When In Doubt, Look Intelligent ☺️

33 and misaligned Lurker and Reader Can’t write for sh*t

[calelundaa]

someone let gator know it’s coupon day and i have one im ready to give out

[ms-mountebank]

Happy hump day to me! 😍

[keer-y]

“Wanna hear you say”

pairing: gator tillman/f!reader wc: 26.7k tags: rivals to lovers, slow burn (there's just a lot of buildup), slapping, shotgunning (smoke/vaping), dirty talk, vaginal fingering, nipple play, oral sex (f + m receiving), pussy slapping, deep throating, vaginal sex, overstimulation, multiple orgasms, slightly unrealistic male refractory period but whatever don’t @ me a/n: *laughs all the way to hell* &&

IT'S A FRIENDLY COMPETITION.

At least, that's what they want you to believe.

Two departments, eighteen players, one charity softball game. For the good of the community.

Yeah, fuck that. It was about showing those pigs who was better, and you and your brethren knew: It was the fire department.

Your crew had been playing in the league for years, and you were defending the title. Yes, of course, you knew it wasn't all about that, but it was nice to win and be able to rub it in the police department's face.

This year, though, they were changing up the rules a little. In addition to the regular state police officers who were joining the team, they were allowing the sheriff's department to offer up a few deputies—young men, of course—to play and try to change the tide.

Wouldn't work. You and the other firefighters were a cohesive unit. You had each other's backs in every manner, every way you possibly could, and there were no ifs, ands, or buts about it—you were going to win, again.

The lead up to the game was tense. Things were taken seriously and then taken too far. Like, spying on each other's practices, standing vigil outside the police stations to intimidate the cops, trying to infiltrate the firehouse to plant stink bombs using some turncoat EMTs—no one said you guys were mature adults, because everything was fair game and this was gravely important.

One of the newbies on the PD squad was a deputy you knew by name only, simply because his father was the sheriff in Stark County. The circulating rumor was that he was a nepo baby who couldn't find his dick in the dark, but when you and one of your fellows, a middle-aged volunteer firefighter named Pete, did some recon on the guy, you had to admit you could see why they'd asked him to play in the game.

He was young, probably around your age, and spry, and while he didn't look like a bodybuilder or overly athletic in general, a quick Google search turned up plenty of articles about him from several years ago, touting his athletic ability in high school, though his sport of choice at the time had been football.

So, nothing to worry about from him.

No, what you had to worry about was how attractive you found him, and whether helping the FD team absolutely decimate the PD team would ruin your chances of getting him to rail you.

&&

Someone above your pay grade had made the brilliant decision to do some PR for the game, even though the entire county and even some neighboring ones knew about it. But publicity helps bring in more donations, and when you show up to the field where you'll be playing the game in just a few weeks’ time, the law enforcement officers are all there showing off, laughing, rowdy, some even shirtless and showing off their physiques. Even the handful of women over there are in sports bras and bike shorts, which—have fun trying to slide into a base in those.

You suck your teeth and sidle up to Pete, who's standing with the rest of the firefighters, watching.

“They're too cocky,” you say. “Look at them.”

“They think they're showing off,” Pete says.

“They are showing off,” you say. “But that's all it is. Show.”

Pete smirks and leads you over to the rest of your group, who are pulling their jerseys out of the garment bag where they're kept over the winter and spring. You only really need them for the charity game and home run derby in the fall, after all. Yet another indication that the FD squad is taking this way more seriously than the police.

They're organized by number, and yours is 14—the letters of your last name neatly stitched over the number, the patch with the emblem of the fire department on your chest and on your right arm. You leave on your jeans, even though it's unseasonably warm for spring and you have a pair of shorts in the gym bag in the back of your car, because you're a slider and you won't make the same mistake as the cops in the other dugout. Not that you're going to be doing much more than posing for photos today.

“You guys got a girl on yer team?” one of them calls, and though he's a little too far away to make out his face, you can see he's laughing.

“You have three!” the captain of your team, and the captain of your unit, who goes exclusively by his last name, Lopez, shouts back.

The cop who called that out to you shuts up, and you laugh, shaking your head. You're used to the sexism, the slights, and the chiding comments, but your boys always have your back, and as you fit a Minnesota Twins cap onto your head, you grab a bat just as the photographer that the charity provided ambles over.

“Good morning,” he calls, waving at you all as he ducks into the little covered bench that serves as your dugout. “Are we ready for some photos?”

Yeahs and Yeses resound from you and your fellows, and the photographer nods, walking through and introducing himself as Ashton every time he shakes a hand. You pause in buttoning your jersey to take his hand and nod, introducing yourself to him as well, and then leave the fenced-in bench to feel the sun on your face again.

The PD team's players are still laughing, throwing balls to each other and catching pop flies; the one who called out to your team is practicing pitching with their catcher, winding up and landing throw after throw right into the mitt. You quirk an eyebrow—this guy seems better than last year's pitcher. He must be one of the new deputies.

“All right,” Ashton calls as he emerges from the fire department dugout. “Let's get some team shots, and then individual shots.”

“Do we really need individual shots?” one of the officers calls, and Ashton just shrugs.

“That's what I was asked to do,” he says, and then motions for the teams to line up in front of each bench.

You all do, but the police finish their lineup first, not worrying about height order or blocking anyone who might be standing behind them—so Ashton heads over there, making placement adjustments as needed and then snapping several photos. He allows them to disperse and says he'll be walking around for individual and action shots once he finishes with the other group shot. The police scatter across the field, bringing gloves and balls and bats along with them, splitting into pairs or trios to play catch or bat.

Pete and Lopez flank you, and you all stand together, smiling for the camera as Ashton takes a few shots, then asks you to move to the middle of the group.

“For what?” you ask, looking at Lopez, who just shrugs.

“You're the star,” he replies.

“I play right field,” you say, laughing. “Tommy's the pitcher.” You point. “Threw a perfect game three years ago and almost again last year.”

“You also won the home run derby for the last three years,” Ashton says to you. “Stand in the middle, please.”

You bite your lip, then move over to stand in between Tommy and Lenny. You can't help but smile a little, because he's right—you might not be the best at fielding but you're a great fucking hitter, and you help the team just as much when you're at bat even if you're weak in your actual position.

By the time he takes a few more shots, the PD team is fully on the diamond, playing a little mini game where each batter is only bunting, just to keep things in the infield. Ashton walks right up to you as the FD team disperses.

“I'd like to get some solo shots of you first,” he says, and you laugh.

“Are you like—serious?” you ask, laughing. “I'm not the best player on the team.”

“You're a triple-time winner of the home run derby, and by my count, you're best known in these charity games for runs batted in, even if your own scoring isn't notable. Isn't that right?”

You shrug. Yes, he's right, but you also aren't really the type to brag about it, even if several of the charity game wins were the result of you driving in the game-winning runs. “I mean, I guess.”

“Grab a bat, please,” Ashton says, and you do, posing for some photos and feeling spectacularly stupid as you do. Last year's photographer had taken team shots and left as quickly as possible. This guy is super into it.

After your shots are done, he releases you to join the rest of your team and makes his rounds, grabbing solo pictures of each player on the field in turn. You make your way over to the three policewomen in the outfield and join them for a round of catch. They introduce themselves as Miri, Portia, and Ebony. They're so nice, actually, that you forget about the rivalry that fuels the feud that makes the PD vs. FD game so exciting and ask if they've ever played baseball or softball before. They all shake their heads no, saying they were asked to play and joined just for fun and a little exercise . You advise them not to even think about sliding unless they want a real fucking painful scrape on their thighs in those shorts.

The four of you head back to the group, both teams now congregating near the pitcher's mound. As you approach, you realize very quickly that you, and your new friends, are the center of attention, and that the guy who yelled about you being the only girl on the FD team is none other than the deputy you'd been staking out with Pete: Gator Tillman.

All fifteen of the men present are looking at the four of you, but you feel Gator's eyes locked on you, feel his gaze the heaviest. You pointedly ignore him.

“I'd like to get some duo shots,” Ashton says, gesturing toward both teams as they mill together. “Everyone, please find your counterpart. So, pitcher and pitcher, shortstop and shortstop, et cetera.”

Gator makes a beeline for you. He jerks his chin at you and sizes you up as he approaches.

“I'm not the pitcher,” you say, pointing at Tommy, who's watching all of this—you all saw Gator pitching to his team before.

“Don't care about this guy's fuckin' pictures,” Gator says, and you almost smirk before remembering he's technically the enemy. “Just wanted ta let you know I ain't gonna take it easy on ya 'cause yer a girl.”

You hold his gaze. “Um, did someone tell you to?” you asked, laughing a little.

“Nah, I just know how you ladies tend ta get,” he says. He jerks his thumb back toward Portia and Ebony, who have found their left field and first base buddies. “Them three ain't got no grit.”

“Well, I've been on this team for years,” you say, moving to step around him and to find the other right fielder. “Excuse me.”

“Wait,” Gator says after you, but you ignore him and approach Tommy, who's standing with one of the police officers, a young man—younger than you, he looks fresh out of the academy—who's bright eyed and bushy tailed and looks thrilled to be paired with a woman, toned arms and strong legs and a face that clearly impresses upon him that you take no shit—only supported by the way you dismissed yourself from Gator's presence when probably no one else ever has or ever would do such a thing.

