This. Whatever the hell this is.”
“There is no ‘this,’” Connor answered immediately.
Too quickly. Again.
Hank barked out a humorless laugh. “Jesus Christ, you’re both hopeless.”
“Hank,” you warned.
“No, listen to me.” He set his coffee down harder than necessary. “You’re getting attached.”
The bullpen noise suddenly felt farther away.
Connor remained perfectly motionless.
You crossed your arms defensively. “We’re partners.”
“He’s a machine.”
Connor’s LED dimmed slightly. You noticed.
“Hank—”
“No.” Hank looked directly at you now. Serious for once. “You think CyberLife won’t pull the plug if he steps outta line?”
Connor’s processors froze.
Hank continued before you could interrupt. “You think they care how polite he is? One wrong move and they’ll wipe him clean or replace him with another model.”
Connor stared at the floor. Not because he lacked response. Because he had too many.
You looked furious now. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s reality.”
“He’s trying harder than half the people in this department!”
“And he’s still a machine.”
The words hit harder than Connor expected. Because this time Hank wasn’t yelling. He sounded tired. Certain. Like Connor’s existence had already been decided for him.
And then Hank said the one thing Connor couldn’t process correctly.
“You keep treating him like a person and eventually it’s gonna get one of you hurt.”
Silence. Connor looked up instinctively. At you. Not Hank. Always you.
Your expression shifted the second you saw him standing there. Hurt. Not physically. Something quieter. Something worse.
Connor turned away before either of you could say anything and walked down the hallway. Fast enough to escape. Slow enough to hear you snap:
“Hank, what the hell is wrong with you?”
Connor stood alone near the evidence room for exactly four minutes and eleven seconds before you found him. He’d spent that entire time attempting to stabilize his systems.
Failure percentage:
Concerningly high.
You approached slower than usual. Carefully. Like he might disappear.
“Connor.”
He turned toward you immediately despite himself.
Your face softened. “Hank’s an asshole.”
Connor managed a faint nod. “Lieutenant Anderson displays elevated hostility under emotional stress.”
“That’s the most diplomatic way anyone’s ever called him emotionally constipated.”
A pause. Normally Connor would attempt humor here. He’d learned humans liked that. But his processors remained tangled around one sentence. He’s still a machine.
You stepped closer. “Hey.” Softer now. “Don’t listen to him.”
Connor looked at you for a long moment before speaking quietly. “…Would you prefer if I remained only functional?”
The question hit you like a physical blow.
Connor continued before you could answer. “If emotional adaptation compromises the mission, I can correct the behavior.”
Your heartbeat changed instantly. Connor noticed.
“You think caring about people is a malfunction?”
“I was not designed for attachment.”
“And yet here you are.”
Connor’s LED flickered yellow. Unstable.
“You defend me constantly,” he said quietly. “You prioritize my wellbeing despite social consequences within the department. Your behavior is statistically inconsistent with standard human-android relations.”
You stared at him. “Connor…”
“I need clarity.”
There it was again. That awful, careful politeness he used whenever he was afraid of the answer.
“I do not wish to cause problems for you.”
The hallway suddenly felt too small. Too warm. Too honest. You stepped closer until there was barely any distance left between you.
Connor’s thirium pump accelerated immediately.
“You are not a problem.”
His eyes lifted to yours slowly. “But Lieutenant Anderson may be correct. If CyberLife determines I am compromised—”
“Then CyberLife can deal with me.”
Connor’s systems stalled for 1.2 seconds. “You would oppose them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question came out smaller than intended. Not analytical. Not investigative. Personal.
You looked at him for a long moment before answering. “Because you matter to me.”
Direct hit.
Connor’s LED spun violently yellow-red-yellow before stabilizing blue again. His breathing simulation stuttered. You noticed all of it. And somehow that only made your expression softer.
“Connor,” you said carefully, “you’re not just some machine people get to kick around whenever they’re angry.”
He stared at you silently.
“You’re kind,” you continued. “You try harder than anyone else here. You care about people even when they treat you horribly.”
