hello! thank you for checking my blog out! my name's fox, currently twenty-eight years old & i go by she/they. i'm from brazil, which means english is not my first language, but i hope you can vibe with my writing anyway. i tend to write fics about old men who are full of yearning and self-hatred, right now mostly writing for both pedro pascal & shawn hatosy characters.
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*SEASON OF THE WOLF: a joel miller x reader story. (part four)
The giant wolf that has been killing people around town shares a very striking feature with the quiet man that keeps breaking into your home— They both have the saddest, warmest brown eyes you've ever seen.
join the TAGLIST. / SERIES masterlist. / PREVIOUS chapter.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved into the oncoming lane.
warnings: the basics (werewolf!joel, age gap, no outbreak), attempted suicide, small town shenanigans, slut shaming, alcohol & weed consumption, mentions of food/eating, everyone is queer bc i said so, more werewolf lore, technically cannibal!joel, vomiting (i think reader throws up like three different times in this SORRY), girlie is drunk and concussed, kinda frenemies with reader's best friend, they're lowkey shitty friends to each other, drunk driving and its consequences, bathroom make out (not w joel sorry!!), gore & body horror, angst.
word count: 7.3k.
fox says: hello friends! thank you so much for reading! this was nearing the 10k words threshold so i ended up splitting this chapter into two which means we don't get smutty until part five :( but i promise i'll make it worth the wait, and it also means we get an extra chapter since the next one was supposed to be the last. as always pls let me know how we feel!
also available on archiveofourown.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved onto the oncoming lane. People would notice you gone, of course. Céline would be the first one, since she’s the only one expecting you home. Your grandmother would probably notice it by Sunday, when you didn’t make it to church in time. And Joel—
You don’t want to think about Joel. But those two hours you spend behind the wheel of the car you stole from him give you nothing but time to think. Think about how you took everything he said at face value because you wanted it to be true. Think about how, apart from the time he basically hijacked your body, there’s a reasonable and non-supernatural answer to every odd thing that has happened since you met him: He’s been stalking you everywhere, he could’ve easily overheard you speaking to the wolf. You never actually saw him shift from wolf to human. The night he was injured — allegedly — and slept at your place, you went to sleep with a wolf in your living room and woke up to him; he could’ve easily swapped places with the animal while you slept and the real wolf was probably dead somewhere in the woods.
And sure, you don’t have a proper explanation to the calming purring and the way your body forced you to obey his command but… Well, maybe those are on you. Maybe you wanted it so badly to be true that your brain tricked itself into thinking those things were actually happening.
The real, more plausible truth is that Joel is a weird, obsessive killer that murdered his own wife and is now targeting you. His brother is clearly in on it, and you think that maybe Joel told him about it after he stalked you through the woods and saw the second wolf: It’s the perfect excuse to make you believe, really— A witness and an accomplice.
You, more than ever, consider throwing the car straight into a lightpost. You feel like a fucking idiot, like the biggest moron on the planet and you wonder how much the Millers have laughed at your expanse. How far they are willing to go with this charade just because you gave it to them on a silver platter.
You’re not crying by the time you park the truck in front of Céline’s expensive condo, not really, but your cheeks are clammy and your eyes are burning— You don’t think you blinked more than three times since entering city limits, you don’t even remember stopping at a single red light ever since leaving the interstate and you hope you’ve gathered a shitload of traffic violations.
Céline pulls you into a hug that feels more like mourning than welcoming, her twiggy arms encasing around you for a long moment before she finally pulls away.
“New car?” She asks when you hike up your backpack over your shoulder, one of her well manicured brows raising.
“Borrowed from a friend.”
“Right.” Céline nods and you’re not sure if she doesn’t believe the car is borrowed or that you have a friend that isn’t her. But then her demeanor changes, a wide smile blooming on her pretty face. “Let’s get you upstairs, Oli’s making margaritas.”
Céline’s apartment is on the tenth floor of a newly renovated building with floor to ceiling windows and so much space you don’t even know how she managed to furnish it all. Oliver, her fiancé, is in the kitchen, standing behind a deep navy blue island and marble counters with a pitch of margarita and tiny, fancy-looking tacos.
“I just threw something together really quick.” They say, an apologetic smile even though the colorful tray is fancier and more elaborate than anything you ever could’ve done. “I did a pollo and a veggie version too, in case you’re vegan.”
“Pollo is chicken.” Céline adds, shuffling through the cabinets for the glasses. You drop your backpack by your feet, shuffling your dirty converse shoes on the expensive hardwood flooring. Your entire existence feels dirty somehow, like you’re tainting this perfectly tailored reality by simply stepping foot in it.
“I know.” You tell her with a little bit more bite than intended before turning back to Oliver. “This is perfect, thank you.”
Oliver is only around for two glasses of margarita before they excuse themself out of the room, giving Cél a soft kiss— Work calls, they say with a wave before ducking out of the apartment; there’s something funny about a big-time lawyer going to work slightly buzzed, something grounding in seeing a reflection of yourself in them— a tiny detail that makes Oliver a bit more of a real human and less of the rich and fancy soulmate your best friend found.
You and Céline end up in the terrace with the margarita pitcher, the tray of tacos that Céline barely touches and a blunt— Higher quality than any weed you’ve smoked in the past couple of years, tasting fresh and a little citrusy, earthy in a way that makes you instantly relax.
It’s easy to fall back into your dynamic with Céline even if the two of you haven’t seen each other in years— The booze and the weed help break the stiffness in your shoulders and you don’t even find yourself hurting over her outlandish stories, no jealousy tightening your stomach when she goes on and on about her new friends or the hot professor she hooked up with a couple of summers ago, your smile genuine when she speaks excitedly about how the universe ‘conspired’ for her to be accepted into residency at the hospital of her dreams.
Of course things have always been easy for Céline— She’s pretty, she’s charming, she’s rich. She never had to struggle the way you had, never had to be told she’d be kicked out if her grades didn’t improve or berated about the hardships of raising a child. She still has both of her parents, a safety net to fall back to if she needs it and a hefty trust fund that allows her to pick and choose her residency.
You’ve always hated her a little, no matter how much you love her, and you’re fairly certain the feeling is mutual.
“How’s work?” She asks eventually, like you knew she would. You’re almost surprised she hasn’t asked about Joel first but you’re glad for it too— You’re not certain you can talk about him without breaking down.
“It’s fine. Good.” You shrug, taking a final hit from the blunt before you hand it back; Céline puts it out on the ashtray between the two of you, her long legs drawn up to her chest. “Not sure I’ll stay there for long, though. Genevieve’s unbearable.”
“She always was. I remember she’d yell at everyone when she made captain of the soccer team. But we both know she’s gonna rot in a menial job using her power trip to abuse her subordinates.”
You wince, thinking about how you, too, will most likely rot in some menial job until you die. Céline seems to understand the weight of her words as soon as they’re out of her mouth because she reaches between the two of you, her hand grasping yours.
“That job is temporary for you, anyway.” She says, in that calming and warm tone that would’ve sounded condescending from anyone else. “You’ll be able to tell her to suck it as soon as you start to sell your paintings.”
You shove a taco in your mouth. It’s already a little soggy, the lettuce starting to wilt under the warmth of the pollo, but it’s better than to admit to her that, apart from that stupid doodle of the wolf on the back of a receipt, you haven’t drawn or painted for the better part of the year.
It started because you ran out of paint and didn’t have the cash to buy more— You switched to charcoal then, which has never been your favorite but it was better than nothing. But then you started to draw less and less, too busy or too tired or too unmotivated.
You’re not even sure where your supplies are, anymore.
“Ooh, you should make TikToks!” She says, squeezing your hand once before she lets it go, an almost childlike smile on her face. “You could record yourself painting and then sell them once they’re done! I follow a girl that does macramê and she has like a bazillion followers.”
“I’ll think about it.” You say, though you have no intention of following through with it. “Tell me about Oli’s friends, again. They’re meeting us at the thing, right?”
The three of you make it to the bar about half past midnight— You’re three energy drinks and way too many tequila shots in already, needing the alcohol and the caffeine to stay up so late. It’s funny how you’d most likely be wide awake, panicking and crying, if you were still at home. But in the big city, with your best friend and all the twinkling lights, your eyelids droop while she peppers them with so much glitter you think it’ll never wipe off entirely. You’re in a red dress, short and sparkly just like your eyes, the sort of pretty clothing you haven’t worn in way too many years. It smells a little like the back of your closet but Céline sprays her perfume on you and hands you a pair of her heels and, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t feel like a falsified copy of yourself like you thought you would.
You look pretty, and that is a word you haven’t used to talk about yourself since you were a teenager.
The Wilde, the bar that Céline has been raving about since she moved to Jackson, is almost forty minutes away from her apartment— The drive is tense after Cél asks way too many questions about the baby car seat in the back that you didn’t even notice was there until her eyes are bugging out of her head. And then it goes very quiet when you finally admit that Joel is the one that lent you the car. Poor Oliver keeps trying to lighten the mood, telling you about their job and singing along to the music on the radio a little bit too loud, like a child trying to take the attention away from two arguing parents. They jump out of the truck even before you can properly park it, clearly wanting to get away from the bad thing brewing between you and Céline as fast as possible.
Cél grabs your wrist just before you can hop out of the car too and you take a deep breath, turning back to her with your shoulders squared and fully prepared to be yelled at but she simply smiles.
“I don’t want to spend the whole weekend fighting.” She says, her voice a little wobbly from the liquor. “I missed us.”
“I miss us too.”
And you do. Things have never been easy or smooth between you and Céline, but they were good. You’d fight and make up almost every week, giggling in the dark of her bedroom at night, trading secrets and life stories until you knew more about her than you know of yourself. But this, the girl with pink eyeshadow and sixty dollar french tip manicure, feels like a stranger. A stranger that knows too much, that has seen too much and doesn’t love you enough to not judge you for it. She brings your hand to her lips, pressing a sticky kiss to the back of your hand, and everything is fine. It’s fine. She’s your best friend and her bright pink gloss is now smeared all over the back of your hand and she knows too much and not enough about you. It’s fine.
The bar is crowded. So crowded that you barely see Oliver waving from a table, both of their hands in the air before either of you notice it. There’s two more people there already, a woman with dark braids so long they hit the swell of her ass, the golden rings weaved into her hair shining against the strobing pink and blue lights that swirl around the room. The other woman is taller, her blond hair gelled and spiked up in a way that makes you think of a pop star from the 90s. The girl with the spiky bun is named Ripley, the one with the braids is Bri, and they both attend the same college as Céline. It’s a mismatched, odd group of people that don’t seem to fit together but clearly do, all of them talking over each other and cackling with jokes that fly right over your head but, unlike when it’d been with just Céline and Oliver, you don’t feel left out— Bri sits next to you and rolls her eyes or explains a joke or two, talking fast and waving her hands a lot, blowing raspberries or booing Céline whenever she says something a little too pretentious.
Sitting between Ripley and Bri, you feel at home. Like these girls could actually be your friends, welcoming you with honesty and a lot more warmth than your own best friend did. There’s no competition, no baggage with them, just laughing and drinking and trying to hold Ripley’s legs when she decides to dance on top of the table.
You’re way past drunk when you go into the bathroom stall with Bri. You don’t even know who started it, who pulled who into it but you think she’s way too drunk too, her hands a little sloppy when they sneak under the hem of your dress, her kisses leaving a wet trail down your neck. You lean into it, your hands roaming her shoulders and her sides, but it doesn’t feel right. Your entire body screams at you to get away, to walk from the bar and get in the car and drive back home.
Home. Not Céline’s apartment, not your house, not your grandmother’s house but that little cabin in the middle of nowhere that has children’s toys scattered everywhere, two pairs of muddy boots by the front door and the strong scent of pine everywhere.
“I uhm, I—” Whatever you’re about to say is cut off by Bri’s kiss, her soft lips pressing lazily against yours, her kiss tasting of Jack and Coke. Her body fits nicely against yours, her perfume is soft and feminine and her slightly taller height is perfect enough that you don’t need to bend too far backwards to slot your mouth against hers, your shoulders pressing against the bathroom stall when she pulls at your hips, her thigh dragging up between yours.
Still, everything feels wrong. Not because she’s a stranger, not because you’re way past a reasonable amount of drunk in a dirty bathroom stall miles and miles away from your hometown, not because you’re out of a job and still spending almost thirty dollars for one cocktail with a stolen truck in the parking lot.
It’s wrong because she’s not Joel. It’s wrong because you’re wearing someone else’s perfume, with someone else between your legs, in a place that you don’t belong with people that you don’t belong to.
You’re out of the bar before you can even notice. You push Bri away, apologies tumbling out of your mouth that you don’t listen to as you scramble out of the stall and out of the bathroom, wobbling your way out of the bar.
Céline is the one that follows you outside and holds your hair while you retch into the gutter.
“What happened?” She asks as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, shaking as you lean against Joel’s truck. She’s just as drunk as you are, face flushed and eyes bloodshot. “You pushed Bri so hard she slipped and hit her head on the toilet.”
You don’t even remember pushing the other woman, all you could think about was getting out.
“I don—” The words are cut out by a rancid hiccup. “I couldn’t do that— Joel— I can’t do that to him.”
“Joel?” She says the name like it’s rotten in her mouth. “The stalker that you think killed a bunch of people? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
And suddenly Céline’s concern for you twists into something else, something with teeth. You laugh, short and watery before it turns into tears.
“Oh, I know he killed people. Every one of ‘em.” You sob, shaking your head. You shouldn’t say it, you know you shouldn’t, but the secret that has been bubbling inside of you spills out before you can consider holding back. “Killed his fucking wife too. I ran.” You wave your hand towards the truck, wobbling to the side before you regain a little stability. “Stole his fucking truck and ran. But I miss him. I fuckin’— Fuck. I love him.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Oliver pokes their head through the door but Céline waves them back inside without taking her eyes off of you.
“You don’t love him.” She shakes her head. The drunken flush is gone from her face, replaced with a sickly paleness. “You’re just desperate.”
“I love him.” You whine, your breath coming in ragged between the tears. “I do, Cél, I fucking love him so—”
“No, you don’t! You think you do because he’s the first person to look at you twice. I mean, c’mon sweetheart, we both know you’d fuck a horse if it gave you enough attention.”
You can tell she regrets the words as soon as they come out, her breath stuttering as she says your name as if she’s shocked with herself for saying it but you’re not listening anymore. You climb into the truck through the passenger seat, sliding to the driver’s side as Céline begs you not to drive. She’s sorry and you’re both drunk and she doesn’t mean it but you don’t listen. You just rev the engine and speed out of the parking lot.
You don’t go back to Céline’s apartment even though all of your things are still there. The truck swerves dangerously on the highway but you don’t even notice it and, by the seventh time she calls, you throw your phone out of the window— You’re going to fucking regret that in the morning but, right now, you don’t really have a plan of making it to the morning. Your foot is lead on the gas, the motor rattling and shaking as you cut other cars; you turn on the windshield wipers before you realize it’s not raining and that the watery distortion of everything is coming from the tears welling up your eyes. You laugh at yourself and then you cry a little more, your headlights coming dangerously close to the car on your left. The driver honks, loud and long, but you don’t even notice it’s aimed at you.
You make almost all of the way home. You’re about forty miles from the welcome sign that designates the border of your town when your heel gets stuck underneath the brake pedal— The truck is close to 90mph, the old thing barely hanging on, but the pointer only climbs up in your panic: You floor the gas pedal as you try to pull your other foot from the brake pedal; you look down, trying to figure out what is happening underneath the dashboard, the car swerving harshly to the left, into the woods.
You barely manage to avoid the first tree, your hands turning the steering wheel this and that way in a blind panic as the car flies off the highway— The front of the truck slams into a large willow tree and the last thing you feel is your face slamming into the dashboard before everything goes dark.
There’s something wet on your face. Soft, wet and warm, running over the side of your face in steady strokes; you try to push it away, even if the feeling isn’t entirely unpleasant, but all your trembling hand finds is soft fur. Something whines and you’re not sure if the noise came from you or not— Your body feels like it’s floating, feverish but cold to the bone at the same time, pain burning everywhere with the sort of intensity that almost makes you numb to it. Your eyes flutter close as you struggle to keep them open, head lolling to the side. You think there’s a grey and brown snout licking at your cheek, but your brain is already giving back into the emptiness.
The next time you wake up, you’re moving. You’re being dragged across the forest ground to be precise, dead leaves and pointy sticks getting stuck to your skin; you flail, panicking at the teeth that cradle on the back of your neck— the pressure is very soft, just enough to hold without hurting, but they’re still there, warm and sharp, spit dribbling down to the front of your neck and down your chest as the thing that is holding you by the back of your neck — the wolf, you know without having to look — drags you through the forest as if you were a misbehaving puppy.
The jaw around your neck tightens ever so slightly when you flail, just enough to send you spiraling even more, before it drops you down on the ground. You roll, trying to scamper away, but the movement makes you dizzy. The wolf stares at you with blood — your blood — staining all over its mouth and face, from its jaw up to its forehead. It steps forward when you crawl backwards, your pretty dress now ruined, your stomach twisting.
“Stay the fuck back.” You tell him, scootching backwards until you hit a particularly large tree root. The wolf whines, a pitiful noise that breaks your heart but not your resolve.
You’ve lost Céline’s borrowed heels at some point and, although it’s not funny, you laugh when you think about how pissed she will be. You stand up slowly, fingers digging into the moss that covers the tree trunk next to you, not even considering all of the creepy crawlies that could be walking all over you— It’s so dark you can barely see, the wolf sitting next to you bathed in moonlight and then oppressing darkness from the forest behind it.
You stumble and then fall to your knees just two steps away from the wolf, both from the head injury and the alcohol; the animal is on you in a second, big nose insistent and stubborn as it sniffs your face and neck. “Go away.” You say, trying and failing to push him away. “You can’t— No. Go.”
You barely have time to pull your hair out of the way before you puke. Your head is starting to hurt more than it did before, a consistent throbbing behind your eyelids that only gets worse when the wolf sits on his hind legs and howls.
You’ve seen videos of wolves howling before. You’ve seen it in movies and you’ve read about it and you probably have seen way too many wolf-related TikToks at this point but nothing could prepare you for just how loud the noise is in real life. It’s loud and painful and if you weren’t already crawling on the ground you’d probably would’ve fallen to your knees; the howl reverberates through your core, squeezing your stomach into a tight little ball, goosebumps erupting on your skin. Something feels very, very wrong.
You wipe your hands on the hem of your dress before bringing them to your face, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes. The already smeared makeup goes inside your eyes and it only makes everything worse, vision blurry and burning as you try and fail not to cry. The wolf pads close to you, slowly and carefully as if he is approaching a wild animal — which, at this point, you might as well be — before curling its big, warm body around yours.
The wolf smells of Joel and blood, his strong legs pulling you close until you’re enveloped in soft fur and the rumbling underneath his ribcages. You don’t want to, you want to fight and walk away and tell him to fuck off but you lean against his sturdy form anyway, fingers digging into the long fur, your head dropping against his neck.
Céline is right. Céline is wrong. You’re not certain anymore. Maybe both, maybe neither. You can’t figure out what’s real or what isn’t and maybe you’re still somewhere inside that car, trapped in twisted hot metal as the whole thing goes into flames. Or maybe your brain is swelling and bleeding inside of your head and you’re going to die either way, but this time with a magical wolfman wrapped around you like a pelt.
You blink and perhaps your eyes stay closed for longer than you anticipated because, when they finally open, Tommy is staring at you. He’s crouched about three feet away from you, a flashlight in one hand, the other empty and outstretched towards you.
The wolf underneath you growls when Tommy’s hand moves closer.
“Yer the one that fuckin’ called me. I can’t help her if I can’t touch her.” He argues back, clearly unfazed by the long and threatening noise your wolf is still emitting. “What happened, sugar?”
“Crashed the truck.” You say, pushing yourself into a sitting position. The wolf moves along, his side still glued to your back. “I think.”
Tommy pushes the hair away from your face, humming when he brings the flashlight to your forehead.
“Drinkin’?”
“No.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I can smell the tequila from a mile away.”
“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”
Tommy grumbles under his breath but doesn’t say anything else, instead choosing to help you to your feet and then flipping Joel off when the wolf gets in his face about it.
“You can’t carry her like a damn pup. Just gon’ hurt her more.” Tommy says, hands on his hips. The wolf is taller than him but not by much— The height doesn’t matter, though, because the hulking shape of the wolf should be enough to scare anyone away; not Tommy, it seems, because he rolls his eyes and pushes Joel’s face away like a diver does with a shark. “If you didn’t want my help you shouldn’t have called me.”
“I don’t think I called you.” You say, closing your eyes. Your head is fully pounding now, the migraine settling deep behind your teeth. “I threw my phone out the window a few miles back.”
“Not you. Him. Howlin’ like a hurt puppy to drag me here. Why—” Tommy shook his head. “You know what? Don’t tell me. Let’s just get you home… And maybe to a hospital.”
The wolf growls, still flanking the both of you, his teeth shimmering in the moonlight.
“No hospital?” You ask, tongue feeling like lead. Nothing about the interaction feels real— The world around you doesn’t feel real, like everything is immaterial, like you’re just floating inside of your head. Like Joel and Tommy and the wolf and the past forty-eight hours aren’t true and have never been.
You hobble and stumble your way back to the cabin because the wolf refuses to let Tommy carry you and you throw up again while trying to climb onto the animal’s back before giving up and walking on your own. You do the thing Tommy did with the hand to the snout when it tries to grab you by the nape of the neck, pushing his nose away gently. You think you might’ve told him that you’d rather die than get dragged around by the neck but you’re not certain you managed to get the words out.
You’ve never had a concussion before, but there’s a small part of you that thinks this is what it feels like.
In the end, the wolf doesn’t let you inside the cabin. It stalks around you and sits in your way and actually tries to bite Tommy when he begins to maneuver you out of the wolf’s way; Tommy on his part cusses him out and complains the entire time about how Joel’s a fucking maniac and a possessive son of a bitch and a goddamn stubborn bastard, but he heeds with caution when he tells you to wait outside, coming around to the back of the cabin with a cardboard box of blankets, a water bottle and a Tylenol, throwing you a ‘good fuckin’ luck’ before he stomps back inside. The wolf noses at your stomach until you plop down on the stairs, leaning against the staircase railing and downing the water while you watch it work.
You can’t lie to yourself anymore and pretend that this is anything other than a man. He sniffs through the cardboard box before tipping it over and pulling its contents out— It’s not nearly as neat and well made as the nest Joel had made in your living room but you can see it has the same structure, the heavy blankets underneath and the fluffy ones on top. The animal growls, frustrated with himself when his paws and nose don’t seem to work to get it just right and you eventually pad down closer to him, using your opposable thumbs — which you make sure to flex in his face — to fix it into something similar to what you’ve seen before.
He forces you to lie down, big forehead headbutting you until you fall onto the covers, his warm and fluffy body climbing over yours; there’s a brief moment of panic where you think he’s trying to mount you but then he rolls over, big paws wrapping around you, belly up. You go down far too willingly, Céline’s words replaying in your head as you fist the wolf’s fur, burying your face against his neck.
You hate yourself for how fucking right she is.
There’s something heavy on your face. You’re laying somewhere too comfortable, warmth surrounding you everywhere, the thing on your face completely covering your eyes— The wolf’s head, you belatedly realize, his jaw shielding your eyes from the morning sun while leaving just enough space for you to breathe; which you can’t do anyway because of the heavy paw weighing down on your chest. You grumble, pushing him away, the sun immediately burning behind your eyelids.
Tommy is sitting on the staircase, still in his pajamas, a steaming mug in hands and a far too gleeful smile on his face. The wolf is asleep next to you, head rolling to the side when you push him away, dead to the world. You’re not sure how you got here, your memory from the night before fuzzy and painful. You remember the bar, Bri, and Céline— Not much else.
“Did I—” You shake your head, unwilling to let the words come out of your mouth; it’s not like you can ask Joel’s brother if you committed bestiality in his backyard the night before. Instead, you change course. “What the fuck happened?”
“Don’t think so, I woulda heard if you did.” He answers anyway, his voice lacking any judgement. “How much do you remember? Reckon you got a concussion but there’s only so much medicine I know how to practice.”
“I—” You lick your lips, your mouth dry as cotton. “I got into a fight with my friend. Went to her place in Jackson for the weekend.”
“You crashed the truck. I didn’t see it but I think it was bad, car was on fire by the time I got to it.”
Your hand comes up to touch the side of your face— It throbs a little, but no more than a proper hangover; still, you’re certain he’s right. You’re still in last night's clothes, covered in leaves, mud and dried up blood, and you can already see a particularly dark bruise forming on your shin. Your entire body feels sore, particularly your stomach, and his words bring forth the faint memory of tires screeching and the painful sound of metal twisting into a different, wrong shape.
You eye the mug in his hands, which Tommy promptly hands you.
“Coffee. Fresh off the pot. I’d invite you in but I reckon he ain’t lettin’ you out of his sight.”
“Huh.” You say, voice dripping with sarcasm as you stretch towards the coffee. It’s bitter and way too strong for your taste, but it helps settle the nausea. “Wouldn’t it be a nice little party trick if he could just switch back into human form and walk inside his own damn house?”
“That ain’t happening until you’re healed.” Tommy leans on his knees, seriousness thundering over his face. “Your lil’ disappearing act did a number on him. Hasn’t shifted back since he realized you were gone.”
You go silent for a moment, sipping the coffee as you take in Joel’s sleeping form.
“I assume that’s not normal?”
“Nope. We don’t usually spend that much time in wolf form. Dad warned us not to, said it was dangerous stayin’ as a wild animal for that long. But you could never be sure if the old man was tellin’ the truth about anything.”
You instantly feel a migraine coming through.
“That’s just fucking great.” Still, despite the bitterness of your words, you can’t help but bring a hand to rub his stomach. The wolf gives a little woof in his sleep, mouth still closed, the sound reverberating from his chest. It’s fucking cute, which is not a word you think should be used to describe a giant killing machine that is still covered in dried blood. “What am I supposed to do? Stay outside until he decides to shift back?”
Tommy shrugs. “I can bring you some of Sarah’s coloring books.”
You have to bite down on your tongue to resist the urge of barking at him.
As much as it pains you to admit, Sarah’s coloring books do help to distract you. Tommy brings you food and drinks periodically, complaining about having to care for someone that ‘ain’t even his damn mate’, but he also brings you clothes and a coat when it gets a little chilly— The wolf sleeps for most of the day, whining whenever you pull away for too long, and you wonder if he slept at all while you were gone.
You tell yourself that you stick around mainly because you need to see the moment Joel shifts back. You need proof, irrefutable evidence that you can’t explain away with any ounce of logic other than him truly, absolutely, being a werewolf.
You get your evidence in the middle of the afternoon. The wolf whines and stir, his paws wiggling a little in his sleep as if he’s dreaming of running; you turn around absentmindedly to scratch his neck when you realize something is wrong. A clump of fur falls off on your hand, sticking to your hand when you try to shake it off— And he’s warm. You’ve noticed he runs hot but this is too much, so hot it makes him a little uncomfortable to the touch.
You think he’s growling in his sleep at first, lips pulled back as if he’s baring his teeth before you realize that his skin is, in fact, pulling back— Receding into the fur that seems to shed more and more every time you blink, his paws and back twisting and spasming as if he’s about to break. The fur goes away first, some chunks disappearing into his skin, others falling clean off like a young deer shedding its antlers, skin and all; you can see muscles and tendons and veins before the skin grows back, tan and smooth and human.
There’s a moment in which he looks like a mixture of a Xoloitzcuintle dog and a wolf, as tall and big as human Joel is but still dog-shaped, smooth skin covered in a peach fuzz that sheds every time he spasms. And then the muscles twist and bend and suddenly the wolf is entirely gone, replaced with just Joel, laying on a pile of his own gore.
It’s stupid, but the first thing you think about is how he somehow got rid of the werewolf chunks from your living room that night. And you’re grateful for it too, because you’re about to either puke or pass out. Maybe both.
It’s grotesque, and beautiful, and so otherworldly that you can’t do anything other than sit there and stare as Joel’s eyes finally open, hazy at first before consciousness fully sets in. He rolls over, chest heaving, and you pull the corner of the blanket to throw over his very naked waist— You don’t know where Sarah is but you’re fairly certain she’s still inside the house and you think that accidentally seeing her naked bloodied father might not be for the best.
“Morning.” You say even though it’s well past noon, dropping the electric blue pencil you’d been using to doodle on the margins of the coloring book. Joel raises a hand, nails and cuticles caked with deep red blood, and touches the side of your face; it’s still a little tender but it doesn’t pound anymore and you’re desperately curious to know what you look like.
And you’re also in desperate need of a shower and a toothbrush.
“That’s gonna scar.” He says, frowning as he pushes himself onto his elbow. “I’m sorry. There’s only so much I could fix.”
“Do I look badass or do I look hideous?”
“Beautiful.” Joel says, his voice just a little soft. His hand is warm and clammy, falling from your cheek to your clavicle. “Shoulder healin’ okay?”
You roll your shoulders absentmindedly before shrugging. “I wasn’t even aware it was injured, so I’d say yes.”
Joel nods once, reaching for the half empty water bottle next to you. His hands shake. “You should go inside. I’ll clean up and be right there.”
You eye the mess he’s sitting in wearily. “Do you… Uh. Need help or something?”
“No, you can go.” He gives you a wobbly smile, face a little paler than usual and you’re not sure if it’s from shifting back or just exhaustion. Either way, you’re incredibly relieved at not having to mop pieces of werewolf off of the ground.
Whatever you had been expecting, the state of the woman looking back at you in the bathroom mirror is worse than you thought it would be. Your hair is a rat’s nest of loose leaves, knots and dried blood— You pluck a tiny shard of glass when you try to untangle it dry before giving up entirely. The left side of your face is a constellation of tiny scars, light colored freckles that look just a bit irritated, coming from your temple all the way to your chin; it doesn’t look badass or hideous but it surely doesn’t look beautiful. You want to cry over it, but all you can truly do is be grateful that the glass shards that embedded into your skin on impact didn’t hit your eyes.
Your body is a collection of bruises, scraps and cuts that look a lot older than the sixteen hours they truly are, just as you’re expecting them to be. Your head and shoulders seems to have taken the brunt of it, but there are long and angry scraps on your stomach that mix along with old, faded stretchmarks; you decide to ask Joel if he knows what happened later, but you’re fairly certain you flew through the windshield and it’s a fucking miracle you didn’t break your neck or split your skull open.
Your mother didn’t have the same luck twenty-something years ago. You can see her wrecked car behind your eyelids as you step into the too-hot shower as if the accident had just happened, the blood on the broken windshield where her body had been, the hood bent upwards— She’d gone halfway through the windshield before a particularly sharp glass shard embedded deep enough to tear her gut open, the top of her head smashed into the hood that had popped open and then flown backwards. You were six years old, and while you hadn’t understood it back then, you know for sure that your grandmother should’ve spared you from the details.
She never spared you from anything, had shown no mercy when you were kept up from nightmares of your mother with her organs falling from the open wound on her torso, the gruesome picture of her neck bent and her brains pouring out whenever you closed your eyes.
Your legs give under you as you wash the blood away, rivulets trailing down your body and into the drain; you sit there, shampoo on your hair and tears and blood washing down your chest, until the water runs cold. You think the werewolves in the house can hear your sobs even through the spray of the shower, know Joel hears better than most even with his busted eardrum, but nobody knocks on the door or tries to hurry you. You’re alone with your misery for forty-something minutes, knees to your chest and nails digging into your thighs, until the cold water becomes too much to bear on your sore muscles.
Joel is inside by the time you’ve showered, gore rinsed off as he scarves down a giant plate of eggs and bacon; Sarah sits next to him, babbling away, stealing bacon bits from his plate that Joel pretends not to notice. She smiles brightly when you walk in, clad in a pair of Joel’s boxer shorts and a sweatshirt, waving you a slice of bacon.
“Hi, kiddo.” You say, avoiding the spit-soaked bacon she’s offering you by kissing the top of her head and then moving to the couch.
“How are you feeling?” Joel asks, eyeing you carefully.
“Hungover.” You lean back on the couch, bringing your legs up. “And like I flew straight through a windshield.”
“Glad you think this is funny.”
You curl in on yourself, turning to stare back at the TV— An episode of Clifford is on, muted.
“I’m sorry about your truck. Is it salvageable?”
“Fuck the truck.” Joel barks, his eyes wild and burning with anger. “You could’ve died. You would have died if I wasn’t there.”