Ashton makes his rounds, yet again, each team thinking up a funny pose—Tommy suggests putting Gator in a headlock, but the deputy absolutely refuses and so they just end up standing side by side, Tommy smiling widely and Gator just scowling at the camera—he truly did not care about Ashton's fucking pictures, he wasn’t lying. You and the other right fielder, a rookie cop by the name of Leon, mug for the camera, your elbow leaning on Leon's shoulder with your head tipped toward his, while he has his arm wrapped around your waist, his hand (inside his glove, of course) resting around your hip. It's cute and cheesy—the way something like that should be, you thought—but as you break apart from him and see the way Gator is still glaring, you just give him a small smile and turn to Leon.

“Hey,” you say, reaching out to tug at the drawstring of his sleeveless hoodie. “Do you wanna practice catching some pop flies? On the off chance one comes to us on game day?” Your eyes flick to Gator as you ask. He absolutely seems like the type to fall for this kind of thing, you blatantly flirtng with someone else in front of him. If you're right about Gator Tillman—and you think you are—it's a good way to get under his skin and keep him thinking about you, but also to throw him off his game even weeks before the first inning.

“Oh, um,” Leon says. “Yeah, ok!” He smiles at you and you head into the outfield, which Ashton loves because it offers him more opportunity for action shots. At this point, you're wondering whether he actually needs all these photos for whatever PR the charity is doing, or if he just likes baseball that much.

Other duos join you out there, and before long it turns into an impromptu scrimmage game. You all collectively decide to just play until someone hits a home run, and the PD and FD teams flip a coin to decide who bats first. When Leon from the PD team makes the correct call, they align themselves into their batting order while Tommy steps up to the mound.

It takes three innings for a home run to happen. Tommy is a great pitcher, but Gator honestly might be better. He strikes out three of the FD players in 12 throws total, sending Lopez, who hadn't even swung at any of his three pitches, back to the bench looking.

The sides switch, and you're third up. You stand outside the dugout, leaning against the chainlink, watching Gator as he takes the mound, turning his hat around backward and nodding to the catcher once he's ready. The FD's first batter, Pete, steps up to the plate. Two pitches in, he gets a hit, but it's actually a pop fly to right field and Leon catches it.

You catch his eye when he looks for you, and you give him a small “Whoo!” and a wink, then turn back to Gator as you step up to take a few practice swings in the area your team has collectively chosen as the “on deck” spot. Gator walks the batter before you, and you're almost surprised—he seemed better than that. Five pitches, four balls—not a great look. But maybe it was just a fluke.

You step up to the plate, eyeing the PD team as they all look back at you, Portia and Ebony waving at you while Miri blows you a kiss, and you just ready your bat, staring down Gator as he looks past you to the catcher. You wait, gripping the bat, ready to swing—or not—at whatever pitch he sends your way. Gator shakes his head once, then twice. He hesitates, then shakes his head again. You're glad he doesn't have sunglasses on, because it makes his expression a little easier to read. He's nervous, or at the very least, unhappy that he walked someone, but then he nods and readies the pitch.

Bracing yourself, you swing—feel the jump of your heart in your chest when the bat connects with the ball, and then grin, so wide your face hurts a little, because it's fucking flying out of the field. You start running toward first base, but you don't really even need to hurry—by your estimation, it's already over the fence. You and Jeff, the guy Gator had walked, both step on home plate and the game is deemed over, even though it was only a few innings.

You gratefully accept the pats on the back from the other firefighters, and then let Miri, Portia, and Ebony pull you in for a group hug, just as Ashton appears again in your periphery.

He looks smug, a smirk plastered on his face, and gestures to you and the other girls.

“Can we take a picture, ladies?” he asks, and the four of you accept, arms draped over each other's hips as you stand in a line, all of you glistening with a little sweat from running and standing in the heavy afternoon sun. Leon catches your eye, but before you can step away toward him, you see Ashton gesturing, beckoning over another player.

“What,” Gator snaps as he approaches the two of you, the three other women on the diamond making themselves scarce. For the first time since you've joined this softball team, you're regretting it.

“I just think a fun little rivalry like yours should be a focus of the game,” Ashton says, and you look at Gator as he looks at you.

“What rivalry?” you ask.

Ashton looks pleased that you questioned it. “Well—how Deputy Tillman was doing perfectly fine pitching until you stepped out of your dugout. And how you were the player who managed to get the home run.”

Looking from Ashton to Gator, you can't help the way the corner of your lips quirk upward.

“I guess that's true,” you say, as Gator spoke over you.

“This was a fuckin' practice game,” he says. “And what the fuck're you tryna say, anyway?” Gator asks, stepping closer to Ashton, even as you try to move in between to block them from each other.

“What do you want, more photos?” you ask, and Ashton looks from Gator to you, then nods.

“If you don't mind,” he says.

“I fuckin' mind,” Gator protests, but you just huff a sigh.

“It's for charity,” you remind him.

“The game is for charity,” Gator corrects you. “This is all just... fluff bullshit.”

“Just a couple pictures?” you ask to Ashton, who nods. “Let's just do it. We're both already here.”

Gator rolls his eyes, grumbling to himself and then turning away, spitting onto the field before he takes a step closer to you. He makes no move to touch you or even really enter your personal space.

“However you like,” Ashton says.

You're the one to close the distance between yourself and Gator, reaching out to put your arm around his waist. You feel him stiffen up, and then he relaxes—which for Gator still feels and looks like he's constipated—and drapes his arm over your shoulders.

Ashton steps back and readies his camera.

“So what makes you so special?” Gator asks you out of the corner of his mouth. His hand moves from your shoulder to your lower back.

You keep the smile on your face. “Excuse me?” you ask, tipping your head a little to the side as Ashton takes another photo.

“First one ta get solo pictures,” Gator says. “Stuck ya right in the middle of yer team.” He lowers his hand from your back to your ass. “Sleep with him?”

You laugh, just as Ashton snaps a photo of the two of you. “Guess I'm just that good.”

Gator also chuckles. “Guess we'll see about that,” he says, giving your ass a little slap before he pulls away from you completely, even as Ashton protests that he wasn't finished yet. “After the game. We'll see.”

You give him a small smile, then turn away, spotting who you're looking for after a moment, and jogging away from Gator, leaving him there unanswered and unhappy.

“Leon!” you shout, making your way over to the rookie. You glance back at Gator as you do, seeing him chatting up Miri now, but he's looking back at you too.

He can talk to whoever he wants—you're both looking at each other, and you both understand what that means.

&&

You blow off Leon, because he served his purpose and, honestly, you don't like cops just by default.

The game is about a week and a half away now, and you spend a lot of your free time when not at work with your girlfriends at the gym and your downtime while you are at work with your team in the grassy yard out behind the firehouse, practicing hitting and fielding. It's what makes you guys the best—the way you refuse to compromise and work your hardest to be the best players that you can be.

The call comes in late one evening, long after your practice is over: A brush fire next to a house out near the outskirts of the city, not sure if it was accidental, campers, kids playing with firecrackers, or what.

There are already police there, no reports of any people nearby other than the house, so you hop into the fire engine and speed off to the address provided. By the time you arrive, it's already getting way too close to the structure, and you get to action.

Hoses, water from the tank, shouting and coordinating while the family steps out of the house to look on, the police officers there making sure that they stay a safe distance away. The trees and bushes from the field are blackened and dead, dripping with water, steam pouring off of the damaged limbs and branches as Lopez steps through the area, making sure there's no embers that will catch and reignite or sparks that might blaze up again.

Thankfully, you don't need to head inside to the house—you got there in time to prevent the fire from spreading, and despite the chill of the spring evening, you're still sweating in your gear, heavy clothing and helmet, though you do take that off once the fire is out.

One of the police officers is talking to the family with Pete, while you stand beside the engine and take a few deep breaths, humming softly at the scent of smoke and dirt permeating the air.

The flashing lights from the fire engine and the police cars nearby are turning everything red-then-blue then back again, but even in the dimness of the moonlight, you're still able to make out his face when he approaches you.

“So ya ain't just a diversity hire,” Gator says, and you sigh in response, but you're amused anyway.

“I'm good at what I do,” you reply.

“Yeah,” Gator says. “Real good at workin' a hose.”

You meet his eyes, and then laugh right in his face. “That's your line?” you ask, positively basking in his scowl. “Jesus, the girls in town always talk you up but fuck, you leave a lot to be desired, Tillman.”

He opens his mouth, looks like he's torn between telling you to fuck off or to let him show you exactly what you should be desiring, but in the end he just clamps his jaw closed.

“Aw, come on,” you say, reaching out to push at his shoulder with your gloved hand, and then you just remove them both, tossing them into the cab seat in the truck behind you. “Don't be like that.”

“Like what?” he says.

“All pissy,” you say. “If you can call me a diversity hire but can't take a little negging, I think maybe you need to grow a pair.”

He scoffs. “I said you ain't a diversity hire.”

“I'm not parsing words with you,” you say, laughing. “You said what you said.” You lean back against the engine and he steps closer, to your side, leaning up on the truck, in a posture you recognize from every guy who's ever hit on you at the bar, or grocery store, or laundromat, or... literally anywhere you go.

“Said what I said but y'ain't hearin' me.”

“No, I think I can read between the lines of your hose comment just fine, Deputy,” you say, but you're still smirking, still laughing, still entertaining this.

“So what d'ya say?” he asks, leaning closer. You're still overwhelmed with the odor of burning wood, but as he leans in you smell leather and metal.

“About what?” You bite your lip to keep from smirking even wider.

“What, that ya need me ta spell out for ya?”

You shake your head once just for good measure. “No,” you say. “I just want to hear you say it.”