Connor’s voice dropped lower. “I care about you significantly more.”
The words escaped before he could stop them. Silence. Connor froze.
System warning messages exploded across his vision.
INSTABILITY INCREASING.
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE EXCEEDS PARAMETERS.
You looked stunned.
Connor immediately straightened. “I apologize. That statement was inappropriate.”
“No,” you breathed instantly. “No, it wasn’t.”
His LED flickered. Blue. Uncertain.
You smiled then — small and nervous and unbearably warm. And Connor realized something catastrophic. He wanted to see that expression again. Repeatedly. Constantly. Dangerously.
Your hand moved before you could overthink it, fingers brushing lightly against his sleeve near his wrist.
Connor stopped functioning for approximately one entire second. You definitely noticed.
A laugh escaped you softly. “There you are.”
Connor blinked. “...There who is?”
“The guy underneath all the programming.”
His chest tightened strangely. Not painful. Worse. Meaningful.
From the bullpen, Hank yelled:
“If you two are flirting, do it after work hours!”
You jumped slightly.
Connor looked confused. “…Are we flirting?”
You laughed harder this time.
And Connor decided — perhaps for the first time in his existence — that he would very much like to hear that sound again.
Hello! Just wanted to clarify what fandoms you write for before making a request! 😊
Hi there!
I’m a huge fan of Call of Duty, The Last of Us, war movies (in general), Formula 1 and so much more. If it’s intense, emotional, or makes me stare at the ceiling at 2 a.m. thinking about character lore… I’m in.
Fandom or character doesn’t matter — even if I don’t know them yet, I’ll do my research and give it my best shot.
You can also have a look at my masterlist to see what I’ve written so far 😊
Alex Keller
Call of Duty
Words: 1778
*Trigger warning* Gun violence, war/injury themes, explosions, rubble entrapment, blood/injuries, panic attacks/panic response, descriptions of violence, near death experience, civilian caught in crossfire, physical trauma, military conflict, emotional distress, mentions of crushed/trapped injuries
The market always woke before the sun did.
By the time the first pale streaks of dawn stretched over the rooftops of Urzikstan, the streets below were already alive with movement. Wooden carts rattled over uneven stone, merchants dragged open metal shutters with loud scraping noises, and the smell of fresh bread mixed with spices and dust in the cooling morning air.
You were always there early.
Long before the crowds arrived.
Long before the heat settled heavy over the city.
Your stall sat near the center of the market square beneath faded fabric awnings that had survived more storms and wars than anyone could count. Fruits stacked carefully into neat pyramids, jars of dried herbs lining the back shelves, handwoven cloths folded with impossible precision.
Routine mattered here.
Routine meant normalcy.
Normalcy meant survival.
You were arranging figs into a basket when Farah appeared for the first time.
Not unusual on its own. Farah Karim visited often enough that most vendors knew her by name. People respected her. Trusted her. Some feared her a little too.
But that morning she wasn’t alone.
The tall foreign soldier walking beside her drew attention immediately.
He moved differently than the locals. Too aware. Too controlled. Like every alleyway, rooftop, and passing stranger had already been assessed for danger before he took another step.
Sunglasses hid his eyes despite the early hour, sleeves rolled to his elbows despite the dust and heat.
You noticed the scars first.
Then the rifle.
Then the way he stayed slightly behind Farah without ever seeming secondary to her.
Your gaze met his for half a second.
He looked away first.
Farah greeted you warmly in Arabic, already reaching for produce while explaining what she needed. Medical supplies were harder to acquire these days. Food had become expensive again after the latest fighting near the outskirts.
The foreigner stood nearby silently.
Watching.
Listening.
You caught him staring at the handwritten labels on the baskets.
Trying to understand them.
“You read Arabic?” you asked carefully in heavily accented English.
The man blinked slightly, almost surprised you addressed him directly.
“A little,” he answered.
The accent was American.
Rougher than expected.
You pointed toward the figs. “This says fresh.”
His eyes narrowed slightly as he sounded out the letters under his breath.