Your eyes whip back to Sarah, who offers you another toothy smile before she pipes up with something that sounds remarkably like ‘fuck the truck!’.
“I don’t think we should be having this conversation in front of her.” Your voice wobbles, breaking a little before you swallow it down. You feel like an exposed nerve, like your entire body is made out of open wires and you’re really, really not in the mood for a scolding from a crazed murderer.
Joel turns back to his meal but his shoulders are tense, hiked up all the way to his ears as he leans forward, elbows on the table and head hanging low. Sarah pats his bicep twice before she shimmies from her chair, padding towards you and climbing onto the couch without a single word. Her lips are greasy when they touch your cheek, and you don’t even notice you’re crying until the action smears your own tears all over your face.
“You’re sad.” She says, big brown eyes staring at you with a severity that is far too old for her chubby little face. You press a kiss to her forehead, arms wrapping around her and pulling her close. You risk a glance at Joel who is now sitting with his back ramrod straight, still turned away, not eating anymore.
“I’m okay, pup.” You tell her with a tiny smile. “Just tired.”
And it’s true— You’re tired of running, tired of fighting back and pretending that this isn’t exactly what you want.
Hi everyone! I'm posting on behalf of my friend Ari, @femmeanonymelives. Ari is short $120 on rent and she cannot get an extension. We are trying to prevent homelessness. She is working on getting a better paying job, but right now she needs to maintain housing.
We are trying to raise funds by Tuesday. If anyone can help, that would be amazing!!! Ari is a member of fandoms, especially in Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal and The Pitt and is a friend to many of us!
Thank you for help, if you can't donate please reblog to spread the word!
for every $10 donated i will write whatever Joel x request you have and are DYING to see! As crazy and disgusting or loving and needy, Just send proof of donation and your request via DM!!!!!!!!!!!
this might be a little corny but… i enjoy the occasional maroon 5 song and i can’t help but feel that animals fits season of the wolf joel and reader SO well
maybe it’s the fact that the song is literally called ANIMALS, but some lyrics just fit idk.. like them not being able to stay away from wach other because of the pull idk (which fit lyrics like "you can’t deny the beast inside")
am i crazy
WAIT no i totally see your vision!!!!!!!!! i hadn't thought about that song in soooo long but some of the lyrics absolutely fit their vibe!!!!! omg i wish i had the braincell to make a playlist for them it would be so much fun smskmsl
fic: *SEASON OF THE WOLF, a joel miller x reader story.
*SEASON OF THE WOLF: a joel miller x reader story. (part four)
The giant wolf that has been killing people around town shares a very striking feature with the quiet man that keeps breaking into your home— They both have the saddest, warmest brown eyes you've ever seen.
join the TAGLIST. / SERIES masterlist. / PREVIOUS chapter.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved into the oncoming lane.
warnings: the basics (werewolf!joel, age gap, no outbreak), attempted suicide, small town shenanigans, slut shaming, alcohol & weed consumption, mentions of food/eating, everyone is queer bc i said so, more werewolf lore, technically cannibal!joel, vomiting (i think reader throws up like three different times in this SORRY), girlie is drunk and concussed, kinda frenemies with reader's best friend, they're lowkey shitty friends to each other, drunk driving and its consequences, bathroom make out (not w joel sorry!!), gore & body horror, angst.
word count: 7.3k.
fox says: hello friends! thank you so much for reading! this was nearing the 10k words threshold so i ended up splitting this chapter into two which means we don't get smutty until part five :( but i promise i'll make it worth the wait, and it also means we get an extra chapter since the next one was supposed to be the last. as always pls let me know how we feel!
also available on archiveofourown.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved onto the oncoming lane. People would notice you gone, of course. Céline would be the first one, since she’s the only one expecting you home. Your grandmother would probably notice it by Sunday, when you didn’t make it to church in time. And Joel—
You don’t want to think about Joel. But those two hours you spend behind the wheel of the car you stole from him give you nothing but time to think. Think about how you took everything he said at face value because you wanted it to be true. Think about how, apart from the time he basically hijacked your body, there’s a reasonable and non-supernatural answer to every odd thing that has happened since you met him: He’s been stalking you everywhere, he could’ve easily overheard you speaking to the wolf. You never actually saw him shift from wolf to human. The night he was injured — allegedly — and slept at your place, you went to sleep with a wolf in your living room and woke up to him; he could’ve easily swapped places with the animal while you slept and the real wolf was probably dead somewhere in the woods.
And sure, you don’t have a proper explanation to the calming purring and the way your body forced you to obey his command but… Well, maybe those are on you. Maybe you wanted it so badly to be true that your brain tricked itself into thinking those things were actually happening.
The real, more plausible truth is that Joel is a weird, obsessive killer that murdered his own wife and is now targeting you. His brother is clearly in on it, and you think that maybe Joel told him about it after he stalked you through the woods and saw the second wolf: It’s the perfect excuse to make you believe, really— A witness and an accomplice.
You, more than ever, consider throwing the car straight into a lightpost. You feel like a fucking idiot, like the biggest moron on the planet and you wonder how much the Millers have laughed at your expanse. How far they are willing to go with this charade just because you gave it to them on a silver platter.
You’re not crying by the time you park the truck in front of Céline’s expensive condo, not really, but your cheeks are clammy and your eyes are burning— You don’t think you blinked more than three times since entering city limits, you don’t even remember stopping at a single red light ever since leaving the interstate and you hope you’ve gathered a shitload of traffic violations.
Céline pulls you into a hug that feels more like mourning than welcoming, her twiggy arms encasing around you for a long moment before she finally pulls away.
“New car?” She asks when you hike up your backpack over your shoulder, one of her well manicured brows raising.
“Borrowed from a friend.”
“Right.” Céline nods and you’re not sure if she doesn’t believe the car is borrowed or that you have a friend that isn’t her. But then her demeanor changes, a wide smile blooming on her pretty face. “Let’s get you upstairs, Oli’s making margaritas.”
Céline’s apartment is on the tenth floor of a newly renovated building with floor to ceiling windows and so much space you don’t even know how she managed to furnish it all. Oliver, her fiancé, is in the kitchen, standing behind a deep navy blue island and marble counters with a pitch of margarita and tiny, fancy-looking tacos.
“I just threw something together really quick.” They say, an apologetic smile even though the colorful tray is fancier and more elaborate than anything you ever could’ve done. “I did a pollo and a veggie version too, in case you’re vegan.”
“Pollo is chicken.” Céline adds, shuffling through the cabinets for the glasses. You drop your backpack by your feet, shuffling your dirty converse shoes on the expensive hardwood flooring. Your entire existence feels dirty somehow, like you’re tainting this perfectly tailored reality by simply stepping foot in it.
“I know.” You tell her with a little bit more bite than intended before turning back to Oliver. “This is perfect, thank you.”
Oliver is only around for two glasses of margarita before they excuse themself out of the room, giving Cél a soft kiss— Work calls, they say with a wave before ducking out of the apartment; there’s something funny about a big-time lawyer going to work slightly buzzed, something grounding in seeing a reflection of yourself in them— a tiny detail that makes Oliver a bit more of a real human and less of the rich and fancy soulmate your best friend found.
You and Céline end up in the terrace with the margarita pitcher, the tray of tacos that Céline barely touches and a blunt— Higher quality than any weed you’ve smoked in the past couple of years, tasting fresh and a little citrusy, earthy in a way that makes you instantly relax.
It’s easy to fall back into your dynamic with Céline even if the two of you haven’t seen each other in years— The booze and the weed help break the stiffness in your shoulders and you don’t even find yourself hurting over her outlandish stories, no jealousy tightening your stomach when she goes on and on about her new friends or the hot professor she hooked up with a couple of summers ago, your smile genuine when she speaks excitedly about how the universe ‘conspired’ for her to be accepted into residency at the hospital of her dreams.
Of course things have always been easy for Céline— She’s pretty, she’s charming, she’s rich. She never had to struggle the way you had, never had to be told she’d be kicked out if her grades didn’t improve or berated about the hardships of raising a child. She still has both of her parents, a safety net to fall back to if she needs it and a hefty trust fund that allows her to pick and choose her residency.
You’ve always hated her a little, no matter how much you love her, and you’re fairly certain the feeling is mutual.
“How’s work?” She asks eventually, like you knew she would. You’re almost surprised she hasn’t asked about Joel first but you’re glad for it too— You’re not certain you can talk about him without breaking down.
“It’s fine. Good.” You shrug, taking a final hit from the blunt before you hand it back; Céline puts it out on the ashtray between the two of you, her long legs drawn up to her chest. “Not sure I’ll stay there for long, though. Genevieve’s unbearable.”
“She always was. I remember she’d yell at everyone when she made captain of the soccer team. But we both know she’s gonna rot in a menial job using her power trip to abuse her subordinates.”
You wince, thinking about how you, too, will most likely rot in some menial job until you die. Céline seems to understand the weight of her words as soon as they’re out of her mouth because she reaches between the two of you, her hand grasping yours.
“That job is temporary for you, anyway.” She says, in that calming and warm tone that would’ve sounded condescending from anyone else. “You’ll be able to tell her to suck it as soon as you start to sell your paintings.”
You shove a taco in your mouth. It’s already a little soggy, the lettuce starting to wilt under the warmth of the pollo, but it’s better than to admit to her that, apart from that stupid doodle of the wolf on the back of a receipt, you haven’t drawn or painted for the better part of the year.
It started because you ran out of paint and didn’t have the cash to buy more— You switched to charcoal then, which has never been your favorite but it was better than nothing. But then you started to draw less and less, too busy or too tired or too unmotivated.
You’re not even sure where your supplies are, anymore.
“Ooh, you should make TikToks!” She says, squeezing your hand once before she lets it go, an almost childlike smile on her face. “You could record yourself painting and then sell them once they’re done! I follow a girl that does macramê and she has like a bazillion followers.”
“I’ll think about it.” You say, though you have no intention of following through with it. “Tell me about Oli’s friends, again. They’re meeting us at the thing, right?”
The three of you make it to the bar about half past midnight— You’re three energy drinks and way too many tequila shots in already, needing the alcohol and the caffeine to stay up so late. It’s funny how you’d most likely be wide awake, panicking and crying, if you were still at home. But in the big city, with your best friend and all the twinkling lights, your eyelids droop while she peppers them with so much glitter you think it’ll never wipe off entirely. You’re in a red dress, short and sparkly just like your eyes, the sort of pretty clothing you haven’t worn in way too many years. It smells a little like the back of your closet but Céline sprays her perfume on you and hands you a pair of her heels and, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t feel like a falsified copy of yourself like you thought you would.
You look pretty, and that is a word you haven’t used to talk about yourself since you were a teenager.
The Wilde, the bar that Céline has been raving about since she moved to Jackson, is almost forty minutes away from her apartment— The drive is tense after Cél asks way too many questions about the baby car seat in the back that you didn’t even notice was there until her eyes are bugging out of her head. And then it goes very quiet when you finally admit that Joel is the one that lent you the car. Poor Oliver keeps trying to lighten the mood, telling you about their job and singing along to the music on the radio a little bit too loud, like a child trying to take the attention away from two arguing parents. They jump out of the truck even before you can properly park it, clearly wanting to get away from the bad thing brewing between you and Céline as fast as possible.
Cél grabs your wrist just before you can hop out of the car too and you take a deep breath, turning back to her with your shoulders squared and fully prepared to be yelled at but she simply smiles.
“I don’t want to spend the whole weekend fighting.” She says, her voice a little wobbly from the liquor. “I missed us.”
“I miss us too.”
And you do. Things have never been easy or smooth between you and Céline, but they were good. You’d fight and make up almost every week, giggling in the dark of her bedroom at night, trading secrets and life stories until you knew more about her than you know of yourself. But this, the girl with pink eyeshadow and sixty dollar french tip manicure, feels like a stranger. A stranger that knows too much, that has seen too much and doesn’t love you enough to not judge you for it. She brings your hand to her lips, pressing a sticky kiss to the back of your hand, and everything is fine. It’s fine. She’s your best friend and her bright pink gloss is now smeared all over the back of your hand and she knows too much and not enough about you. It’s fine.
The bar is crowded. So crowded that you barely see Oliver waving from a table, both of their hands in the air before either of you notice it. There’s two more people there already, a woman with dark braids so long they hit the swell of her ass, the golden rings weaved into her hair shining against the strobing pink and blue lights that swirl around the room. The other woman is taller, her blond hair gelled and spiked up in a way that makes you think of a pop star from the 90s. The girl with the spiky bun is named Ripley, the one with the braids is Bri, and they both attend the same college as Céline. It’s a mismatched, odd group of people that don’t seem to fit together but clearly do, all of them talking over each other and cackling with jokes that fly right over your head but, unlike when it’d been with just Céline and Oliver, you don’t feel left out— Bri sits next to you and rolls her eyes or explains a joke or two, talking fast and waving her hands a lot, blowing raspberries or booing Céline whenever she says something a little too pretentious.
Sitting between Ripley and Bri, you feel at home. Like these girls could actually be your friends, welcoming you with honesty and a lot more warmth than your own best friend did. There’s no competition, no baggage with them, just laughing and drinking and trying to hold Ripley’s legs when she decides to dance on top of the table.
You’re way past drunk when you go into the bathroom stall with Bri. You don’t even know who started it, who pulled who into it but you think she’s way too drunk too, her hands a little sloppy when they sneak under the hem of your dress, her kisses leaving a wet trail down your neck. You lean into it, your hands roaming her shoulders and her sides, but it doesn’t feel right. Your entire body screams at you to get away, to walk from the bar and get in the car and drive back home.
Home. Not Céline’s apartment, not your house, not your grandmother’s house but that little cabin in the middle of nowhere that has children’s toys scattered everywhere, two pairs of muddy boots by the front door and the strong scent of pine everywhere.
“I uhm, I—” Whatever you’re about to say is cut off by Bri’s kiss, her soft lips pressing lazily against yours, her kiss tasting of Jack and Coke. Her body fits nicely against yours, her perfume is soft and feminine and her slightly taller height is perfect enough that you don’t need to bend too far backwards to slot your mouth against hers, your shoulders pressing against the bathroom stall when she pulls at your hips, her thigh dragging up between yours.
Still, everything feels wrong. Not because she’s a stranger, not because you’re way past a reasonable amount of drunk in a dirty bathroom stall miles and miles away from your hometown, not because you’re out of a job and still spending almost thirty dollars for one cocktail with a stolen truck in the parking lot.
It’s wrong because she’s not Joel. It’s wrong because you’re wearing someone else’s perfume, with someone else between your legs, in a place that you don’t belong with people that you don’t belong to.
You’re out of the bar before you can even notice. You push Bri away, apologies tumbling out of your mouth that you don’t listen to as you scramble out of the stall and out of the bathroom, wobbling your way out of the bar.
Céline is the one that follows you outside and holds your hair while you retch into the gutter.
“What happened?” She asks as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, shaking as you lean against Joel’s truck. She’s just as drunk as you are, face flushed and eyes bloodshot. “You pushed Bri so hard she slipped and hit her head on the toilet.”
You don’t even remember pushing the other woman, all you could think about was getting out.
“I don—” The words are cut out by a rancid hiccup. “I couldn’t do that— Joel— I can’t do that to him.”
“Joel?” She says the name like it’s rotten in her mouth. “The stalker that you think killed a bunch of people? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
And suddenly Céline’s concern for you twists into something else, something with teeth. You laugh, short and watery before it turns into tears.
“Oh, I know he killed people. Every one of ‘em.” You sob, shaking your head. You shouldn’t say it, you know you shouldn’t, but the secret that has been bubbling inside of you spills out before you can consider holding back. “Killed his fucking wife too. I ran.” You wave your hand towards the truck, wobbling to the side before you regain a little stability. “Stole his fucking truck and ran. But I miss him. I fuckin’— Fuck. I love him.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Oliver pokes their head through the door but Céline waves them back inside without taking her eyes off of you.
“You don’t love him.” She shakes her head. The drunken flush is gone from her face, replaced with a sickly paleness. “You’re just desperate.”
“I love him.” You whine, your breath coming in ragged between the tears. “I do, Cél, I fucking love him so—”
“No, you don’t! You think you do because he’s the first person to look at you twice. I mean, c’mon sweetheart, we both know you’d fuck a horse if it gave you enough attention.”
You can tell she regrets the words as soon as they come out, her breath stuttering as she says your name as if she’s shocked with herself for saying it but you’re not listening anymore. You climb into the truck through the passenger seat, sliding to the driver’s side as Céline begs you not to drive. She’s sorry and you’re both drunk and she doesn’t mean it but you don’t listen. You just rev the engine and speed out of the parking lot.
You don’t go back to Céline’s apartment even though all of your things are still there. The truck swerves dangerously on the highway but you don’t even notice it and, by the seventh time she calls, you throw your phone out of the window— You’re going to fucking regret that in the morning but, right now, you don’t really have a plan of making it to the morning. Your foot is lead on the gas, the motor rattling and shaking as you cut other cars; you turn on the windshield wipers before you realize it’s not raining and that the watery distortion of everything is coming from the tears welling up your eyes. You laugh at yourself and then you cry a little more, your headlights coming dangerously close to the car on your left. The driver honks, loud and long, but you don’t even notice it’s aimed at you.
You make almost all of the way home. You’re about forty miles from the welcome sign that designates the border of your town when your heel gets stuck underneath the brake pedal— The truck is close to 90mph, the old thing barely hanging on, but the pointer only climbs up in your panic: You floor the gas pedal as you try to pull your other foot from the brake pedal; you look down, trying to figure out what is happening underneath the dashboard, the car swerving harshly to the left, into the woods.
You barely manage to avoid the first tree, your hands turning the steering wheel this and that way in a blind panic as the car flies off the highway— The front of the truck slams into a large willow tree and the last thing you feel is your face slamming into the dashboard before everything goes dark.
There’s something wet on your face. Soft, wet and warm, running over the side of your face in steady strokes; you try to push it away, even if the feeling isn’t entirely unpleasant, but all your trembling hand finds is soft fur. Something whines and you’re not sure if the noise came from you or not— Your body feels like it’s floating, feverish but cold to the bone at the same time, pain burning everywhere with the sort of intensity that almost makes you numb to it. Your eyes flutter close as you struggle to keep them open, head lolling to the side. You think there’s a grey and brown snout licking at your cheek, but your brain is already giving back into the emptiness.
The next time you wake up, you’re moving. You’re being dragged across the forest ground to be precise, dead leaves and pointy sticks getting stuck to your skin; you flail, panicking at the teeth that cradle on the back of your neck— the pressure is very soft, just enough to hold without hurting, but they’re still there, warm and sharp, spit dribbling down to the front of your neck and down your chest as the thing that is holding you by the back of your neck — the wolf, you know without having to look — drags you through the forest as if you were a misbehaving puppy.
The jaw around your neck tightens ever so slightly when you flail, just enough to send you spiraling even more, before it drops you down on the ground. You roll, trying to scamper away, but the movement makes you dizzy. The wolf stares at you with blood — your blood — staining all over its mouth and face, from its jaw up to its forehead. It steps forward when you crawl backwards, your pretty dress now ruined, your stomach twisting.
“Stay the fuck back.” You tell him, scootching backwards until you hit a particularly large tree root. The wolf whines, a pitiful noise that breaks your heart but not your resolve.
You’ve lost Céline’s borrowed heels at some point and, although it’s not funny, you laugh when you think about how pissed she will be. You stand up slowly, fingers digging into the moss that covers the tree trunk next to you, not even considering all of the creepy crawlies that could be walking all over you— It’s so dark you can barely see, the wolf sitting next to you bathed in moonlight and then oppressing darkness from the forest behind it.
You stumble and then fall to your knees just two steps away from the wolf, both from the head injury and the alcohol; the animal is on you in a second, big nose insistent and stubborn as it sniffs your face and neck. “Go away.” You say, trying and failing to push him away. “You can’t— No. Go.”
You barely have time to pull your hair out of the way before you puke. Your head is starting to hurt more than it did before, a consistent throbbing behind your eyelids that only gets worse when the wolf sits on his hind legs and howls.
You’ve seen videos of wolves howling before. You’ve seen it in movies and you’ve read about it and you probably have seen way too many wolf-related TikToks at this point but nothing could prepare you for just how loud the noise is in real life. It’s loud and painful and if you weren’t already crawling on the ground you’d probably would’ve fallen to your knees; the howl reverberates through your core, squeezing your stomach into a tight little ball, goosebumps erupting on your skin. Something feels very, very wrong.
You wipe your hands on the hem of your dress before bringing them to your face, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes. The already smeared makeup goes inside your eyes and it only makes everything worse, vision blurry and burning as you try and fail not to cry. The wolf pads close to you, slowly and carefully as if he is approaching a wild animal — which, at this point, you might as well be — before curling its big, warm body around yours.
The wolf smells of Joel and blood, his strong legs pulling you close until you’re enveloped in soft fur and the rumbling underneath his ribcages. You don’t want to, you want to fight and walk away and tell him to fuck off but you lean against his sturdy form anyway, fingers digging into the long fur, your head dropping against his neck.
Céline is right. Céline is wrong. You’re not certain anymore. Maybe both, maybe neither. You can’t figure out what’s real or what isn’t and maybe you’re still somewhere inside that car, trapped in twisted hot metal as the whole thing goes into flames. Or maybe your brain is swelling and bleeding inside of your head and you’re going to die either way, but this time with a magical wolfman wrapped around you like a pelt.
You blink and perhaps your eyes stay closed for longer than you anticipated because, when they finally open, Tommy is staring at you. He’s crouched about three feet away from you, a flashlight in one hand, the other empty and outstretched towards you.
The wolf underneath you growls when Tommy’s hand moves closer.
“Yer the one that fuckin’ called me. I can’t help her if I can’t touch her.” He argues back, clearly unfazed by the long and threatening noise your wolf is still emitting. “What happened, sugar?”
“Crashed the truck.” You say, pushing yourself into a sitting position. The wolf moves along, his side still glued to your back. “I think.”
Tommy pushes the hair away from your face, humming when he brings the flashlight to your forehead.
“Drinkin’?”
“No.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I can smell the tequila from a mile away.”
“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”
Tommy grumbles under his breath but doesn’t say anything else, instead choosing to help you to your feet and then flipping Joel off when the wolf gets in his face about it.
“You can’t carry her like a damn pup. Just gon’ hurt her more.” Tommy says, hands on his hips. The wolf is taller than him but not by much— The height doesn’t matter, though, because the hulking shape of the wolf should be enough to scare anyone away; not Tommy, it seems, because he rolls his eyes and pushes Joel’s face away like a diver does with a shark. “If you didn’t want my help you shouldn’t have called me.”
“I don’t think I called you.” You say, closing your eyes. Your head is fully pounding now, the migraine settling deep behind your teeth. “I threw my phone out the window a few miles back.”
“Not you. Him. Howlin’ like a hurt puppy to drag me here. Why—” Tommy shook his head. “You know what? Don’t tell me. Let’s just get you home… And maybe to a hospital.”
The wolf growls, still flanking the both of you, his teeth shimmering in the moonlight.
“No hospital?” You ask, tongue feeling like lead. Nothing about the interaction feels real— The world around you doesn’t feel real, like everything is immaterial, like you’re just floating inside of your head. Like Joel and Tommy and the wolf and the past forty-eight hours aren’t true and have never been.
You hobble and stumble your way back to the cabin because the wolf refuses to let Tommy carry you and you throw up again while trying to climb onto the animal’s back before giving up and walking on your own. You do the thing Tommy did with the hand to the snout when it tries to grab you by the nape of the neck, pushing his nose away gently. You think you might’ve told him that you’d rather die than get dragged around by the neck but you’re not certain you managed to get the words out.
You’ve never had a concussion before, but there’s a small part of you that thinks this is what it feels like.
In the end, the wolf doesn’t let you inside the cabin. It stalks around you and sits in your way and actually tries to bite Tommy when he begins to maneuver you out of the wolf’s way; Tommy on his part cusses him out and complains the entire time about how Joel’s a fucking maniac and a possessive son of a bitch and a goddamn stubborn bastard, but he heeds with caution when he tells you to wait outside, coming around to the back of the cabin with a cardboard box of blankets, a water bottle and a Tylenol, throwing you a ‘good fuckin’ luck’ before he stomps back inside. The wolf noses at your stomach until you plop down on the stairs, leaning against the staircase railing and downing the water while you watch it work.
You can’t lie to yourself anymore and pretend that this is anything other than a man. He sniffs through the cardboard box before tipping it over and pulling its contents out— It’s not nearly as neat and well made as the nest Joel had made in your living room but you can see it has the same structure, the heavy blankets underneath and the fluffy ones on top. The animal growls, frustrated with himself when his paws and nose don’t seem to work to get it just right and you eventually pad down closer to him, using your opposable thumbs — which you make sure to flex in his face — to fix it into something similar to what you’ve seen before.
He forces you to lie down, big forehead headbutting you until you fall onto the covers, his warm and fluffy body climbing over yours; there’s a brief moment of panic where you think he’s trying to mount you but then he rolls over, big paws wrapping around you, belly up. You go down far too willingly, Céline’s words replaying in your head as you fist the wolf’s fur, burying your face against his neck.
You hate yourself for how fucking right she is.
There’s something heavy on your face. You’re laying somewhere too comfortable, warmth surrounding you everywhere, the thing on your face completely covering your eyes— The wolf’s head, you belatedly realize, his jaw shielding your eyes from the morning sun while leaving just enough space for you to breathe; which you can’t do anyway because of the heavy paw weighing down on your chest. You grumble, pushing him away, the sun immediately burning behind your eyelids.
Tommy is sitting on the staircase, still in his pajamas, a steaming mug in hands and a far too gleeful smile on his face. The wolf is asleep next to you, head rolling to the side when you push him away, dead to the world. You’re not sure how you got here, your memory from the night before fuzzy and painful. You remember the bar, Bri, and Céline— Not much else.
“Did I—” You shake your head, unwilling to let the words come out of your mouth; it’s not like you can ask Joel’s brother if you committed bestiality in his backyard the night before. Instead, you change course. “What the fuck happened?”
“Don’t think so, I woulda heard if you did.” He answers anyway, his voice lacking any judgement. “How much do you remember? Reckon you got a concussion but there’s only so much medicine I know how to practice.”
“I—” You lick your lips, your mouth dry as cotton. “I got into a fight with my friend. Went to her place in Jackson for the weekend.”
“You crashed the truck. I didn’t see it but I think it was bad, car was on fire by the time I got to it.”
Your hand comes up to touch the side of your face— It throbs a little, but no more than a proper hangover; still, you’re certain he’s right. You’re still in last night's clothes, covered in leaves, mud and dried up blood, and you can already see a particularly dark bruise forming on your shin. Your entire body feels sore, particularly your stomach, and his words bring forth the faint memory of tires screeching and the painful sound of metal twisting into a different, wrong shape.
You eye the mug in his hands, which Tommy promptly hands you.
“Coffee. Fresh off the pot. I’d invite you in but I reckon he ain’t lettin’ you out of his sight.”
“Huh.” You say, voice dripping with sarcasm as you stretch towards the coffee. It’s bitter and way too strong for your taste, but it helps settle the nausea. “Wouldn’t it be a nice little party trick if he could just switch back into human form and walk inside his own damn house?”
“That ain’t happening until you’re healed.” Tommy leans on his knees, seriousness thundering over his face. “Your lil’ disappearing act did a number on him. Hasn’t shifted back since he realized you were gone.”
You go silent for a moment, sipping the coffee as you take in Joel’s sleeping form.
“I assume that’s not normal?”
“Nope. We don’t usually spend that much time in wolf form. Dad warned us not to, said it was dangerous stayin’ as a wild animal for that long. But you could never be sure if the old man was tellin’ the truth about anything.”
You instantly feel a migraine coming through.
“That’s just fucking great.” Still, despite the bitterness of your words, you can’t help but bring a hand to rub his stomach. The wolf gives a little woof in his sleep, mouth still closed, the sound reverberating from his chest. It’s fucking cute, which is not a word you think should be used to describe a giant killing machine that is still covered in dried blood. “What am I supposed to do? Stay outside until he decides to shift back?”
Tommy shrugs. “I can bring you some of Sarah’s coloring books.”
You have to bite down on your tongue to resist the urge of barking at him.
As much as it pains you to admit, Sarah’s coloring books do help to distract you. Tommy brings you food and drinks periodically, complaining about having to care for someone that ‘ain’t even his damn mate’, but he also brings you clothes and a coat when it gets a little chilly— The wolf sleeps for most of the day, whining whenever you pull away for too long, and you wonder if he slept at all while you were gone.
You tell yourself that you stick around mainly because you need to see the moment Joel shifts back. You need proof, irrefutable evidence that you can’t explain away with any ounce of logic other than him truly, absolutely, being a werewolf.
You get your evidence in the middle of the afternoon. The wolf whines and stir, his paws wiggling a little in his sleep as if he’s dreaming of running; you turn around absentmindedly to scratch his neck when you realize something is wrong. A clump of fur falls off on your hand, sticking to your hand when you try to shake it off— And he’s warm. You’ve noticed he runs hot but this is too much, so hot it makes him a little uncomfortable to the touch.
You think he’s growling in his sleep at first, lips pulled back as if he’s baring his teeth before you realize that his skin is, in fact, pulling back— Receding into the fur that seems to shed more and more every time you blink, his paws and back twisting and spasming as if he’s about to break. The fur goes away first, some chunks disappearing into his skin, others falling clean off like a young deer shedding its antlers, skin and all; you can see muscles and tendons and veins before the skin grows back, tan and smooth and human.
There’s a moment in which he looks like a mixture of a Xoloitzcuintle dog and a wolf, as tall and big as human Joel is but still dog-shaped, smooth skin covered in a peach fuzz that sheds every time he spasms. And then the muscles twist and bend and suddenly the wolf is entirely gone, replaced with just Joel, laying on a pile of his own gore.
It’s stupid, but the first thing you think about is how he somehow got rid of the werewolf chunks from your living room that night. And you’re grateful for it too, because you’re about to either puke or pass out. Maybe both.
It’s grotesque, and beautiful, and so otherworldly that you can’t do anything other than sit there and stare as Joel’s eyes finally open, hazy at first before consciousness fully sets in. He rolls over, chest heaving, and you pull the corner of the blanket to throw over his very naked waist— You don’t know where Sarah is but you’re fairly certain she’s still inside the house and you think that accidentally seeing her naked bloodied father might not be for the best.
“Morning.” You say even though it’s well past noon, dropping the electric blue pencil you’d been using to doodle on the margins of the coloring book. Joel raises a hand, nails and cuticles caked with deep red blood, and touches the side of your face; it’s still a little tender but it doesn’t pound anymore and you’re desperately curious to know what you look like.
And you’re also in desperate need of a shower and a toothbrush.
“That’s gonna scar.” He says, frowning as he pushes himself onto his elbow. “I’m sorry. There’s only so much I could fix.”
“Do I look badass or do I look hideous?”
“Beautiful.” Joel says, his voice just a little soft. His hand is warm and clammy, falling from your cheek to your clavicle. “Shoulder healin’ okay?”
You roll your shoulders absentmindedly before shrugging. “I wasn’t even aware it was injured, so I’d say yes.”
Joel nods once, reaching for the half empty water bottle next to you. His hands shake. “You should go inside. I’ll clean up and be right there.”
You eye the mess he’s sitting in wearily. “Do you… Uh. Need help or something?”
“No, you can go.” He gives you a wobbly smile, face a little paler than usual and you’re not sure if it’s from shifting back or just exhaustion. Either way, you’re incredibly relieved at not having to mop pieces of werewolf off of the ground.
Whatever you had been expecting, the state of the woman looking back at you in the bathroom mirror is worse than you thought it would be. Your hair is a rat’s nest of loose leaves, knots and dried blood— You pluck a tiny shard of glass when you try to untangle it dry before giving up entirely. The left side of your face is a constellation of tiny scars, light colored freckles that look just a bit irritated, coming from your temple all the way to your chin; it doesn’t look badass or hideous but it surely doesn’t look beautiful. You want to cry over it, but all you can truly do is be grateful that the glass shards that embedded into your skin on impact didn’t hit your eyes.
Your body is a collection of bruises, scraps and cuts that look a lot older than the sixteen hours they truly are, just as you’re expecting them to be. Your head and shoulders seems to have taken the brunt of it, but there are long and angry scraps on your stomach that mix along with old, faded stretchmarks; you decide to ask Joel if he knows what happened later, but you’re fairly certain you flew through the windshield and it’s a fucking miracle you didn’t break your neck or split your skull open.