Gator, finally, smirks back at you, closing the distance, his hand landing on your waist, sliding into your open uniform coat, and moving straight to your lower back just like the photoshoot last week. He leans in close, and now you catch the hair gel, the cologne, the chewing tobacco he has tucked into his lip. You tip your face up to his as he speaks.

“Yeah?” he asks, and you nod, barely perceptibly. You know that there's not much time—the fire is out, the inspection of the area will be over soon, the family will go back inside and your fellow firefighters will return to the engine to go back to the station, but you don't pull away even when Gator says the most hideously filthy things right to your face.

“Ya wanna hear me say how I'm gonna have ya soakin' my cock wetter'n anything? How I'll finger that tight little gash'a yers until yer cryin' my name?” You inhale sharply, eyes wide, but he doesn't stop, his hand pressing tighter to your back, pulling you closer. You're almost flush against him, but not yet. “Gonna nut straight down yer throat, how's that? Let ya have a taste 'fore ya ride me.”

“Maybe,” you utter, trying to save face, and he laughs, loudly, definitely drawing attention from probably everyone else who's still at the scene.

“Maybe?” he repeats. “Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll give yer pretty little kitty”—you almost laugh; you should, and you would, if you didn't feel every press of his fingertips like a brand, if you didn't feel your thighs pressing together because you were so stupidly attracted to him you wanted to die of embarrassment—“a second t'breathe 'fore I fit this fat fuckin' dick inside ya 'nd have ya bouncin' on it real nice.”

“Gator,” you manage to scoff, gasping a little as his hand slides down, his fingertips slipping inside the waistband of your pants since he can't very well fondle you through the heavy uniform you've got on.

“You asked, sweets,” Gator says. “Wanted ta hear me say it.” He moves even closer to you, his face right beside you, his cheek practically brushing yours as he whispers, right into your ear, “Wanna hear you too, so how's about it?”

“Deputy,” you hear Lopez' voice say, and just like that he's off you, stepping away, holding up both hands like he's trying to showcase his innocence.

“Captain,” Gator says, nodding to Lopez before turning around to you. “Have a good evening, miss,” he says to you, and the duality of him in that moment makes you turn away and briefly cover your face with your hands

“You good?” Lopez asks. “He giving you a hard time?”

“No,” you squeak out.

“About the game?” Lopez pushes, and you shake your head.

“Don't worry,” you say. “I'm not fraternizing with the enemy.” Not before the game, at least.

Lopez laughs and claps a hand on your shoulder. “Good girl,” he says, squeezing you a little. “Let's head back to the station.”

You climb into the engine and watch as the police cars start to drive away as well, the deputy's leaving last.

Pete leans over. “If he was fucking with you, we'll get him back at the game.”

“I'm fine,” you say, half touched that they care so much to want to protect you, and half annoyed that they think you'd let a guy make unwelcome advances (or otherwise) without standing up for yourself.

“Just another ten days,” Lopez says from the driver's seat. “It'll pass before you know it.”

&&

And they do—well, mostly. The days pass without you seeing hide nor hair of Gator—in person, anyway. You can't speak it aloud, even to your friends, but you replay the conversation, if you can even call it that, to yourself sometimes, at night if you're bored or lonely or, you know. Horny.

You still think he talked a big game that you'd love for him to prove. But you're not about to seek him out three days before the game during which you're hoping to destroy him and his copper friends. Like you'd been hoping since you staked him out—you just hope he won't be too sore a loser to put his money where his mouth is.

The night before the game is scheduled, you head to the gym with your friend Melissa, and, surprisingly, Miri from the PD team. Both of you promised that you weren't going to let the rivalry get between you, and since she doesn't really care about the game other than that it's for charity, it seems like that will actually be the case.

Miri heads straight for the treadmill while you and Melissa head over to the weights—you go for a run on your own time, usually, and get your cardio in that way, so lifting is what you primarily use the gym for.

You're spotting her while she does a set of bench presses, when suddenly you hear a loud wolf whistle and look up, because you hate when men act like dogs at the gym. You're ready to start a fight, honestly, until you realize that Miri is the one who whistled and she was, in fact, whistling at Gator Tillman, who apparently, coincidentally, also decided to work out the night before the game.

And once your eyes fall on him, you see exactly why she whistled at him: He's wearing a muscle tank and a pair of shorts, but not the kind you'd expect to see a guy like him wearing at the gym. They leave most of his legs exposed, and with the slits down the sides of his tank top, you can also see straight into his shirt to his abdomen, his chest.

Gripping the bar Melissa's holding, you help her set it back onto the rack and she sits up, whistling herself, but lower so only you can hear.

“Fancy seeing him here,” she says, and you look down at her. She isn't even looking at Gator—she's looking at you looking at him, and smirking. “He's playing in the game tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” you say absently, and she just sucks her lower lip into her mouth.

“How's his form?” she asks. You give her a look. “What? I see you sizing him up! Either you want him or you already had him.”

“Neither,” you protest, but it's futile—Mel knows you better than anyone. “Ok, well—”

“Already? When?!” she nearly shouts, and you reach your hands out to cover her face, smothering her a little as she laughs and bats your wrists with her palms.

“No, not—Jesus, no. We were just flirting a little,” you say, because that's the only way you can put it without sounding like a harlot.

“Ok, and?”

“And nothing,” you say. “I can't get involved with him, the game is tomorrow. I need to focus—FD needs to win.”

Mel pushes herself up off the bench, gesturing for you to lie down so she can spot you; you do so. “What if you got involved with him to... get in his head before tomorrow?” she suggests, and you look at her upside down, quirking your eyebrow.

“You mean cheat?”

“Nooo,” she says, singsong. “I mean use the assets you have to give yourself an advantage over a disgusting man-pig.”

You both laugh, and before you finish your set, you hear footsteps approaching.

“Oh, hello, Deputy,” Mel says, and you don't let yourself get distracted from your set. You extend your arms, then retract them, three more times before Mel helps you replace the bar.

“Evenin', ladies,” Gator says, and as you sit up, you can see he's not looking at Melissa. He's not really even looking at you—his eyes are fixed on your crotch, the leggings you're wearing clinging to your thighs—and everything between them, surely—and you know it.

“Gator,” you say, figuring that since he's already got you both fantasizing about fucking each other, you're officially on a first name basis for good.

“Mind spottin' me?” he asks you, and Mel only snickers under her breath and just steps away over to the leg press machine, which is far enough away to give you some semblance of privacy but close enough to absolutely eavesdrop, which you fully expect from her and would do too if you were in her position.

“Sure,” you say, sitting up to straddle the bench. “Let me just wipe this down for you.” You stand and step over the bench, and before you can even make a move to grab something to clean the bench, Gator steps astride it and sits down.

“Don't worry ‘bout it, sweets,” he says. “Little sweat never hurt nobody.”

You glance at Melissa, who scoffed at that statement to get your attention and is now making eyes at you, but you just ignore her and round the bench.

“How much more weight d’you want?” you ask, ready to go get some plates for him, assuming he'll want more.

“How much ya got on there?” he asks, turning to look.

“Seventy-five,” you say, and he looks at the weights, then looks at you.

“Double it,” he says, watching as your muscles flex as you lift the weights to secure them on the bar. You spot him, but he lifts it easily, obviously not really needing you, and when you look down at him, you can see he's just watching you as he lifts the weights. “Ready for the game tomorrow?” he asks when you make eye contact.

“Of course,” you say, shifting your weight a little. “Are you ready to lose?”

He chuckles and you help him place the bar back in its resting place. “You talk a big talk, y'know.”

“Yeah, 'cause I can back it up. FD team always wins the charity game.”

“Not this year,” Gator says, and he lifts up to face you, still seated, the bar thankfully between you, because even though he hasn't broken a sweat the way you did, he still looks like he's glowing a little, lit up, his hair loose and half down over his forehead, his hazel eyes sparkling with mischief and the freckles on his face so goddamn lickable that you have to look away.

Your eyes land on Mel, and she just shakes her head, mouthing FUCK HIM ALREADY at you. You just barely feel Gator's fingertips graze your thigh and you turn back to him. By the time you look at him again, his hand is already gone.

“Guess we'll see,” you say, echoing his words back to him.

“Guess we will,” he says, stepping away, over the bench, and you stare at his ass and thighs once his back is turned as he walks to the free weights, hands in his pockets.

Thankfully, considering you're in public, that exchange wasn't nearly as heated and blatant as the last one you'd had. You continue with your workout, catching up with Miri as she grabs a smoothie, and it's when you're heading outside to your respective cars you realize—you don't have your phone. You usually stick it in your leggings pocket when you're at the gym, but maybe it fell out. You let Mel and Miri know and wave away their offers to wait for you—you'll just be a second.

They both look like they want to insist, but you insist first: “I'll be fine, I swear. Besides, Nate won't let anything happen to me, right, Nate?” you ask, gesturing to the attendant at the front desk who also doubles as security and the smoothie-maker.

“Right,” Nate says, giving you a thumbs up. “I'll walk you to your car if you want.”

“Fine,” Mel says. “But you text me the second you find it.”

“I swear on Nate's life,” you say, all three of you laughing as Nate pretends to grasp at his heart through his chest.

Miri and Mel head out into the parking lot, and you return to the weights area, where—oh.

Gator is there, seated on the weight bench, leaning back against the bar you’d used earlier. He's got his arms draped over it nonchalantly, and in his right hand you see—your phone.

“I'd thank you but I don't think you deserve it,” you say.

“I don't,” Gator agrees. “Lifted it right outta yer pocket, ya didn't even notice.”

“Why?” you ask.

“Wanted to talk ta ya alone,” he says. “Without yer girl and Miri around.”