You smiled despite yourself.
“Not good?”
One corner of his mouth twitched faintly.
“Working on it.”
That was the first conversation you ever had with Alex Keller.
After that, he started appearing regularly beside Farah.
At first he barely spoke.
Mostly he carried supplies, scanned rooftops, or stood nearby while Farah negotiated prices with local merchants. Some people distrusted him immediately because he was foreign military. Others simply avoided looking at him altogether.
But Alex kept coming back.
And slowly, very slowly, things changed.
You learned he hated overly sweet tea.
He learned you added cardamom to nearly everything.
You learned he always positioned himself facing entrances automatically.
He learned your younger brother kept stealing oranges from your own stall when he thought you weren’t looking.
The language barrier made every interaction awkward in the beginning.
Your English consisted mostly of broken phrases and stubborn determination.
His Arabic was somehow even worse.
The first time he tried ordering something himself, he accidentally asked for “three kilos of sheep” instead of apricots.
You laughed so hard you nearly dropped an entire crate.
Alex stared at you for a solid five seconds before realizing what he’d said.
Then even he laughed.
Quietly.
Briefly.
But genuinely.
After that, learning became easier.
He picked up Arabic frighteningly fast. Enough to bargain poorly, ask directions, and understand when old women in the market gossiped about him thinking he couldn’t understand them.
You improved your English with equal stubbornness.
Sometimes he helped.
Sometimes he made it worse.
“Repeat,” he said one afternoon while leaning against the side of your stall.
You narrowed your eyes suspiciously. “You teach bad words again?”
“I would never.”
“You taught my brother how to say asshole.”
“In my defense,” Alex replied calmly, “he used it correctly.”
You shoved his shoulder lightly while trying not to smile.
He smiled first.
That became dangerous.
Because once Alex Keller smiled at you directly, it became increasingly difficult not to think about him afterward.
The city had seen worse days.
Everyone knew that.
Still, tension lingered in the air that morning like smoke before a fire.
Too many military vehicles moving through the streets.
Too few civilians outside.
Farah had warned people to stay alert.
Alex had looked distracted all morning.
Restless.
You noticed it immediately when he arrived near noon.
He approached your stall alone this time, tactical vest dusty, rifle slung across his back. His jaw looked tighter than usual.
“Everything okay?” you asked carefully.
His eyes moved across the square automatically before settling on you.
“Probably.”
Probably.
Not yes.
Not reassuring.
You frowned slightly.
Alex noticed.
“We’ve had reports of Al-Qatala movement nearby,” he admitted quietly. “Could be nothing.”
Nothing.
In Urzikstan, nothing still usually meant gunfire eventually.
You started packing some crates instinctively.
Alex watched you for a moment before stepping closer.
“You should head home early today.”
“So should you.”
A faint huff of amusement escaped him.
“Not really an option for me.”
Before you could answer, shouting erupted somewhere across the market.
Then gunfire.
The entire square exploded into chaos instantly.
People screamed.
Merchants abandoned stalls.
Glass shattered somewhere nearby while automatic rifle fire echoed violently through the narrow streets.
Alex moved before your brain fully processed what was happening.
One second he stood beside you.
The next he had grabbed your arm and pulled you downward behind the stall as bullets ripped through wooden beams overhead.
“Stay down!”
The explosion came almost immediately afterward.
Close enough to knock the breath from your lungs.
The ground shook violently beneath you.
Stone cracked.
People screamed louder.
Then the building beside the market collapsed.
You barely remembered the impact.
Only the deafening noise.
The feeling of falling.
Then darkness and crushing weight.
Pain arrived slowly.
Breathing hurt first.
Then your leg.
Then your ribs.
Dust coated your throat so thickly you could barely cough.
Everything around you was dark except for thin streams of sunlight breaking through cracks in the rubble above.
You tried moving.
Something heavy pinned your lower body instantly.
Panic hit hard enough to make your vision blur.
“Help!”
Your own voice sounded weak beneath the ringing in your ears.
No answer.