Your mother didn’t have the same luck twenty-something years ago. You can see her wrecked car behind your eyelids as you step into the too-hot shower as if the accident had just happened, the blood on the broken windshield where her body had been, the hood bent upwards— She’d gone halfway through the windshield before a particularly sharp glass shard embedded deep enough to tear her gut open, the top of her head smashed into the hood that had popped open and then flown backwards. You were six years old, and while you hadn’t understood it back then, you know for sure that your grandmother should’ve spared you from the details.
She never spared you from anything, had shown no mercy when you were kept up from nightmares of your mother with her organs falling from the open wound on her torso, the gruesome picture of her neck bent and her brains pouring out whenever you closed your eyes.
Your legs give under you as you wash the blood away, rivulets trailing down your body and into the drain; you sit there, shampoo on your hair and tears and blood washing down your chest, until the water runs cold. You think the werewolves in the house can hear your sobs even through the spray of the shower, know Joel hears better than most even with his busted eardrum, but nobody knocks on the door or tries to hurry you. You’re alone with your misery for forty-something minutes, knees to your chest and nails digging into your thighs, until the cold water becomes too much to bear on your sore muscles.
Joel is inside by the time you’ve showered, gore rinsed off as he scarves down a giant plate of eggs and bacon; Sarah sits next to him, babbling away, stealing bacon bits from his plate that Joel pretends not to notice. She smiles brightly when you walk in, clad in a pair of Joel’s boxer shorts and a sweatshirt, waving you a slice of bacon.
“Hi, kiddo.” You say, avoiding the spit-soaked bacon she’s offering you by kissing the top of her head and then moving to the couch.
“How are you feeling?” Joel asks, eyeing you carefully.
“Hungover.” You lean back on the couch, bringing your legs up. “And like I flew straight through a windshield.”
“Glad you think this is funny.”
You curl in on yourself, turning to stare back at the TV— An episode of Clifford is on, muted.
“I’m sorry about your truck. Is it salvageable?”
“Fuck the truck.” Joel barks, his eyes wild and burning with anger. “You could’ve died. You would have died if I wasn’t there.”
Your eyes whip back to Sarah, who offers you another toothy smile before she pipes up with something that sounds remarkably like ‘fuck the truck!’.
“I don’t think we should be having this conversation in front of her.” Your voice wobbles, breaking a little before you swallow it down. You feel like an exposed nerve, like your entire body is made out of open wires and you’re really, really not in the mood for a scolding from a crazed murderer.
Joel turns back to his meal but his shoulders are tense, hiked up all the way to his ears as he leans forward, elbows on the table and head hanging low. Sarah pats his bicep twice before she shimmies from her chair, padding towards you and climbing onto the couch without a single word. Her lips are greasy when they touch your cheek, and you don’t even notice you’re crying until the action smears your own tears all over your face.
“You’re sad.” She says, big brown eyes staring at you with a severity that is far too old for her chubby little face. You press a kiss to her forehead, arms wrapping around her and pulling her close. You risk a glance at Joel who is now sitting with his back ramrod straight, still turned away, not eating anymore.
“I’m okay, pup.” You tell her with a tiny smile. “Just tired.”
And it’s true— You’re tired of running, tired of fighting back and pretending that this isn’t exactly what you want.
*SEASON OF THE WOLF: a joel miller x reader story. (part four)
The giant wolf that has been killing people around town shares a very striking feature with the quiet man that keeps breaking into your home— They both have the saddest, warmest brown eyes you've ever seen.
join the TAGLIST. / SERIES masterlist. / PREVIOUS chapter.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved into the oncoming lane.
warnings: the basics (werewolf!joel, age gap, no outbreak), attempted suicide, small town shenanigans, slut shaming, alcohol & weed consumption, mentions of food/eating, everyone is queer bc i said so, more werewolf lore, technically cannibal!joel, vomiting (i think reader throws up like three different times in this SORRY), girlie is drunk and concussed, kinda frenemies with reader's best friend, they're lowkey shitty friends to each other, drunk driving and its consequences, bathroom make out (not w joel sorry!!), gore & body horror, angst.
word count: 7.3k.
fox says: hello friends! thank you so much for reading! this was nearing the 10k words threshold so i ended up splitting this chapter into two which means we don't get smutty until part five :( but i promise i'll make it worth the wait, and it also means we get an extra chapter since the next one was supposed to be the last. as always pls let me know how we feel!
also available on archiveofourown.
You spend the two hour drive wondering if anyone would miss you if you swerved onto the oncoming lane. People would notice you gone, of course. Céline would be the first one, since she’s the only one expecting you home. Your grandmother would probably notice it by Sunday, when you didn’t make it to church in time. And Joel—
You don’t want to think about Joel. But those two hours you spend behind the wheel of the car you stole from him give you nothing but time to think. Think about how you took everything he said at face value because you wanted it to be true. Think about how, apart from the time he basically hijacked your body, there’s a reasonable and non-supernatural answer to every odd thing that has happened since you met him: He’s been stalking you everywhere, he could’ve easily overheard you speaking to the wolf. You never actually saw him shift from wolf to human. The night he was injured — allegedly — and slept at your place, you went to sleep with a wolf in your living room and woke up to him; he could’ve easily swapped places with the animal while you slept and the real wolf was probably dead somewhere in the woods.
And sure, you don’t have a proper explanation to the calming purring and the way your body forced you to obey his command but… Well, maybe those are on you. Maybe you wanted it so badly to be true that your brain tricked itself into thinking those things were actually happening.
The real, more plausible truth is that Joel is a weird, obsessive killer that murdered his own wife and is now targeting you. His brother is clearly in on it, and you think that maybe Joel told him about it after he stalked you through the woods and saw the second wolf: It’s the perfect excuse to make you believe, really— A witness and an accomplice.
You, more than ever, consider throwing the car straight into a lightpost. You feel like a fucking idiot, like the biggest moron on the planet and you wonder how much the Millers have laughed at your expanse. How far they are willing to go with this charade just because you gave it to them on a silver platter.
You’re not crying by the time you park the truck in front of Céline’s expensive condo, not really, but your cheeks are clammy and your eyes are burning— You don’t think you blinked more than three times since entering city limits, you don’t even remember stopping at a single red light ever since leaving the interstate and you hope you’ve gathered a shitload of traffic violations.
Céline pulls you into a hug that feels more like mourning than welcoming, her twiggy arms encasing around you for a long moment before she finally pulls away.
“New car?” She asks when you hike up your backpack over your shoulder, one of her well manicured brows raising.
“Borrowed from a friend.”
“Right.” Céline nods and you’re not sure if she doesn’t believe the car is borrowed or that you have a friend that isn’t her. But then her demeanor changes, a wide smile blooming on her pretty face. “Let’s get you upstairs, Oli’s making margaritas.”
Céline’s apartment is on the tenth floor of a newly renovated building with floor to ceiling windows and so much space you don’t even know how she managed to furnish it all. Oliver, her fiancé, is in the kitchen, standing behind a deep navy blue island and marble counters with a pitch of margarita and tiny, fancy-looking tacos.
“I just threw something together really quick.” They say, an apologetic smile even though the colorful tray is fancier and more elaborate than anything you ever could’ve done. “I did a pollo and a veggie version too, in case you’re vegan.”
“Pollo is chicken.” Céline adds, shuffling through the cabinets for the glasses. You drop your backpack by your feet, shuffling your dirty converse shoes on the expensive hardwood flooring. Your entire existence feels dirty somehow, like you’re tainting this perfectly tailored reality by simply stepping foot in it.
“I know.” You tell her with a little bit more bite than intended before turning back to Oliver. “This is perfect, thank you.”
Oliver is only around for two glasses of margarita before they excuse themself out of the room, giving Cél a soft kiss— Work calls, they say with a wave before ducking out of the apartment; there’s something funny about a big-time lawyer going to work slightly buzzed, something grounding in seeing a reflection of yourself in them— a tiny detail that makes Oliver a bit more of a real human and less of the rich and fancy soulmate your best friend found.
You and Céline end up in the terrace with the margarita pitcher, the tray of tacos that Céline barely touches and a blunt— Higher quality than any weed you’ve smoked in the past couple of years, tasting fresh and a little citrusy, earthy in a way that makes you instantly relax.
It’s easy to fall back into your dynamic with Céline even if the two of you haven’t seen each other in years— The booze and the weed help break the stiffness in your shoulders and you don’t even find yourself hurting over her outlandish stories, no jealousy tightening your stomach when she goes on and on about her new friends or the hot professor she hooked up with a couple of summers ago, your smile genuine when she speaks excitedly about how the universe ‘conspired’ for her to be accepted into residency at the hospital of her dreams.
Of course things have always been easy for Céline— She’s pretty, she’s charming, she’s rich. She never had to struggle the way you had, never had to be told she’d be kicked out if her grades didn’t improve or berated about the hardships of raising a child. She still has both of her parents, a safety net to fall back to if she needs it and a hefty trust fund that allows her to pick and choose her residency.
You’ve always hated her a little, no matter how much you love her, and you’re fairly certain the feeling is mutual.
“How’s work?” She asks eventually, like you knew she would. You’re almost surprised she hasn’t asked about Joel first but you’re glad for it too— You’re not certain you can talk about him without breaking down.
“It’s fine. Good.” You shrug, taking a final hit from the blunt before you hand it back; Céline puts it out on the ashtray between the two of you, her long legs drawn up to her chest. “Not sure I’ll stay there for long, though. Genevieve’s unbearable.”
“She always was. I remember she’d yell at everyone when she made captain of the soccer team. But we both know she’s gonna rot in a menial job using her power trip to abuse her subordinates.”
You wince, thinking about how you, too, will most likely rot in some menial job until you die. Céline seems to understand the weight of her words as soon as they’re out of her mouth because she reaches between the two of you, her hand grasping yours.
“That job is temporary for you, anyway.” She says, in that calming and warm tone that would’ve sounded condescending from anyone else. “You’ll be able to tell her to suck it as soon as you start to sell your paintings.”
You shove a taco in your mouth. It’s already a little soggy, the lettuce starting to wilt under the warmth of the pollo, but it’s better than to admit to her that, apart from that stupid doodle of the wolf on the back of a receipt, you haven’t drawn or painted for the better part of the year.
It started because you ran out of paint and didn’t have the cash to buy more— You switched to charcoal then, which has never been your favorite but it was better than nothing. But then you started to draw less and less, too busy or too tired or too unmotivated.
You’re not even sure where your supplies are, anymore.
“Ooh, you should make TikToks!” She says, squeezing your hand once before she lets it go, an almost childlike smile on her face. “You could record yourself painting and then sell them once they’re done! I follow a girl that does macramê and she has like a bazillion followers.”
“I’ll think about it.” You say, though you have no intention of following through with it. “Tell me about Oli’s friends, again. They’re meeting us at the thing, right?”
The three of you make it to the bar about half past midnight— You’re three energy drinks and way too many tequila shots in already, needing the alcohol and the caffeine to stay up so late. It’s funny how you’d most likely be wide awake, panicking and crying, if you were still at home. But in the big city, with your best friend and all the twinkling lights, your eyelids droop while she peppers them with so much glitter you think it’ll never wipe off entirely. You’re in a red dress, short and sparkly just like your eyes, the sort of pretty clothing you haven’t worn in way too many years. It smells a little like the back of your closet but Céline sprays her perfume on you and hands you a pair of her heels and, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you don’t feel like a falsified copy of yourself like you thought you would.
You look pretty, and that is a word you haven’t used to talk about yourself since you were a teenager.
The Wilde, the bar that Céline has been raving about since she moved to Jackson, is almost forty minutes away from her apartment— The drive is tense after Cél asks way too many questions about the baby car seat in the back that you didn’t even notice was there until her eyes are bugging out of her head. And then it goes very quiet when you finally admit that Joel is the one that lent you the car. Poor Oliver keeps trying to lighten the mood, telling you about their job and singing along to the music on the radio a little bit too loud, like a child trying to take the attention away from two arguing parents. They jump out of the truck even before you can properly park it, clearly wanting to get away from the bad thing brewing between you and Céline as fast as possible.
Cél grabs your wrist just before you can hop out of the car too and you take a deep breath, turning back to her with your shoulders squared and fully prepared to be yelled at but she simply smiles.
“I don’t want to spend the whole weekend fighting.” She says, her voice a little wobbly from the liquor. “I missed us.”
“I miss us too.”
And you do. Things have never been easy or smooth between you and Céline, but they were good. You’d fight and make up almost every week, giggling in the dark of her bedroom at night, trading secrets and life stories until you knew more about her than you know of yourself. But this, the girl with pink eyeshadow and sixty dollar french tip manicure, feels like a stranger. A stranger that knows too much, that has seen too much and doesn’t love you enough to not judge you for it. She brings your hand to her lips, pressing a sticky kiss to the back of your hand, and everything is fine. It’s fine. She’s your best friend and her bright pink gloss is now smeared all over the back of your hand and she knows too much and not enough about you. It’s fine.
The bar is crowded. So crowded that you barely see Oliver waving from a table, both of their hands in the air before either of you notice it. There’s two more people there already, a woman with dark braids so long they hit the swell of her ass, the golden rings weaved into her hair shining against the strobing pink and blue lights that swirl around the room. The other woman is taller, her blond hair gelled and spiked up in a way that makes you think of a pop star from the 90s. The girl with the spiky bun is named Ripley, the one with the braids is Bri, and they both attend the same college as Céline. It’s a mismatched, odd group of people that don’t seem to fit together but clearly do, all of them talking over each other and cackling with jokes that fly right over your head but, unlike when it’d been with just Céline and Oliver, you don’t feel left out— Bri sits next to you and rolls her eyes or explains a joke or two, talking fast and waving her hands a lot, blowing raspberries or booing Céline whenever she says something a little too pretentious.
Sitting between Ripley and Bri, you feel at home. Like these girls could actually be your friends, welcoming you with honesty and a lot more warmth than your own best friend did. There’s no competition, no baggage with them, just laughing and drinking and trying to hold Ripley’s legs when she decides to dance on top of the table.
You’re way past drunk when you go into the bathroom stall with Bri. You don’t even know who started it, who pulled who into it but you think she’s way too drunk too, her hands a little sloppy when they sneak under the hem of your dress, her kisses leaving a wet trail down your neck. You lean into it, your hands roaming her shoulders and her sides, but it doesn’t feel right. Your entire body screams at you to get away, to walk from the bar and get in the car and drive back home.
Home. Not Céline’s apartment, not your house, not your grandmother’s house but that little cabin in the middle of nowhere that has children’s toys scattered everywhere, two pairs of muddy boots by the front door and the strong scent of pine everywhere.
“I uhm, I—” Whatever you’re about to say is cut off by Bri’s kiss, her soft lips pressing lazily against yours, her kiss tasting of Jack and Coke. Her body fits nicely against yours, her perfume is soft and feminine and her slightly taller height is perfect enough that you don’t need to bend too far backwards to slot your mouth against hers, your shoulders pressing against the bathroom stall when she pulls at your hips, her thigh dragging up between yours.
Still, everything feels wrong. Not because she’s a stranger, not because you’re way past a reasonable amount of drunk in a dirty bathroom stall miles and miles away from your hometown, not because you’re out of a job and still spending almost thirty dollars for one cocktail with a stolen truck in the parking lot.
It’s wrong because she’s not Joel. It’s wrong because you’re wearing someone else’s perfume, with someone else between your legs, in a place that you don’t belong with people that you don’t belong to.
You’re out of the bar before you can even notice. You push Bri away, apologies tumbling out of your mouth that you don’t listen to as you scramble out of the stall and out of the bathroom, wobbling your way out of the bar.
Céline is the one that follows you outside and holds your hair while you retch into the gutter.
“What happened?” She asks as you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, shaking as you lean against Joel’s truck. She’s just as drunk as you are, face flushed and eyes bloodshot. “You pushed Bri so hard she slipped and hit her head on the toilet.”
You don’t even remember pushing the other woman, all you could think about was getting out.
“I don—” The words are cut out by a rancid hiccup. “I couldn’t do that— Joel— I can’t do that to him.”
“Joel?” She says the name like it’s rotten in her mouth. “The stalker that you think killed a bunch of people? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
And suddenly Céline’s concern for you twists into something else, something with teeth. You laugh, short and watery before it turns into tears.
“Oh, I know he killed people. Every one of ‘em.” You sob, shaking your head. You shouldn’t say it, you know you shouldn’t, but the secret that has been bubbling inside of you spills out before you can consider holding back. “Killed his fucking wife too. I ran.” You wave your hand towards the truck, wobbling to the side before you regain a little stability. “Stole his fucking truck and ran. But I miss him. I fuckin’— Fuck. I love him.”
The silence that follows is suffocating. Oliver pokes their head through the door but Céline waves them back inside without taking her eyes off of you.
“You don’t love him.” She shakes her head. The drunken flush is gone from her face, replaced with a sickly paleness. “You’re just desperate.”
“I love him.” You whine, your breath coming in ragged between the tears. “I do, Cél, I fucking love him so—”
“No, you don’t! You think you do because he’s the first person to look at you twice. I mean, c’mon sweetheart, we both know you’d fuck a horse if it gave you enough attention.”
You can tell she regrets the words as soon as they come out, her breath stuttering as she says your name as if she’s shocked with herself for saying it but you’re not listening anymore. You climb into the truck through the passenger seat, sliding to the driver’s side as Céline begs you not to drive. She’s sorry and you’re both drunk and she doesn’t mean it but you don’t listen. You just rev the engine and speed out of the parking lot.
You don’t go back to Céline’s apartment even though all of your things are still there. The truck swerves dangerously on the highway but you don’t even notice it and, by the seventh time she calls, you throw your phone out of the window— You’re going to fucking regret that in the morning but, right now, you don’t really have a plan of making it to the morning. Your foot is lead on the gas, the motor rattling and shaking as you cut other cars; you turn on the windshield wipers before you realize it’s not raining and that the watery distortion of everything is coming from the tears welling up your eyes. You laugh at yourself and then you cry a little more, your headlights coming dangerously close to the car on your left. The driver honks, loud and long, but you don’t even notice it’s aimed at you.
You make almost all of the way home. You’re about forty miles from the welcome sign that designates the border of your town when your heel gets stuck underneath the brake pedal— The truck is close to 90mph, the old thing barely hanging on, but the pointer only climbs up in your panic: You floor the gas pedal as you try to pull your other foot from the brake pedal; you look down, trying to figure out what is happening underneath the dashboard, the car swerving harshly to the left, into the woods.
You barely manage to avoid the first tree, your hands turning the steering wheel this and that way in a blind panic as the car flies off the highway— The front of the truck slams into a large willow tree and the last thing you feel is your face slamming into the dashboard before everything goes dark.
There’s something wet on your face. Soft, wet and warm, running over the side of your face in steady strokes; you try to push it away, even if the feeling isn’t entirely unpleasant, but all your trembling hand finds is soft fur. Something whines and you’re not sure if the noise came from you or not— Your body feels like it’s floating, feverish but cold to the bone at the same time, pain burning everywhere with the sort of intensity that almost makes you numb to it. Your eyes flutter close as you struggle to keep them open, head lolling to the side. You think there’s a grey and brown snout licking at your cheek, but your brain is already giving back into the emptiness.
The next time you wake up, you’re moving. You’re being dragged across the forest ground to be precise, dead leaves and pointy sticks getting stuck to your skin; you flail, panicking at the teeth that cradle on the back of your neck— the pressure is very soft, just enough to hold without hurting, but they’re still there, warm and sharp, spit dribbling down to the front of your neck and down your chest as the thing that is holding you by the back of your neck — the wolf, you know without having to look — drags you through the forest as if you were a misbehaving puppy.
The jaw around your neck tightens ever so slightly when you flail, just enough to send you spiraling even more, before it drops you down on the ground. You roll, trying to scamper away, but the movement makes you dizzy. The wolf stares at you with blood — your blood — staining all over its mouth and face, from its jaw up to its forehead. It steps forward when you crawl backwards, your pretty dress now ruined, your stomach twisting.
“Stay the fuck back.” You tell him, scootching backwards until you hit a particularly large tree root. The wolf whines, a pitiful noise that breaks your heart but not your resolve.
You’ve lost Céline’s borrowed heels at some point and, although it’s not funny, you laugh when you think about how pissed she will be. You stand up slowly, fingers digging into the moss that covers the tree trunk next to you, not even considering all of the creepy crawlies that could be walking all over you— It’s so dark you can barely see, the wolf sitting next to you bathed in moonlight and then oppressing darkness from the forest behind it.
You stumble and then fall to your knees just two steps away from the wolf, both from the head injury and the alcohol; the animal is on you in a second, big nose insistent and stubborn as it sniffs your face and neck. “Go away.” You say, trying and failing to push him away. “You can’t— No. Go.”
You barely have time to pull your hair out of the way before you puke. Your head is starting to hurt more than it did before, a consistent throbbing behind your eyelids that only gets worse when the wolf sits on his hind legs and howls.
You’ve seen videos of wolves howling before. You’ve seen it in movies and you’ve read about it and you probably have seen way too many wolf-related TikToks at this point but nothing could prepare you for just how loud the noise is in real life. It’s loud and painful and if you weren’t already crawling on the ground you’d probably would’ve fallen to your knees; the howl reverberates through your core, squeezing your stomach into a tight little ball, goosebumps erupting on your skin. Something feels very, very wrong.
You wipe your hands on the hem of your dress before bringing them to your face, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes. The already smeared makeup goes inside your eyes and it only makes everything worse, vision blurry and burning as you try and fail not to cry. The wolf pads close to you, slowly and carefully as if he is approaching a wild animal — which, at this point, you might as well be — before curling its big, warm body around yours.
The wolf smells of Joel and blood, his strong legs pulling you close until you’re enveloped in soft fur and the rumbling underneath his ribcages. You don’t want to, you want to fight and walk away and tell him to fuck off but you lean against his sturdy form anyway, fingers digging into the long fur, your head dropping against his neck.
Céline is right. Céline is wrong. You’re not certain anymore. Maybe both, maybe neither. You can’t figure out what’s real or what isn’t and maybe you’re still somewhere inside that car, trapped in twisted hot metal as the whole thing goes into flames. Or maybe your brain is swelling and bleeding inside of your head and you’re going to die either way, but this time with a magical wolfman wrapped around you like a pelt.
You blink and perhaps your eyes stay closed for longer than you anticipated because, when they finally open, Tommy is staring at you. He’s crouched about three feet away from you, a flashlight in one hand, the other empty and outstretched towards you.
The wolf underneath you growls when Tommy’s hand moves closer.
“Yer the one that fuckin’ called me. I can’t help her if I can’t touch her.” He argues back, clearly unfazed by the long and threatening noise your wolf is still emitting. “What happened, sugar?”
“Crashed the truck.” You say, pushing yourself into a sitting position. The wolf moves along, his side still glued to your back. “I think.”
Tommy pushes the hair away from your face, humming when he brings the flashlight to your forehead.
“Drinkin’?”
“No.”
He raises an eyebrow. “I can smell the tequila from a mile away.”
“Then you shouldn’t have asked.”
Tommy grumbles under his breath but doesn’t say anything else, instead choosing to help you to your feet and then flipping Joel off when the wolf gets in his face about it.
“You can’t carry her like a damn pup. Just gon’ hurt her more.” Tommy says, hands on his hips. The wolf is taller than him but not by much— The height doesn’t matter, though, because the hulking shape of the wolf should be enough to scare anyone away; not Tommy, it seems, because he rolls his eyes and pushes Joel’s face away like a diver does with a shark. “If you didn’t want my help you shouldn’t have called me.”
“I don’t think I called you.” You say, closing your eyes. Your head is fully pounding now, the migraine settling deep behind your teeth. “I threw my phone out the window a few miles back.”
“Not you. Him. Howlin’ like a hurt puppy to drag me here. Why—” Tommy shook his head. “You know what? Don’t tell me. Let’s just get you home… And maybe to a hospital.”
The wolf growls, still flanking the both of you, his teeth shimmering in the moonlight.
“No hospital?” You ask, tongue feeling like lead. Nothing about the interaction feels real— The world around you doesn’t feel real, like everything is immaterial, like you’re just floating inside of your head. Like Joel and Tommy and the wolf and the past forty-eight hours aren’t true and have never been.
You hobble and stumble your way back to the cabin because the wolf refuses to let Tommy carry you and you throw up again while trying to climb onto the animal’s back before giving up and walking on your own. You do the thing Tommy did with the hand to the snout when it tries to grab you by the nape of the neck, pushing his nose away gently. You think you might’ve told him that you’d rather die than get dragged around by the neck but you’re not certain you managed to get the words out.
You’ve never had a concussion before, but there’s a small part of you that thinks this is what it feels like.
In the end, the wolf doesn’t let you inside the cabin. It stalks around you and sits in your way and actually tries to bite Tommy when he begins to maneuver you out of the wolf’s way; Tommy on his part cusses him out and complains the entire time about how Joel’s a fucking maniac and a possessive son of a bitch and a goddamn stubborn bastard, but he heeds with caution when he tells you to wait outside, coming around to the back of the cabin with a cardboard box of blankets, a water bottle and a Tylenol, throwing you a ‘good fuckin’ luck’ before he stomps back inside. The wolf noses at your stomach until you plop down on the stairs, leaning against the staircase railing and downing the water while you watch it work.
You can’t lie to yourself anymore and pretend that this is anything other than a man. He sniffs through the cardboard box before tipping it over and pulling its contents out— It’s not nearly as neat and well made as the nest Joel had made in your living room but you can see it has the same structure, the heavy blankets underneath and the fluffy ones on top. The animal growls, frustrated with himself when his paws and nose don’t seem to work to get it just right and you eventually pad down closer to him, using your opposable thumbs — which you make sure to flex in his face — to fix it into something similar to what you’ve seen before.
He forces you to lie down, big forehead headbutting you until you fall onto the covers, his warm and fluffy body climbing over yours; there’s a brief moment of panic where you think he’s trying to mount you but then he rolls over, big paws wrapping around you, belly up. You go down far too willingly, Céline’s words replaying in your head as you fist the wolf’s fur, burying your face against his neck.
You hate yourself for how fucking right she is.
There’s something heavy on your face. You’re laying somewhere too comfortable, warmth surrounding you everywhere, the thing on your face completely covering your eyes— The wolf’s head, you belatedly realize, his jaw shielding your eyes from the morning sun while leaving just enough space for you to breathe; which you can’t do anyway because of the heavy paw weighing down on your chest. You grumble, pushing him away, the sun immediately burning behind your eyelids.
Tommy is sitting on the staircase, still in his pajamas, a steaming mug in hands and a far too gleeful smile on his face. The wolf is asleep next to you, head rolling to the side when you push him away, dead to the world. You’re not sure how you got here, your memory from the night before fuzzy and painful. You remember the bar, Bri, and Céline— Not much else.
“Did I—” You shake your head, unwilling to let the words come out of your mouth; it’s not like you can ask Joel’s brother if you committed bestiality in his backyard the night before. Instead, you change course. “What the fuck happened?”
“Don’t think so, I woulda heard if you did.” He answers anyway, his voice lacking any judgement. “How much do you remember? Reckon you got a concussion but there’s only so much medicine I know how to practice.”
“I—” You lick your lips, your mouth dry as cotton. “I got into a fight with my friend. Went to her place in Jackson for the weekend.”
“You crashed the truck. I didn’t see it but I think it was bad, car was on fire by the time I got to it.”
Your hand comes up to touch the side of your face— It throbs a little, but no more than a proper hangover; still, you’re certain he’s right. You’re still in last night's clothes, covered in leaves, mud and dried up blood, and you can already see a particularly dark bruise forming on your shin. Your entire body feels sore, particularly your stomach, and his words bring forth the faint memory of tires screeching and the painful sound of metal twisting into a different, wrong shape.
You eye the mug in his hands, which Tommy promptly hands you.
“Coffee. Fresh off the pot. I’d invite you in but I reckon he ain’t lettin’ you out of his sight.”
“Huh.” You say, voice dripping with sarcasm as you stretch towards the coffee. It’s bitter and way too strong for your taste, but it helps settle the nausea. “Wouldn’t it be a nice little party trick if he could just switch back into human form and walk inside his own damn house?”
“That ain’t happening until you’re healed.” Tommy leans on his knees, seriousness thundering over his face. “Your lil’ disappearing act did a number on him. Hasn’t shifted back since he realized you were gone.”
You go silent for a moment, sipping the coffee as you take in Joel’s sleeping form.
“I assume that’s not normal?”
“Nope. We don’t usually spend that much time in wolf form. Dad warned us not to, said it was dangerous stayin’ as a wild animal for that long. But you could never be sure if the old man was tellin’ the truth about anything.”
You instantly feel a migraine coming through.
“That’s just fucking great.” Still, despite the bitterness of your words, you can’t help but bring a hand to rub his stomach. The wolf gives a little woof in his sleep, mouth still closed, the sound reverberating from his chest. It’s fucking cute, which is not a word you think should be used to describe a giant killing machine that is still covered in dried blood. “What am I supposed to do? Stay outside until he decides to shift back?”
Tommy shrugs. “I can bring you some of Sarah’s coloring books.”
You have to bite down on your tongue to resist the urge of barking at him.
As much as it pains you to admit, Sarah’s coloring books do help to distract you. Tommy brings you food and drinks periodically, complaining about having to care for someone that ‘ain’t even his damn mate’, but he also brings you clothes and a coat when it gets a little chilly— The wolf sleeps for most of the day, whining whenever you pull away for too long, and you wonder if he slept at all while you were gone.
You tell yourself that you stick around mainly because you need to see the moment Joel shifts back. You need proof, irrefutable evidence that you can’t explain away with any ounce of logic other than him truly, absolutely, being a werewolf.
You get your evidence in the middle of the afternoon. The wolf whines and stir, his paws wiggling a little in his sleep as if he’s dreaming of running; you turn around absentmindedly to scratch his neck when you realize something is wrong. A clump of fur falls off on your hand, sticking to your hand when you try to shake it off— And he’s warm. You’ve noticed he runs hot but this is too much, so hot it makes him a little uncomfortable to the touch.
You think he’s growling in his sleep at first, lips pulled back as if he’s baring his teeth before you realize that his skin is, in fact, pulling back— Receding into the fur that seems to shed more and more every time you blink, his paws and back twisting and spasming as if he’s about to break. The fur goes away first, some chunks disappearing into his skin, others falling clean off like a young deer shedding its antlers, skin and all; you can see muscles and tendons and veins before the skin grows back, tan and smooth and human.
There’s a moment in which he looks like a mixture of a Xoloitzcuintle dog and a wolf, as tall and big as human Joel is but still dog-shaped, smooth skin covered in a peach fuzz that sheds every time he spasms. And then the muscles twist and bend and suddenly the wolf is entirely gone, replaced with just Joel, laying on a pile of his own gore.
It’s stupid, but the first thing you think about is how he somehow got rid of the werewolf chunks from your living room that night. And you’re grateful for it too, because you’re about to either puke or pass out. Maybe both.
It’s grotesque, and beautiful, and so otherworldly that you can’t do anything other than sit there and stare as Joel’s eyes finally open, hazy at first before consciousness fully sets in. He rolls over, chest heaving, and you pull the corner of the blanket to throw over his very naked waist— You don’t know where Sarah is but you’re fairly certain she’s still inside the house and you think that accidentally seeing her naked bloodied father might not be for the best.
“Morning.” You say even though it’s well past noon, dropping the electric blue pencil you’d been using to doodle on the margins of the coloring book. Joel raises a hand, nails and cuticles caked with deep red blood, and touches the side of your face; it’s still a little tender but it doesn’t pound anymore and you’re desperately curious to know what you look like.
And you’re also in desperate need of a shower and a toothbrush.
“That’s gonna scar.” He says, frowning as he pushes himself onto his elbow. “I’m sorry. There’s only so much I could fix.”
“Do I look badass or do I look hideous?”
“Beautiful.” Joel says, his voice just a little soft. His hand is warm and clammy, falling from your cheek to your clavicle. “Shoulder healin’ okay?”
You roll your shoulders absentmindedly before shrugging. “I wasn’t even aware it was injured, so I’d say yes.”
Joel nods once, reaching for the half empty water bottle next to you. His hands shake. “You should go inside. I’ll clean up and be right there.”
You eye the mess he’s sitting in wearily. “Do you… Uh. Need help or something?”