You look over your shoulder; it's late. Late enough that the gym has mostly emptied out, just one solitary figure with its back to you on a stationary bike with their headphones on.

“Then talk,” you reply, and he stands up, holding out your phone. You take it and stow it away in your pocket again.

“Honestly... ain't got much t'say after all,” he admits, keeping his face angled down a little but looking straight at you.

And you feel it, again, the little spark, the electricity between you. It's purely physical, you know that, you understand that, and you remember Mel's comment about getting into his head.

Seems like you're already there though.

“So all that just to let me walk away?” you say, holding his gaze even as you smirk.

Where you're standing, you're out of sight of Nate. You know it and he knows it.

“No fuckin' way,” Gator says, and his hands are on your waist before you can register it. You almost pull away, just by virtue of having unknown hands on you, but you give in because your brain wants it and also, more importantly, almost fundamentally more importantly, your body wants it. He tugs you closer by your hips and this time, you do end up right against him, standing as close as you possibly can in the middle of the gym, his hazel eyes fixed on yours, thick lashes half-shrouding his eyes, and you're wrapped up again in him, the smell of sweat and tobacco this time, his rough fingers moving over your skin as they dip into the waistband of your leggings.

“Here?” you ask, and he just snickers.

“I'll take ya anywhere ya wanna go,” he answers, and then his lips are on yours and you give in all over again.

Gator leaves one hand on your lower back, and the other comes up to cup your face. The way he kisses you is a stark contrast to the dirty words he was saying to you the last time you were in this position, his lips soft and slow on yours, tongue barely dipping into your mouth before he pulls back.

“So?” he asks, and shoves his hand a little further down into your leggings, groping your ass before he pulls it out, the waistband riding way too low, and gives you a playful little slap on your ass cheek. The act of it—of everything he just did—leaves you way, way more exposed than you'd ever want, though his hand on you is still thrilling as he rubs the tender flesh he just spanked. The ebb and flow of it make you want to let him take you home, but the way he's playing with your body in public like this pisses you off, and so you step back, fix your leggings with one hand and slap him in the face with the other.

“What the fuck?” he half-shouts, loud enough that you know Nate will come to see what that was about.

“Tomorrow,” you say, stepping backwards, away from him, fighting to keep your expression coy and probably failing—you do want it, after all, just on your own terms. “If your team wins...” You gesture to yourself, your body. “Wherever you want.”

You hear Nate's sneakers squeaking as he rushes around the corner. He's still far enough away not to hear.

“And if your team wins?” Gator asks.

“Guess you'll find out,” you reply, turning on your heel and waving at Nate as you make your way out of the gym, Nate skidding to a stop and following you, walking you out to your car like he promised while Gator just watches, rubbing at his cheek with his palm, grimacing a little.

&&

The sky is a beautiful baby blue, cloudless and clear, sunshine beaming down on the baseball field as the stands fill with fans, donors, police officers, and your fellow firefighters. The crowd's already raucous before the game even starts, as the FD and PD teams practice before the official start time of 11:00AM.

Last you checked, it was just about a quarter to, so you head back to the little clubhouse by the parking lot for a bathroom break beforehand and to refill your water bottle from the fountain.

You pause only to take a selfie in the mirror, waiting to post it in case the unthinkable happens and you don't win the game, and as you head out of the bathroom, you almost walk right into someone.

“Oh, sor—” you start to say, before realizing it's Gator. You back up a step. Look up at him. Suppress the smirk. “Did you follow me in here?”

He looks you up and down instead of answering, and you straighten your jersey even though it isn't askew, flattening it down over the baseball pants you have on. You stand your ground, not shrinking back under his surveying look, or letting him get under your skin the way you presume you've gotten under his.

“Just wanted t'wish ya luck before the game,” Gator says, and you laugh.

“Oh, yeah?” you say, not smirking now but smiling, in a way that says you definitely don't believe him.

“Yeah,” he says, moving closer to you even though you were already pretty damn close. “How 'bout a kiss fer good luck?”

You don't move, and he takes your inaction as permission, leaning down to try and steal a kiss. Just as he's about to let his lips touch yours, you speak.

“You think you deserve one after the shit you pulled last night?”

He stops, pulls away.

“You think it wouldn't getcha another slap in the mouth?”

Gator smirks this time. “Worth the risk.”

“Oh yeah?” you counter.

Instead of saying anything, he just steps right up to you, close enough for you to feel the warmth of his body from its proximity to yours, and he kisses you. Like at the gym, it's soft and slow, but it builds quickly, and before you really think about stopping, he's licking into your mouth to deepen the kiss right in the middle of the clubhouse lobby, where anyone could see you. And anyone might, because it's got to be almost 11 by now, the game will be starting any minute, and someone’s bound to come looking for the pair of you.

You just let Gator practically fuck your mouth with his tongue as you suck at it, your tongue moving over his as he kisses you almost savagely, and you manage to get a grip on yourself, your hands on his arms, pushing him back as you step away.

“Yeah,” he answers you, finally, and you look up at him before you just lift your hand and slap him again.

This time, he seems to be ready for it, but he doesn't dodge it, he just takes it like a champ. Though even you'll admit you didn't really put too much force behind it.

Gator just chuckles quietly. “Gonna make me start assumin' that's just foreplay t'you, sweets.”

You laugh and step around him, and he lets you go. At the door, you stop and turn to look at him; he's still standing there, watching you. “You coming?” you ask, holding the door open.

“Oh, yeah,” he says, walking over to you. “Just got used t'you walkin' away from me mid-conversation.”

You roll your eyes, but together you leave the clubhouse and approach the field to thunderous applause. You made a point to avoid any of the publicity stuff that Ashton had provided the photos for, but you heard from Miri and Pete that they were very heavily pitting you and Gator against each other for some reason. Stupid, you thought, but hopefully making you two seem like you were going to antagonize each other made more people take notice of the game and donate for the winner's charity.

When you walk around the side of the stands with Gator—not that you were even that close together, and he was a couple steps behind you—the crowd notices. The cheering increases in volume, and you almost have to laugh, because these people are acting like you're a legitimate softball star with an actual rival. You'd gotten decent attention from the crowd in years past, but not like this.

You chance a look back at Gator, who looks thoroughly miserable at being the center of attention. He'd hated having his photo taken, so it stands to reason that he would hate being watched by so many people too. Part of you hopes he'll choke on the mound; the other part hopes he doesn't, because you want to win fair and square, not by using your tits (thanks Mel!) or his nerves to your advantage.

The PD team is up at bat first, and you watch as they line up back into their dugout as your team takes to the field and the first couple of batters emerge, one to home plate, and one to the on deck circle.

All of the police officers are wearing brown t-shirts which you figure are supposed to be their “uniforms”—they all say Stark County Police on the back in lieu of a name or number, like the FD jerseys you're all wearing. It seems either the deputies missed the memo or weren't given any shirts, because they're all wearing mismatched clothing. Gator in a white t-shirt, the sleeves short enough to show off the tattoo on his left forearm and the barbed-wire lettering on his right; the other two deputies have on a New York Yankees jersey (Jeter; you roll your eyes), and a camouflage shirt. They couldn't even bother to look professional, cohesive; if that's how the day is going to start, you hope it's a sign of how it will end too.

Gator and Tommy are both on one in the first few innings alone. Gator is striking out batters left and right, and Tommy only lets up one hit which ends in an out as Jeff dives to catch it.

By the 9th inning, though, both teams have scored some runs, and it's 3-2 in favor of the police department. There are three batters ahead of you: Lopez, Donnie, and Jeff. If any one of them can just get himself onto a fucking base, you know for sure you can drive in two runs. And after that, it's game over. The FD team gets last licks, and you're known for making sure the game ends in a win.

You slink out of the dugout to watch the game without a chainlink fence in your way, leaning back against it from the outside, eyeing Gator, watching as Lopez heads to the plate, taking in the scene as Gator spins the ball in his hand. He happens to glance to his left and his eyes fall on you for just a second; he turns quickly back to the catcher. He shakes his head, shakes his head, shakes his head, then nods.

Lopez catches the first pitch square on his bat and takes off like a rocket. It bounces somewhere in the outfield and then it's sailing on its way to second base, thrown there by the left fielder. Lopez stays put on first.

Donnie takes his place in the batter's box while Jeff takes a few practice swings off to the side. Gator throws two strikes, and Donnie hits two foul balls before the fifth pitch is thrown, and then he manages to hit another single.

Jeff is up now, and then you. You take Jeff's place on deck, while he squares up with Gator. In a move that you should have expected but are amused by anyway, Jeff bunts and it's clear that Gator and the other infielders are not expecting it. Jeff laughs as he sprints to first base, moving Lopez to third and Donnie to second.

Bases loaded.

You're up.

As you step up to the plate, you can already feel the adrenaline coursing through you, excitement making you half-giddy. No outs, three men on. Facing the guy who you're pretty sure is fucking up consistently because of you. You just have to hope you don't fuck up because of him, too.

You settle into your stance and wait for Gator to ready himself for the first pitch. It goes wide, you think, but they call it a strike. You straighten, look to Lopez for assistance or a second opinion, but he just waves it off. So he agrees—strike.

Fine.

You raise the bat again, and this time, at the second pitch, you swing—and miss. You hear the umpire call it a strike, and you even see Gator clench his hand into a fist and thump it against his chest like he's hyping himself up for what could very well be his final pitch to you.

This is not good, but you can't focus on that, can't do anything other than hit that goddamn fucking ball.

You watch Gator, staring straight at him, as he shakes his head at the catcher, then nods. The third pitch—the potential third strike—is coming.