Only distant gunfire.
More screaming somewhere outside.
You shoved uselessly against broken concrete until pain shot through your side sharply enough to make you gasp.
Tears burned your eyes immediately.
You were trapped.
Completely trapped.
Minutes passed.
Or maybe longer.
Time stopped making sense beneath rubble and dust and fear.
Then somewhere nearby—
Your name.
Muffled.
Desperate.
You froze.
Again.
Closer this time.
“Hey! Hey, talk to me!”
Alex.
Relief hit so violently it almost hurt.
“I’m here!” you shouted hoarsely. “Alex—!”
Rubble shifted nearby.
Small pieces of concrete fell from above while light pushed through a widening gap.
Then finally—
His face appeared through the dust.
Blood ran from a cut along his forehead, one sleeve soaked dark red near the shoulder, dirt covering nearly every inch of him.
But his eyes found yours instantly.
Sharp.
Focused.
Alive.
“Oh thank God,” he breathed.
You had never heard Alex sound frightened before.
Not until then.
“I can’t move,” you whispered immediately, panic breaking through your voice despite trying to stay calm.
“I know.”
He crouched lower beside the opening, assessing the debris around you with quick trained movements.
Gunfire still echoed outside.
Closer now.
Alex ignored it completely.
“You hurt anywhere besides your leg?”
“My ribs,” you managed. “I—I can’t—”
“You’re breathing,” he interrupted firmly. “That’s good. Stay with me.”
Concrete groaned overhead.
Alex looked upward instantly.
The building wasn’t stable.
You could see it in his face immediately.
Still, he squeezed himself further into the narrow gap anyway.
“Alex—”
“I’ve got you.”
Simple.
Certain.
Like there had never been another outcome in his mind.
He shoved broken stone aside piece by piece despite the unstable structure around both of you. Dust coated his arms, blood dripping steadily from his injured shoulder every time he forced heavier debris away.
“Your arm—”
“Not important.”
“It’s bleeding.”
“I noticed.”
Even injured, sarcasm somehow survived.
You almost laughed.
Almost.
Another distant explosion shook the street violently.
The ceiling above you cracked louder.
Alex cursed sharply under his breath.
Your eyes widened slightly despite the situation.
He noticed immediately.
A tired grin crossed his face for half a second.
Then it vanished as he reached the slab pinning your leg.
The piece of concrete was enormous.
Far too heavy.
Alex stared at it once before setting his rifle aside completely.
“No,” you said instantly. “Alex, you can’t—”
“Yes, I can.”
His voice carried that same calm determination soldiers got right before doing something reckless.
You hated it immediately.
He braced himself beside the slab, injured arm trembling slightly already.
“Listen to me,” he said, breathing harder now. “The second this moves, you crawl toward that opening. Don’t stop. Understand?”
“You’re hurt.”
“Understand?”
Tears burned your eyes again.
“Yes.”
Alex nodded once.
Then lifted.
The sound that left him was half grunt, half strangled breath as muscles strained violently beneath the weight. Blood soaked faster through his sleeve instantly.
But the slab moved.
Barely.
Enough.
“Go!” he shouted.
You dragged yourself forward immediately despite pain screaming through your leg and ribs. Broken stone tore at your palms while dust choked your lungs.
Behind you, the concrete suddenly shifted dangerously.
Alex shoved harder.
A crack split through the ceiling above him.
“Alex!”
“Move!”
You reached the opening just as part of the structure collapsed behind him.
The noise was deafening.
Dust exploded outward.
For one horrifying second you couldn’t see him.
Couldn’t breathe.
Then Alex stumbled through the debris cloud coughing violently before dropping beside you onto the street.
Alive.
You grabbed him immediately without thinking.
His arms wrapped around you just as fast.
Both of you breathing too hard.
Too relieved.
Gunfire still echoed nearby.
The city still burned around you.
But for a few seconds beneath the smoke and dust and chaos, Alex simply held you against him like he needed physical proof you were still there.
“You okay?” he asked roughly against your hair.