“No, you can go.” He gives you a wobbly smile, face a little paler than usual and you’re not sure if it’s from shifting back or just exhaustion. Either way, you’re incredibly relieved at not having to mop pieces of werewolf off of the ground.
Whatever you had been expecting, the state of the woman looking back at you in the bathroom mirror is worse than you thought it would be. Your hair is a rat’s nest of loose leaves, knots and dried blood— You pluck a tiny shard of glass when you try to untangle it dry before giving up entirely. The left side of your face is a constellation of tiny scars, light colored freckles that look just a bit irritated, coming from your temple all the way to your chin; it doesn’t look badass or hideous but it surely doesn’t look beautiful. You want to cry over it, but all you can truly do is be grateful that the glass shards that embedded into your skin on impact didn’t hit your eyes.
Your body is a collection of bruises, scraps and cuts that look a lot older than the sixteen hours they truly are, just as you’re expecting them to be. Your head and shoulders seems to have taken the brunt of it, but there are long and angry scraps on your stomach that mix along with old, faded stretchmarks; you decide to ask Joel if he knows what happened later, but you’re fairly certain you flew through the windshield and it’s a fucking miracle you didn’t break your neck or split your skull open.
Your mother didn’t have the same luck twenty-something years ago. You can see her wrecked car behind your eyelids as you step into the too-hot shower as if the accident had just happened, the blood on the broken windshield where her body had been, the hood bent upwards— She’d gone halfway through the windshield before a particularly sharp glass shard embedded deep enough to tear her gut open, the top of her head smashed into the hood that had popped open and then flown backwards. You were six years old, and while you hadn’t understood it back then, you know for sure that your grandmother should’ve spared you from the details.
She never spared you from anything, had shown no mercy when you were kept up from nightmares of your mother with her organs falling from the open wound on her torso, the gruesome picture of her neck bent and her brains pouring out whenever you closed your eyes.
Your legs give under you as you wash the blood away, rivulets trailing down your body and into the drain; you sit there, shampoo on your hair and tears and blood washing down your chest, until the water runs cold. You think the werewolves in the house can hear your sobs even through the spray of the shower, know Joel hears better than most even with his busted eardrum, but nobody knocks on the door or tries to hurry you. You’re alone with your misery for forty-something minutes, knees to your chest and nails digging into your thighs, until the cold water becomes too much to bear on your sore muscles.
Joel is inside by the time you’ve showered, gore rinsed off as he scarves down a giant plate of eggs and bacon; Sarah sits next to him, babbling away, stealing bacon bits from his plate that Joel pretends not to notice. She smiles brightly when you walk in, clad in a pair of Joel’s boxer shorts and a sweatshirt, waving you a slice of bacon.
“Hi, kiddo.” You say, avoiding the spit-soaked bacon she’s offering you by kissing the top of her head and then moving to the couch.
“How are you feeling?” Joel asks, eyeing you carefully.
“Hungover.” You lean back on the couch, bringing your legs up. “And like I flew straight through a windshield.”
“Glad you think this is funny.”
You curl in on yourself, turning to stare back at the TV— An episode of Clifford is on, muted.
“I’m sorry about your truck. Is it salvageable?”
“Fuck the truck.” Joel barks, his eyes wild and burning with anger. “You could’ve died. You would have died if I wasn’t there.”
Your eyes whip back to Sarah, who offers you another toothy smile before she pipes up with something that sounds remarkably like ‘fuck the truck!’.
“I don’t think we should be having this conversation in front of her.” Your voice wobbles, breaking a little before you swallow it down. You feel like an exposed nerve, like your entire body is made out of open wires and you’re really, really not in the mood for a scolding from a crazed murderer.
Joel turns back to his meal but his shoulders are tense, hiked up all the way to his ears as he leans forward, elbows on the table and head hanging low. Sarah pats his bicep twice before she shimmies from her chair, padding towards you and climbing onto the couch without a single word. Her lips are greasy when they touch your cheek, and you don’t even notice you’re crying until the action smears your own tears all over your face.
“You’re sad.” She says, big brown eyes staring at you with a severity that is far too old for her chubby little face. You press a kiss to her forehead, arms wrapping around her and pulling her close. You risk a glance at Joel who is now sitting with his back ramrod straight, still turned away, not eating anymore.
“I’m okay, pup.” You tell her with a tiny smile. “Just tired.”
And it’s true— You’re tired of running, tired of fighting back and pretending that this isn’t exactly what you want.
Pope gets mauled by the devil in the middle of the night. (Your cat likes Pope's big chest almost as much as you do.)
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warnings: established relationship, pure fluff, cats, awkward!pope, sadboy!pope, he doesn't know how to handle softness but he needs it, no use of y/n or any description of reader other being a loud snorer, domestic bliss, mentions of smurf being the worst mother ever.
rating: 18+. (there's nothing explicit in this but i dont want kiddos on my blog sorry!)
word count: 1.1k.
fox says: hi friends, thank you for reading! this is just a short little thing i wrote bc i need andrew to be happy, i wrote this in like forty minutes and i almost didn't post it because of how short it is but i hope you guys still like it! as always pls let me know how we feel!
also available on archiveofourown.
Pope had to learn how to sleep with one eye open a long time before going to prison. His home had never been safe and, even as a child, he was always a light sleeper simply because it was a survival mechanism he developed to survive growing up under Smurf’s thumb. So he wakes instantly to the weight shifting on his chest, entire body locking in place as he tries to figure out what is happening. It’s not you, he can hear you snoring like a truck to the side — Pope would always be surprised that such a delicate woman could make so much noise while unconscious —, and the weight is too light and too concentrated to be a person.
He opens his eyes slowly, just a little, not wanting to let the intruder know he is awake; the element of surprise always does wonders for him— attacking fast and hard before your opponent can understand what is happening is what has saved Pope’s life time and time again. On top of him there is a small pile of black fur. The thing is moving, little arms stretched over Pope’s pecks, tiny claws opening and closing, tugging at the cotton of his shirt. The animal blinks, slowly, and Pope can only tell that its eyes are open when the moonlight coming through the window hits it just right.
The Tasmanian Devil. You told him the cat’s name had been Tweety at first, because he was tiny and seemed kind— He grew up into what you call a ‘terrorist’ with a sweet voice and fond smile, so you renamed him. Tweety to Tasmanian Devil. Sweet to sour.
You did the opposite with him. He was Pope when he first met you— Angry, violent, unstable. You’d taken one look at him and started calling him Andy. A new name, a new identity, a facet of his personality that has always been there but has never been allowed to shine through. Sour to sweet.
The cat never seemed to like Pope very much. And it’s fine, Pope doesn’t like the thing either. He has never owned a pet, Smurf never allowed animals inside the house— Julia had made that mistake once, when they were eleven and an old mutt followed them from school. Pope didn’t see what happened, Smurf had dragged both Julia and the dog outside when she finally came home, but he had held his sister in the aftermath, arms around her shoulders as she cried and cried and cried.
Pope never saw the dog again.
Tec. Tec. Tec. The rhythmic sound of the devil ruining his shirt, its attack slow and coordinated as it keeps digging its claws into his shirt and tugging harshly. It doesn’t hurt— The thing can’t even do that properly, it seems. Pope pokes you on the shoulder twice and is only rewarded with the revving engine sound of your snores. You go quiet by the third poke but you don’t say anything, clearly awake enough to understand something is happening but not enough to realize it is him.
“Honey?” Pope calls out. The devil stops moving on top of him for a moment at the rumbling of his chest before it restarts the assault. “Your devil is trying to kill me.”
You slowly turn around then, hair mussed with sleep and eyes squinting. The cat doesn’t seem bothered by the movement, still clawing at Pope’s chest.
“He likes you.” You say, and Pope frowns at how big you’re smiling. “Just wants to make some biscuits on those big titties of yours.”
You’re making fun of him. Pope is getting attacked and you’re making fun of him.
“Wh—”
“Pet him.” You cut him off. Your own hand comes up to scratch behind the cat’s ear. The thing vibrates, then, a soft crooning noise taking over the silence of the bedroom.
“It’s clawing at me.” Pope says, his hands still firmly by his sides.
“He’s making biscuits.” You say again, just a little more forcefully but he can tell you’re having way too much fun. “Cats only do that when they like you and feel safe. When they’re kittens they do that while they’re nursing to help get the milk out.”
“I don’t have any milk.”
You snort. “Don’t I know it.”
Pope’s face flushes, the reminder of how much attention you’d given his nipples earlier that evening crawling to the forefront of his mind. He raises a hand, carefully, patting his index finger on the top of the devil’s forehead. It keeps crooning, still making biscuits on his chest.
The devil feels safe with him. It’s an odd feeling, but not an uncomfortable one— No one ever feels safe with him. People fear him, and he protects his family with his teeth and bare knuckles, but they don’t feel safe around him. You do, he thinks. He never asked, afraid of the answer, but you shield behind him whenever his brothers get too physical with each other, and you climb on his lap and hide your face on his neck whenever you’re watching a scary movie.
He likes that. It makes him feel useful in a different way. When he protects his family he feels dirty, like a crazed guard dog that is going to be put down the second he is no longer useful. With you, he feels like he matters, like he belongs in your bed and in your house and in your heart.
The devil headbuts his finger and you giggle, pressing a kiss to Pope’s bicep.
“He likes scritches.”
So Pope follows through, gently scratching behind the cat’s ear like you’d done before. His nails are shorter than yours, always trimmed down to the point where he’s one wrong angle away from bleeding, but the cat doesn’t seem to mind. The cat crawls a little closer to his neck, a loud mrrrp sound escaping it.
“He hates me.” Pope says, heart thundering at the noise but you just snuggle closer, your leg thrown over his thigh.
“He’s happy, Andy.” Your eyes are drooping, sleep is about to drag you back. “He would’ve bitten your finger clean off if he hated you.”
The cat stands, its little paws digging on his chest and the softness of his stomach. It twists twice before it plops back down on his chest, fluffy tail swiping over Pope’s face. It’s uncomfortable and so unsanitary that any other day Pope might’ve jumped out of bed but he remains as still as he can, the cat’s purring being drowned down by your snoring, his fingers running along the cat’s spine.
He doesn’t say it but, with the Tasmanian Devil’s weight on his chest, your leg over his and your cold hands gripping his bicep like a lifeline, Andy feels safe too.
.⋆♱ summary: The Court of Oyer and Terminer, comes to Andover, and with it, a sermon sharp enough to make every woman in the meetinghouse feel already condemned. As Magistrate Grimes preaches obedience, restraint, and the wickedness of female desire, the silence inside your marriage turns unbearable. Jack may be willing to protect you from the men hunting witches, but he has yet to answer for the hunger he has left untouched in his own bed.
.⋆♱ a/n 1: This is my first time writing for a character who isn’t Joel or Tommy Miller, so I really hope you like it. This wild little idea was born one afternoon while I was at work, listening to My Moon My Man by Feist, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed it immensely.
.⋆♱ a/n 2: A special mention to the sweet and endlessly patient @mcthsman for reading this little baby! ily Fox 🤍
.⋆♱ a/n 3: I can’t wait to read your comments, and if you have any ideas for Jack, Titus, or Pope, my requests are always open for them along with Joel and Tommy Miller <3
.⋆♱ warnings: period typical misogyny, religious oppression, religious guilt, tormented characters, touch starved characters (very), references to hangings/executions, fear of accusation, public shaming of women, sermons about female obedience/submission, sexual repression, internalized shame around female desire, marital tension, unconsummated marriage, emotional distress, pregnancy mentions, grief/parents loss references, a general atmosphere of paranoia, judgment and religiously justified violence, amputee Jack, he has a wooden leg okay, chronic pain/mobility issues, implied age gap.
.⋆♱ wc: 14.775 k
Andover, Massachusetts Bay Colony
Late Summer, 1692
That morning, the sky over Andover looked like old ash.
By the time you reached the meetinghouse, most of the town had already gathered beneath it, drawn together by habit, duty, and the kind of fear no one wished to name while standing beneath God’s eye. Gray clouds hung low over the roofs and fields, pressing the damp summer air close to the ground. It had not rained, not yet, but everything smelled as though it might at any moment: wool, mud, split wood, the thin smoke curling from chimneys before dissolving into the colorless sky. A Sabbath morning like this was supposed to bring some promise that, no matter how frightened people had become, the world could still be made sensible through prayer. But instead, fear had arrived even before the congregation.
It stood in the yard among the men with their hats in their hands and their eyes turned too carefully away from one another. It sat inside the carriages where mothers adjusted caps beneath their daughters chins with fingers that trembled only when they thought no one was watching. It moved through the gathered women in a series of small corrections: a whisper hushed too quickly, a sleeve pulled lower over the wrist, a gaze lowered not from modesty but caution.
Everyone knew what had happened in Salem, even if no one wished to be the first to say the names aloud beneath the shadow of the meetinghouse. Women turned into warnings, their lives gathered into rumors and sermons and the solemn nods of men who spoke of justice with clean hands. There had been men accused too, men condemned too, but terror did not settle evenly upon every soul. It clung differently to women. It followed them into kitchens and birthing rooms, into doorways and pews, into the private chambers where thoughts themselves had begun to feel dangerous.
By then, Andover had begun to feel the fever spreading toward it. The afflictions, the accusations, the examinations; the invisible threads drawn from one town to another until no hearth was entirely safe from suspicion. A woman’s grief could be read as hardness. Her sharp tongue as malice. Her knowledge of herbs as commerce with darkness. Her loneliness as proof. Her beauty as temptation. Her poverty as resentment. Her refusal to confess as pride. Her confession as evidence. There seemed to be no shape a woman could take that could not, in the right mouth, be made monstrous.
Jack walked beside you without speaking. He had said little all morning, though that was not unusual. Silence sat naturally on him, sometimes like thought, sometimes like punishment. His cane struck the packed ground with a steady rhythm, though you knew him well enough to hear the effort inside that steadiness. Damp weather was unkind to the old injury. It dragged at him before he admitted pain, stiffening his jaw, slowing the first steps after he stood. His left leg bore his weight with stubborn reliability, but the other, the damaged one, required calculation. A step chosen too quickly could betray him. A turn made without care could send pain across his face before pride had time to hide it.
You had seen him rise from the table that morning, had noticed the pause he tried to disguise while pushing himself upright, the brief tightening at the corner of his mouth when the dampness caught in the ruined place before his will smoothed it away again. Once, perhaps, concern would have come easily to you. Once, you might have asked if it ached badly today, if he needed another moment, if he wanted your arm before stepping outside. But resentment had learned the layout of your marriage too well by then, and now even softness felt like exposure. It was humiliating to care for a man who could share your roof, your name, your bed in the most literal and least intimate sense, and still treat your body as though it were a door he had sworn never to open.
So you walked beside him with your Bible held against your ribs and your gloves buttoned tight at the wrist, and when his shoulder came close to yours as the crowd pressed inward at the meetinghouse steps, you pretended not to feel the heat of him through the layers between you.
Inside, the meetinghouse was colder than it should have been, cold in the benches, cold in the boards, cold in the severe whitewashed walls and the narrow windows that allowed the gray morning to enter without warming a thing. Bodies shifted into place with the tense obedience of people eager to be seen doing nothing wrong. Men went one way, women another, though husbands and wives still found nearness where custom allowed.
The pew was hard beneath you. Jack lowered himself carefully, his jaw tightening for only the smallest moment as his injured leg bent, and when his cane came to rest between his knees, both hands folded over its handle, you noticed the whiteness of his knuckles before you noticed the men near the pulpit.
They did not belong to Andover.
There were three of them standing with Reverend Danes near the front, their coats dark and plain, their faces arranged with the grave severity men wore when they wished righteousness to be mistaken for virtue. One was older and broad through the chest, one younger with a thin, restless mouth, and the one between them held the room without yet speaking. He was tall and narrow, with a trimmed beard, deep set eyes, and the sort of stillness that did not soothe. His gaze traveled over the congregation slowly like he had entered a barn and begun assessing which animals might be useful, which might be lame, which might need slaughtering for the good of the rest.
Then a whisper moved behind you.
“The Court.”
Jack heard it too. You felt, rather than saw, the change in him. His shoulders did not move, his face did not turn, but something in the air around him hardened. You looked at his hands again, still over the cane, still except for the faint press of one thumb against the other.
The Court of Oyer and Terminer had become a phrase with a gallows built inside it. It had gathered in Salem to hear and determine, to examine and condemn, to turn afflicted cries and neighborly malice into judgment. It did not need to enter a room loudly. Their reputation entered first. It came ahead of the men who served it, trailing names, warrants, confessions, spectral accusations, and the dreadful knowledge that innocence had become a poor defense against certainty.
Reverend Danes took the pulpit at last, and your first thought was that he looked older than he had the Sunday before. Age had always been on him, of course, in the white of his hair and the slight bend of his back, but this was different. Strain had drawn new lines beside his mouth. His eyes rested briefly on the women’s side of the congregation and then moved away.
“Beloved brethren,” he began, his voice carrying solemnly across the room, tired but firm, “we gather in a season of grievous trial, wherein the Lord, in His inscrutable wisdom, has permitted the works of darkness to be brought into the light.”
The congregation held still. No one coughed. No child dared fidget for long.
“We are joined this Sabbath by Magistrate Nathaniel Grimes, who has lately come from Salem and bears witness to the necessary labors undertaken there for the preservation of godly order in this province.”
Necessary labors.
You felt the phrase go through the room like a blade hidden in cloth.
Reverend Danes did not look proud to say it. If anything, the words seemed to leave a taste in his mouth. For half a heartbeat, you thought he might add something of his own, some caution, some plea, some human word against the twisted acts beginning to move through the towns. But the moment passed, his hand tightened on the edge of the pulpit before he stepped aside and Magistrate Nathaniel Grimes took his place.
He did not open the Bible immediately, and that alone unsettled you. A minister began with scripture, a shepherd began with the Word but Grimes began with the congregation, with a slow survey of faces, pews, bowed heads, and restless hands. When his gaze passed over you, your stomach tightened before you could stop it. Like you were a danger already half proven by existing.
“My good people of Andover,” he said, his voice smooth, controlled, cold enough to feel clean. “You dwell in a town blessed by labor, by covenant, by the outward signs of obedience. Your fields are ordered. Your houses stand. Your children are brought to worship. Your women are clothed in modesty, their heads covered beneath God and man.”
He paused, and his eyes moved slowly over the women’s benches.
“But let no man mistake appearance for purity.”
The room seemed to inhale.
Jack did not move beside you.
“There is no hedge so high that Satan cannot peer over it. No door so stout that corruption cannot pass beneath it like smoke. No hearth so swept that the serpent cannot coil in its warmth. We have seen this in Salem. We have seen this in households that called themselves godly. We have seen it in women who prayed aloud while nursing rebellion in secret.”
Your hands tightened in your lap, and Jack’s eyes cut downward, briefly, toward your fingers before you forced them still.
Grimes rested both hands on the pulpit. “Let us not be ashamed to speak plainly. Shame has already served the Devil well enough. In Salem, darkness has not been imagined. It has been uncovered. We have seen children afflicted, men tormented, goodwives bewitched, cattle sickened, bodies pinched by invisible hands, and souls imperiled by those who gave themselves over to the Enemy.”
He spoke with no tremor and that was the horror of him. He did not sound inflamed by panic. He sounded pleased by order, proud of the shape terror took when men like him were allowed to give it language.
“And if some among you think the rope severe,” he continued, softer now, “then I ask you: what severity is too great when Hell has entered a Christian settlement? Shall the shepherd pity the wolf because its fur is soft? Shall a father spare the viper because it curls beside the cradle? No. Mercy to corruption is cruelty to the innocent.”
Mercy.
You thought of the women hanged in Salem and felt your throat tighten.
A woman two rows ahead bowed her head lower. Another pressed her mouth hard enough that her lips disappeared into a bloodless line. You wondered how many of them were thinking of someone they knew. How many were thinking of themselves.
Grimes lifted one long finger. “The Devil, in these latter days, has found a rich mine among the daughters of Eve.”
Something inside you went cold.
Jack’s breath changed beside you, barely, but enough for you to notice.
“The first woman listened,” Grimes said. “The first woman doubted. The first woman reached beyond the boundary God had set for her and took. And through her taking came sin, death, corruption, and the fall of man. Shall we then marvel that Satan still seeks his instruments among those descended from her weakness? Shall we be surprised when the wife whispers where she should obey, when the daughter questions where she should submit, when the widow presumes authority because no man stands near enough to correct her?”
You stared at the pulpit until the wood blurred.
“Woman is not evil by nature,” he continued, “no more than dry straw is flame by nature. Yet place a spark within it and see how swiftly it may consume a house. This is why God, in His wisdom, did not leave woman ungoverned. He placed her beneath father, beneath husband, beneath the godly order of male authority, that her weakness might be protected from itself.”
Protected.
The word almost made you laugh.
Jack leaned a fraction closer, his voice no more than breath. “Do not.”
You did not look at him. “I have said nothing.”
“No, but you are about to.”
The fact that he knew it only sharpened your anger.
You kept your eyes forward. “Then perhaps you should correct me.”
His head turned slightly, and you felt the weight of his stare on your cheek before he murmured, “Do not say that.”
It pleased you, bitterly, that he hated the sound of it.
At the pulpit, Grimes’s voice deepened. “Daughters, obey your fathers. A girl who learns defiance beneath her father’s roof carries rebellion into her husband’s bed. Sisters, heed your brothers. The son, though younger in years, bears the mark of Adam and must not be made small beneath a woman’s pride. Mothers, presume not that having borne sons grants you dominion over them. To bear a man is not to rule him.”
A rustle passed through the room, then died quickly, frightened by its own existence.
You thought of all the mothers there, hands scarred from labor, bodies worn by birth and burial, being told the sons they had bled into the world stood above them by right of being male. You thought of a woman crying out in labor and a man later telling her she had no authority over the life that had split her open. Something hot and poisonous moved through you at that realization.
“And wives,” Grimes said.
The word struck the room differently because every married woman—including you—seemed to become more visible and more trapped at once.
“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Not in public only. Not when submission suits comfort. Not while neighbors watch and then with rebellion once the door is shut. A wife’s obedience is not a Sabbath garment to be worn and then laid aside. It is her holy estate. Her protection. Her salvation.”
Jack’s jaw tightened, and you saw it from the corner of your eye.
You knew the language of his restraint better than you knew the language of his affection, because restraint was all he had given you.
“Where a wife raises her voice,” Grimes said, “her husband must lower it for her. Where she questions, he must instruct. Where she strays, he must guide. Where she tempts, he must master both himself and her, lest indulgence in the home become an open gate to Hell.”
You felt Jack’s eyes on you again.
The sermon was no longer merely vile. It was intimate. It had entered the places polite speech pretended not to know. It had stepped into the chamber, into the bed, into the locked room of every marriage in that meetinghouse and lit a candle there for public inspection.
Hawke finally opened the Bible, and the sound of the pages turning was obscenely loud.
“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband,” he read, “but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.”
You looked down at your hands.
Were you rot, then?
The thought came unbidden, humiliating in its swiftness. Not because you believed Grimes. God, no. You hated him. You hated every cold, clean word that came out of his mouth. But shame did not always require belief. Sometimes shame only needed an old wound to enter through, and your marriage had many.
And now this man stood before the town speaking of women’s desires as if they were doors to damnation, and some horrible part of you wondered whether Jack had believed it long before Grimes ever said it aloud.
“Is that what you think?” you whispered.
Jack did not turn his head, but the stillness in him sharpened. “No.”
“No,” you said, barely moving your lips. “Of course, you do not.”
His fingers flexed once on the head of his cane. “This is not the place.”
A bitter smile touched your mouth. “There is never a place with you.”
“Not here,” he said, and this time there was urgency beneath the restraint. “Not with them watchin’ us.”
Jack was right, and that made you angrier because danger had a way of making cowards of even righteous fury, and you were not foolish enough to think a woman could say anything she liked in such a room and walk out unchanged by it.
Still, something in you wanted to make them hear.
You wanted to stand and ask Grimes whether all the women hanged in Salem had died because they were wicked, or because men had found a holy language for fear. You wanted to ask if Eve’s sin had been reaching, or if Adam’s had been blaming her afterward. You wanted to ask how many women must be made small before men felt large enough to call it order.
But you said none of it, and your silence felt like swallowing broken glass.
Grimes closed the Bible again but kept one palm resting atop it, claiming its authority without needing to read further. “Men of Andover, understand me well. The Devil does not always enter through hatred. Sometimes he enters through softness. Through indulgence. Through a husband too fond of a wife’s smile to correct her spirit. Through a father too amused by a daughter’s wit to break her pride while it is yet young. Through a brother who laughs at a sister’s defiance and so teaches her that manhood may be mocked without consequence.”
Jack’s mouth tightened.
You looked at him then, unable to stop yourself. “You hear that?”
He stared forward. “I hear.”
“Perhaps you should have broken my pride when it was still young.”
His eyes cut to you at last, and there was real anger in them now. Not at your defiance, you realized, but at the words themselves. At the idea of them. At you placing them between his hands as though they belonged there.
“Enough,” he whispered.
You should have stopped but you did not.
“Would that have made me easier to tolerate?”
His face changed.
Something in the question struck him harder than you expected. The anger did not leave, but it shifted around a deeper hurt you had not meant to touch. For a moment he looked not like a husband withholding judgment, but like a man trying to hold closed a door that had begun to split beneath pressure from the other side.
“You are not difficult,” he said. “You aren't.”
The answer came too quickly and too certain to be nothing.
It unsettled you enough that you looked away first.
At the pulpit, Grimes began to speak of the body. You knew it before he named it. You felt the room prepare itself, felt the men lean inward without moving, felt women lower their eyes in dread or obedience or both. Even the children seemed to sense that some subject had arrived for which they were expected to be innocent and silent.
“The marriage bed,” Hawke said, “is lawful.”
Your skin prickled beneath your sleeves.
“Let no one say I preach against what Scripture permits. The Lord made man and woman. He commanded fruitfulness. He joined the husband and wife so that the household might increase and the covenant endure.”
His voice softened, and somehow that softness was worse than shouting.
“But lawful things may be corrupted by disorder. Wine gladdens the heart, yet drunkenness damns. Food sustains the body, yet gluttony shames it. So too the marriage bed, though lawful, may become a theater of rebellion if proper order is not maintained.”
Your breath stopped somewhere high in your chest.
Jack went still beside you in a way you felt through the narrow space between your bodies.
“A husband must not feed the false fantasy that his wife may govern desire,” Grimes said. “He must not praise boldness where modesty is required, nor encourage appetite where meekness should dwell. Woman was made from man, for man, and under man.”
The silence was absolute.
No one coughed now. No bench creaked. You heard only Grimes’s voice and your own heartbeat.
“Beneath him,” he said.
The word entered you like a violation.
“Receiving and never taking.”
Jack’s hand tightened around the cane so suddenly the wood gave a faint creak beneath his grip.
“Yielding. Never commanding. Covered. Never exalted. For when a wife seeks mastery in the bed, she rehearses rebellion in the soul.”
Heat rose up your throat so fast you thought you might be sick. You looked straight ahead and saw the shape of your own shame, dragged into the light by a stranger and named wicked before God and town.
Because God help you, you wanted.
You wanted with a force that frightened you in the quiet hours. You wanted your husband in ways no sermon had prepared you to survive. You wanted his hands on you not by accident but with purpose. You wanted his mouth, his weight, his breath breaking against your skin. You wanted to hear restraint leave him. You wanted to be looked at by Jack as if his patience had finally failed.
And beneath that want, more shameful still, lived an anger so intimate it felt almost obscene. You did not merely want him to take. Sometimes, in the secret and unsayable privacy of your mind, you wanted to take from him. To choose. To move. To watch him lose that terrible control he wore like armor. To make him feel even a fraction of the ache he had left you carrying alone.
Your gloved hands trembled once before you pressed them flat against your lap.
Jack saw and he leaned a fraction closer, voice strained almost beyond recognition. “Look at me.”
But you did not.
“Please,” he whispered.
And that word nearly undid you.
Please.
Jack, who could order his pain into silence. Jack, who rarely asked for anything he could deny himself. Jack, whose tenderness reached you only in fragments and never where you needed it most.
You turned your head just enough to look at him.
His eyes were fixed on you, dark with something too tangled to name in the middle of a sermon. And beneath them, there and gone so quickly you might have missed it if you were not starving for proof, a heat that made your breath catch.
“What?” you whispered.
Jack searched your face. “Do not listen to him.”
You stared at him because the words were right but they were too late for a starved soul like yours.
“Why not?”
His brow furrowed. “Because he is wrong.”
“Is he?”
Something like disbelief crossed his face. “Yes.”
You leaned closer, your voice a thread. “Then why does my own husband make me feel as though he is not?”
Jack flinched.
Not visibly to anyone else, perhaps. But to you, who had learned him through deprivation, it was as obvious as blood on linen.
At the front, Grimes continued, proud of the dread he had cultivated. “A man who fears firmness with his wife does not practice mercy. He practices cowardice. If her tongue is unruly, correct it. If her gaze is too bold, lower it. If her desires swell beyond their proper bounds, teach her the shape God intended her to keep.”
A laugh rose in your throat, small, breathless, and ugly with pain.
Jack’s eyes flashed. “Do not.”
You looked forward again. “There it is, the shape I am intended to keep.”
“You know I do not believe that.”
“Do I?”
His jaw worked.
“You do not speak,” you whispered. “You do not touch. You do not explain. You leave me to make meaning from absence and then act wounded by the meaning I find.”
The words struck too deep. You knew it the moment they left you.
Jack looked away first, but not before you saw what they had done. For one terrible second, guilt flickered through you.
Then Grimes said, “Let none pity the witches who have swung for their covenant with Hell. Pity instead the godly households they sought to corrupt. Pity the men made weak by womanly cunning. Pity the children afflicted by female malice. Pity the province, which must now cleanse itself because pride was permitted too long to wear a woman’s face.”
The gallows rose in your mind with such clarity you could almost smell the rope. You imagined the women standing beneath it, skirts damp with morning, caps tied beneath chins, hands bound or shaking or still. You wondered whether any of them had been angry at the end. Whether they had been afraid. Whether one had looked out at the crowd and seen not justice, but neighbors. Men who had borrowed tools from her husband. Women who had taken broth from her hands. Children she had watched grow.
You wondered if any of them had wanted too much, had spoken too plainly or had refused to lower their eyes.
Your own eyes burned, but you would not cry there. Not in front of Grimes. Not in front of the women who might mistake tears for weakness or the men who might mistake them for guilt. Not in front of Jack, whose nearness had become a cruelty no one else could see.
The congregation bowed its head as one body and you bowed yours because refusing would have been noticed.
But your eyes remained open.
The wood grain of the pew blurred beneath your gaze. Beside you, Jack lowered his head too. His hand remained on the cane. His other rested on his thigh, broad and still, the knuckles roughened from work, the nails clean but cut short. A husband’s hand. A man’s hand. A hand that had steadied you over ice, lifted heavy things from your arms, set a cup beside you when you coughed through a cold.
A hand that had never once reached for you in bed.
Hawke prayed over the congregation in a voice that asked God to make women obedient and men brave enough to force obedience upon them. He prayed for the afflicted girls. He prayed for the judges. He prayed for the souls already cut down and called their deaths a warning, not a tragedy. He prayed that no household in Andover would shield sin out of sentiment.
Jack’s hand moved.
Only slightly.
His fingers shifted against his thigh, then stilled. For one wild moment, you thought he might touch you there, in that terrible room, under that terrible prayer but he did not.
His fingers curled into his palm as the prayer ended.
“Amen,” the congregation said.
You did not.
Jack noticed. You knew because he closed his eyes for half a second before opening them again, as if he had taken the silence into himself like another pain.
The final psalm began. Voices rose unevenly at first, then gathered strength because fear often sang louder than faith. You stood when everyone stood. Jack rose beside you with effort so controlled it might have fooled anyone else. His cane took his weight; his damaged leg followed a heartbeat later. Pain crossed his face and disappeared. Instinct moved you before anger could stop it, your hand lifting toward his sleeve because your body remembered caring for him before your pride remembered why it should not.
But you caught yourself just before touching him.
And Jack saw.
The two of you stood there, close enough that the almost touch seemed louder than the psalm around you. His gaze dropped to your hand. Yours did too. Slowly, you lowered it. His throat moved, and neither of you sang.
Around you, Andover lifted its voice to God while the court men watched from the front. Grimes did not sing. He stood with his hands folded and his eyes on the congregation, inspecting the effect of his own poison.