Gator throws.

You swing.

It connects.

Right away, from the resounding crack and the hush that falls over the crowd, you can tell. You know. It's a home run. A grand slam. Four runs batted in in the bottom of the 9th. Game over. You won. You won.

Lopez, Donnie, Jeff, and the rest of the FD squad are waiting for you at home plate when you hop onto it with both feet, and then you're surrounded by men, all hooting and hollering and smothering you with hugs and slaps on the back. You lose your Twins hat as they hoist you up on top of them, eight firefighters holding you up to crowdsurf you along the first base line.

You're still buzzing, still thrilling from the grand slam and the win and the sheer contagious excited energy of your teammates—and then you see Gator.

He's not on the pitcher's mound anymore; he's over near the dugout with Miri, sucking on a vape and blowing the smoke up and away from her. He's watching the spectacle of you being venerated by your team, by the crowd—hell, even by his team a little—and when he catches you looking, he offers Miri the vape and she takes it, grinning up at him. But he's not paying her any attention; he's watching for your reaction.

Like you'll be jealous.

Please.

You ignore the slight pull in your stomach and just throw your arms up into the air, losing yourself to the victory and the roar from the stands.

&&

The entire crew plus countless others—both teams, along with a bunch of volunteer firefighters, off-duty cops, and family members—are supposed to meet up at the local bar later that evening after the game for food and drinks.

You're definitely going; you want to, plus you promised Miri, Ebony, and Portia you'd show face, and Mel wanted to meet you there to celebrate too. Or to watch what happens with Gator, though she denies that one up and down.

When you arrive, freshly showered and dolled up in a sleeveless dress that shows off your arms and your legs, you can see right away that it's all-around good fun, revelry of the highest order. You're not the only one who went home and got cleaned up—you can see Portia's hair is freshly straightened, Ebony is wearing an adorable technicolor romper, and Miri has on a full face of makeup. You arrive the bar, linking arms with Mel in the parking lot, who drove separately from you because, as she put it, “Either of you could meet someone” and then gave you an exaggerated wink.

You know better than to rise to the comment, and so you just ignore her, walking in to the wall of sound emanating from the sheer number of people—even if they were all speaking at normal volume, it would have still been staggeringly loud. As it is, people are yelling, laughing, singing along to the jukebox, and all of it's spurred on by alcohol, so it's at least twice as loud as it should be. The trio of your new police officer friends rush over to you right away, drinks already in hand, and you make your way over to the bar to procure your own libations. You do a round of shots, and as you swallow the mouthful of liquor, letting the glass thunk hollowly on the bar as you put it down, you turn and spot Gator leaning against the opposite wall, pint glass in his hand, eyes directly on you, ignoring whatever Leon is yapping away about at his side.

It's a little too early in the evening to entertain leaving with him just yet, but you tuck him away into the corner of your mind for later. There's no music to dance to—not that kind of bar, really—but the jukebox is stocked with classic rock hits and when you crowd around it with Miri and Mel, you flip through the records until you find a track by Heart and immediately select it, then queue up another by the Stones (Mel) and then Blondie (Miri) for good measure. Ebony and Portia are waiting for you when you return to the bar, and the five of you chat about the game and the charity and work. Portia is pulled away barely ten minutes later by Jeff (you give her a nod, because he's a good guy), and Ebony decides she's hungry and wanders away to the opposite end of the bar to order food.

Miri orders a second round of shots for the three of you, and just as you're about to knock yours back, you feel a presence at your elbow. You ignore him and just drink the liquor, smacking your lips before you turn to Gator—

Except it's not Gator, it's Leon.

“Oh,” you say, surprised. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, and you can tell he's trying to keep it cool. Mel snickers behind you, while Miri looks on, biting her lips together from the inside. “You killed it in the game today.”

“Ah, thanks.” You smile at him and over his shoulder, you notice someone sidle up to the jukebox, flipping through the song selections, but he's looking back at you too often to really be subtle. That, of course, is where Gator got to. He's smirking at you, like this is all his doing.

“—a drink?”

“What?” you ask, looking up at Leon, whose smile falters a little. Behind you, you hear Mel laugh quietly even with all of the other ambient noise.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Leon asks, and you open your mouth to decline.

“She's sober,” Mel says, interrupting, like he didn't just see you doing a shot. “But I'd love one.”

Leon looks from you to her and back again, questioning. You nod, then shake your head. “No—I'm not sober, but, um, Mel's a lot more fun than me.”

“You... sure?” Leon asks, but he's taking in Mel's smile, her toned arms, the way she's stepping around you to get to him.

“I'm gonna go find Ebony,” Miri says, clapping her hand onto your shoulder, and then she's gone. Leon orders two drinks.

“You really did, um,” Leon says, turning back around with a glass of some amber liquid, neat, while Mel pulls the little umbrella out of her cocktail and tucks it behind her ear, “do well in the game today.”

“Thank you,” you say, smiling, and then giving Mel a look.

“I just saved your ass,” she mutters into your ear, pulling you in for a hug, giving you a kiss on the cheek, and then a pinch on the ass. “Have fun with the deputy!”

“Shut up!” you call after her, but she's already gone, her arm curled around Leon's, and you turn back to look for Gator at the jukebox at the same moment he steps right into your personal space, startling you. You jump a little and steady yourself against the bar, muttering, “Jesus Christ.”

“Lovin' all the attention?” he drawls, and you look up at him, taking him in from close up now. He's got a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth, and you don't detect the scent of chewing tobacco or leather clinging to him—no, now you smell a musky, deep cologne and mint mingling with beer. His hair is loose, falling just a little over his forehead, and as your eyes move over his face, he smirks, flicking the toothpick to the other side of his mouth with his tongue.

“Oh, yeah,” you say, pulling your gaze away from him and turning to the bar, signaling to the guy tending it that you want to order something. “It's what I live for.”

“Well, when ya hit a grand slam in the bottom'a the ninth... wha'd'ya expect?” Gator asks, leaning on the bar beside you, both elbows on the wood.

You scoff. “I don't know. It feels a lot different this year,” you admit.

“Why's that?”

You look at him, opening your mouth just as the bartender approaches, and you order a vodka cranberry. You look at Gator who asks for whatever's cheapest on tap, then looks at you expectantly.

“No one made such a big deal out of it before,” you say. “Last year, or... before that. I think it's 'cause they really played up... me and you.”

Gator smirks. “Oh yeah?”

You roll your eyes. “Not 'me and you' like that,” you say. “I just mean... the photos of us, and the story of what happened at the practice game. And... what happened today.”

“Yeah...” Gator says, his voice trailing off as he takes the glass of beer from the bartender, eyeing your glass as it's plunked down in front of you. “Choked.”

Sipping your drink, you look at him out of the corner of your eyes, waiting for him to elaborate. He doesn't. “Yeah, what happened?” you ask.

Gator scoffs. “Nothin',” he says. “Just choked.”

The drink is sweet and tart on your tongue as you lean over to him. “Thinking too much about me to focus?”

“You fuckin' wish,” Gator snaps, but there's no real bite in it.

“Shouldn't've kissed me before the game, Tillman,” you say. “Probably had a boner for all nine innings.”

“Jesus Christ, are we 12? A boner?” He huffs, disgusted, at you, then lifts his hand to pluck the toothpick from his mouth, and takes a long swig of his beer.

“What would you call it?” you ask.

“I wouldn't call it nothin', 'cause I didn't have one.”

“Have what?” You snicker a little. “Wanna hear you say it. Have what?”

“I didn't have a fuckin' boner, Christ. Lay off, woman.”

“From sweets to woman,” you say, raising your eyebrows as you sip your drink. “I see how it is. That why you sent Leon over? Tired of me?”

Gator laughs. “Nah. Just thought it'd be funny.”

“Funny to ruin your own chances?”

He looks at you then, sidelong and impudent. “Please. Y'know that kid wouldn't shut the fuck up aboutcha. What the hell happened?”

You bite your lip, because you both know why he's here. You both know why you're talking to him. You just have to decide how much you want to divulge.

“My friend Mel scooped him up.”

“Why's that?” Gator asks.

You shrug, but his eyes fix on you, looking like amber in the dim lights of the bar, and you're entirely unable to keep your mouth shut. “She wants me to hook up with you.”

Gator laughs at that, a genuine belly laugh that has him grinning, eyes crinkled at the corners, greatly amused. “I think you want you to hook up with me,” he says. “Speakin' of, your team won, 'nd I'm itchin' t'find out what that means.”

“Me too,” you admit, and he pushes off the bar to face you. He takes you in, a smirk playing at his lips as he takes another drink of beer—you mimic him, sip your cocktail—and then he puts the mostly-empty glass down on the bar.

“Well,” Gator says. “We got all night, sweets. How 'bout a little fun?”

You tip your head to the side, shrugging in a way you hope reads as coy, and follow him, still clinging to your glass.

A little fun, apparently, means heading over to the heavily populated area of the bar that contains the pool table and dartboard. You notice a handful of men circled around the pool table so Gator veers toward the dartboard, mostly because it's less crowded and not currently in use.

“Know how ta play?” he asks, and you shrug. He suppresses a smirk; you absolutely catch it. “All right. I'll take it easy on ya—let's just see who can score highest after a couple rounds.” He steps over to the board, grabbing six total darts, and hands you three.

“Ladies first,” Gator says, and you shake your head again.

“Show me how it's done,” you suggest, and he takes the bait, sticking the toothpick back into his mouth—you force yourself to avoid looking at his lips—and lining up a throw. He measures it out, taking his time, and his first shot lands and he gains 20 points. The other two net him a total of 43 points which brings him to 63 total.