You laughed weakly despite the tears finally spilling over.
“You look terrible.”
A breathless chuckle escaped him.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “You too.”
Then his hand moved carefully against the back of your head while soldiers shouted somewhere nearby and the world kept collapsing around you.
Ethan Choi
Chicago Med
Words: 1342
*Trigger warning* car accident, medical trauma, emergency room, hospital setting, injuries, blood, panic response, broken bones, fractures, disorientation, emotional angst
The world comes back in fragments.
Flashing blue lights reflected in shattered glass. The metallic taste of blood coating your tongue. Someone shouting numbers you can’t quite process. Your chest burns every time you try to breathe and your left arm feels wrong—heavy and numb and agonizing all at once.
“Ma’am? Stay with me.”
You try to answer, but the words dissolve into a broken gasp when pain tears through your ribs.
Cold rain hits your face. Or maybe it’s sweat.
Hands are everywhere. Gloves. Pressure against your abdomen. A neck brace locking your head in place.
“She was trapped for nearly twenty minutes—”
“BP’s dropping.”
“We need to move now.”
The stretcher jolts beneath you and panic claws up your throat instantly. You can’t see properly. Everything blurs together into hospital lights and movement and noise too loud, too bright, too fast.
“No—wait—” Your voice comes out strangled. “Please—”
“It’s okay, we got you,” a paramedic says quickly.
But it doesn’t feel okay.
Nothing feels okay.
By the time the ambulance doors burst open at Chicago Med, your entire body is trembling uncontrollably.
The emergency department hits you like a wave.
Voices overlapping.
Monitors beeping.
Shoes squeaking against polished floors.
Someone asks your name.
Someone else cuts away the remains of your jacket.
And then—
“Oh my God.”
That voice.
Every nerve in your body locks up.
You know that voice.
Even through the haze.
Even through the pain.
Even after all this time.
Your eyes struggle to focus toward the sound and immediately regret it.
Ethan.
Ethan Choi stands only a few feet away in navy scrubs, frozen in place like someone just punched the air from his lungs.
For one horrible second neither of you move.
He looks exactly the same.
Maybe a little more tired around the eyes.
Maybe older.
But still Ethan.
Your Ethan.
Or at least he used to be.
You physically feel your pulse spike on the monitor.
“Hey, hey,” another voice cuts in gently. “Don’t do that right now.”
Natalie appears beside the stretcher almost instantly, slipping into professional calm with terrifying ease even as her eyes flick briefly toward Ethan.
And she knows.
Of course she knows.
Everybody knew when you left.
You had been a nurse here for three years. You and Ethan had practically been inseparable for most of it until suddenly you weren’t anymore.
You’d transferred hospitals two weeks after the breakup.
Cleaner that way.
Easier.
At least that’s what you kept telling yourself.
“Okay,” Natalie says firmly, taking control before the silence can suffocate everyone. “Let’s move. Trauma Two.”
The stretcher starts moving again.
You try not to look at Ethan.
You fail immediately.
He’s still there.
Still staring.
Like he can’t quite believe you’re real.
“Possible internal bleeding,” the paramedic rattles off. “Left humerus fracture, multiple rib fractures likely, oxygen saturation unstable during transport.”
“Got it,” Will answers as he joins Natalie at your side.
You know what’s happening before it’s said aloud.
Will and Natalie are taking over.
Not Ethan.
Because they know.
Because everyone knows this is a disaster waiting to happen.
And maybe it should comfort you.
Maybe it should make this easier.
Instead your chest tightens painfully when Ethan follows anyway.
Right beside the stretcher.
Not speaking.
Not leaving.
Trauma Two becomes controlled chaos within seconds.
Your clothes are cut away.
Leads attached.
IV lines checked.
The pain gets worse the more aware you become.
Your breathing turns shallow.
“Ribs,” you choke out.
“We know,” Natalie says softly. “Try not to move.”
A laugh nearly escapes you at that.
Try not to move.
As if your body would allow anything else.
Someone presses against your abdomen and white-hot agony explodes through you hard enough that you cry out.