When the psalm ended, there was no immediate release. The service dissolved not into relief but into careful movement. Benches creaked. Children were gathered close. Men reached for hats. Women adjusted shawls and expressions. No one wanted to be first out the door. No one wanted to linger too long either. Such was fear: it made every ordinary motion suspicious.
Jack leaned toward you. “We need to leave.”
You looked at him. “Do we?”
His face was tight. “Yes.”
“Before I become troublesome?”
A flash of pain crossed his eyes before anger did. “Before men like him decide you are.”
“Men like him,” you repeated softly.
His mouth tightened. “Do not twist this.”
“I am only trying to understand which men I should fear.”
He stared at you for a second too long, and then said, very quietly, “Not me, never me.”
You stepped into the narrow aisle with the other women, Jack close behind you. The press of bodies forced you forward slowly. A neighbor nodded to you with a face too pale to be friendly. Another woman looked at your mouth, perhaps wondering whether you had whispered too much. Or perhaps that was only fear making you imagine witnesses everywhere.
Behind you, Jack’s cane struck the floor.
Wood on wood.
Slow, uneven but controlled.
You could hear pain in the rhythm now and you wondered if Grimes heard weakness. You wondered if men like him saw Jack’s ruined leg and thought less of him. You wondered whether Jack did. Whether every refusal, every withheld touch, every night he turned his body away from yours had less to do with your wickedness than his own private shame.
Then you hated yourself for still trying to excuse him.
Near the doors, the crowd slowed. Grimes stood with the rest of the court, receiving the grave nods of men who seemed eager to appear aligned with righteousness. Reverend Danes remained somewhat apart, his eyes troubled, his mouth set. When his gaze met yours briefly, something like an apology passed through it.
That almost broke you more than Grimes’s cruelty.
An apology meant someone knew harm had been done and lacked either the power or the courage to prevent it.
Jack moved closer behind you as the court men’s attention shifted toward the departing congregation. Near enough that his presence changed the air at your back.
“Keep your eyes down,” he murmured.
Your whole body went rigid.
Slowly, you turned your head. “What did you say?”
His expression changed the moment he realized how it had sounded. “I did not mean—”
“What a pity,” you whispered. “For a moment, you sounded exactly as instructed.”
Jack’s face closed.
You saw the hurt and the anger. You saw him swallow both because you were still in public and he would not give anyone the satisfaction of watching your marriage bleed in the aisle.
“Please,” he said, so low only you could hear. “Not here.”
Again.
Not here.
The phrase that held your whole life in place.
Not here. Not now. Not like this. Not safe. Not proper. Not possible.
You stepped closer until anyone watching might have thought you were merely making room for a passing family. Your shoulder nearly brushed his chest. Your voice, when it came, was calm enough to frighten even you.
“Is that why you do not touch me?”
Jack went still.
The meetinghouse continued around you, bodies moving, voices murmuring, footsteps passing over old boards. But your world narrowed to his face.
He looked as though the question had reached into him and closed around something vital.
You know that you should have stopped but instead, you gave him the rest of it.
“Because my desire is wicked?”
For a moment, Jack did not breathe.
Then his eyes moved over your face, searching, stricken, furious at something you could not name. His lips parted as if the answer might finally come, as if a year of silence might split open there in the aisle with Magistrate Grimes still near enough to hear a woman condemned by truth if not witchcraft.
But Jack said nothing.
Nothing that mattered.
Only your name, rough and barely audible, spoken like a plea he had no right to make.And that was enough to wound you.
Outside, the air did not feel like freedom.
It should have.
After the close heat of the meetinghouse, after the press of bodies and wool and breath held too long, after Magistrate Grimes’s voice had crawled over skin and scripture alike until even prayer seemed to have been handled by unclean hands, the open yard should have offered relief. Instead, the summer air struck you warm and damp, heavy with mud, grass, horse sweat, and the sour sweet smell of too many frightened people released at once into daylight. The clouds still hung low over Andover, gray and swollen, promising rain without granting it, and the world beyond the meetinghouse seemed no larger than the room you had left.
Grimes’s sermon followed you through the doorway. It clung to your throat, to the back of your neck, to the place where anger and shame had wound themselves so tightly together you could no longer tell which one was choking you.
People spilled slowly into the churchyard, but no one truly scattered. They gathered in uneasy clusters beneath the dim Sabbath sky. Men stood with hats in hand, speaking as though every word had been weighed before being allowed past their teeth. Women moved closer to husbands, fathers, brothers, not always because they wished to, you thought, but because everyone had just been reminded what a woman alone could become in the right story. Girls were called back sharply when they wandered too far. Mothers fussed with caps and collars that did not need fixing. A widow near the fence kept her eyes lowered so completely that she nearly walked into another woman’s shoulder.
Jack stood beside you, silent.
That was almost funny, though not in any way that might have softened you. There was something so bitterly fitting about it that you nearly laughed. Of course he had the audacity to be silent now. After a sermon about men ruling women’s voices and women being punished for wanting too much, your sweet husband had chosen exactly the one thing he did best: standing near you with a storm locked somewhere behind his ribs and giving you nothing but weather.
You did not look at him. You looked instead toward the meetinghouse steps, where Magistrate Grimes and the other men from the Court emerged beneath the gaze of half the town. Grimes looked satisfied in a quiet, bloodless way, not triumphant exactly, because men like him did not need triumph. They carried certainty the way other men carried muskets. It was enough that people stepped aside for him.
Reverend Danes stood stiffly at Grimes’s side, nodding when expected. The younger court man, the one with the thin mouth, looked over the assembled townspeople as if searching already for movement where stillness had been ordered.
Jack shifted beside you.
This time, you looked.
He was watching them too. His face had gone hard in a way that made him seem older. One hand rested around the head of his cane, the other close to his side, fingers loose but ready. With a clarity that irritated you, you realized he had placed himself half a step between you and them without thinking, his body making a shield of itself before his mouth could form a word.
Protective, then.
Always protective.
But never tender where you needed him.
“Beloved friends of Andover,” Grimes called, lifting his voice enough to command the yard.
The murmurs thinned at once.
You hated how quickly silence obeyed him.
Grimes stepped down from the meetinghouse stairs with measured calm. “We shall remain among you for several days. The work of cleansing is not brief, nor should any godly soul desire it hurried. Where sin has burrowed, it must be drawn out by root.”
A shiver moved through the gathered crowd, though the air was too warm for it.
“Those troubled in conscience,” he continued, “would do well to come forward. Confession is a mercy still offered. Names withheld may yet weigh heavily before God. Names spoken may aid in the preservation of many.”
There it was.
Confession.
A holy word twisted into a blade.
Beside you, Jack’s jaw tightened. “Bastards,” he muttered, barely loud enough for you to hear.
It startled you enough that you turned your head.
He did not look at you. His eyes stayed on Grimes, cold and unblinking.
The word should not have warmed you but it did anyway, for one foolish second.
Jack saw it too, then. The shape beneath the sermon. The hunger under the piety. Men inviting frightened souls to save themselves by feeding another body to the gallows.
Grimes continued speaking, voice grave and clean. “Let no one here imagine silence to be innocence. Silence may be fellowship with darkness. Silence may be fear of exposure. Silence may be the Devil’s hand over the mouth of the witness.”
You almost laughed again.
Silence.
Even that belonged to them now.
Jack’s hand tightened around his cane as if he would have liked very much to use it for something other than walking.
“There you are.”
Your sister’s voice reached you before she did, and for one instant the familiar sound nearly broke the careful, furious line you had drawn around yourself.
Jane came toward you from the side of the meetinghouse with one hand braced beneath the swell of her stomach, her other tucked into the crook of Robby’s arm. Pregnancy had softened her face and sharpened her temper, a combination you had come to admire more with each month, but what struck you first was not her usual briskness. It was the way she looked at you. Not amused. Not exasperated. Not ready, as she often was, to gather everyone’s foolishness into one hand and sort it by severity.
She was worried.
Her gaze moved over your face, then to Jack’s, then to the narrow space between you where no touch had happened and too much had.
Robby noticed it too. He was not a subtle man in most things, but he was not stupid, and whatever he had been about to say died behind his teeth when he took in Jack’s expression. His hand covered Jane’s where it rested in his arm, not restraining her, only reminding her that he was there.
For a moment, none of you spoke.
The silence was brief, but it was not empty.
Jane’s eyes returned to yours. “Are you unwell?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Jack looked at you then, just once.
Jane saw that as well.
Her mouth tightened. “You look pale.”
“It was a sermon, Jane. Not a plague.”
“It was not only a sermon.”
Robby exhaled softly and looked toward Hawke. “No. It was more of a public invitation to ruin one’s neighbors with biblical seasoning.”
Jane turned her head just enough to give him a warning look.
“What?” he said, quieter. “I am trying to be accurate.”
Despite everything, the corner of your mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Jack did not smile. His eyes were on the men from the Court again, and the set of his shoulders told you that every part of him had gone alert in a way that had nothing to do with normal anger.
“They mean to stay then?” Jane asked.
“For several days,” Jack said.
His voice was controlled, but there was something beneath it that made Jane look at him more closely.
Robby’s humor faded. “Of course they do. Would be a shame to frighten a town senseless and then leave before supper.”
Jack did not answer. He watched as two men from the congregation approached Grimes with bowed heads. One wrung his hat in his hands. Another kept glancing over his shoulder as though hoping not to be seen while ensuring he was seen enough.
Your stomach turned.
“Confession,” you said softly.
Jane’s hand tightened on Robby’s arm. “No, accusation.”
No one corrected her.
For a moment, the four of you stood together while Andover shifted around you. You could feel Jack beside you, could almost feel the thought forming in him before he spoke. That was another cruelty of marriage, perhaps. You could learn a person too well even when they kept themselves from you.
He turned to you. “I think it best you stay with Jane while we are gone.”
You looked at him.
There it was. The command dressed as reason.
“I beg your pardon?”
Jack’s eyes flicked briefly toward Robby and Jane, then back to you. “Robby and I leave soon. We will be gone for three days, maybe four if the weather turns.”
“I know.”
“It is best you not remain alone at the house.”
“I have remained alone at the house before.”
“Not with them in town.”
His gaze moved past you toward Grimes, who was now speaking to one of the deacons with a hand laid solemnly over his heart. The sight made Jack’s mouth harden.
You folded your arms. “I fail to see how their being in town alters the walls of our house.”
“It alters what men may decide to do inside them.”
Jane went still.
Robby’s expression sobered at once.
Jack leaned slightly closer, his voice lowered but not softened. “There is real danger now.”
“There has been real danger before.”
“Yes,” he said. “But it has now walked into Andover and announced it will be taking appointments.”
Robby looked away, pressing his lips together.
“You think I cannot manage myself for three days?”
“I think those men came here lookin’ for a woman to hang.”
The words dropped hard between you.
Jane inhaled sharply. Robby glanced around to make sure no one had heard. Jack did not take his eyes off you.
“Or burn,” he added, lower and rougher now. “Or ruin. Call it whatever godly name suits them.”
You looked at the court men, then back at him. “Then I suppose there is no issue.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “No issue.”
“No.” You smiled faintly, and even you could feel how wrong it sat on your mouth. “You need not concern yourself.”
Jane said your name softly but you ignored it.
Jack’s voice dropped. “And why is that?”
You turned to him fully now, no longer caring that Robby and Jane were there, no longer caring that the yard was full of ears hungry enough to make a meal of anything. “Because I seem to be something of an expert at being invisible to a man’s eyes. Is that not so, Jack?”
Silence fell between you with such force that even the churchyard seemed to recede.
A silence so sudden that even Robby stopped pretending not to understand.
Jack looked as if the words had found the one unguarded place in him and gone straight through. His face did not change at all. It never did with you. But you saw the impact all the same, the smallest slackening around his eyes, the faint movement in his throat, the hand on his cane closing once before he stilled it by force.
Jane’s expression flickered with pain.
Not surprise.
Just pain.
And somehow that was worse, because it meant she had known there was a wound. Perhaps not its shape, perhaps not its depth, but she had sensed enough to fear looking directly at it.
Robby, who had been moments away from some dry remark, wisely swallowed it whole.
Jack opened his mouth.
Before anything could come out, Robby stepped in with the careful urgency of a man trying to keep several kinds of disaster from occurring in a churchyard full of zealots.
“I think,” he said, loudly enough to be useful and quietly enough not to attract attention, “that Jack is right.”
You turned your stare on him.
Robby lifted both hands. “Not about—well, not about whatever this is.” He glanced between you and Jack and immediately looked as though he wished he had chosen death instead. “Actually, I am not touching whatever this is with both hands and a shovel. I mean about you staying with Jane.”
Jane recovered herself with visible effort. “Yes. Of course you will stay with me.”
“I have not agreed to that.”
“I know.”
“You can’t just make decisions for me.” Jane's brows rose, and for a moment she looked almost like herself again. "I’m your older sister. Managing your life was the first thing I ever perfected."
“By a mere two years.”
“And a crucial two years they were.”
Robby scoffed softly. “I swear those two years grow more mythical by the day.”
Jane didn't look at him. “Well, they’ve earned it.”
The exchange was soft enough not to draw attention, familiar enough to ease the air by a thread, but Jane’s hand reached for yours as she spoke, and when her fingers closed around your glove, there was no humor in the pressure.
“Come stay with me,” she said, quieter now. “Please. If not for yourself, then for me. Robby will be gone. And this one”—she glanced down at her stomach—“has apparently decided that rest is a personal insult for him. I would like the company.”
It was unfair.
Effective, but unfair.
You looked at her, then at Robby, then finally back at Jack. He was waiting. There was no victory in him at all. Only tension and a fear he did not know how to make gentle.
“Fine,” you said.
Jane squeezed your hand once, and the relief that passed over her face was quickly hidden, but not quickly enough.
Robby exhaled. “Good. That is one crisis resolved without anyone being denounced.”
Jack looked at him.
Robby cleared his throat. “A low bar, admittedly, but I am taking my victories where I find them.”
The walk to Jane and Robby’s house did not take long, though it felt longer with so much left unsaid moving alongside you. The men led the horses, Jack’s cane striking the road at a measured pace while Robby adjusted his stride without making it obvious. Jane walked with you slightly behind them, one hand at the small of her back, her eyes occasionally flicking toward your face when she thought you would not notice.
The road was damp in patches from the rain of the night before, though the air was warm enough to lift the smell of mud and crushed grass with every step. Insects hummed in the hedges. A dog barked somewhere beyond the bend. The world had the indecency to continue as though no stranger had just stood before God and made women into kindling.
“You need not watch me as though I am about to bolt,” you murmured.
Jane kept her eyes ahead. “I am deciding whether you are more likely to bolt or bite.”
“I can do both.”
“Yes. That is precisely my concern.”
Ahead of you, Robby said without turning, “For the record, biting is easier to explain than bolting.”
Jack’s mouth twitched faintly.
You saw it.
Jane’s house sat just beyond the road bend, low and sturdy beneath the maples, with smoke rising thinly from the chimney despite the summer heat because the morning bread had needed baking. Two chickens made a determined nuisance of themselves near the steps, scratching at damp earth as if they too had grievances against the province.
At the door, Robby turned first to Jane.
The change in him was immediate and shameless. All his humor softened into something intimate. He set one hand gently against her stomach, then bent and kissed her quickly on the mouth.
It still struck you like a slap.
Jane smiled up at him. “Do not get yourself killed.”
“I had no plans to.”
“You rarely plan your foolishness.”
“That wounds me.”
“It should.”
Robby kissed her forehead. “No lifting. No hauling water. No deciding the bed should be moved because the room feels too warm from the east.”
Jane looked offended. “That was one time.”
His face softened so much you had to look away. “No efforts,” he said.
“I am growing a person, Robby. Everything is effort.”
“I am aware.” His hand moved once over the curve of her stomach, reverent and worried in a way that made your chest hurt. “That is why I am asking you not to add furniture to the matter.”
Then Robby turned to you. “And you. Watch her.”
Jane huffed. “I do not need watching.”
“You absolutely do.” Robby looked back at you. “Do not let her carry anything heavier than bread.”
“What if the bread is very heavy?” you asked.
Robby considered. “Then eat half first.”
Against your will, you smiled.
Jack saw that too.
For a second, something in his expression loosened. Not happiness, not even relief, but the sight of your smile seemed to reach him before he could stop it. Then he looked away, jaw tightening as if he had been caught wanting something.
Robby stepped back toward the horses, and then there was nothing left but your own goodbye.
You faced Jack near the gate.
Jane and Robby, to their credit, pretended not to watch.
Badly, but with effort.
Jack stood before you with his hat in one hand and his cane in the other. The gray summer light made the lines around his mouth look deeper. He seemed tired suddenly, more tired than he had in the meetinghouse, and you wondered whether the sermon had lodged in him too.
“Tend yourself,” he said.
You looked at him. “Is that all?”
His mouth tightened. “And be careful.”
“I am always careful.”
His gaze sharpened. “No, you are not.”
A spark of anger lit in you again. “Because I have a tongue?”
“Because you have no fear of using it when fear might serve you better.”
Behind him, Robby dropped his chin toward his chest, already sensing trouble.
Jack continued, quieter, “Watch what you say these next few days.”
You smiled.
But it was not kind.
“And you,” you said, “watch what you do not.”
Jack stared at you.
Robby made a strangled noise and turned it into a cough so violently that Jane had to press a hand over her mouth.
Jack did not look amused. But something flickered at the edge of his expression, something wounded and reluctant and nearly human.
“That supposed to mean something?” he asked.
“You are an intelligent man. I trust you to puzzle it out.”
Robby muttered, “Christ alive,” under his breath.
Jack’s eyes stayed on yours. “When we return, I will come straight for you.”
“Will you?”
His face hardened. “Yes.”
“Then I suppose I will see you when the hunting has proved successful.”
He gave you a look. “That is a cold farewell.”
“You have made a study of coldness. I assumed you preferred it.”
This time Robby did not even pretend not to wince.
Jack took the hit in silence. For a moment, you thought he would leave it there. That he would turn away with all of it still locked behind his teeth, as always. But then he stepped closer, just enough that the others fell out of focus.
His voice lowered. “You think I do not know when you mean to wound me?”
You swallowed.
He had never asked that before.
The answer should have been easy. Yes, of course you were trying to wound him. You had been trying since the sermon, since the aisle, since the moment he failed again to say what you needed him to say. But standing this close, with his eyes on yours and something raw beneath the restraint, the truth twisted.
“I think,” you said softly, “that I have grown tired of being the only one bleeding.”
Jack’s breath caught.
It was slight. Almost nothing.
But it broke something in you anyway.
Jane called your name gently from the doorway.
Gently, as if she had heard enough to know neither of you could survive much more of this where others might see.
The spell snapped.
Jack stepped back first.
He put his hat on and nodded once, as if the movement could replace all words. “Stay inside after dark.”
You lifted your chin. “Yes, husband.”
His mouth tightened at the title.
Robby mounted his horse, then glanced down at Jack with open mischief now that the immediate danger had shifted from catastrophic to merely painful. “Ready?”
Jack did not answer him.
He looked at you one last time.
You almost said, Be safe.
But the words pressed at your teeth, soft, stupid and honest.
But you did not offer them gently.
Instead, as Jack turned toward his horse, you folded your arms and said, “Do take care in the woods.”
He paused.
You smiled sweetly. “God forbid some hunting dog mistake your leg for a fallen branch.”
Robby bent over his saddle with a sound that was definitely not a cough.
Jane gasped your name, scandalized despite herself, one hand flying to her mouth.
Jack turned back slowly.
For one glorious, dangerous second, he looked utterly betrayed.
Then his eyes narrowed. “That mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble one day.”
You held his gaze. “One can hope.”
The words landed before you fully understood what you had said.
But Jack did immediately.
You saw it in the way his expression changed, humor darkening into something else for one brief, breathless instant. Something neither of you could touch there, in the yard, before your sister and her husband, with the Court men still somewhere behind you poisoning the town.
Then he looked away.
“Robby,” he said, voice rough. “Let’s go.”
Robby, still fighting for his life not to laugh, gathered the reins. “As you say.”
Jack mounted with difficulty he tried to hide and failed only because you knew where to look. His bad leg dragged a fraction too long. His jaw set hard. Your anger wavered, traitorous and tender, but you held yourself still.
He settled in the saddle and looked down at you.
The silence stretched.
Then, softly enough that only you could hear, he said, “Please.”
You did not know what he was asking.
Be careful?
Forgive me?
Do not hate me?
Do not make me leave like this?
Maybe all of it.
Maybe none.
You looked up at him and gave him the only mercy you had left.
“I will stay with Jane, do not worry”
His eyes closed for half a second. When they opened, he nodded once.
Then the horses moved, carrying the men down the road toward the woods and the gray morning beyond. Robby lifted a hand in farewell. Jack did not. He looked back only once, and because you were still angry, still hurt, still ashamed of how badly you wanted him to, you made yourself stand perfectly still until the road bent and took him from sight.
Only then did Jane come to stand beside you.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
The road lay empty before you, damp and pale beneath the thick summer sky.
Jane did not make a joke at first.
That was how you knew she was truly worried.
Instead, she slipped her arm through yours carefully, as though touching you too quickly might make you pull away. “Come inside.”
You stared down the road. “I am fine.”
“No,” she said softly. “You are not.”
The simple truth of it almost undid you.
You turned your head, ready to argue, but Jane was not looking at the road anymore. She was looking at your face the way she had in the churchyard, as if the exchange between you and Jack had left marks she could read even without knowing their names.
“What happened between you?” she asked.
Your throat tightened.
You looked away. “Nothing.”
Jane’s hand tightened gently around your arm.
“That,” she said, “is what frightens me.”
You had no answer.
Behind you, her house waited warm and shaded beneath the maples.
Still, you let Jane lead you inside.
Because Jack had asked.
Because Jane had insisted.
Because the Court had come to Andover looking for women to blame.
And because, though you hated him for it, some stubborn, foolish part of you still wanted your husband to come back and find you alive.
Jane shut the door behind you, not quickly, but firmly enough that the latch fell into place with a small wooden sound you felt somewhere beneath your ribs. You hated that your body noticed it. Hated that, after Grimes’s sermon, even a door could become something more complicated. Safety and confinement had begun to resemble one another too closely. A husband’s concern had begun to sound like instruction. A sister’s house, warm and familiar and filled with every proof of love, had become another place you had been brought because men had decided the world outside was too dangerous for a woman left alone.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Jane remained by the door with one hand resting beneath the curve of her belly, her face turned toward you but not yet demanding anything. That was what unsettled you first: not that she asked questions, but that she did not. Jane, who had an opinion on every foolish thing under heaven; Jane, who could scold a kettle for boiling too slowly; Jane, who had once argued with Father for an entire afternoon about whether girls should be taught to mend harness straps if they were expected to wait for men to come home and fix everything anyway. That Jane stood very still, watching you the way one watched an animal that had come in from the woods with an arrow in its side.
Not frightened of you.
Frightened for you.
You turned your face away because you could not bear it.
Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, the road held the last faint sound of horses departing, though perhaps that was only memory. Jack and Robby would be moving toward the north woods by now, or toward the edge of them at least, with their muskets and provisions and that grave male purpose men acquired whenever hunger, weather, or danger gave them something practical to do. Jack would be riding stiffly, pretending his leg had not pained him at the mounting block. Robby would notice and say nothing, which was perhaps the closest thing men like them had to tenderness with one another.
You hated that you were thinking of him already.
Jane crossed the room slowly. Pregnancy had made her movements more deliberate, but not less purposeful. She paused near the table, touched the back of a chair as if considering whether to sit, then changed her mind and came closer instead.
“You are shaking,” she said.
You looked down.
You were.
Only a little. Enough that the fingers of your gloves trembled where they rested against your Bible. You tightened them at once, as if restraint could still be made invisible if applied quickly enough.
“I am not.”
Jane did not correct you immediately. That was worse.
After a moment, she said, “I saw what happened by the gate.”
Your throat tightened.
“Nothing happened.”
“No,” Jane said quietly. “A great deal happened. You simply did not raise your voice while it did.”
You stared at the window, at the warped summer light trembling through the glass. The house seemed too warm suddenly, too full of air that had nowhere to go. A fly struck once against the pane, then again, trapped by its own belief in brightness.
Jane came to stand beside you, though she did not touch you yet. “I am not asking so I may accuse you.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because you looked at your husband as though he had put you in chains.” Her voice softened on the last word, not out of delicacy, but because she knew exactly how dangerous it was. “And he looked at you as though he had placed them there himself.”
That did it.
The room moved strangely around you, not spinning, not darkening, only narrowing around the impossible accuracy of what she had said. You turned toward her at last. “You saw too much.”
“I am your sister.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
Jane’s face was pale in the warm light, her eyes dark with the sort of worry she would usually have disguised beneath irritation.
Her gaze dropped to your cloak, still fastened at your throat, then to your gloves. “Let me take that from you.”
“I can do it.”
“I know.”
“I am not helpless.”
“I know that too.”
The answer was so gentle that it irritated you more than command would have. You lifted your hands to the knot and tugged at it, but your fingers were clumsy inside the gloves and the ties resisted you with humiliating persistence.
Jane watched for one moment, then reached slowly. “May I?”
That nearly broke you more than if she had simply taken over.
You gave a short nod.
She loosened the knot with careful fingers and drew the cloak from your shoulders. The air touched the back of your neck, warm and damp. Jane hung the cloak near the door, where Robby’s hat usually rested on a peg, then turned back to you. Her expression changed when she saw your face fully, and whatever small composure you had left began to fray.
“You were angry with him,” she said.
“I am still angry with him.”
“Yes.” Jane folded her hands over the upper curve of her stomach, thinking. “But in the yard it was not only anger.”
You let out a quiet, humorless breath. “I am glad my marriage has become an object of study.”
“That is unfair.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” She held your gaze. “But I will allow it once because you have had a vile morning.”
The familiar edge of her might have comforted you if it had not been softened by concern. Somehow that made it sharper. You crossed toward the table simply to have somewhere to go, and only then did you properly see the room around you.
Jane’s home was not large, but it had been arranged by love into usefulness. A cradle stood near the bed alcove, ready. A basket of mending waited open on the table, a wooden cup beside it. There were crumbs on the bench, an old ribbon beneath a chair, a new doll made from cloth and corn husk lying face down near the wall as if overcome by the heat.
Life everywhere.
Need everywhere.
Proof that a household could be loud, hungry, crowded, and still somehow full of tenderness.
Your own house was quieter.
So quiet some nights you could hear the shape of what was missing.
Jane followed your gaze, and something in her face tightened as if she understood more than you had meant to show. “Sit down.”
You looked at her.
She sighed, one hand going to her back. “Please. Before you fall down out of pure stubbornness and make me explain to Robby’s mother why I let my little sister faint in the middle of my kitchen.”
“I am not going to faint.”
“You look as if you might either faint or commit a sin loud enough to bring Magistrate Grimes through the door. I would prefer neither before dinner.”
There it was, the first true flicker of Jane’s humor, weary and edged, but not empty. It landed because it came with fear beneath it.
Despite yourself, your mouth almost moved.
You sat.
The chair creaked softly beneath you. Jane looked relieved for half a heartbeat, then turned toward the hearth. The fire had burned low after breakfast, more embers than flame, just enough to keep the kettle warm and the room close. She took a small pot from the shelf, poured in milk from a covered jug, added a spoonful of honey, and set it near the heat.
You watched her in silence.
Milk with honey.
The sight reached farther back than you wanted it to. It reached your father’s kitchen, his hands too large for delicate cups, his sleeves rolled to the forearms, his voice gruff with exhaustion and tenderness as he told two motherless girls that sweet milk could cure most night terrors if one believed in it hard enough.
Your mother had died bringing you into the world.
No one had ever said that to you cruelly, not in your house. Your father would not have allowed it. Jane never had either. But facts did not need cruelty to leave marks. You had grown up in the shadow of a woman you had never known and had somehow been asked to grieve and replace her both. Jane had been old enough to remember a scent, a song, the pressure of a hand smoothing hair away from her brow. You had nothing but absence and the knowledge that your first breath had been taken in the same room as your mother’s last.
Your father had raised you both with hands too rough for ribbons and a heart too stubborn to break where you could see. Jane had learned softness by inventing it. You had learned defiance because someone had to fill the space where a mother’s gentleness might have been.
Now Jane stirred honey into milk, and the tenderness of it nearly made you cry before either of you had said anything that mattered.
“I do not want milk,” you said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you making it?”
“Because Father used to make it when one of us looked like the world had ended, and I cannot think of anything better right now.”
You looked down at the table.
Jane did not look at you while she stirred. That was a mercy. “Also because I am very pregnant and very close to becoming disagreeable. If I am to ask questions you do not want to answer, I would like to have honey in my mouth first.”
A weak breath left you. Not quite a laugh, but not nothing.
Jane poured the milk into two cups and carried them over. She set one before you, then lowered herself into the chair opposite with a quiet sound of effort she clearly wished neither of you had heard.
“You should not be standing so much,” you said at once.
Her eyes softened. “There you are.”
You frowned. “What?”
“My sister. She disappears under her own mind for an hour and returns the moment there is someone else to fuss over.”
You looked away. “I am not fussing.”
“You are. Now drink.”
You wrapped your hands around the cup. It was warm through the wood, grounding in a way you resented because it worked. Steam rose faintly, carrying honey sweetness up to your face.
Jane held her own cup but did not drink. She looked at you instead, not prying now, not teasing, only waiting until you could no longer pretend the silence belonged to the room.
At last, she said, “What did he do?”
You closed your eyes.
Not what happened.
Not what did you say.
What did he do?
It was the question of someone who had seen you bleeding and did not immediately assume you had stabbed yourself.
When you opened your eyes again, Jane’s face had blurred slightly. You blinked it clear. “Do not make him a villain.”
“I have not.”
“You are beginning in the wrong place if you ask that.”
“Then tell me the right place.”
“There is no right place.”
Jane’s mouth tightened with worry, not impatience. “There must be somewhere to begin.”
You stared into the milk, watching the thin skin beginning to gather across its surface. “He did nothing.”
Jane said nothing.
You hated that she understood the answer before you had explained it.
“That is the problem,” you added, quieter.
The air between you changed.
Outside, a cart rattled distantly along the road, then faded. Somewhere in the house, one of the shutters gave a small complaint against the humid breeze. Jane did not move except to set her cup down carefully, as if sudden gestures might frighten the truth back inside you.
“What do you mean?”
You wanted to answer plainly. You wanted to make your humiliation sound sharp enough to defend itself. Instead, your throat tightened, and when you spoke, your voice came out smaller than you could bear.
“He does not want me.”
Jane went very still.
You looked down at once. “Not as a husband should want his wife. Not as Robby wants you. Not even as men look at women they should not want. Jack is kind. He is decent. He sees that there is food and wood, that the roof holds, that I have what I require. He remembers things. He notices when the hinge sticks before I mention it. He brings in water when his leg is hurting and pretends it is not. But he does not—”
You stopped, pressing your lips together hard enough to hurt.
Jane’s eyes had widened slightly, but she did not interrupt.
That mercy undid you more than questions would have.
You forced yourself onward. “We have never consummated the marriage.”
The sentence came out barely above a whisper.
Jane’s face changed.
Not the way another woman might have looked, with curiosity dressed up as concern, already arranging the confession into something to be repeated elsewhere. Jane looked as if a piece of the morning had finally slid into place and revealed the shape of a wound she had been trying not to imagine.
“Oh,” she said softly.
The gentleness of it burned.
You looked away, shame rising so violently that for a moment you were back inside the meetinghouse with Grimes’s voice naming women’s desire rebellion. Your hands tightened around the cup until heat bit into your palms.
“A year,” you said. “Nearly a year. He has never taken me as his wife. He does not kiss me, not truly. He does not touch me except when courtesy requires it. He sleeps beside me as though I am something fragile, or shameful, or dead. I do not know which would be kinder.”
Jane said your name.
You shook your head because if she pitied you openly, you would break, and you were already too close. “I have tried to understand. Truly. I have told myself he grieves. I have told myself his leg pains him. I have told myself he is older and perhaps desire changes, or perhaps I expect too much, or perhaps I misunderstood what marriage was meant to be. And then I sit through a sermon like that and hear a man speak as though wanting is the mark of wickedness, and I think—God help me—I think perhaps Jack sees me the same way. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he can feel it on me and it disgusts him.”
“No.”
Jane’s voice cut through yours so sharply you flinched.