“Nice,” you say, taking his spot as he grabs his darts from the board and stands off to the side. His gaze weighs heavy on you as he steps to the side, watching as you attempt to copy his posture and stance, and your first dart lands in one of the triple rings. “How many is that?”

Gator sucks the inside of his cheek. “Fifty-seven,” he says.

You grin at him and make your next two throws. Carefully, carefully... you gain another 13 points.

“First shot a fluke?” he asks, an edge to his voice.

“Beginner's luck,” you chirp.

“Mm,” he hums, flicking the toothpick with his tongue.

His second round ups his score to 137, one of his darts landing in the triple ring as well, and the other two in the double ring.

This time, when you trade places with him, you feel him scrutinizing you; there are other eyes on you now, too, police and firefighters alike watching. Some of them know what's going on and it's not the police.

You toss the first dart at the board and cock your head to the side when it lands in a spot that only gets you 6 points. “Darn.”

“Uh huh,” Gator says, because now he sees your fellow firefighters behind you snickering and nudging each other—you wish that they had even a pinch of subtlety—and you use your next two throws to just give it up, because there's no way you could keep pretending after this.

Your second throw lands in the triple ring directly above the bullseye: 60 points.

And for good measure, you make sure your last throw lands in the dead center of the board. Bullseye. Only 50 points, but enough to take you to 180 total.

You feel the hands of your colleagues on your arms, razzing you, laughing and hyping you up, as you make eye contact with Gator. You open your mouth to speak as the group of firemen leave you, but he cuts you off.

“You hustlin' me?” Gator asks.

“No...” you say, not quite able to suppress the giggle. “We didn't bet anything.”

He steps closer to the board, stabbing the three darts he's holding into it, and then approaches you.

“You were hustlin' me,” he says, and this time it's not a question.

“So I know how to play darts,” you say, rolling your eyes. “Gonna arrest me, Deputy?”

“Fuckin' should,” Gator says, once again crowding you, stepping right up into your space, and maybe it was the shots and the drink, lowering your inhibitions just enough to allow it even in public, just enough to not care that there could be any number of eyes on you, your colleagues and Mel and Leon and strangers—you let Gator put his hands on your waist and pull your front against his, his lips trailing over yours as you gasp a little, because he's got you up against the now-unused pool table, your ass on the edge of it as he boxes you in.

“You wouldn't,” you say against his lips, resisting the urge to hop up onto the pool table and let him step in between your thighs, even though the heat coiling in your belly really, really wants you to.

“Don't test me, sweets,” he says, and you laugh against his lips; your amusement lingers as he does kiss you, and his hands squeeze your ass through your skirt before someone behind you wolf whistles. Gator is unfazed by it, but you turn away, starting with your face and then your body, twisting yourself out of his hold. You blearily look around to maybe see who whistled at you—your eyes fall on Lopez who's laughing, but he turns back to the bar, giving you as much privacy as you can get in a crowded room, and you rest your palm on the pool table, fingertips skimming over the felt as you round its corner, now standing on the side perpendicular to Gator.

“You play pool?” you ask.

“Yeah,” Gator says, moving a few steps forward, like he wants to follow you but knows nothing can really come of it when you're still in the bar.

“Better than you play darts?” Your hand curls around the 8-ball.

Gator scowls at you, but then snickers—he'll give you that jibe, because it's kind of funny in a catty way. “Yeah, actually.” He follows you around to your side of the table, reaching for the rack to set the balls out on the table. “You?”

“Not a clue,” you reply. “For real, I swear.”

He racks the balls, gesturing for you to roll the 8 over to him, and you do. He settles it into the center of the triangle then grabs a cue and hands it to you, placing the cue ball.

“Break 'em,” Gator says, and you study the set up on the table, then lean over it and line up the cue with the ball at the point of the triangle. You hit the cue ball and watch as they scatter over the table—and then as the cue ball rolls right into one of the side pockets, scratching right out of the gate.

You laugh, and Gator groans behind you.

“That was so bad I almost think yer fuckin' with me again,” he says.

“There's no way I could have done that on purpose,” you retort, and he just gives you a look, reaching into the pocket for the cue ball.

“Get over here,” he says, putting the ball back on the table. “C'mon, let's try to sink the 5,” he says, pointing to the solid orange ball, precariously close to one of the corner pockets. “C'mere.”

Moving over to him, Gator steps back to let you lean over the table, and as you do, his hands end up back on your hips. You turn back to look at him, but his only response is to wink at you, toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth, curved up into a smirk, and then he leans over you, your back tucked against his front, his hands sliding down your arms to guide you.

“Everyone can see us,” you mutter, as he jerks his hips against your ass just enough for you to know he's doing it on purpose.

“And?” Gator asks. “I'm teachin’ ya how t'play pool. Perfectly normal behavior fer a bar.”

You fall silent, letting him adjust your arms, your posture. One of his hands slides off of your arm and moves beneath your front, pressing against your stomach just beneath your breasts. Your breath catches, but he doesn't move it further. He just holds it there, holding you against him.

“Take the shot,” he says, and you move your arm with his—he keeps your elbow steady as you draw back, and when you hit the cue ball, it shoots into the 5 and you sink it right into the corner like he'd called for. The cue ball spins safely away from the pocket.

“Ok,” you say, grinning, expecting him to move off of you. And he does—but not before moving his hand from your stomach to your chest, surreptitiously squeezing one of your tits before he pulls back.

Without missing a beat, you straighten up, spin around, and slap him right on the cheek.

You hear several bar patrons whoop and whistle—a few even applaud, because you know they witnessed the way he was slathering himself all over you, even if they didn't see him cop a feel—but Gator just chuckles.

Leaning in, his breath warm on your cheek, you hear the laugh lingering in his words. “Must be doin' somethin' right if that's the treatment yer givin' me.”

He takes the cue stick right out of your hand.

“Gonna sink 10 in 'at side pocket, there,” he says, using the end of the cue to indicate which one he means, and then he artfully does exactly what he said as you watch, desire clouding your mind. He's such a cocky asshole, but that doesn't change how strongly you feel about getting him on top of you. Or under you. Or next to you. Whatever works.

“Gonna trounce me?” you ask, and he meets your eye, smirking.

“At pool, or...?” he counters.

“No,” you say, stepping away from the pool table, watching as he looks you up and down. “Don't think I'm much of a billiards girl.”

“Well, I ain't much of a darts girl,” Gator says, making you snicker. “So I think we exhausted our options.”

“Well, there's food. And alcohol,” you say, gesturing to the bar. You can see Miri and Ebony seated at the far end, while Mel and Leon are off in a corner, actually still chatting. Maybe in addition to helping you out, she's actually doing something for herself too.

“You hungry?” Gator asks.

You bite your lip. “Kinda.”

“Well,” Gator says. “When yer the softball MVP and a covert darts pro, I guess ya work up an appetite.”

“Oh my god,” you say, hitting his arm. “Shut up.”

“Nah, you like it,” Gator says dismissively, tossing the cue back onto the pool table, still littered with billiard balls. It knocks some of them out of place, the sound of wood clunking against the resin as you walk away. He drapes his arm over your shoulders, leading you back to the bar. You end up right next to Miri and Ebony, who give you knowing looks.

“Well, hi,” Miri says, raising her eyebrows at you.

“Hey guys,” you greet them, as Gator tries to catch the bartender's attention.

“Is this an impromptu date?” Ebony asks.

“No,” you say, hoping he's not listening.

“No?” Miri repeats. “Looks like a date.”

“It's not a date,” you say. “We're just...messing around.”

“You slapped him,” Miri says.

Before you can respond, Gator leans into you, his front against your back again. “That was foreplay.”

Miri gasps and Ebony shrieks out a laugh, and you elbow him in the ribs as he just laughs too.

“It was not,” you try to say, but Gator is nodding at the others, and Miri is coughing, trying to compose herself, and then the bartender's there with a small, cardstock menu for you to look at and you just absently order a burger and fries without even looking at it. Wanting to fuck Gator has been a net positive (your team won the game) but it's also proving itself to be a lot more trouble than its worth (you are, indeed, on an impromptu date with him at a bar, and pretty much everyone you see on a daily basis is bearing witness to it happening).

“I'll have the same,” Gator says to the bartender, handing him back the menu, and you realize that now you have to stand here even longer with the guy you're totally on a date-not-date with and two relatively new friends who you theoretically could ghost after this. Which would be totally fine, until Mel pops up beside you with Leon in tow.

“You guys getting food?” she asks, and you nod only because you can't lie to Mel. She always knows.

Gator is the one who speaks. “Yeah,” he says. “She's been working up an appetite fuckin' with me all goddamn day.”

“Hey!” you say, hitting him on the arm again, and he just laughs, stepping out of the small throng of people and over to a clear area of the bar to order a drink. It's less crowded than it was when you first arrived—many of the firefighters and police officers have left, along with their friends and family, so now most of the people in the bar are just regular patrons or townies. He leans over the bar, and you turn to Mel.

“Bathroom,” she says to you, hooking her arm in yours and leading you away from the little bubble of people surrounding you. Once you step through the door, it's immediately cooler and brighter, the air less stuffy even though it smells like disinfectant and dirty mop water.

“What?” you ask, and she steps closer to you in case any of the stalls are occupied.

“So things seem to be going well,” she says, voice low, smirk on her lips.

“I guess so,” you say, and she grins a little, wiggling her eyebrow at you.