“Possible splenic injury,” Will says immediately.
“We need imaging now.”
The room spins.
You can hear every monitor.
Every instruction.
Every clipped medical phrase your brain still recognizes instinctively from years of nursing.
And underneath all of it—
Ethan’s silence.
It’s unbearable.
You finally look at him fully for the first time.
Big mistake.
Because he looks devastated.
Not shocked anymore.
Not confused.
Devastated.
His jaw is clenched so tightly you think it might crack. His hands flex uselessly at his sides like he physically cannot stand there and do nothing.
Then your breathing catches wrong.
Pain spears through your ribs violently enough to send panic flooding through you.
“I can’t—”
“You can,” Natalie says quickly.
“No—no I can’t breathe—”
Your oxygen dips.
Everything accelerates instantly.
“Sat’s dropping.”
“Pain response.”
“Get respiratory down here.”
Suddenly the room feels too small.
Too loud.
You know this feeling.
You’ve seen it in patients a hundred times.
Panic feeding pain.
Pain feeding panic.
But knowing what’s happening doesn’t stop it.
“Please—” you gasp, voice shaking. “Please don’t—”
And then Ethan moves.
Finally.
He’s beside you in seconds, one hand carefully finding yours while the other steadies against the rail of the bed.
“Hey,” he says quietly.
Your entire body goes still.
God.
You forgot what his voice sounded like when he was trying to calm you down.
“You’re okay.”
The irony is almost enough to make you laugh hysterically.
You are very obviously not okay.
But your fingers lock around his instinctively anyway.
“You’re at Med,” he continues steadily. “You know this place. You know the people here.”
Your breathing still stutters painfully.
Ethan squeezes your hand once.
“Look at me.”
You do.
And for just a second everything else disappears.
Not the pain.
Not the fear.
Just the noise.
“You’re gonna keep breathing with me,” he says. “Slow. Come on.”
His voice stays maddeningly calm.
Like the last two years never happened.
Like he didn’t break your heart.
Like you didn’t leave because seeing him every day became unbearable.
Your lungs shake through another breath.
“There you go,” Ethan murmurs immediately.
Natalie and Will exchange a glance over your bed.
One of those silent conversations doctors have after years of working together.
They both see it.
The way you calm for him.
The way Ethan looks at you.
Like he’s hanging on by a thread.
“You staying with us?” Will asks carefully.
Ethan doesn’t even look away from you.
“Yes.”
Not hesitation.
Not uncertainty.
Just yes.
Another wave of pain crashes through you and tears gather instantly in your eyes before you can stop them.
Humiliating.
You hate crying in hospitals.
Always have.
Ethan notices immediately anyway.
His thumb brushes shakily across your knuckles.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he says softly.
And that—
that nearly breaks you more than the accident itself.
Because pretending had become your entire life after him.
Pretending you were fine transferring hospitals.
Pretending it didn’t hurt hearing updates about him through old coworkers.
Pretending you stopped loving him somewhere along the way.
“CT’s ready,” someone calls from the hallway.
The team starts moving again.
You try to let go of Ethan’s hand automatically.
He doesn’t let you.
For one brief second his composure cracks completely and you finally see it—real fear sitting raw and exposed in his eyes.
Not doctor fear.
Personal fear.
The kind he was never good at hiding from you.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he admits quietly.
The confession hits harder than the morphine ever could.
Your throat tightens painfully.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” you whisper weakly.
Ethan gives a short, humorless laugh.
“Yeah,” he says. “Funny how that worked out.”
The stretcher begins rolling toward CT.
Natalie walks beside you reviewing scans and injuries with Will while nurses move around preparing everything for the next phase of treatment.
And still Ethan stays right there.
Like leaving simply isn’t an option.
You stare up at the harsh hospital lights passing overhead and feel another wave of emotion threatening to drag you under entirely.
Because this was the one place you swore you’d never end up again.
Not like this.
Not with him.
But Ethan’s hand never leaves yours the entire way down the hall.