She stood too quickly, one hand catching the table for balance, and came around to you. The heat and her condition made the movement awkward, but nothing in her face allowed room for delay. She lowered herself beside your chair with effort, not quite kneeling because she could not manage it easily, but close enough that her hands could take yours.
“No,” she said again, quieter now, but no less firm. “Do not put Grimes’s filth in Jack’s mouth. Be angry with him. You have cause. But do not let that man from the Court give language to your pain.”
The first tear fell before you could stop it.
Then another.
You looked down, furious with them. “Please do not.”
“I will,” Jane said, and her voice trembled now. “I will, because if you are thinking such things of yourself, then someone must stand in the way of them. You may call Jack a fool until the roof collapses. You may call him cruel, and perhaps you will be right. But you will not sit in my house and speak of your own heart and needs as if it were something unclean because they are not.”
The sob came up so suddenly you had no time to make it quiet.
Jane gathered you in as best she could, one arm around your shoulders, her belly between you making the embrace imperfect and therefore somehow more devastating. You folded into her anyway, gripping the back of her sleeve, your other hand pressed uselessly over your mouth. She smelled of lavender, flour, warm skin, and smoke. Like childhood. Like the side of the bed she used to let you crawl into after storms when Father was too exhausted to wake.
“There is nothing wrong with wanting your husband,” she murmured into your hair. “Nothing.”
You shook your head against her. “Then why does he make me feel as though there is?”
Jane was quiet for half a breath.
“I do not know,” she said at last, and the honesty hurt more than comfort would have. “But I do not believe it is because he finds you disgusting.”
You laughed wetly, bitterly, pulling back just enough to see her. “What else am I to think?”
“That he is a man.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” Jane admitted, wiping your cheek with her thumb. “But it is often the beginning of one.”
A broken sound escaped you despite yourself.
Jane’s mouth softened. “There you are.”
“Do not try to make me laugh.”
“I am not trying. Men are simply ridiculous even when they are breaking our hearts.”
Jane struggled back into the chair beside yours, and you immediately reached to steady her. She accepted your hand without comment, then sat with her shoulder pressed against yours. For a while, neither of you spoke. The milk cooled slowly on the table.
Then the question came to you before you could stop it because it had been living in you all morning, perhaps longer than you wanted to admit.
“Jane?”
“Yes.”
You looked down at your hands. “You and Robby…”
She waited.
Your face heated so fiercely you nearly lost your nerve. You thought of your sister’s kiss at the doorway, simple and quick and devastating because nothing in it had looked like shame or fear.
“Do you still lie together?” you asked, the words barely holding their shape. “Even now? With the baby?”
Jane’s silence changed.
You rushed on at once, ashamed and unable to bear the space after the question. “I am sorry. I should not have asked. It is improper.”
“No.” Jane’s hand found yours beneath the table. “You may ask me anything.”
You could not look at her. “I should not want to know.”
“That is different from having no right to ask.”
Her answer came slowly, not because she was embarrassed, but because she understood the weight of what she was about to place in your hands.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “We do. Not as often now, and not always easily, because I am tired and ungainly and he worries too much. But yes.”
The words broke you open in a new place.
You had expected the answer, perhaps. Feared it. Needed it. Still, hearing it made the hollow inside your own marriage seem suddenly vast. Jane and Robby had debts, chores, a baby pressing between them from the inside, and still they found each other. Still he reached for her. Still she was wanted not as an obligation before God, not as a duty performed for offspring, but as a woman. A wife. A body beloved enough to be sought even when life had made seeking inconvenient.
You covered your mouth.
Jane’s face crumpled. “Oh, love.”
“I am glad for you,” you said quickly, voice breaking around every word. “I am. I love you. I love Robby. I am glad he is good to you.”
“I know.”
“No, I need you to know that. I am not angry with you.”
“I know.”
“I would never begrudge you that.”
“I know.”
“But then what is wrong with me?” The question tore out before pride could stop it. “What is so wrong with me that my own husband cannot bear the thought of touching me?”
Jane drew you in again, and this time you truly broke.
You cried the way you had not cried since Father died, with your whole body, shoulders shaking, breath catching, a sound trapped in your throat that you could not swallow down. Jane held you as firmly as she could, one hand stroking your hair, the other rubbing slow circles between your shoulder blades the way she had when you were little and inconsolable over things adults thought too small to matter.
“This is not because there is something wrong with you,” she said. “Listen to me. There is nothing wrong with you.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I can.”
“No, you cannot.”
“I can because I have eyes.”
You let out a strangled, miserable laugh against her shoulder. “That is your proof?”
“It is a start.”
You pulled back, wiping your face with the heel of your hand. “You are only saying this to comfort me.”
“I am saying it because it is true.”
“Jane.”
“No. You will listen to me now.” She turned in her chair as much as her body allowed, facing you fully. “You are beautiful. Do not look at me like that. You are beautiful, yes, but more than that, you are alive in a way most people are too frightened to be. You think. You argue. You laugh at the wrong moments. You look at the world as though you have every intention of holding it accountable for its sins. Men like Grimes fear women like you because you make obedience look like a choice rather than nature.”
Your lips trembled.
Jane’s voice softened. “And Jack sees it.”
You looked away at once. “Do not.”
“He does.”
“You need not invent things to make me feel better.”
“I am not inventing them.”
“He does not look at me.”
Jane’s expression went flat in a way that resembled Father so strongly it almost startled you. “He looks at you constantly.”
The statement was so absurd against the evidence of your own loneliness that anger stirred again, weak but present. “No, he does not.”
“Yes, he does. He simply stops when you look back.”
That landed strangely.
You frowned.
Jane saw the opening and, being Jane, stepped right into it. “At supper last winter, when Robby spilled cider all over the table and you laughed so hard you nearly choked, Jack looked at you as though someone had handed him the sun and he did not know whether he was allowed to keep it.”
Your throat went tight.
“And at the market, when Trinity Santos tried to shame you for speaking too plainly about the price of flour, he looked ready to commit murder with the sack in his hands.”
You sniffed. “He did seem rather cross.”
“He looked deranged.”
Despite yourself, a small laugh escaped.
Jane nodded once, as if the sound proved her point. “There. And today, in the churchyard, when you told him he had made you invisible? That did not strike a man indifferent to his wife. That struck a man who knew he had sinned against her and had no prayer ready.”
The words went too deep.
You pulled your hand free gently and wrapped your arms around yourself. “If he wanted me, he would touch me.”
Jane was quiet for a moment.
Then, carefully, she said, “I may be speaking more than I should.”
You glanced at her.
She was looking down at her cup now, thumb rubbing along its edge. “Robby told me something after Father died.”
Your chest tightened. Even now, grief had a way of entering the room fully grown.
“What?”
Jane hesitated.
“Jane.”
She sighed. “When the suitors began coming.”
A bitter taste filled your mouth. “Vultures.”
“Yes.”
They had come so quickly after the funeral that you had barely had time to wash the black from beneath your eyes. Men who had known your father, traded with him, prayed beside him, borrowed tools from him, all suddenly appearing with solemn faces and practical intentions. You were alone now, they said. Of age. Without a father’s protection. Marriage was wise. Marriage was necessary. Marriage was safety, spoken always by men who sounded as though safety and ownership were merely different names for the same mercy.
Jack had been among them.
Not at first.
But soon.
You had told yourself his offer was different because Jack was different. Because he had known your family. Because he did not look at you the way the others did, with calculation thinly veiled as concern. Because when he asked, he seemed almost pained by the mere fact of asking.
Now you did not know what to believe.
Jane’s voice pulled you back. “Robby said Jack was not himself during those weeks.”
You swallowed. “In what way?”
Jane looked at you. “Robby said he was restless. Sharp. Half mad whenever another man’s name was mentioned in connection with you.”
Your heart beat once, hard.
You forced yourself to scoff. “Why would he be?”
Jane held your gaze.
The silence answered before she did.
“Because he was jealous.”
You stared at her.
The word seemed too strange to belong in the room.
Jealous.
Jack?
Jealous over you?
“No,” you said.
“Yes.”
“No. That makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“He married me because Father died and someone had to.”
Jane’s face tightened with immediate frustration. “You cannot truly believe that.”
“What else was it?”
“Love, perhaps.”
The word hurt so badly you almost stood.
“Do not,” you said.
Jane leaned closer. “He is in love with you.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know what a man looks like when he loves a woman and hates himself for wanting her.”
You went still.
Jane seemed to regret the sharpness of it, but she did not take it back.
Outside, wind brushed against the shutters. Somewhere in the house, wood settled with a small creak.
Your voice, when it came, was thin. “Why would he hate himself?”
Jane’s expression softened, and this time pity entered it. “He is older. He was married before. He has buried a wife. He is hurt in ways he cannot hide, though God knows he tries. And you…” She touched your cheek lightly. “You were Father’s youngest. Wild and grieving and suddenly surrounded by men who all wanted to decide your future before you had even understood your loss.”
You looked down.
“Perhaps Jack thought he was saving you,” Jane said. “Perhaps he thought he was taking something too.”
Your breath caught.
There was an ache in that possibility you were not ready to touch.
Jane continued, gentler now. “I am not saying he has done right by you. Do not mistake me. If he has made you feel unwanted in your own marriage, then he has hurt you deeply, whether he meant to or not. But I do not believe he withholds himself because he repudiates you.”
You closed your eyes.
Repudiates.
Such a formal word for such a private devastation.
“He looks at you,” Jane said. “I swear it.”
You opened your eyes, tears clinging to your lashes. “Do not swear lightly.”
“I am not.”
“You are saying this because you love me.”
“I am saying this because I love you, and because it is true.”
You shook your head, though not as firmly now. “You cannot know what is in him.”
“No,” Jane said. “But I can see what comes out of him when he thinks no one is watching.”
You gave her a broken, skeptical look.
She took both your hands in hers. “I swear it by the life of this child.”
You froze.
Jane had never used her baby as a vow. Not once. Not even in jest.
“Jane.”
“I swear,” she repeated, voice steady, one hand leaving yours to rest over her stomach, “by this baby, by my own life, and by Father’s memory if you need the heavier ghost in the room, that Jack looks at you like a man in love. Not like a man disgusted. Not like a man trapped. Like a man starving beside a feast he believes he has no right to touch.”
The words went through you so cleanly you could not speak.
Starving.
You thought of Jack in the meetinghouse. His pale face. His hand tightening on the cane when Grimes said receiving, never taking. The roughness in his whisper when he told you not to listen. The way he had gone still when you asked if your desire was wicked. Not disgusted. Stricken.
Had you misread him?
Or had he made himself impossible to read and left you bleeding in the dark?
Anger returned then, but altered. Not gone. Never gone. Simply tangled now with something like terror.
“If that is true,” you said, voice barely there, “then he has been crueler than I thought.”
Jane did not argue.
That, too, was mercy.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Perhaps he has.”
A new tear slid down your cheek.
Jane lifted her hand and wiped it away with her thumb, just as she had when you were small. “Speak to him when he returns.”
You let out a shaky breath. “He does not speak.”
“Then make him.”
You gave a wet, weak laugh. “You say that as though Jack can be made to do anything.”
“He married you, did he not?”
You looked at her.
Jane’s mouth curved faintly. “Something made him.”
You looked down, and despite everything, something fragile moved in your chest. Hope, perhaps. You distrusted it immediately.
“I am afraid, Jane.” you admitted.
Jane squeezed your hands. “Of what?”
“That he will have an answer.” Your throat tightened. “That he will tell me there is nothing wrong with me, and still not want me. That he will be kind. I think I could bear cruelty better than kindness now.”
Jane’s eyes filled. “Oh, my sweet girl.”
The phrase nearly destroyed you.
No one had called you that since Father.
Jane leaned forward and kissed your forehead. “Then do not ask for kindness. Ask for truth.”
You closed your eyes.
Truth.
The word sounded simple only to people who had never had to survive it.
Jane sat back, brushing the damp from your cheeks with the corner of her apron. “And until he returns, you stay here. You drink milk with honey. You help me do absolutely nothing strenuous, because Robby has forbidden it and I must occasionally allow him the illusion that I obey. You sleep in the spare room. You do not listen to men like Grimes. You do not decide there is wickedness in wanting to be loved. And if you must be angry with Jack, be angry clearly. Not with hunting dog remarks and his wooden leg.”
You sniffed. “That was funny.”
“It was very funny,” Jane admitted. “But cruel.”
“Robby laughed.”
“Robby is a weak man in the face of comedy.”
A small laugh escaped you again, gentler this time, and Jane smiled as if the sound had been worth the whole afternoon.
You picked up your cup at last and drank.
The milk had cooled, but the honey still sat warm on your tongue.
For a moment, you were not in a town being watched by men who had turned fear into law. You were not a wife untouched. You were not a woman ashamed of the hunger living under her skin. You were only a younger sister sitting beside an older one, motherless girls grown into women, still passing sweetness between them because their father had once taught them that warmth could be made in a pot and shared when words failed.
Jane rested her head lightly against yours.
You let her.
Outside, Andover held its breath beneath the shadow of the Court.
Somewhere beyond the road, Jack rode toward the woods with your words lodged between his ribs.
Inside, you held the cup with both hands and tried, for the first time that day, to believe your sister.
Not that Jack had not hurt you.
He had.
Not that silence could be forgiven because love was hidden beneath it.
It could not.
Only this:
Perhaps your wanting had not made you wicked.
Perhaps your body was not a thing to be ashamed of.
Perhaps the ache in you was not proof of sin, but proof that something had been denied too long.
And perhaps, when Jack returned, you would finally make him answer for the hunger he had left starving in both of you.
HONEY I LOVE YOU thank u sosososo much for giving me the chance to read this before everyone else this literally altered my brain chemistry?????? i wish i could do like i did with the google doc and just highlight all of my favorite parts (aka everything at this point), there's so much nuance with the way you write and the words you pick and the imagery is so on fucking point every time??? you don't miss a single beat with this one i love it so much
i genuinely think people should give this fic a chance even if the subject matter isn't for everyone (i know period pieces aren't something everyone is into) because i feel like this fic tackles so many important subjects and i love this bitter and rebelious reader and i love this glutton for punishment jack and the atmosphere is eery and very much grounded in reality: yes it's witch hunting and yes the speech is worded differently but my god the fucking witch hunter starts preaching about the sainthood of marriage and the submission of women and you could very much just hand him a microphone and a camera because it's the same bullshit every man with a podcast is still saying so many centuries after.
and not only that, but jack's reaction to everything (including his kind of imploding marriage) and the way he keeps hurting his wife over and over again even though we can feel his love through the words.... honestly the way they both keep wounding each other at every chance and how everyone's miserable but there's still hope! and we know their relationship is salvageable! they just need to talk and fuck! like normal people!
anyway anyway thank you honey for sharing this piece with us, i know how much work you put into it and i can guarantee it shines through with every word! i simply cannot wait to read the rest 💗
“Know I wanna beat it, wanna beat it bad
Oh, everyone looks happy in a photograph
I've crossed the county line, I cannot go back
I'm always on my own.”
-All Them Horses, Noah Kahan
summary: your family is in town for the annual ‘parents berating their kids for their decisions’ get together. jack overhears you talking about how much easier it would be if you had a boyfriend to shove in their face, and offers his services. No strings attached, of course.
wc: 15.7k (steak is too juicy lobster is too buttery)
tags/tropes: jack falls first and harder, reader is an eldest daughter (but not the eldest child) to a large judgmental family who are constantly disappointed in her, jack pretty much uses the fake dating as a chance to show reader what a good boyfriend he COULD be to her if she let herself have nice things, jack 'i'll pay for it' abbot, jack is YEARNING in this one, a teeny bit of mean dom jack as a treat
a/n: how are we all feeling about the latest noah kahan album. Doors is great. i do NOT repeat timestamp 2:14-2:21 of All Them Horses. i’m normal and can be trusted with noah kahan’s discography. this fic was supposed to be crossposted on ao3 at the time of post but ao3 crashed and i lost all of my tagging and uploading process so im saving that. for later. when it is POSTED it will be linked below :)
acknowledgements: thank you @wesandresons for the amazing gif and @saradika-graphics, @chrisssiren, and @uzmacchiato for the dividers! and thank you @leeknowpegger for your work in keeping up morale and being deranged with me
masterlist
“Your family’s in town?”
You’re at the nurses station, tucked into a corner with your head in your hands while Shen, of course, drinks what has to be his third Dunkin coffee of the day. Where he’s getting them is one of the world’s strangest unsolved mysteries.
You can’t see his face, on account of the heels of your hands being pressed into your eyes so hard stars are bursting and swirling behind your eyelids, but you can hear the grimace in his tone.
“Yeah. I moved out here to get away from them, but they decided to host the annual family dinner circuit here in Pittsburgh instead. My mom always complains about how it’s such a huge imposition to have the entire family fly out, but I never asked to do it and offered to just fly to them on multiple occasions. Apparently, my work schedule is too hard to work around.”
“Dinner circuit?”
You wave a hand. “It’s actually a lunch circuit now, since I work nights. Basically, for every single day that they’re here everybody has to attend a lunch, no matter what. Most of the time they’re at different restaurants, but sometimes my mom demands to have them at my place.”
“Yikes,” The attending says, sipping on the last bits of his coffee, “And the whole successful doctor thing doesn’t work on them? It got my parents off my back.”
You shake your head. “I’m the only doctor in the family, but they thought I should’ve been a hospitalist or go into general surgery.”
The sound of ice being shaken in a plastic cup rings in your ears. “There’s money in emergency medicine. Eventually.”
“There’s money in all medicine eventually,” You groan, lifting your head and leaning against the wall, blinking dazedly up at the flickering fluorescent lights. “I’m sure if I'd picked general surgery they would’ve found a problem with that too.”
“So your fucked, basically.”
Your eyes slip shut again. “Yep. Anything short of showing up with a rich boyfriend and a promise of grandkids on the way won’t get my mom off my back.”
Shen clasps you on the shoulder. “Best of luck with that. You’re the only intern the night shift has got, so we’d rather you don’t off yourself via poisoned wine.”
“I wouldn’t do poison. I’d choke on bread so they’d have to live with the guilt of not being able to save me.”
“Jesus fuck, man. I mean, clearly, they suck, but that’s brutal.”
You shrug. “Not as brutal as my mom not coming to my med school graduation.”
He gapes. “What reason could she have possibly had for not showing up?”
“I told her at dinner the night before that I was going into emergency medicine.”
“That’s…” Shen trails off, flabbergasted, “…Wow. Now I'm worried you’re going to kill one of them.”
“Way too much effort. They aren’t worth the jail time.”
The attending tosses his now empty coffee in a nearby trash can. “Well, if you snap and kill them all in a fit of extremely valid rage, please don’t call me. I can’t afford to be implicated.”
“You saying I can’t hide a body myself?”
“I’m saying I can’t hide a body.”
“Who’s hiding bodies?” Jack says, sidling up to the two of you with a tablet and a chart open in his hand.
Shen jams a thumb in your direction. “She’s killing her parents later today.”
You roll your eyes. “I’m not. Honestly, so long as I agree with whatever my mom says and don’t bring up any trigger topics, I’ll be fine.”
Jack snorts. “You’re describing being held hostage by someone mentally unstable.”
“Dr. Intern?” Ellis interrupts, using the stupid nickname Santos picked for you when she found out you’re the only PGY1 on the night shift, “There’s a woman in the lobby here to see you. Says she’s your mom.”
Your stomach drops to your feet and your heart seizes in your chest. “It’s six in the morning. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
Someone behind you says “Holy shit,” but you’re already gone. As you’re speed walking you whip out your phone, checking the dates of their flights that you’d only had a chance to skim and— fuck. They got in an hour ago. Why the fuck would she stop here? At the PTMC?
You practically slam the doors open and make eye contact with your mom across the crowded lobby.
“Mom?”
“There you are sweetie. I was trying to explain that there’s nothing wrong with me and I was here to see you, but they wouldn’t let me. Something about a security issue?”
“It’s not safe. We’ve had incidents in the past—“
She waves a hand, dismissing you. “I’m your mother. Honestly, I wouldn’t have had to come down here if you’d just respond to my texts.”
“I’ve told you mom, I’m really busy here and I don’t get very much time to look at my phone—“
“Your brothers take the time out of their busy schedules to text me back,” She sighs, then continues on, “Did you get time off this week for dinner?”
You frown. “I thought we were having lunch.”
“Well, I figured since we’re all making it easier for your work schedule to come to you, you could manage to take a few days off for your family. But if we need to make an extra effort—“
“It’s fine, mom,” You tell her with a gritted-toothed smile, “I can make something work. Can you just send me the dates again?”
“It’s this Friday and Saturday.”
Before you can even open your mouth to respond, a large, warm hand settles on your shoulder. Accompanied by the hand is a steadying one on your lower back, a familiar, rich scent and a low voice.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Jack.
Jack fucking Abbot.
Hottest man in the ED. Probably in the world.
Your mom blinks, clearly caught off guard, before regaining her judgy senses and narrowing her eyes at him.
“I’m trying to have a conversation with my daughter. Don’t tell me you’re security.”
You know for a fact that Jack has his stethoscope around his neck and his keycard in his scrub pocket that says ‘DOCTOR’ on it, so your mom’s just being bitchy. Figures.
Jack’s hand in your shoulder gives you a tiny, reassuring squeeze before he speaks.
“I’m Dr. Abbot,” He sticks out a hand for her to shake, the one that was on your shoulder, “I’m an attending here at the ED.”
And my boss, you mentally add. Your mom probably hears it anyway.
“You work with my daughter?”
“Yes ma’am. She’s the most promising intern we have here on the night shift.”
Your lips twitch at his words. He’s joking. Testing your mother— you’re the only PGY1 on the night shift. If your mom remembers that, she’ll pick up on his joke.
She doesn’t. She purses her lips for a moment before giving him one of her big, fake smiles.
“Well that’s good to hear. We’re very proud of her.”
Proud of the money I send home, maybe.
“If you’ll excuse us, I need her working on patients.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Your mom gushes, clearly already charmed by Jack. He has that effect on people. “I didn’t realize she was so important and busy here.“
You would if you’d ever let me talk about work before interrupting me and telling me what I should be doing better.
Jack’s thumb makes tiny sweeping motions on your lower back, little tingling motions that distract you enough to unclench your jaw and relax your shoulders.
“I’ll text you as soon as I can, okay mom?”
Your mom sweeps you into a hug, a rare show of affection. Putting on a show for Jack, more than likely.
“No rush. Whenever you get the chance, sweetheart.”
Jack gives her a parting nod, but you wait until your mom’s turned around and walking out of the lobby before allowing Jack to steer you back inside.
The second the doors close behind you and you’re enveloped in the sounds and smells of the heart of the PTMC, you shut your eyes and release a long exhale.
“I,” You start, “Am so sorry. I never thought she’d show up here, I got the flight times mixed up—“
“Hey,” Jack’s voice is low and steady, a much needed anchor. He uses the hand still on your lower back to turn you towards him, “None of that was your fault. We deal with patients like that every day. It is not your job to keep your mother in line.”
“I know. I know. Still, I’m sorry. She can be… difficult.”
He snorts. “Understatement of the year. But seriously. Don’t worry about it. If I didn’t want to get involved with her, I wouldn’t have swooped in there.”
You huff a laugh. “My hero. I’m pretty sure if you’d introduced yourself as my boyfriend she would’ve had an aneurysm. Or a heart attack.”
“Are those desired outcomes?”
“Mostly.”
He slides his hands into his pockets and leans against the opposite wall. “Might be worth a shot, then.”
It’s a very well kept secret that you’ve harbored an embarrassing, ‘think about him while you’re falling asleep at night’ crush on Jack.
So naturally, your response is to laugh. Loudly. And semi-awkwardly. Because he has to be joking. Obviously.
“Yeah, right,” You say, looking down at your feet because eye-contact has never been your forte and Jack’s gaze is too intense, “Could even take you to dinner with me. Maybe my dad would have a heart attack too. Really just wipe out the whole family.”
“You could.”
“Wipe out my entire family?”
“Take me to dinner with you.”
Jack’s body is relaxed and his tone is even. Not light and humor-filled. There’s no mischievous uptick to the corner of his lips. He looks like he’s serious.
“Are you joking?”
He can’t really be serious. He’s probably just fucking with you. He wouldn’t actually—
“No.”
You run a hand over your hair. “Yeah, sure, laugh it up, haha—“
“I’ll go to dinner with you. As your boyfriend.”
What. The. Fuck.
“No.” You gape, incredulous.
“No?” He raises an eyebrow.
“No, I mean— fuck. Dr. Abbot—“
“Jack.”
You purse your lips. “Jack. You can’t just… pretend to be my boyfriend at a family lunch.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” You sputter, “For one, we hardly know each other—“
“You’ve been working here for three months. We’re hardly strangers.”
“You’re my boss, your way older than me, you’re—“ You cut yourself off before you can say something embarrassing like ‘you’re ridiculously fucking hot and I haven’t washed my socks in months’, “It wouldn’t even be believable. How would we even have met?”
“In the ED, obviously.”
“How long have we been together?”
“Month and a half.”
“Why are we even dating?”
“Because you’re a beautiful and intelligent woman, not to mention a good doctor.”
Your mouth goes dry, and your stomach does an entire gymnastics routine.
“Have you… thought about this?”
He makes a noncommittal hum, tilts his head back a bit. “Would it work?”
“Are you rich?”
There’s that devilish, pants dropping smile.
“I’m a senior attending on night shifts in an emergency department. I’m comfortable.”
You worry your lip between your teeth. “I still can’t… I appreciate the offer, but I can’t subject you to my family. No one else should have to suffer through these lunches and dinners.”
“But you do?”
“They’re my family.”
Jack doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t move off the wall and walk away either. Distantly, you really hope a patient isn’t coding somewhere.
You sigh. “Why would you even offer, anyway?”
“You need help, and I’m in a position to give it. Plus life has been kind of boring recently. My therapist told me to pick a new hobby that doesn’t involve people dying or getting shot at.”
“So you thought spending an evening being subjected to backhanded questions, comments, and not very subtle micro-aggressions was a good substitute?”
“Beats drinking beer in the park.”
You can’t say yes. It’s crazy. One, it would make your crush a million times worse and you might never recover on that fact alone, and two, when this inevitably blows up in your face, your family will never let you live it down and bring it up in literally every conversation for the rest of your life.
On the other hand, if it works, it will work. Your mom would probably get off your back for a while. You wouldn’t be a complete and total disappointment. If it works, it would be a much needed win.
“So. We’ve been dating for a month and a half?”
Jack nods, another smile playing at his lips. “I asked you out, of course.”
“Flowers?”
“Naturally.”
“You pay?”
“For every meal.”
“What’s my favorite color?”
“Navy blue. Mine?”
You roll your eyes. “Black. What are we going to tell my mom when she pokes at the age gap?”
Someone rushes by, pager beeping, and you both wordlessly start moseying towards your respective patients.
“Will she really be that upset about it?”
“Probably not, but she’ll definitely ask about it. My dad will probably be angry, but he’s easier to placate than my mom is.”
Jack hums thoughtfully. “When’s the lunch today?”
“Twelve-thirty, at that Italian place that has that mussel dish.”
“How about this,” He starts, apparently not needing anymore clarification on the location, “Lets focus on finishing our shifts right now. Then go home, get some sleep, and I’ll pick you up at eleven so you can pick my brain for every detail that you want to make this work. Deal?”
Last chance to back out. Say hell no, this is a crazy idea, why would you even volunteer for it, I changed my mind.
“Deal.”
—
Holy fucking shit. Jack Abbot is your boyfriend.
Fake boyfriend. But for the next few hours, he’s as good as yours. Kind of.
In a way.
You’re standing in front of your bathroom mirror, dressed in the outfit you picked out for the stupid lunch when your mom texted you the plane ticket details a month ago.
Neither your makeup nor your hair are cooperating and you really need them to because you have to be perfect, so you need your mascara and stop clumping and your hair to stop laying like that and you just don’t want to fucking go.
Before frustration induced tears can ruin your half-done makeup, a knock sounds at the door.
You rush through your apartment, nearly cracking your skull open on the corner of the couch when you trip over a stray shoe.
Shit, he’s here and you’re not ready, god he’s going to be so upset you have to make him wait it’s so rude—
“Hi!” You swing open the door and plaster what you hope is a cute-frazzled smile and not a panicked one. It’s a thin line between the two, “I’m almost ready, I’m so sorry, you can come in and sit down wherever, I promise I won’t take too long to finish up. Sorry.”
You turn, unable to bear the anger or frustration on his face and dart away (an old method— hiding and disappearing is much better for everyone in the long run) but a hand encircles your wrist before you can successfully escape.
“Woah, easy girl. Nobody’s mad at you. We have time, remember?”
Your smile is definitely coming across as panicked.
Your nails wander and find a hangnail to pick at while you talk. “I know, but that was so we’d have time to plan and it’s rude to make you wait and I really need time to plan, but I can’t get my makeup to look right—“
Jack nudges you into the house and you cut yourself off with another apology. Right. Cause he’s just standing in the hallway and you’re rambling on like someone deranged. God. Why can’t your brain just work? Get into gear? Actually function properly?
“First of all,” Jack starts, gently steering you towards your couch, “You look beautiful.”
Why does he have to say these things? Has he no care for what he’s doing to your heart? Is he unaware that Simone Biles would be impressed with the flip routine your stomach is currently doing?
He places a throw pillow in your hands which were previously clenched in your lap. It’s your favorite throw pillow, actually, because the texture is very soothing. You squeeze it and rub your fingers across the grain.
“Secondly, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I can go home and go to bed and if you want, I’ll never bring it up again. Not even to Robby.”
You crack a wobbly smile. “Not even to Nurse Evans?”
“She’d probably guess on her own, but I would never confirm her suspicions.”
You tuck your feet under your legs, shrinking into the corner of your couch. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I already texted my mom to add a person to the reservation, and if I show up without a plus one there’ll be hell to pay.”
“You could swap me with someone else?”
“Do you think I would have agreed to let my boss be my fake boyfriend if I had someone else to bring?”
“Touché.”
The corner thread of your throw pillow has begun unraveling, and your wandering fingers pull and tug at it erratically.
“I’m sorry. I’m not usually this neurotic, I swear. My family brings out the worst in me.”
“I ain’t judging, sweetheart,” Jack soothes, “Besides. We’re ER doctors. We’re all a little neurotic.”
Steadfastly avoiding his gaze (again, just a little too knowing, like he can see every insecurity you’re trying to hide) you stand on shaky legs and rush to the bathroom.
“I’ll just. Finish up. Sorry again.”
“I’m gonna start a tally of unnecessary sorry’s. You’re gonna owe me an hour of overtime for each one.”
Oddly enough, getting ready (the rest of the way) feels much more manageable and much less difficult with Jack nearby. He doesn’t critique how long it takes you, the fact that you change earrings three times, or tell you that you look good enough and should just go.
He just hangs out in your living room, on the couch, practically oozing calm and nonchalance. The foolish, romance-starved part of you wants to cancel on your mom and spend the rest of the day curled up next to him on the couch, like a cat. Lazily dozing while Jack watches TV or something sounds like a much better way to spend your time after work than experiencing all five stages of grief over the course of one lunch. Repeatedly.
Finally ready, and with your sanity intact thanks to Jack, you pause by the kitchen and debate the merits of taking a shot to loosen your nerves. Unfortunately, your mom would undoubtedly somehow smell the alcohol on you and no doubt chew you out for a minimum of twenty minutes. Heaven forbid you make the event bearable.
Ever the kind host, you peek your head around the kitchen wall. “Do you want a shot, Jack?”
“You’re aware that I’m fifty?”
Right. That's probably an unhinged question.
“Just thought I’d offer,” You say, meekly tucking the bottle back under the shelf, slightly embarrassed, “Sometimes alcohol is the only way I can survive these things.”
He’s leaned up against the couch, hands in his pockets when you exit the kitchen. “It was very considerate, thank you. But I think the days of vodka and tequila shots are behind me. I’m more of a whiskey man, anyways.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when we end up at a bar afterwards to drink away memories of the lunch.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “You act like we’re going to be hung, drawn, and quartered after showing up.”
You worry your bottom lip between your teeth. “Sorry. I just don’t want you to be unprepared, because they’re not always bad but when they’re bad they’re bad, you know? And I just don’t want to scare you off, and ruin the day you could be spending sleeping, and I really am thankful, by the way, I just don’t—“
“Do you always ramble when you’re worried?” Jack interrupts, tilting his head to the side.