“You're so in.” She squeezes your arm. “First the gym, and then the game, and now whatever the hell you guys have going on right now.” She sighs wistfully. “I'm such a good matchmaker.”

“You? You did nothing!” you insist, but she speaks over you, her voice staying quiet in the stillness of the bathroom. Behind you, a toilet flushes and you hear the rattle of the paper roll.

“Excuse me,” she says, “I put the whole idea into your head at the gym.”

“No you didn't, and it's not like that,” you say, and she pauses. “I didn't—use my 'assets' or whatever you said.”

The stall door opens and you push Mel back, away from the sinks, as the woman washes her hands. Mel waits to reply until she leaves.

“Ok...” she says, nodding. “Ok. Well, you know what to text me if you need me to come get you.”

“I have my own car,” you say.

“Then I expect a full rundown tomorrow morning,” she says, reaching out to fix your hair, then wiping a stray eyelash off your cheek. “Over coffee?”

“We'll see what time I wake up,” you quip, and she squeals, squeezing your arms as the door opens behind her and Ebony walks in with Miri.

“Oh, did we miss some girl talk?” Miri asks.

“Sorry,” you say, while Ebony just winks at you as you pass the two of them on the way out.

When you return to the bar, Gator and Leon are sitting on stools, far apart—there are two empty spots between them, and you take the one beside Gator while Mel hops up beside Leon. You watch as she places her hand on his thigh as soon as she settles down.

You turn to Gator just as he sips his beer, and once you're seated, he slides you a second vodka cranberry, which he taps with his beer glass as soon as you pick it up.

“Cheers,” he mutters, and you smirk before you sip the cocktail.

“To what?” you ask.

Gator leans in closer to you, his elbow against yours on the bar, his lips brushing your ear.

“To wherever the night takes us, sweets.”

He tilts his head a little to the side, and you feel the rush in your belly as you realize that he's going to kiss you, without any antagonizing or even any playfulness, any banter—but before he can, two plates are set down before each of you with a clatter. You spring apart, and without waiting for you to even survey your meal, Mel is already picking at your fries.

“Melissa, I swear to god,” you say, grabbing her wrist, even as she artfully plucks the fry out of her left hand with her right and bites it in half.

Beside you, Gator is laughing, picking up his burger, and Leon is watching, amused.

“You know, um, Mel, I can—get you some fries,” Leon says, and she just looks at him the way someone would look at a lost puppy.

“I don't actually want fries,” she says, and you move your plate a little away from her since she's distracted. “I just like ruining my best friend's night.”

“She's really good at it,” you say, leaning forward to look at Leon around Mel, then turn your bar stool toward Gator a little more. He's eating quietly, not watching you intently but keeping an eye on you. You both work at clearing your plates in silence, and once half of your burger is gone and you've stopped barring Mel from taking your fries, you shift on your stool to face Gator. Once you do, he sips his beer and clears his throat after he swallows.

“So,” he begins, “thought any more 'bout yer prize fer winnin' the game?”

You pick up one of his fries and pop it into your mouth, shrugging a little. “Maybe.”

“Feel like' enlightenin' me?” he asks.

“No,” you reply, and he just chuckles to himself, taking another bite of food and smirking as he chews. “Yer real fuckin' funny, y'know that?”

“Why?” you ask, taking a bite of your burger and looking at him with your eyebrows raised, waiting for him to explain.

Gator lifts his hand to rub at his mouth, his chin, before his cheek, and your eyes trail over the freckles on that side of his face. “Think yer bein' real slick actin' like this ain't gonna end the way we both know it's gonna end.” He picks a fry off his plate and holds it out to you, intending to feed it to you. You hesitate, hoping that Mel isn't seeing this happen, but you open your mouth and let him feed you the French fry. You close your lips, but his hand lingers there, his index finger tracing over your lower lip. It isn't particularly sexy, but you also know that he didn't really mean for it to be. He just moves his fingertip over your lip, then his hand over your cheek to thread his hand through the hair at the side of your head, the nape of your neck, and as he leans in, you move closer to him too. He doesn't kiss you, but his breath is warm on your cheek as he speaks, just low enough that you can still hear him in the din of the bar interior.

“Wanna head outside fer a smoke?”

“I'm a firefighter,” you joke, turning toward him and letting your lips just barely move over the two prominent freckles you'd focused on earlier. “Kind of anti-smoke by default.”

Gator laughs, pulling back from you, dropping his hand from the nape of your neck down to your thigh, letting it slip between your legs and disappear under your skirt. He's letting it rest on your inner thigh, but not trying to move too high up over your bare skin. You squeeze your legs together, feeling yourself react to his touch, feeling yourself clench up but you manage to save face.

“I ain't a real smoker,” he says, using his free hand to reach into his pocket and pull out the lime green vape you'd seen him sharing with Miri at the photo shoot. “So this ain't real smoke.”

“Guess you got me,” you say.

“Guess I do,” Gator retorts, sliding his hand back down to your knee as he steps off of the bar stool, pocketing the vape again and pulling out his wallet instead, tossing a few folded bills onto the bar to cover your food and drinks. “Need ta tell yer girly we're headin' out?”

“We're—leaving?” you ask.

Gator sniffs, then huffs a laugh through his nose. “Hey, this is yer show, I guess—yer callin' the shots. I'm headin' outside real quick, though.”

“Ok, wait, I'll—I'll come.”

“Sure fuckin' will,” you think you hear Gator say, but you ignore the warmth rushing to your cheeks as you also hop off your stool, then press yourself up against Mel's back and hook your chin over her shoulder.

“Babe, I'm going outside real quick,” you say, and she just nods, reaching behind herself to squeeze your hip.

“Text me,” she says, a reminder, and when you pull back from her, when you turn back around, you see Gator's still standing there, waiting for you, a faint smile curving his lips up at the corners and despite yourself, you feel a little tightness in your chest because you wouldn't have expected that kind of thing from him. Waiting for you, watching for you, reaching out toward you when you step closer—not to take your hand, but to lay his palm on your lower back as you walk together toward the door, the gesture possessive but still charming.

When you reach the door, he pushes it open but lets you step out first, not guiding you with his hand as much as just keeping contact with you in some way, and then you're out in the cool spring evening, a complete breath of fresh air after the hot, stuffy interior of the bar.

There are a few other people smoking outside beneath the darkening blue sky, the streetlights not on just yet so the whole parking lot feels a little bit dangerous, a little bit like somewhere you shouldn't be, but you still follow as Gator leads you around the side of the building, his boots scuffing over the blacktop. He leans his back against the side of the building, removing the vape from his pocket again and lifts it to his mouth. The blue light on the end blinks on as he inhales, and you watch as he lowers it, holding his breath for a long moment before he offers the vape to you.

You take it as he exhales, the cloud obscuring his face. You suck at the vape, not drawing off of it nearly as long as he did or holding it as long. It's cherry menthol, you think, which explains where the scent of mint clinging to Gator earlier came from.

“Tastes like shit,” you say, exhaling the vapor as a little puff with each word, pursing your lips and blowing the rest out in one final stream.

“Well, I'm real sorry 'bout that, princess,” Gator says, reaching out for the vape. “When you start buyin' my shit fer me, you can pick the flavor, how's'at sound?”

You hand him the vape, knowing he's joking, but you can't help playing along. You step closer, leaning your shoulder against the wall to face him even as he's facing out into the lot, taking another pull.

“Maybe I just need another taste,” you say, reaching up as he lowers his hand from his mouth.

He attempts to pass it over, but you cup his face instead, turning it toward you. He follows with his body, shifting so he's no longer perpendicular to you and instead facing you properly, and you lean up to press your lips to his before he can exhale.

As his lips part against yours, you breathe in the cool vapor he breathes out, letting your tongue move against his as you kiss him. It's slow and lazy, one hand still clinging to his vape, the other moving to your lower back. You wrap your arms around his neck, pulling him closer to you as you press yourself flush against him, and he deepens the kiss, licking further into your mouth, as you feel his hand creep down over your skirt, and then—you should have expected this—pull the hem up and grope your ass through the flimsy panties you have on. He's got your ass fully out, just like at the gym, but this time, you're in a parking lot and you don't think you care.

He's positively pawing at it, and you feel him shove the vape back in his pocket so he can get his other hand on your waist, though it doesn't stay there long. You pull away from him just enough to bite at his lower lip, drawing it into your mouth to suck at it as he trails his tongue over the cupid's bow of your upper lip, kissing you there while his hand moves from your waist to your lower back, holding you tight against him.

You sigh softly into his mouth and then he's muttering your name, and that, for some reason, affects you more than you thought it might. You lean further into him, hands moving to his shoulders; one stays there, the other moves to his neck, cupping the underside of his jaw as you lick into his mouth again, tongues sliding together.

Gator's hand moves over your ass, giving it a sharp little slap—you startle, pressing your front even harder against his, and you feel him smirk against your mouth even as you're kissing him—and then he's yanking your skirt up even further, his hand sliding into your underwear to touch you skin-to-skin. You whine his name and lower your hand from his shoulder to his front, feeling his chest through his t-shirt, before lowering it further to try and untuck it from his jeans.

“Ah,” he breaks the kiss, pulling away and grabbing your wrist to stop you, though he doesn't pull his hand out of your panties. “Nuh-uh. Little overeager, y'think?”

“You should talk,” you counter, trying for one more kiss, licking over the seam of his lips, but he holds your wrist tightly with his hand, then retracts the other away from your ass and takes hold of your other wrist, pulling both of your hands away from him.

“Enough'a that,” he says, and he kisses you one more time, the bastard. He keeps a hold of your arms.