This is kind of a “Part II” — a second letter to my best friend.
His 9th anniversary was last month, and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful days of the entire month.
He sent us sunshine, warmth, and so much laughter.
Surrounded by his family and friends, I spent an unbelievably beautiful day in the garden of the apartment we once shared. I want to keep him alive by telling our stories, honoring his legacy, and carrying him in my heart. Forever.
Sometimes life takes turns you never expect.
For a long time, I struggled to accept that the thing he loved most in the world was also the thing that took him away from me.
But I truly believe he passed while being happy. Up on a mountain. Surrounded by some of his closest friends.
They are probably up there right now, enjoying one too many beers and plates of pasta.
And someday, we’ll meet again.
Until then — keep your loved ones close.
Tell them how much they mean to you.
Every single day.
I talked to your mom and dad on your anniversary
we shared so many stories
and pasta
and a chocolate croissant for dessert
I talked to so many of your friends
— by now, our friends
H. is having a baby
and she retired from professional skiing
can you believe that?
She now has the life she always said
she could never imagine for herself
because “there’s no time for marriage and kids
while being a professional athlete”
but I don’t think
I’ve ever seen her happier
P. published a book
with pictures from his trips
he climbed so many mountains
he even went to Nepal
P. in Nepal?
a disaster waiting to happen
as we both know
too cold
too much rain
and his damn flip flops
A. wanted to climb your route
but couldn’t manage the overhang passage
you know which one
the one where you wanted to give up
and after days of staring
at that goddamn wall
you went back up
and climbed it
as if it was the easiest thing in the world
we shared so much laughter
tears of joy
and some tears of sadness too
they carried me through the whole week
at first
I just wanted to stay in bed
hide from the world
and let the anniversary pass quietly
but they got me out
I even hiked up to the peak
where we went skiing together
for the very first time
the weather was beautiful
the day before, it rained
the day after, it snowed
but while I stood on that peak
there was nothing but sunshine
I guess that was you
smiling down on me
or maybe laughing
because I still huff and puff
like a rhino while hiking
I miss you
but somehow
missing you
keeps me going
and every bowl of pasta
every chocolate croissant
every mountain
reminds me
that I carry you deep in my heart
right where you belong
I keep telling your stories
spreading your words
keeping your legacy alive
Abby Anderson x Lev x Reader (platonic friendship)
The last of us
Words: 537
*Author's note* just had Lev and Abby on my mind today and somehow this happened 💀 thought it might be fun to post because apparently my sense of humor is just “Lev takes everything literally while Abby suffers in the background” now.
also I’m sorry but I was genuinely laughing at my own jokes while writing this 😭
Lev hearing Abby say “I slept like shit” for the first time and immediately looking concerned because why would someone sleep inside shit voluntarily.
Reader has to leave the room because laughing directly in his face feels mean.
—
Abby: “We’re not outta the woods yet.”
Lev, looking around at the completely abandoned aquarium:
“…There are no woods.”
Reader physically turning away to hide their smile while Abby realizes halfway through explaining metaphors that she has made a terrible mistake.
—
Reader after scavenging for six straight hours:
“I’m running on caffeine and spite.”
Lev:
“…What is spite?”
Abby without hesitation:
“Me.”
—
Lev hearing someone say “hold your horses.”
“…Why would I hold them?”
Reader:
“It means wait.”
“…Then why not say wait?”
Abby:
“Because humans like making communication difficult.”
—
Reader trying to explain birthdays.
“So every year people celebrate surviving another year?”
“Basically.”
“And there’s cake?”
“Yes.”
“And gifts?”
“Usually.”
Lev thinking silently for a moment:
“That sounds emotionally manipulative.”
Abby actually snorting water through her nose.
—
Lev hearing Reader call Abby “dramatic” after she groans about sore muscles.
“She was stabbed.”
“I know.”
“And starved.”
“I know.”
“And enslaved.”
“I was there, Lev.”
Abby from the couch:
“Thank you for supporting me in this difficult time.”
Reader:
“You asked me to hand you a spoon that was six inches away.”