“Um. No? I don’t know. I try not to. But like I said. My family brings out the worst in me.”
He searches your face for a moment, then taps the underside of your chin with a crooked finger, raising it slightly.
“We got this, okay? I’m not easy to scare. Combat med vet, remember? Plus, if it really gets that bad, I’ll fake a call from the hospital. Say there was some horrible accident and we’re being called in.”
“Won’t my mom get wise when she never hears it on the news?”
Jack shrugs. “It’s the city. Something horrible is always happening here.”
He holds the front door open for you when you’ve got your shoes on and purse ready, but as you’re sliding past him, he leans down, the angle of his jaw almost brushing the side of your neck, and breathes in deeply.
“You smell good.”
Fuck the gymnastics routine. Your stomach is going for Olympic Gold.
“Oh,” You exhale, a shiver running up your spine and a pleasant tingling sparking where your skin barely brushed his, “Uh— Thanks. Vanilla and spice. I like layering scents.”
“It’s nice. Suits you.”
You manage to squeak out another awkward “Thanks” before hastily locking the door, hoping he can’t tell just how flustered he keeps making you. Judging by the smile playing at his lips, your hopes are in vain.
The car ride to the restaurant is longer than it should be, on account of Pittsburgh traffic, but the time goes by quickly as you pepper Jack with questions to prepare for the million and one that your mother will no doubt ask.
(“What should I say if she asks if we’ve slept together?”
“Do you really, honestly, truly think your mother is going to bring up the topic of sex at the table, in a nice restaurant, with your entire family present?”
“Fair point.”)
By the time you arrive, you’ve picked and torn every single hangnail and loose cuticle around your fingers down to raw flesh and tiny dots of blood. Jack parks the car (parallel parks easily in one go, no repositioning needed, in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s one of the hottest things you’ve ever seen in your life) a good distance away from the restaurant, so that your family wouldn’t be able to see you if you decided to flee to his car to escape them.
At least, that’s what he says.
“I want you to hang onto the car keys, okay? If they get too much, you can sneak out through the kitchen and go to the car. I’ll meet you there.”
You can’t help but smile at his efforts. “And what will you be doing while I’m sneaking out?”
“Singing your praises, of course.”
Exhaustion from the shift you worked in what seems like a lifetime ago lines your limbs, but as you step out of the car (through the door Jack insists on opening for you “In case they’re still watching,”) and loop your arm through Jack’s, you feel… almost capable.
The lunch is going to suck. That’s a given. But Jack assured you he’s seen worse (“Probably done worse, sweetheart,”) and will not leave the lunch in a fit of rage and cause a scene. His arm is firm and solid —and fucking huge, how are his biceps that big— under your arm, and his presence is steadying.
As you cross the street and begin your final walk towards the building, he un-loops his arm from yours, but after you make a questioning noise in your throat, worried you’d be completely untethered (how pathetic to already be this reliant on a man, but there’s no time to unpack that now) but instead he wraps his arm around your waist instead, drawing you to his side and effectively grounding you to his body.
The entire left side of your body lights up at the contact, and if this were your apartment, it would be very difficult to refrain from climbing him like a tree or doing something equally embarrassing, like plastering yourself to his side and begging him to never stop touching you.
You’ve almost managed to come off unaffected, but then he leans down, lips almost brushing your ear, and whispers:
“You’ve got this, baby. And if you don’t, I do.”
Forget your family. Jack Abbot is going to be the death of you.
When you walk into the restaurant, hyper-aware of Jack’s grip on your body (your delusional mind has you thinking how… possessive the hand almost feels, if you ignore the fact that this is all fake) your family is waiting in the foyer, talking amongst themselves.
Your mother immediately zeroes in on you. “Honey, we’ve talked about you being on time to these things. You can’t be late to important family—“
You watch in real time as your mother’s gaze finally flicks to Jack, and the shades of recognition, shock, almost disgust, and confusion before settling back into forced pleasantness.
Your father, however, looks downright murderous. Looks like the age gap isn’t going down too well.
If Jack is at all nervous or put off by the several stares and outright glares from your family, he does not show it. He exudes cool confidence, the same unflappable energy he has during chaotic night shifts. The same calm that makes him so alluring to you in the first place.
He sticks out his hand for your mother to shake, a mirror of earlier that day in the PTMC lobby.
“I believe we’ve met before, but I’ll introduce myself again. I’m Dr. Jack Abbot.”
Your mother shakes his hand, but looks between the two of you like you’ve just spilled wine on her Persian rug that she can’t afford in the first place.
“You’re my daughter’s plus one?”
Jack nods. “Her boyfriend, yes.”
Your brother’s gape. Your dad’s glare intensifies. You want to kiss Jack.
“Honey,” Your mother says, gaze darting to you, “You didn’t say—“
“I didn’t want you to meet him at the hospital,” You tell her, hoping the lie doesn’t come across as too rehearsed, since you did rehearse it several times with Jack in the car on the way over, “The lobby of the hospital isn’t the best place to introduce people. And we really did have patients to get back to.”
Your mother purses her lips. “Why the last minute addition? If you’d told me that he was coming before today, it would’ve been easier to make the reservation.”
Jack is quicker to respond than you. “That’s my fault, actually. I didn’t think I was going to be able to come, what with my shifts as a senior attending, but when we met in the lobby I understood how important it was to make the time.”
You have to try hard not to smile at Jack’s not-so-subtle flex. Senior attending.
“Yes, well. My daughter doesn’t always stress the importance of these things.”
Jack’s grip on your waist tightens ever-so-slightly at the backhanded remark, and your mother’s gaze darts to the point of contact. But your father jerks his head towards the tables before she can say anything. “I’m starving.”
Everyone files in behind him, with you and Jack at the back of the line. Again, he leans down to whisper to you.
“How’d I do?”
You elbow him in the side. “We’ll discuss your performance after this is over.”
“Looking forward to it.”
The hostess leads everyone over to a large table near a window (your mother is particularly about seating) and everyone finds a seat. One of your brothers, either as a test or just to be a shit (your money’s on the latter) slides into the open seat next to you before Jack can.
To his credit, Jack doesn’t cause a scene, but he doesn’t back down either. He just stares at your idiot brother for awhile before finally asking:
“Do you really wanna do this right now?”
Your brother must sense that Jack Abbot is not a man to be fucked with (just a man you want to fuck), and scurries to his own seat, tail between his legs.
Once everyone is seated and the food is ordered (you don’t bother ordering anything other than the salad; Jack orders the most expensive thing on their menu. He’s never seemed like one to care for finery and expensive Italian restaurants where you practically have to order in Italian, but again, his unfazed demeanor makes him fit in anywhere) your family immediately begins peppering him with questions. Questions you knew they’d ask and appropriately prepared him for.
“So. Dr. Abbot—”
“Just Jack is fine.”
“—How long have the two of you been dating?”
“A month and a half.”
“Why’d you start dating?”
You take a generous gulp of your wine.
“Because your daughter is an incredible woman and an even better doctor.”
“Do you think she’s pretty?” One of your brothers chimes in.
Jack takes it in stride, despite that not being a question you prepared. “I’d have to be blind and stupid if I didn’t.”
You feel hot from the tips of your ears down to your toes.
That’s going in the mental folder.
“Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”
“Pretty much. Took a bit of a detour as a combat medic first, though.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“Honorably discharged after I lost my right leg. Below the knee amputation.”
You drain the rest of your glass and inconspicuously motion to the waiter for more wine.
The table is silent for the customary length of time after someone drops the “got a limb chopped off” bomb. Your family is clearly mildly uncomfortable, but Jack just keeps sipping his drink, his free hand drifting down and brushing the side of your thigh.
Your dad clears his throat. Here we go. Home stretch. Final questions before we’re in the clear.
“Mr. Abbot—“
“Either Doctor or Jack works.”
Ooo. There was some bite in that one.
Your Dad frowns. He does not like to be interrupted or corrected. You’ve been on the receiving end of far too many hour long lectures (read: berating and borderline verbal abuse) to know better.
But Jack isn’t his daughter. Jack is pretty much his equal. Actually, the fact that Jack not only served but is now a doctor places him above your father, by social conventions.
This no doubt infuriates your father. He’s always hated it when he couldn’t tear somebody down to his level. A true coward.
“Jack,” Your dad continues, a trademarked forced smile to save face, “You’re a smart man, yeah? Haven’t you ever considered the age difference between the two of you might be a little much?”
Yikes. Questioning Jack’s competency is not the way to go. Jack is very competent. And smart. And capable. It’s really hot.
Your fake-boyfriend just reaches over and grasps your hand, over the table, and looks at you with such devotion in his eyes that you forget how to breathe.
“War doesn’t really lend to longevity. I’ve learned to hold on tight to things I care about.”
For a moment, it doesn’t feel fake. There’s raw, punched emotion in his voice, and his thumb rubs your hand gently. Like he really does care that much. Like he wants to hold on.
But then your brother fake-gags and your fake boyfriend looks away with that, he’s passed the tests, and the conversation moves onto to different topics. Jack laughs at all the right moments, doesn’t bring up any argument-starting topics, doesn’t rise to bait when it’s thrown his way.
He’s perfect.
Eventually lunch is drawn to a polite close. You have one last glass of wine while Jack settles the bill. Himself. With one card. He doesn’t even look.
Your mom sends a smirk your way after he waves off your father’s attempt at splitting the bill or offering to pay. It’s probably the third time she’s actually looked at you for the entire duration of the lunch, but since it’s positive, you’ll let it slide.
Pretty soon bags are grabbed, hands are shook, and Jack’s hand magically finds its way back to your lower back and you’re being (very gently) escorted out of the restaurant and to the car.
“Wow,” You breathe as you slide into the passenger seat of his car. “I think that’s the smoothest a lunch with my family has ever gone in my entire life. You’re really good at this.”
Jack doesn’t respond though. Doesn’t make any kind of noise that he heard you. His hands are nearly white knuckled on the steering wheel and he’s staring straight ahead.
“Jack?”
“They didn’t even talk to you.”
You blink.
“What?”
“Your family never tried to include you in the conversation. Didn’t even ask you any questions.”
You snort. “Trust me, it’s better that way.”
He hasn’t started the car yet, just keeps staring off into the middle ground. He can’t be old enough to start doing a thousand yard stare already, right?
“You ordered a salad.” He says, a very prominent frown on his lips.
“So? It wasn’t too expensive, was it? I swear, if I knew you were gonna pay for the whole bill I would’ve looked at something cheaper, I don’t know why salads are so expensive—“
“Please don’t apologize for ordering a salad,” Jack says, voice pained, “Especially because I know you hate salads.”
Oh.
“How do you know that?”
“I overheard you talking to Dr. King that time you two were discussing the merits of Olive Garden. You said the salad there was the only kind you like, because of the dressing and the pepperoncinis.”
Your cheeks heat. “I never said I hated all salads. I said I like that one in particular.”
“You hardly ate anything during lunch.”
“My family tends to have that effect on my appetite.”
Jack does not look placated. He doesn’t take the out that your little joke provides. Doesn't so much as huff. He looks upset. Distressed.
Something about what he said goes ding! in your mind.
“…Mel and I had that conversation like, last month. You seriously remembered that?”
He frowns harder, like the answer to your partly rhetorical question should be obvious.
(It’s not. Why would he remember that conversation? Why would he care at all?)
“Of course I remember.”
There isn’t much to say after that. You’re not really sure what in particular has upset Jack, what possibly blunder or error you’ve made to incur him going completely monosyllabic and frowny. Ever eager to appease, you refrain from any attempts to cajole him, make conversation, breathe too loudly, or make any kind of indication that you’re still present.
The tension in the car is thick and uncomfortable. It prickles at your skin and the hairs on the back of your neck, but the only thing you dare to do is scroll through Pinterest, only looking at the safest, basic boards in case Jack glances over (he doesn’t.)
But then he does glance over. He just doesn’t look at your phone.
Jack just keeps looking at you.
He’ll look over, eyes darting over your face like he’s looking for something, and then he’ll look away. Over and over for almost the entire course of the drive. He only stops when you accidentally time your staring (monitoring) of him wrong and make eye contact.
He parks by your place (he once again sexily parallel parks with ease) and then puts the car in park. And then he starts talking.
“You’re so much more than them.”
Jack has the heat on, but the air in the car suddenly feels cold.
“What?”
“Your family,” Jack clarifies, like that was the confusing part “Your parents. I hated watching you… disappear like that. You deserve better than that. You are better than that.”
You try to swallow, almost choking on the sudden lump in your throat.
“Listen,” You start, unaware of how to even begin processing what he said, let alone formulating the best response because your brain is just flashing abort! Abort! Abort! in big neon letters,, “Thank you for today. I really appreciate it. But if this is all just too much, I can handle things from here. Really. I can say that someone called out and you had to cover shifts—“
“No.”
Jack says it with such vehemence, bordering on vitriol, that it startles you, and you flinch backwards ever so slightly.
An old habit.
Something flashes across his face —gone before you can decipher it— and he noticeably forces himself calmer.
“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you go alone again. Ever.”
Your brain starts short-circuiting at his words. “I really can’t ask you to—“
“It’s a good thing you’re not asking me then.”
“Jack—“
“Please.”
You’re stunned silent at the rawness in his tone— the pain.
He said please. He said it like he was begging. He is begging.
“I don’t know how you do it,” He continues, jaw working, “I can see it on you, plain as day. How you hate what they do, how it makes you hurt. But you keep going.”
You shrug uselessly. “Is there another option?”
Jack reaches out for you, then falters, like he thought better. A tiny part of you wishes he’d followed through; bridged the yawning gap between the two of you that’s made up of the center console in his car, a couple decades, and your own unwillingness to try at vulnerability.
“I’ll walk you to your door.”
The walk to your door is a stark contrast to the walk to the restaurant. There’s no mischief on his face now, only a mask of stony distress.
At the doorway to your apartment building, you pause. It seems customary. Appropriate. Necessary.
Really, you just want to look at Jack some more. Try to puzzle out why the lunch that felt like it went so well made him so upset. Where you’re getting signals wrong and crossing wires. Why success to you is failure to him.
(As an ED resident, you’ve seen child abuse cases. You’ve seen foster care children littered with cigarette burns and criss-crossing scars of broken bottles and the corners of coffee tables and haunted eyes.
You know your family isn’t great. But there aren’t any cigarette burns or glass scars or eyes that track fast movement.)
You have this burning inclination to apologize to Jack. Logically, you know you haven’t done something wrong, but you feel like you have because he’s upset so maybe you can make it better?
“You have that look on your face.”
You frown. “What look?”
“The ‘I’m gonna apologize for something stupid’ look.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about it,” Jack ducks down, catches your eyes, “Hey, listen to me. You cannot fix what I am upset about. It is not your job. My mood is not your responsibility.”
“It’s freaky when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“You always know what I’m thinking.”
Jack just huffs; shoves his hands in his pockets.
Emboldened by his reassurance, you ask: “Why are you upset?”
“Because your family treats you like shit, and I want to fix it, but I can’t.”
“Oh.”
It’s not that bad. It can’t be that bad. You’ve seen bad. This isn’t it. It’s hard, but it’s not bad.
He stays quiet, seemingly sensing the inner turmoil his words have sparked. That, or he really is that good at reading you.
Jack nods towards your door. “We can talk later. Get some sleep. We both have shifts tonight.”
Right. Yeah. All of these events roughly occurred over the course of six hours. Time makes sense.
Despite the fact that you are exhausted and desperately need to sleep if you have any chance of surviving your –quickly approaching– shift, you linger.
“How am I supposed to repay you for all of this?”
The question that’s been burning a hole in your pocket since he said I’ll do it.
He just shakes his head. Like it’s simple. Easy. “This isn’t something I want repayment for. Now go. You’re no good to me as a zombie.”
“I’ll just have some of Shen’s Dunkin.”
“He doesn’t share that shit. Besides, he’s off tomorrow.”
“Maybe I‘ll—“
“Sleep,” He points at your door, “Now.”
You smile at his insistence. He’s sort of like cold coffee with sugar. Seems all bitter but then you get a bit of that sweet crunch, so it balances out. He balances out.
Sometimes it feels like he balances you out.
“Goodnight.”
He gives you a little smile of his own.
“Goodnight.”
—
Jack Abbot does not take his own advice. Mostly because he knows if he doesn’t talk about what happened during that lunch from hell, he’s going to do something that will end in him being thrown in prison and having his medical license revoked. More importantly, if that happens, he won’t be around to take care of you.
So instead he collapses on his couch, works his prosthetic off to give his stump a needed break, and dials the number at the top of his favorites in his contact list.
“This really isn’t a good time—“
“Robby,” Jack starts, “They didn’t even fucking talk to her.”
“Jesus, okay. Whitaker! Cover for me a sec, will you? I gotta deal with this.”
“They just…” Jack continues, genuinely at a loss for words. His vocabulary feels woefully unequipped to relay the depth of anger he feels about the events of the lunch, “…Ignored her. They talked over her, didn’t ask her questions, hardly ever let her finish speaking when she did finally get a chance to speak, and threw jabs at her constantly. It was fucking awful.“
The background noise quiets over the phone, and Jack knows Robby’s moved to either the break room or an empty patient room.
“She fight back at all?”
“No. Just… grinned and beared it. It was fuckin’ unsettling, man. I’ve seen her yell back at rude patients, watched her stand her ground to EMT’s who think they know better. It was like she hollowed herself out to sit at that table.”
“Christ.”
“She flinched away from me. Afterwards, in the car, when I raised my voice on accident.”
“Fuck. Do you think—“
“I don’t know. Maybe when she was younger. They don’t live in state, so if they are, she’s safe.”
Jack scrubs a hand down his face. “God. I don’t know what to do, Robby. It doesn’t seem like she’s got… anybody. She didn’t even understand why I was upset. She doesn’t get why that would be upsetting.”
“She’s friends with Mel and Santos, right?”
“And Whitaker by extension, yeah. But those are recent friends. I’ve never heard her mention anybody from back home. No boyfriend or best friend or anything. She’s just been doing everything on her own.”
Jack can picture Robby nodding. “We’ve done our fair share of that.”
“Yeah, and look where that got us. I can’t just leave her here. Fuck, it was like watching someone kick a puppy, over and over.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah.”
The line goes silent for a bit, both men stewing on the subject at hand.
“She’s always had these habits. I thought they were just personality quirks, you know. I mean, we’re all fucked up, but watching it happen…”
“It’s different.”
“You could say that,” Jack sighs, “She soaks up praise like a fucking sponge. She looks surprised every time I do something nice for her. And she keeps trying to make me happy.”
“You lost me on that last one.”
“It doesn’t… She’s not doing it to make me happy, exactly. She just does everything she can to keep me from getting mad.”
“Is there a difference?”
“There is. Eager to please versus eager to appease.”
“Are you sure you want to get involved?”
“Bit late for that.”
“You could pull back.”
“Fuck no, I can’t. Then I’d be kicking the puppy.”
“She is a grown woman.”
“Who happens to look like a kicked puppy.”
He scrubs a hand down his face, groaning into the microphone.
“You finally realize how ridiculous you sound?”
Jack grunts. “I’m not giving you the satisfaction of answering that.”
The line crackles with the staticky sound of Robby chuckling. “That’s an answer in it of itself, and you know that.”
He lets the line go quiet again, briefly debating just hanging up.
“I don’t know, Robby. It’s just…”
“Worse than you expected?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on. You knew that was a possibility. Has it put you off, at all?”
“Fuck no.”
“Exactly. Now please, go to bed so I can get back to saving lives? Whitaker is covering for me and he’s only gone through two pairs of scrubs so far today. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d bet money that he’s moved onto his third during this conversation.”
“I save lives too.”
“You won’t save any if you fall asleep on the drive over and die.”
“I would never fall asleep behind the wheel.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Jack really does hang up after that, plugging his phone in and rushing through everything he needs to do before bed.
But even as exhaustion pulls his body down into deep, dreamless sleep, he can’t stop thinking about that hollow look on your face. And he knows, even half-asleep, that he won’t be able to let it go.
—
The next night at work is weird, because nothing has changed, except now you know what the inside of Jack’s car looks like and how his voice sounded when he begged you to let him help.
It’s jarring, to say the least. Unsteadying and mildly world-rocking if you’re being honest.
But gossip travels fast within the walls of the PTMC, so by the time night shift is halfway over, you’re convinced you’ve heard every variation in existence of the same two questions:
“Did you and Jack go on a date yesterday?”
And:
“What’s Jack like on a date?”
The answer to the first question is complicated and embarrassing, so you don’t answer it or any of it’s variants. The answer to the second question is not complicated but it does, however, stir some very complicated feelings, so you refrain from answering that one too. You just try to refrain from thinking about or seeing him in general.
You’re not avoiding Jack, per se. Just keeping busy. With other stuff. That’s conveniently nowhere near him.
Ellis keeps shooting you entirely too knowing looks, Mckay, who’s pulling a double, pats your shoulder and tells you she’s there if you want to talk, Shen is absent as Jack said he would be, and Jack himself is acting like nothing happened and everything is normal and he’s never been to your apartment smelled your perfume.
(“…I like layering scents.”
“It’s nice. Suits you.”)
It’s all too much.
Hence the avoiding.
You try to curb your own ridiculousness for the sake of your patients, but it’s oddly difficult. You’ve always been amazing at compartmentalizing. If your family gave you any kind of skill, it’s the ability to shove your feelings in a box, and then shove that box in a corner of your mind you won’t access consciously until you end up on public transportation with your headphones. You should be more than capable of gathering up all the loose feelings labeled ‘For: Jack Abbot’ and tucking them all nice and neat in that little box and then shove it in a dark mental corner.
But you can’t. And along with the flurry of Jack Abbot causing a hurricane in your head, there’s a lesser storm that is the result of your family. More specifically, how they look to Jack.
All roads lead back to Rome. Or, in your case, to Jack.
You catch yourself during every spare moment or menial task that doesn’t require 100% of your brain power analyzing every interaction he had with them. Everything they said, everything they did, and how Jack would’ve taken it. And why. Because clearly, the act of dealing with them isn’t the problem. The ease and finesse in which he did so crosses that off the list. So it’s something else.
It’s how they treat you.
You understand, logically, that it would be upsetting, from his point of view. If you were in his place, you’d also probably be upset too.
But this feels different. Jack’s reaction is different. Jack is different.
It’s just never really been something that anyone should be upset over. Your family are who they are. Not great, but not truly bad either. You deal with them sparingly. You don’t even live in the same state anymore. It’s not a big deal.
“Why are you hiding from me in a supply closet?”
You whirl around, a box of gloves clutched in your hands.
“I’m not hiding from you.”
Jack crosses his arms and leans against the doorway. “This is the third time you’ve been here in two hours.”
“So? I just want to be… on top of things. I’m a productive person.”
“You are,” He amends, “But all of your productivity tonight has been pretty strictly nowhere near me. Funny how that works.”
You sigh, placing the gloves back on the rack. “Things are just… weird, okay? I don’t know how you’re being so normal about all this?”
Your fingers wander and find a loose piece of skin on the edge of your cuticle, and you begin absent-mindedly picking at it.
You can’t exactly disagree with him, right here, in the supply closet at the hospital. But you can’t quite bring yourself to agree either– because whether he acknowledges it or not, things have changed. Seeing him outside the hospital, perfectly placating your family into one of the most peaceful get-togethers you’ve had in years isn't just nothing.
It’s everything. And you, for one, can’t just pretend that it didn’t happen.
“Hey,” He calls your name softly, “What’s on your mind? What’s bugging you?”
“Nothing.”
He snorts, pushing off the doorframe and shutting the door behind him, so it’s just the two of you alone. “Liar.”
He doesn’t probe any further, just leans against the now closed door with his hands in his pockets, eyes flitting over you like they’re looking for an answer. An answer you’re too hesitant to give.
“I’m just worried.”
“You? Worried? No.”
You cut him a glare, “There’s a very real chance that this could all go horribly awry, you know.”
“Sure,” Jack dips his head, “But that’s not what you’re really worried about.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because that doesn’t address the fact that you’re avoiding me.”
You sigh, scrubbing a hand across your face.
“Why do you care?”
The question that’s been nagging at you since the beginning. The little itch in the back of your mind that you just can’t seem to get rid of. The puzzle you can’t figure out; the tune you can’t place.
You’re a logic driven person. You like knowing how things works– why they work. Why things do the things they do.
You like having the why. Having the why makes the world make sense.
Nothing about Jack Abbot makes sense.
“Why do I care about what?”
“This,” You gesture vaguely to the air, “Me. I don’t buy that you just didn’t have anything better to do or whatever it was you said. People don’t just… do that. You’re really ruining your life for an entire week for what? So I'm a little less uncomfortable? Me? At the end of the day, we’re just coworkers. I know how important your down time is for you, so I just don’t get why you’re so okay with being miserable just for my sake. I’m not that important. These stupid lunches aren’t that important.”
It’s a stupid confession. Much too vulnerable for a supply closet and a man you’re harboring feelings for.
He doesn’t respond right away. Hums, stares at his shoes for a bit. Re-adjusts so his prosthetic isn’t taking so much weight.
“You are important. You’re important to me, to this hospital, to your patients. And for the record, I am not ‘ruining my week.’ If it was that easy for my week to be ruined, I never would have become a doctor, let alone joined the military.”
“But why?”
“Jesus, you watched a lot of the science channel growing up, didn’t you?”
You snort. “Guilty as charged.”
Now it’s his turn to sigh.
“You… seem to have this misguided belief that caring is reciprocal in nature.”
You frown. “It is.”
“It isn’t. At least it shouldn’t be, but I don’t think anyone ever told you that.”
You scoff. “So this is about my family.”
He shrugs. “Amongst other things.”
“They’re not that bad.”
“They are.”
“Other people have it worse.”
“It’s not a competition.”
You resist the urge to throw your hands in the air. “Why is this such a big deal to you?”
“Because it’s a big deal to you.”
The air gets quiet and tense. Like the supply closet and all the medical supplies in it are holding their breath. If they were alive, if they were holding their breath, you’re convinced they’d all be looking at you.
It’s Jack who speaks first though.
“I can see it. You do everything yourself, get back up even when it’s hard. You look out for other people more than you look out for yourself. You’re selfless and kind and I don’t think very many people give that back to you.”
A reflexive smile pulls at your lips, a habit you never quite managed to kick after years of people telling you ‘smile, look grateful, stop looking so upset, there’s nothing to cry about.’ It feels awkward and clunky on your mouth but you don’t know what else to do. There’s no pre-written protocol for something like this.
“I still don’t really get it.” You murmur, more to yourself than to Jack.
Jack sends you a light grin. “We’ll work on it.”
“We will?”
“Sure,” He shrugs, “Already started anyways.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” He opens the door, “Now get back out there. And bring the gloves too.”
You roll your eyes but comply, snagging the box off the shelf where you’d left it and following him out.
The rest of your shift passes much smoother than before, even with the routine influx of patients as the time inches closer to morning. Jack doesn’t hover, but doesn’t pull the disappearing act that you (totally fairly) pulled on him either. He truly seems unfazed. Like it really, actually doesn’t bother him.
Well. Correction. It does bother him, but not because it’s something he’s doing for you, the part that bothers him (apparently) is how all of this affects you. All this caring makes you feel like a deer in the headlights.
You recall something he said that night. Something that had made you shiver– something that hit the nail right on the head.
“Hey, listen to me. You cannot fix what I am upset about. It is not your job. My mood is not your responsibility.”
He always seems to know exactly what to say to you. How to act, what to do, what specific worry you’re feeling and the best course of action to soothe it. It’s great but it’s also difficult, because there’s a part of you that wants to let him keep doing it, but then there’s the part of you that bristles every time and wants to snap that you’re completely capable of doing things yourself.
That probably wouldn’t even work. He’d just say something infuriating and sexy, like “I know, but I want to do this for you.”
He would. He totally would.
The thought is equal parts haunting and reassuring.
(And maybe, also, a little, kind of really sweet?)
–
The next two lunches go great. Jack is still freakishly incredible at charming your family. And, with his help, you actually manage to hold a (mostly) civil conversation with your parents for the first time in… years.
The lunches are fine, but the part you’ve started looking forward to is the before and after. Before, Jack comes to pick you up, and sometimes he comes early and helps prepare (which mostly involves him either talking you off the ledge, pouring a shot or two, or assuring you that your makeup and outfit look great. Not fine, great) or just to hang out. The hanging out part is nice, because he never comes with any sort of expectation. He’ll sit on your couch and scroll through his phone and entertain all the inane chatter you like to get out of your system beforehand but never had an outlet for before.
The after is even more fun. You run through the highlights of the night and hate on all the annoying things your family said to you. This usually also involves stopping somewhere for food (only for you, Jack’s never hungry because he eats t=at the restaurants but you’re never allowed to order anything that isn’t a salad) and then the two fo you fight over who pays. You always insist since you’re the only one actually eating any of the food, but then Jack usually takes your card, puts it in his pocket, and uses his own.
It’s as frustrating as it is hot.
But for the most part, the lunches and your shifts at work have actually been pretty good– as good as night shifts in a trauma center can be, anyway. Jack’s presence is… steadying, even when he’s not physically there. He’s always present in some way– whether it’s little reminders he leaves at your favorite spot for charting (he only uses blue sticky notes) or a real lunch left for you in the breakroom fridge (you weren’t previously aware he actually knew how to cook, or that he knew how picky you are when it comes to what you’ll actually eat for lunch and how often you get too busy to properly make something.) Sometimes he’s there in your head; in little things he’s told or taught you that you remember in the moment.
It’s nice. To have someone be around. Someone you can relax with, joke with– someone who hasn’t looked down on you for the the way you turned out.
You were pretty ready to declare smooth sailing ahead, but then on the third lunch your mother shows up and is decidedly not in a good mood and the seas turn choppy and the boat smashes into the rocks below.
At least, two peach bellinis in, that’s what it feels like.
“Honestly,” Your mother puffs, “I don’t understand why making some simple appetizers could take so long. This is why I hate going to restaurants during lunch hours, the staff just gets so lazy. The menu is always better at dinner anyways.”
You ignore the thinly veiled dig and instead choose to quietly drain the rest of your third peach bellini. They taste like juice and take a much needed edge (or two) of the evening. Lunch. What-fucking-ever.
Jack, ever aware of the best way to survive these functions (somehow) whilst keeping his sanity, remains silent as your mom huffs and puffs, seeming to understand that trying to placate her when she gets in these moods is a fruitless endeavor that only leads to your mom getting more upset and everyone else more annoyed.
You, made slightly optimistic by the wonderful powers of alcohol, attempt to put her in a better mood.
“I have the next three days off, mom. We’ll be able to do dinners instead.”
Your mother, however, only scoffs. “That’s no good to anyone now. We’ve already spent half this week dealing with poor restaurant service. I mean, no respectable job would have such a ridiculous schedule."
“I’m a doctor, mom. It doesn’t get more respectable than that.”
Jack nudges your leg with his, either a silent laugh, show of support, or quiet question of your sanity. Maybe all three.
Another bellini appears in front of you, this one heavier on the alcohol than the last. Your server is getting a giant tip when this is all over.
“You work in the emergency department, dear. That’s hardly stable, and stable is respectable,” Jack clears his throat, and your mother at least has the manners to look mildly sheepish, “No offense, Jack.”
He smiles thinly. “None taken.”
Conversation from there is stilted at best with even your brothers tip-toeing around your mother. No one wants to be the subject of a nitpicking lecture, even when the version she gives them is a slap on the wrist compared to what you endure.
So you keep drinking your bellini’s and they keep coming. After your fourth, you think you should maybe slow down a little, but then your dad starts grilling Jack about his life (again) and you decide that alcohol is, in fact, necessary.
“Have you ever been in a serious relationship before, Jack?”
That one almost makes you ask the server for a shot of vodka, straight. That’s a question you ask a nineteen year-old pimple-faced boy, not a fucking fifty year old man.
“I have, yes. But, like most things in life, they were learning experiences. I’ve moved on.”
Your dad snorts, then gestures to you. “You could teach her a thing or two about moving on.”
Your blood runs cold.
Jack sets his glass down. “And what do you mean by that?”
It’s your mother who answers. Because one vulture circling your soon-to-be carcass wasn’t enough.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t told you. It was all she ever talked about for years. She’s had exactly one boyfriend before you– what was his name honey?”
“Christopher,” You answer hollowly, stomach churning.
Your dad snaps his fingers. “That’s it. It took ages for her to get her first boyfriend. We were fairly convinced it would never happen, but then one day she came home with Christopher. Whole family wanted to throw a party– finally found someone to put up with all that attitude!”