—
Lev discovering sarcasm is not always literal nearly destroys him psychologically.
Reader:
“Oh yeah, great idea Abby, let’s walk directly into infected territory. Brilliant.”
Lev:
“…Then why are we doing it?”
Abby:
“We’re not.”
“…But they said it was a great idea.”
Reader already crying laughing in the background.
—
Lev trying peanut butter for the first time.
Reader:
“So?”
Lev staring into the distance while chewing:
“…I understand why society collapsed.”
—
Reader explaining the concept of “sleeping in.”
“You stay in bed… even after waking up?”
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
“Yes.”
Lev looking horrified:
“That sounds unhealthy.”
Abby:
“Spoken like someone who’s never experienced exhaustion-induced depression naps.”
“…What is a depression nap?”
Reader:
“We are absolutely not opening that conversation.”
—
Abby teaching Lev card games was the worst thing to ever happen because he becomes ruthlessly competitive immediately.
Lev after winning seven rounds in a row:
“Skill issue.”
Reader dropping their cards:
“Abby. Abby what have you done.”
Abby looking emotional:
“That’s my son.”
—
Lev hearing Reader say “I’m dead” after laughing too hard.
Cue immediate panic.
“You’re WHAT?”
Reader wheezing on the floor:
“NO— not literally—”
Abby laughing so hard she falls off the couch directly onto the ground.
—
Reader: “I need a drink.”
Lev silently handing over water.
“…Not that kind.”
“What other kind is there?”
Abby from the kitchen:
“Oh no.”
—
Lev hearing music with explicit lyrics for the first time.
“…This woman seems very angry.”
Reader choking.
Abby:
“Don’t explain rap music to him. He’s not ready.”
—
Reader teaching Lev how to insult people casually.
“You can’t just call people ugly.”
“But Abby does.”
Abby, without looking up:
“Yeah but I’m correct.”
—
Lev discovering old romance movies.
“These people could solve all their problems by communicating honestly.”
Reader:
“You’re smarter than every adult alive before the apocalypse.”
*Author's note:* hey… this one is a little different than what I usually post.
I wrote this last night, sitting outside by the campfire, staring up at the stars and wishing he was still here.
his 9th anniversary is coming up, and if I’m honest, I’ve been struggling a bit with writing lately.
Everything feels a little heavier than usual.
But I still wanted to share something with you — so I thought… why not something a little more personal this time.
thank you for being here 🤍
watching him
high up in the mountains
up there
so close to heaven
and now he’s there
in heaven
there’s rarely a day
he doesn’t cross my mind
I miss the laughs we shared
the chocolate croissants before going up the mountain
the pasta we ate after a successful climb
the quiet moments in the bivvy
while the wind howled outside
the clean morning air
sunrise
sunset
the shared moments of contempt
of accomplishment
of failure
the freezing nights in snowstorms
frozen fingers trying to tie knots
so we could continue up the path we had chosen
now I have to find my path without him
because now he can only watch over me
no helping hand when I’m stuck on a ledge
no encouraging words when I fail
no more chocolate croissants in the morning
but he’s still there
everywhere
every mountaintop
every ray of sunshine
every gust of wind
carries a piece of him
every climb
every descent
every plate of pasta
it’s all still him
I’ll carry him in my heart
for the rest of my life
like he carried me home that night
when I was too tired
to get out of the car
up the stairs
into our apartment
and into bed
it was a rough day
the weather was horrible
the view from the top
just storm clouds and rain
but he still had the biggest smile on his face
because we had made it
together
he made me step out of my comfort zone
reach my limits
and go far beyond
what I thought was possible
and I did all of it
because I wanted to be close to him
and experience what he always told me about
freedom
on top of a mountain
there are no rules
no expectations
there’s just you
and me
us
and the mountain
never take it too easy
but never be too harsh on yourself
you’ll learn what you can do
when the time is right
and with his smile
his words
his supporting hand
everything seemed possible
I’ll be forever grateful
because he showed me
what living feels like