Your family laughs, but Jack doesn’t.
“Where’s the funny part, in all this?”
Your mother clears her throat, just a tad awkward. “When she broke up with him it was awful. She refused to leave her room for works, cried all the time. Honestly, I would have understood if he had broken up with her, but it was all her decision.”
Your dad nods in agreement. “We had to have a sit-down conversation with her about decisions and consequences before she finally stopped crying and hiding in her room. Christopher was such a nice boy, we hated to see him go.”
Jack opens his mouth, poised to fire something back and defend you, but you beat him to the punch.
“He cheated on me with my best friend.”
At that, your mother frowns. “That’s not what Christopher said. You were in your teen angst era, remember? Always picking fights? He told your brother that you were so distant with him he didn’t know you were still together.”
“I wasn’t distant, I was really busy. I was studying for the MCAT. He knew that. He knew how important medical school was to me.”
Your brother rolls his eyes. “Med school was all you talked about. It’s not like you were putting out.”
Your mother snaps her fingers once. “That is inappropriate talk for public. You know better.”
“Come on, mom. It’s true. Everyone knows–”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Jack says, not at all sounding sorry, “But the hospital just texted. There’s an emergency, and we’re needed, so we have to go.”
Jack does not wait for your mother or father to excuse him. He just stands, offering you his hand. It turns out that you need it, because there is, apparently, such a thing as too many peach bellinis. Your mom sends you a pointed glare as you stumble once, after which you make a concerted effort to look more sober.
Neither you nor Jack bother saying proper goodbyes. Once he grabs your jacket and purse (and your vision stops swimming so much and you’re sure you can walk in a convincing approximation of a straight line) you’re both gone. You pass your server on the way out, who is slipped a very generous cash tip for the excellent bellini service.
By the time you get to the car, you realize that you’re about to have to save patient lives and you are very, extremely, drunk. There is no way you are capable of doing any life-saving at the moment.
“Jack,” You mumble, fumbling with your seatbelt, “I think I’m too drunk to go in. Did they say how serious the emergency was? Can I just get a banana bag?”
“There is no emergency,” He says calmly, batting your hands away and buckling you in properly, “I made it up. I figured you’d be okay with ducking out of there.”
“Oh. That was nice of you.”
He clicks you in and gives you a wry grin. “Told you I would handle things.”
You nod, the movement exaggerated and lopsided. “I hate it when they bring up Christpher. They always take his side. Like, is there ever a situation where it’s okay to cheat on a girl with her best friend? I was studying for the MCAT. I didn’t even wallow or break up with him when I found out. I waited until after I took the exam so I didn’t fuck up my score.”
“That’s my girl.”
“Christopher was an asshole. He was a real dickhead. The whole situation sucked. I lost the only two people who I thought cared about me at the same time. My family acted like I was the fucking anti-christ for being upset about it, too. It was fucking terrible. I’m so glad I don’t live with them anymore. I mean, I still love them, and I care about them, cause they’re my family, but everything is just so much easier when they’re not around.”
“You’re allowed to hate them, you know.”
“I know,” You say, fiddling with a hangnail. “I know I probably should.”
You sigh, tilting your head back against the headrest. “I always keep holding out hope, you know? That one day they’ll apologize, figure their shit out, care about me in a way that matters. I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
You frown. “It’s not? It kinda seems stupid. You’d think by now I would know better.”
“No,” Jack eases the car out of the parking space, “We’re biologically wired to love our families. It’s the reason why they can fuck you up so bad. Your brain can’t compute why the people who are supposed to love you above all else just… don’t. Not in any of the right ways.”
You blow air through your lips. “I think my parents fucked me up. I was so happy when I matched into the Pitt, because it was so far away. But then I got out here it just kind of hit me, all at once, that I was alone. My best friend was gone, my ex boyfriend sucked, and I was too busy in med school taking care of myself and my family to make any friends.”
Shit, that sounds so whiny. “But it turns out it wasn’t so bad. Now I've got Mell, and Santos, and I’m pretty sure I’m friends with Shen too. Mckay is nice too. I like her. She’s cool.”
Jack huffs something that could be a laugh, and you turn to study him; the angles of his face awash in the glow of the red light you’re currently stopped at. From here, you can see the tiny bits of tension he carries in his face— a slight pinch in his brow, the tiniest downturn of his lips. It’s the only evidence that he’s not as unaffected by your family as he pretends to be.
Then the light turns green, and his face isn’t illuminated the same.
“And what about me?”
Oh. Well. That’s a loaded question.
The alcohol emboldens you to answer honestly. “I don’t know what to think about you.”
“Oh really?”
“Mmm. Nope.”
“How come?”
"You're so–” You gesture vaguely, “Confusing. I can’t figure you out. For a while there, I was pretty sure you hated me, but then you offered to help me with this and you keep saying you care so I think I’m wrong.”
“You think you’re wrong?”
“Still can’t figure you out.”
“And how can I show you that I mean it?”
That’s. Hmm.
“I don’t know. I think what you’re doing is working,” You pause, debating the pros and cons of continuing to just say whatever the fuck you want before deciding you’re too tired to care, “It helps that you’re really hot.”
His lips twitch. “Oh, does it now?”
“Mhm. You’ve got this whole… capable thing about you. It’s hot. Competency is in.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. I feel like if I had a problem I could call you or something and you would fix it. You’re so…”
“Competent?”
“That’s the word.”
If he’s at all irritated, annoyed, or otherwise put off by your stupid rambling, he didn’t show it.
“You should call me whenever you have a problem. Chances are, I can fix it.”
“Are you like Bob the Builder?”
“I’m a doctor, so no.”
“You’re kind of like Bob the Builder.”
“Whatever you say,” He pauses at an empty intersection before continuing on, “Before I start heading towards your place, do you want to stop by mine? You didn’t even get to eat your salad, and I have leftovers. You can say no.”
“Are you gonna be mad at me if I say no?”
“No.”
‘Then yes.”
“You sure? I wasn’t lying.”
“I know. But I like your cooking.”
You spend the drive to Jack’s continuing to ramble about nothing and everything, to which he entertains with a seemingly endless amount of patience. The only time he interrupts is to hand you a bottle of Gatorade he procured from his back seat. Apparently, he bought a few to keep in his car after the first lunch. “For any alcohol excursions.”
It’s freaky how prepared he is for every situation.
When you arrive, he unbuckles your seatbelt for you (unbuckling is just as difficult as buckling when you’ve had an unknown amount of peach bellinis) and helps you up the stairs to his apartment.
His gigantic apartment.
“Woah,” You mumble as you shuffle through the doorway, pulled along by your hand in Jacks, “I didn’t know they made apartments this size.”
“Its not that big.”
“I think, like, four of my apartments could fit in here. Your living room is the size of my entire place.”
You stumble once, heel catching on the little rug on the entry way, and he’s immediately motioning for you to sit on the little bench by the door and pats his thigh once. You clumsily raise your leg, barely managing to land your foot on the general area he gestures to. He pulls the first shoe off, then repeats with the second with an air of total calm. Like this is normal and he does this all the time for you. Like you regularly find yourself drunk in his apartment.
You decide to unpack the moment when you’re sober.
“One, it’s not that big, and two, that’s what you get for renting a studio apartment.”
“Like you could afford better when you were an intern.”
He snorts, leading you to his couch and gesturing for you to sit. “If you want to change clothes you can borrow some of mine.”
You chew on your lip. The outfits you choose to look nice for your mother are never exactly comfortable, and when else are you going to get the chance to privately live the scenario you fantasize about several times a week before falling asleep?
“Only if you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn't have offered if I wasn’t. Stay there.”
Jack’s only gone for a few minutes before he reappears with a dark grey sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants in a slightly lighter shade. The sweatshirt is oversized and looks well worn, but the sweatpants are suspiciously new, close to your size, and look eerily similar to a pair you changed into after a shift a few weeks ago.
He hands them to you. Neither of you mention the sweatpants. “You can change in the bathroom. Door locks from the inside. I’m gonna change too, and then I’ll heat up the food.”
Jack shows you the bathroom (you don’t bother unpacking why exactly he felt the need to tell you that the door locks and from the inside, that’s for when you’re significantly more drunk than you are now and when you’re not in his fancy-ass apartment.)
Because he’s a man and men take approximately three seconds to change, he’s already in the kitchen setting stuff on the counter by the time you emerge from the bathroom. His countertops are solid granite, because the apartment is clearly expensive and he’s a man. They’re an inky black color with tiny flecks that sparkle when the light hits them just so.
“What are you doing?” Jack asks when he turns from the fridge to find you tilting your head this way and that.
“Looking at the sparkles.”
“Oookay. Do you want me to heat up the vodka pasta or the chicken?”
“You made vodka pasta?”
He shrugs. “You said you liked it.”
You slide into a seat at the kitchen island, a flush creeping up your neck. “The pasta, please.”
Suddenly exhausted now that you’re in soft, comfortable clothes that smell like Jack, you decide to just rest your head on your arms for a bit. And close your eyes. But you’re not going to fall asleep. You’re not.
“Don’t fall asleep. You need to eat something first.”
“M’ not fallin’ asleep.”
“Mhm. Sure.”
With great effort, you blink your eyes open and watch Jack while he heats up the pasta and prepares something else. A salad maybe?
“What’re’you’ making?”
“Just a little salad. In case the pasta is too heavy for you.”
“Oh. How come?”
“Because I don’t want you to throw up.”
“I promise I won’t throw up on your furniture. I don’t usually throw up when I’m hungover.”
“You drink often?”
“No,” Your head lulls to the side, “I’m too busy. I’m actually not-so-secretly very boring. I don’t really like partying. I much prefer staying at home.”
“Thought you went to that thing with King and Santos?”
“Yeah, but that was ‘cause Trinity really wanted me to come and I felt bad and I didn’t want her to think I was a boring, uptight bitch.”
“I see.”
“Yeah. I kinda had fun, though. I wished you were there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” You sigh, probably a hint too dreamily, “Makes me feel better when you’re around.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He slides a little bowl with a light salad in it to you across the counter, and it's perfectly refreshing. Not at all heavy like the pasta ends up being.
“Sorry I couldn’t finish it,” You say, forcing down a yawn and resisting the urge to burrow into your arms and go to sleep right there, “I feel bad that you went through the trouble of making it and heating it up.”
“It wasn’t that much effort. Besides, now you can just eat it for lunch tomorrow instead. I’ll send it home with you.”
“Mhm.” You hum, slowly inching your arms forward and down onto the counter, your head quickly following suit.
Jack chuckles, and you can hear the light step of his feet as he rounds the corner of the island and nudges you in the arm.
“Come on, sweetheart. You wanna get home to bed, don’t you?”
“No,” You shake your head, “I wanna sleep right here. It’s comfortable.”
“It won’t be when you wake up.”
You whine, curling away from him.
He just puffs another little laugh. “You can either sleep in your bed, or my bed. You can’t sleep on the kitchen island.”
“Why not?” You finally lift your head, “And why is your bed an option?”
“One,” He lifts up one finger in front of your face and slowly drags it back and forth, “Because the kitchen island is not a bed. Two, I’m not letting you sleep on the couch.”
“Why? Is your couch uncomfortable?”
“No,” He says, shuffling back over to where the leftovers are and tucking all the food away in the proper places, “It’s just not right to make a woman sleep on the couch.”
“I like sleeping on couches.”
He shoots you a look over his shoulder, “I’m sure you do. But you’re still a little drunk, and my bed is closer to the bathroom than the couch is.”
You prop your head on your hand. “Who said I’m even staying here tonight?”
Jack closes the fridge. “Do you want to? Because I don’t care either way. We both have tomorrow off.”
“It’d be weird to wake up here.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my boss.”
“And I’m faking being your boyfriend so your parents get off your back. Pretty sure we’re past coworkers.”
“What would we even do in the morning?”
“Sleep.”
“I don’t want to kick you out of your bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“You’re my guest–”
“You’re already doing so much for me,” You blurt, stomach clenching, “I– You know me. I can only handle so much. Let me do this one thing? Please?”
Jack glowers for a bit, then sighs.
“Only because you asked nicely and I believe in rewarding good behavior. And because I know my couch isn’t uncomfortable. I’ll help you make it up.”
Jack’s apartment is surprisingly tidy for the fact that a man lives in it (Christopher’s room at his parent’s house always looked like shit) and he pulls down a couple options for bedding. You go with the plain black sheet and its matching thick, fluffy comforter. He insists on making up the couch himself (despite the fact that the alcohol has mostly worn off by now) and even sets up a glass of water, a liquid IV packet, and a bucket– “Just in case those bellini’s don’t love you back.”
The sight of it all is almost too much. It’s just so much care. All of it. The fact that he’s helping out with you and your disaster of a family, the way that despite the horribleness of it all he hasn’t judged you at all for how you deal with them. He refuses to let you drive yourself, always pays for every lunch for your entire family and the little snacks you get afterwards. Listens to you rant and he makes you food and gets you blankets and–
“You okay there?”
“Mhm,” You hum, “Just thinkin’.”
He leaves you be for a moment, busies himself with fixing your pillows and and tugging the comforter into its proper place.
Before you can talk yourself out of it, you turn, throwing your arms around Jack’s middle and burying your face in his chest.
“Thank you,” You say, voice muffled by the fabric, “For doing all of this. Thank you for looking out for me.”
Jack is still for a second, just long enough for you to second guess initiating physical contact –a line you were previously too scared to cross– but then his hands come up and it's so, immediately, remarkably over. Because you’re never ever going to draw that line again. You can never go back to your life without having this. Without having him.
Jack’s hands are big and deliciously warm as they slide up, around your waist, lingering to rub a few circles on the mid of your back before moving on. One arm stays, tightening around your waist and drawing you closer while his other glides further up, up, up, his callused palms sliding over the knob at the very base of your neck before his hand settles around your nape, fingers just barely brushing the edge of your hairline.
You barely manage to suppress a whine at how warm and incredible it feels to be fully enveloped by him. You never want him to let go. Goosebumps erupt everywhere he touches, little sparks of electricity lingering under your skin in his wake.
“I will always,” He presses the lightest of kisses to your temple, just a feathering of his lips, “Look out for you, baby. I’m always gonna be right here.”
His arms tighten around you, drawing you in— closer, closer, closer. Wrapped up in everything that is Jack you can’t help but sag, going completely boneless in his grip and allowing yourself to just bask in him.
“You smell good.” You mumble into his shirt, completely lost in the moment.
“Do I?”
“Yeah. Good. Like man.”
He chuckles, the sound vibrating pleasantly against your cheek. “Thank you sweetheart.”
“Why do you call me sweetheart?”
“Because you’re a sweetheart.”
“I am?”
“Don’t play dumb now,” He pulls back a little, just enough to get a good look at you, fingers curling in the fine hair at your nape and tugging down, angling your chin up so you’re forced to look at him, “You know you are.”
You shrug, eyes darting to the side, your cheeks flushing, “I don’t know. I was just making sure.”
“Mhm.” He hums, tone almost mocking, fingers tightening around your hair just before the precipice of pain.
You stay like that for a few moments of charged silence. Jack’s eyes shamelessly rove over the planes of your face, mapping it out in his mind. He keeps his grip on your hair, not completely forcing eye contact but keeping your head firmly in place.
It’s possessive. Bold. Probably too intimate for two people who (supposedly) are not actually dating
And you love it.
Jack only lets his hand (and your head) drop when your jaw opens in a splitting yawn.
“Okay,” He huffs, taking a step back, “Time for bed. Get going.”
Embarrassment is the only thing keeping you from whining at the loss of contact and impending reality of sleeping on the couch alone. But you made your bed (figuratively) so now you have to lie in it.
The couch does look comfortable. Especially since Jack put all the blankets together.
He waits until you’ve crawled under the comforter to bid you goodnight, followed by a parting reminder to “Wake him up if you start aspirating on vomit.” It’s a very Jack thing to say.
You’re out almost the second Jack turns the lights off. You fall into deep, blissful sleep, dreaming of that final moment in the living room, your eyes boring into each other.
Except in the dream, you tilt your head up those last few inches, and kiss your fake boyfriend as hard as you can.
–
Generally, the annual lecture event ends with a massive blow out argument. Something dramatic and filled with expletives, after which your mother will refuse to answer any texts or calls you send before finally telling you that’s she’s sorry if (always if) something she said offended you, but talking to you is just so hard sometimes so she doesn’t want to unless you’re ready to be more civil. By the time the two of you are on neutral terms again, it’s time for the next annual lunch circuit.
You’re a mess of nerves in the hours before the last one. Like usual, your mom requested that the last dinner be held at your place. “So it can feel like a real family dinner.” While you know that there isn’t any saying no to your mother, you also know that there is no way you’re cramming your entire family in your tiny ass studio apartment. It happened once. It will not happen again.
You originally asked Jack during a last minute shift you both got called in to cover if he would help you move some of the furniture at your place to accommodate them, and then he’d gotten this incredulous look on his face and then told you to tell your mom that you’re having dinner at his place.
“Jack,” You’d gaped at him, “It’s fine. My apartment isn’t that small, and you don’t have to help move the furniture if you don’t want to. I can ask Dennis to give me a hand instead. I really don’t think you want to host my family.”
“Sweetheart, it’s just logic. You’ve seen my place.”
“Okay. No need to rub it in.”
He’d just rolled his eyes and pinned you with a firm look. “Come on. You know this is the best option. If your mom throws a fit, tell her I insisted and give her my number.”
“Do you have a death wish?” You hiss, “That’s asking for torture.”
Jack had just shrugged. “Would having it at my place be easier for you?”
“...Yes?”
“Then we’ll do it there. You’re off in a bit, right?”
You’d nodded.
He fishes something small and shiny out of his pocket and tosses it to you. “That’s my spare key. I’ll be here later than you, so just let yourself in if you want to get there earlier to start setting up. I’ll be home soon.”
Robby shouted his name soon after and Jack was whisked away, leaving you standing in the middle of the ED, holding the fucking spare key to his apartment, gaping like a fish.
The line between real and fake has become so blurred you’re not sure if it ever was there to begin with.
He’s started calling you sweetheart more and more often– sometimes when no one's around. No familial audience to be persuaded into the romantic lie you’re selling. Is it still a lie if it doesn’t feel like one anymore?
The question and accompanying feeling follows you all day. All throughout your harried dinner preparation. Even now, with a solid hour until your family is supposed to start showing up, you can’t help but pace the length of Jack’s kitchen, heeled feet clicking on his floor. Jack himself is similarly dressed up, wearing a pair of dark jeans (“I’m not wearing slacks in my own home, and I’m not old enough to start wearing khakis with everything.”) and a black button down shirt with the first two buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He makes a very nice view and under other circumstances you might take the opportunity to climb him like a tree. But alas. Anxiety.
“Take your shoes off if you’re going to pace. You’re gonna give yourself blisters.”
You ignore him, chewing on an already stinging cuticle.
“Things have been pretty good this far, right? Do you think she’s just waiting until the very end to bring up some secret thing that she’s upset about?”
Jack begins preparing the wine –your mother only likes red– for decanting. “I think if your mother were that upset about something she wouldn’t be able to hide it.”
“True. But what if?”
“I’m not going to help you spiral.”
“Why not?” You whine.
He looks at you with a heavy glare and points to the shoe tray at the door. “Shoes. Off. You can put them back on when they get here.”
You grumble under your breath the entire way but comply. Only because your feet were starting to hurt.
When your family finally does arrive, it ends up being annoyingly anti-climactic. You spend the entire time on the edge of your seat (literally and figuratively) waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for conversation to turn sour, arguments to erupt, someone to choke on a piece of lettuce and die despite professional intervention.
But the argument never starts, conversation remains what it usually is and becomes no worse (or better, unfortunately) and no one passes away due to unevenly chopped vegetables.
The torture is over fairly quickly. Most everyone’s flight back home leaves early the next morning and your dad is paranoid about flight times.
Pretty soon it’s all just… over. They leave, your mother bickering with your father on the way out about something that probably doesn’t matter, and then it’s just you and Jack and the entire scheme is just done. Finished. Just like that.
There won't be anymore knee's brushing under the table, no more shared glances and pecks to the cheek when you make a joke that actually lands. No more excuses just to sit and watch him under the guise of playing the adoring girlfriend. No more late night milkshakes.
You'll just go back to being coworkers-- People who pretend not to know each other intimately. Jack probably won't struggle with it. But to you, right now, the idea of just not having him anymore seems like a another wound, right over top all the others.
You don't want him to become another person who used to know you.
You’ve been staring at the closed door for upwards of five full minutes, clenching and unclenching your fists when Jack comes up next to you. He hands you the same clothes you wore the last time you were there and jerks his head in the direction of the bathroom.
“Why don’t you go and change, huh?”
Your lip wobbles a bit as you answer. “But I want to help you clean up.”
“You can,” He soothes, “After you change.”
“But–”
“Hey,” He interrupts, “No. You’ve been stuck in those clothes for hours. Go change. I’ll wait for you.”
Jack keeps his word. He’s leaned up against the kitchen island when you emerge, rubbing at your –now bare, having had the foresight to bring makeup wipes with you– face.
He looks up when the door opens. “Better?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He just hums, heading back over to the kitchen table, stacking plates and cutlery. You follow in silence, and he thankfully doesn’t push for conversation.
Cleaning up doesn’t take long enough. Jack has a fancy dishwasher (and probably doesn’t want to stay standing any more than he has to this late in the day) and there aren’t any leftovers to pack up. Your brothers are bottomless pits when it comes to free food.
It can’t just be over like this. It can't.
When everything is finished and there isn't anything left to do, Jack wordlessly leads you to the couch and puts something quiet and calm on the TV. The white noise washes over you as you attempt to get comfortable, but the knowledge that it's all over proves to be an itch under your skin that you just can't seem to squash.
“So,” You say after the two of you are seated on opposite ends of the couch, “That’s it then.”
“So it is.”
“Guess I owe you big time, huh?”
“I’ve already told you I don’t care about that.”
“Right,” You look down at your lap, “Yeah. Sorry.”
You lapse into silence.
Jack sighs. “Sweetheart–”
“Was it fake to you?” You blurt, jiggling your knee, still staring at your lap, “Were you– did you mean it?”
It never felt fake. It never felt like pretending.
It felt real.
It felt like, for the first time in your life, things could be easy.
Maybe easy isn't the right word. But it life sure as hell didn't feel as hard.
When you look up, uncomfortable in his silence and hoping there’s answers in his face, but instead of finding something like disappointment or irritation, he’s grinning.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
He dips his head once. “Yes you do. You’re a smart girl, I think you can figure it out.”
Your fingers are curled around the hem of his sweatshirt, white-knuckling the fabric as if to stabilize yourself. Like you’re liable to somehow float away if you don’t dig your heels into the couch and hold on tight.
“What if I’m wrong?”
“You won’t be.”
A scoff escapes your lips, “You can’t know for sure.”
He taps his pointer finger on his leg in an unhurried rhythm.
“You do.”
Your stomach is rolling in a combination of leftover anxiety from the dinner that went better than it was supposed to and the weight of Jack’s gaze on you.
“I think…” You pause, worry threatening to overwhelm you, and take a deep breath before continuing, “I think you might like me.”
“You think,” He drawls, “I might.”
“I don’t want to be wrong!” You cry.
Jack huffs, throwing his head back in a good-natured sigh.
“Come here.”
You scoot further down the couch, sitting criss-cross right in front of him. This is not going the way you thought it would. You were almost certain you’d walk away shamed and embarrassed, forced to fake your death and flee the country out of the sheer humiliation of thinking your boss would actually have a crush on you.
Jack does love to prove you wrong.
“Soo,” You start, still hesitant, “You do like me.”
Jack props his head on his hand, his expression something you’re starting to recognize as fond. “Yes.”
“More than a little?”
“Yes.”
“And you weren’t faking anything. You were serious about the— You know.”
“Use your words.”
“The flirting.” You clarify, ears burning.
“All correct,” He nods, “Though I would have said it differently.”
You frown. “And how would you have put it?”
“I would have said,” He reaches out, snagging your arm and tugging until you fall down onto his chest with a little oof, “That you have a hard time believing things that are good, so I had to audition for my role. Like old-fashioned courting.”
You want to be offended, but unfortunately, it did work.
You frown.
Wait.
“Have you known I liked you this whole time?”
Jack snorts. “Overheard you talking to Whitaker about it during your second week.”
He’s known since the second week?
“Oh my god.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. Except Robby. He’s been hoping you would figure it out for awhile now.”
“Oh my god.”
“I thought it was cute,” He smoothes a hand over your hair, “You were so much more nervous back then. You’ve come a long way.”
You shift uncomfortably at the praise, but Jack’s having none of it. He wraps his arms around you, holding you in place.
“Can you take a compliment?”
“No.”
He re-positions under you, getting more comfortable. “We’ll try again later.”
“Am I– Can I stay here tonight then?”
“Of course,” he murmurs, “My one condition is that you’re not sleeping on the couch.”
“Fine,” You sigh, long and drawn out, “I suppose we can share.”
“How kind of you to share my bed with me.”
“I have been told I’m kind.”
You both smile, and everything just feels so right and so perfect that you can't help but lean up, clearing the last few inches, and pressing a hesitant, gentle kiss to his lips.
It’s just like your dream.
Only this time, it’s real. And Jack is kissing you back.
— ✰ on the page linked below in the SOURCE LINK, you will find ( THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY ) hq gifs of AVANTIKA VANDANAPU sourced from her role in episodes one - three of NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK (2026). avantika is 21 but was 20 while filming this series. she is of indian ( telugu ) descent. all gifs were cropped at 245x145 and were made from scratch by feifer for roleplaying purposes only. therefore, i am taking full credit for these.
gifs feature: Ellen Hunt, Constance Wu, Harry Richardson, Jack Martin, Nicholas Duvernay.
Pope gets mauled by the devil in the middle of the night. (Your cat likes Pope's big chest almost as much as you do.)
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warnings: established relationship, pure fluff, cats, awkward!pope, sadboy!pope, he doesn't know how to handle softness but he needs it, no use of y/n or any description of reader other being a loud snorer, domestic bliss, mentions of smurf being the worst mother ever.
rating: 18+. (there's nothing explicit in this but i dont want kiddos on my blog sorry!)
word count: 1.1k.
fox says: hi friends, thank you for reading! this is just a short little thing i wrote bc i need andrew to be happy, i wrote this in like forty minutes and i almost didn't post it because of how short it is but i hope you guys still like it! as always pls let me know how we feel!
also available on archiveofourown.
Pope had to learn how to sleep with one eye open a long time before going to prison. His home had never been safe and, even as a child, he was always a light sleeper simply because it was a survival mechanism he developed to survive growing up under Smurf’s thumb. So he wakes instantly to the weight shifting on his chest, entire body locking in place as he tries to figure out what is happening. It’s not you, he can hear you snoring like a truck to the side — Pope would always be surprised that such a delicate woman could make so much noise while unconscious —, and the weight is too light and too concentrated to be a person.
He opens his eyes slowly, just a little, not wanting to let the intruder know he is awake; the element of surprise always does wonders for him— attacking fast and hard before your opponent can understand what is happening is what has saved Pope’s life time and time again. On top of him there is a small pile of black fur. The thing is moving, little arms stretched over Pope’s pecks, tiny claws opening and closing, tugging at the cotton of his shirt. The animal blinks, slowly, and Pope can only tell that its eyes are open when the moonlight coming through the window hits it just right.
The Tasmanian Devil. You told him the cat’s name had been Tweety at first, because he was tiny and seemed kind— He grew up into what you call a ‘terrorist’ with a sweet voice and fond smile, so you renamed him. Tweety to Tasmanian Devil. Sweet to sour.
You did the opposite with him. He was Pope when he first met you— Angry, violent, unstable. You’d taken one look at him and started calling him Andy. A new name, a new identity, a facet of his personality that has always been there but has never been allowed to shine through. Sour to sweet.
The cat never seemed to like Pope very much. And it’s fine, Pope doesn’t like the thing either. He has never owned a pet, Smurf never allowed animals inside the house— Julia had made that mistake once, when they were eleven and an old mutt followed them from school. Pope didn’t see what happened, Smurf had dragged both Julia and the dog outside when she finally came home, but he had held his sister in the aftermath, arms around her shoulders as she cried and cried and cried.
Pope never saw the dog again.
Tec. Tec. Tec. The rhythmic sound of the devil ruining his shirt, its attack slow and coordinated as it keeps digging its claws into his shirt and tugging harshly. It doesn’t hurt— The thing can’t even do that properly, it seems. Pope pokes you on the shoulder twice and is only rewarded with the revving engine sound of your snores. You go quiet by the third poke but you don’t say anything, clearly awake enough to understand something is happening but not enough to realize it is him.
“Honey?” Pope calls out. The devil stops moving on top of him for a moment at the rumbling of his chest before it restarts the assault. “Your devil is trying to kill me.”
You slowly turn around then, hair mussed with sleep and eyes squinting. The cat doesn’t seem bothered by the movement, still clawing at Pope’s chest.
“He likes you.” You say, and Pope frowns at how big you’re smiling. “Just wants to make some biscuits on those big titties of yours.”
You’re making fun of him. Pope is getting attacked and you’re making fun of him.
“Wh—”
“Pet him.” You cut him off. Your own hand comes up to scratch behind the cat’s ear. The thing vibrates, then, a soft crooning noise taking over the silence of the bedroom.
“It’s clawing at me.” Pope says, his hands still firmly by his sides.
“He’s making biscuits.” You say again, just a little more forcefully but he can tell you’re having way too much fun. “Cats only do that when they like you and feel safe. When they’re kittens they do that while they’re nursing to help get the milk out.”
“I don’t have any milk.”
You snort. “Don’t I know it.”
Pope’s face flushes, the reminder of how much attention you’d given his nipples earlier that evening crawling to the forefront of his mind. He raises a hand, carefully, patting his index finger on the top of the devil’s forehead. It keeps crooning, still making biscuits on his chest.
The devil feels safe with him. It’s an odd feeling, but not an uncomfortable one— No one ever feels safe with him. People fear him, and he protects his family with his teeth and bare knuckles, but they don’t feel safe around him. You do, he thinks. He never asked, afraid of the answer, but you shield behind him whenever his brothers get too physical with each other, and you climb on his lap and hide your face on his neck whenever you’re watching a scary movie.
He likes that. It makes him feel useful in a different way. When he protects his family he feels dirty, like a crazed guard dog that is going to be put down the second he is no longer useful. With you, he feels like he matters, like he belongs in your bed and in your house and in your heart.
The devil headbuts his finger and you giggle, pressing a kiss to Pope’s bicep.
“He likes scritches.”
So Pope follows through, gently scratching behind the cat’s ear like you’d done before. His nails are shorter than yours, always trimmed down to the point where he’s one wrong angle away from bleeding, but the cat doesn’t seem to mind. The cat crawls a little closer to his neck, a loud mrrrp sound escaping it.
“He hates me.” Pope says, heart thundering at the noise but you just snuggle closer, your leg thrown over his thigh.
“He’s happy, Andy.” Your eyes are drooping, sleep is about to drag you back. “He would’ve bitten your finger clean off if he hated you.”
The cat stands, its little paws digging on his chest and the softness of his stomach. It twists twice before it plops back down on his chest, fluffy tail swiping over Pope’s face. It’s uncomfortable and so unsanitary that any other day Pope might’ve jumped out of bed but he remains as still as he can, the cat’s purring being drowned down by your snoring, his fingers running along the cat’s spine.
He doesn’t say it but, with the Tasmanian Devil’s weight on his chest, your leg over his and your cold hands gripping his bicep like a lifeline, Andy feels safe too.
YES OMG the joel to pope pipeline is so real...... big burly man that has been traumatized by loss and pain and is overwhelmingly loyal to the people he loves, is the one ready to do the dirty work no matter how much it costs from his humanity to make sure his family doesn't have to and is ready to kill, die and set the entire world on fire to keep a little girl he sees as his own daughter safe??????????????? tell me which one of them i just described u CANT (the answer is both, i just described both)
i'm glad u liked the cat!!!! mine aren't terrorists (they're both well behaved lil old ladies u know this) but i cant lie..... olga has a thing for boobs too. idfk why, she just loves them
and aaaaaaaa omg that seriously made my day 🥹🥹 i'm glad you found this special even though it's so short!!!!! i had so much fun writing it and focusing more on fluff which??? i dont really do????
again thank u so so so so much for reading!!!!!! ilu 💗