“Thought I was callin' the shots?” you question him.

Gator snickers. “Might be able ta get away with plenty'a shit in this town,” he says, “but I don't think even I could get away with fuckin' ya in public, sweets, sorry ta disappoint.”

You struggle a little against his hold, and he smirks down at you.

“Relax,” he says, releasing your wrists. He steps back from you and plucks his vape from his pocket again, offering it to you—you decline—and takes one last draw before putting it back. “So, tell me,” he continues, “where ya takin' me?” As he speaks, his words are clouded with cherry menthol and he tilts his head back to blow it fully out of his lungs as he waits for your answer.

“Your place?” you ask, and he just clears his throat, shakes his head.

“Nah,” he says. “Too much fuckin' goin' on over there. My old man, the twins...fuckin' horses...”

Your mouth twitches into a half-smirk, but you dial it back. “Guess your car's off limits?” you suggest.

Gator laughs. “My car ain't conducive t'all the shit I wanna do t'you,” he says, reaching out to put his hand on your waist, sliding it down to your hip. “Ain't just foldin' y'up in my backseat 'nd callin' it a day.” He lifts his hand to card his fingers through your hair then, not pulling you in for a kiss or trying to get you to press yourself against him again; it seems like he's doing it just to keep touching you. “Y'got a roommate?”

“No,” you reply, and he drops his hand to your shoulder, fidgeting with the collar of your dress.

“Solves that, then,” he says. “My truck's right over there.” He nods his chin toward a pickup; you turn to look.

“I drove myself here,” you say. “Follow me?”

Gator smirks, and you get the impression that he's trying to contain how thrilled he actually is that he's going home with you, even if it's just to get his dick wet. He nods, then asks, “Lemme guess, you drive a cute lil' two-door somethin'-’r-other? Maybe a hatchback?”

You laugh. “Not quite.”

“Volkswagen Beetle. With a lil' flower in the dash,” Gator guesses, following as you begin to wend your way through the parked cars, stopping beside a white and red classic Ford pickup.

“Close,” you say, pulling your keys out of your shoulder bag, unlocking the pickup, and hopping up into it as Gator watches you, jaw dropped.

“This is yer car?” he asks, and you close the door, roll the window down, and lean your elbow onto it to tip your head as you rest your cheek on your hand.

“Just like yours,” you say—his Ford F-150 was just a little more modern. “Got a good, what...forty years on it, though, I'd guess.”

He just watches as you start the engine, slapping your hand on the dashboard to get the radio to start playing.

“Damn thing always gives me trouble,” you mutter, as it finally starts transmitting a warbling classic rock song. “Anyway.” You look over at Gator. “You're gonna follow me?”

“Yeah,” he confirms, nodding, staring at you in the classic truck.

“Hey, Tillman,” you say, snapping your fingers in front of his face to make him look up at you. “Don't be jealous that my truck's nicer than yours, ok? I got a whole squad of guys who think they know more than me about cars who love to beg me to see under the hood. Not really a fair competition on your end.”

“I ain't jealous,” Gator says.

“Your drool says otherwise,” you quip, then reach out of your truck to tug him closer to you by his collar. “If you play nice tonight, I'll let you look under the hood tomorrow too, how's that sound?” You have no idea why you're making promises to him that sound long term, when this is clearly going to be a one time thing based solely on physical attraction; you're not going to get your hopes up that he'll even be there when you wake up tomorrow morning, much less that he'll stick around long enough to even look twice at your truck.

But Gator only snickers. “Oh, I'm gonna play real nice, sweets. Promise.”

You lean out of the truck, just enough to let your lips brush his; that's all you really wanted to do, all you intended to do, but you linger and then turn it into a real kiss, and he kisses you back, not pulling away as soon as you'd expect, really, but he does after a few moments.

“All right, c'mon. Enough screwin' around,” he says, and you just move back into your truck, settling into your seat as Gator softly hits both palms against the window sill of the door then backs up a step. You roll up the window as he watches, and once it's closed, he turns to walk over to his truck.

While he's climbing in and starting his engine—you keep watch on him out of the corner of your eye—you pull out your phone to text Mel, sending her a quick message to let her know that you're heading home and you're bringing Gator with you.

Then, you put your phone on DND because you don't want to hear her thoughts or comments, even though you know she would be happy for you and undoubtedly sex positive—you just don't want her to get in your head and make you self-conscious. You weren't joking when you told Gator that the girls in town talked him up—he has a reputation, and after hearing it from more than just a few women, you know he lives up to it.

His truck's engine rumbles as he pulls out of the spot and idles just short of where you're parked. You start your truck and shift into gear, leading Gator out of the bar's lot and into town where your apartment is situated, above a laundromat which is closed currently—thankfully, because you get to have quiet nights rather than hearing people bustling around downstairs or shouting over the sound of the machines into their phones while they're switching from washer to dryer.

You park in your reserved spot—the laundry's owner Irv allowed you, as his tenant, to keep a spot to yourself, and Gator takes the one next to you. Might cause a problem in the morning if he's still there when the laundromat opens, but you also have a feeling that once Irv finds out the truck belongs to Deputy Gator Tillman, he won't have much to say about having the damn thing towed.

Hopping out of your truck, you slam the door and lock it, heading up to round the hood as Gator steps out of his too, the gravel of the parking lot crunching beneath his feet. He joins you, and without a word you lead him around the front of the building, keys jingling as you pass the plate glass window and door to the store itself, and step over to the solid wood door to the vestibule of your apartment instead, unlocking it. Gator reaches over your head to hold the door open, allowing you to step inside first; he follows you into the dark little landing, letting the door swing closed as you flick the light switch to illuminate the stairs leading up to your actual front door.

Gator locks the door behind you as you begin to ascend the stairs, stopping after a few steps up because he's still standing at the bottom.

“You good?” you ask.

“Yeah,” he says, tilting his head to the side. “Just tryin'a get a bird's eye view.” He winks at you and you don't understand what he means at first, until you remember you're wearing a dress—short enough that it stops above your knees—and by heading upstairs before him, you’re indirectly allowing him to look right up your skirt.

“Pervert,” you say, flipping him off—and then just turning right around and continuing to climb the stairs, now directly giving him the view he wanted.

“Takes one t'know one,” Gator says, waiting until you're a few steps higher before following you, the staircase creaking as he takes them two at a time. He reaches you just as you arrive at the second floor landing, which is a little more spacious and even has a window to the outside, with a small collection of succulents on the sill.

Gator pokes at one as you unlock this door as well, opening it and stepping in, waiting patiently for him to join you. He does, and you kick off your flats while he crouches down to unlace his boots, leaving them beside your shoes as you close this door too.

“Cute place,” he says, and you feel yourself get a little embarrassed, because it is a cute place—spacious for what you pay for it, since it's always a little warm during the day with all the machines downstairs running and all the foot traffic coming and going—but it's not straightened up. You left it a little bit of a mess—your pajamas and baseball uniform are still on the floor outside the bathroom, and even though you haven't gotten to your bedroom yet, you know that you left your bed unmade and there are at least three outfits you'd tried on for the bar still on top of your sheets, nixing each before settling on the vintage off-white cotton minidress you're currently wearing.

“I wasn't expecting company,” you say, hurrying away from him to pick up the dirty laundry outside of the bathroom. “Make—um, make yourself at home.” You gesture at the couch, which doesn't have anything untoward on it, but the blanket is askew, there's a book on one of the cushions propped open upside-down with the spine cracking, and an unfinished mug of tea sitting on the coffee table, definitely leaving a ring. Part of you wishes you made a better impression, but when you glance back at Gator before you disappear into your bedroom, he's not even looking at your furniture or the disarray you left. He's just looking at you, a faint smile gracing his lips.

When you catch him, he looks away immediately and crosses to the couch.

You just hurry into your bedroom, bare feet skimming over the carpet as you shove the dirty clothes into your laundry basket, tucked away into the closet, then pick up the other clothes you hadn't decided to wear and, in the interest of time, shove those in with your laundry too, even though they are most definitely clean. You straighten your bedsheets as best you can without properly making it, and then return to Gator—who's gone.

Your living area is empty, but you catch movement out of your periphery, and when you turn to your left, you see that Gator's in the little kitchenette, emptying your stale tea and putting your mug into the sink.

“Thanks?” you say, and Gator glances up at you.

“Figured ya might want coffee'r somethin',” he mumbles.

“Sure... thanks,” you say, which feels weird, because this is your house, your kitchen, your coffee—you don't have coffee. “Oh wait, I just have tea.” As you speak, you look back at the couch and notice that your book has also been placed neatly on the coffee table, with the receipt you were using as a bookmark sticking out of the top, keeping your page. You turn to Gator again, who's now at your refrigerator.

“Ya got beer,” he points and you just laugh.

“You didn't have enough beer?”

He shrugs. “Ya fuckin' scampered away so goddamn fast, thought you might need t'relax.”

“I'm fine,” you say. “Like I said I just—wasn't expecting company.”

Gator closes the refrigerator and steps over to you. “I ain't here t'be company, sweets. I don't give a shit what yer place looks like.”

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you nod. “Right.”

“Right,” Gator echoes you, his hands on your waist again, leaning down to kiss you, and you put your hands on his chest, leaning up into him, to meet him half way. It's different in your apartment—behind closed doors, it feels more real, like it will lead to something because now it can. You slide your hands up over his shoulders, wrapping them around his neck again to bow his back further toward you, and then he's pushing you backward, walking you toward your couch. He lays you down easily, settling above you and you sigh at the feeling of his weight atop you, the way he fits between your thighs, his tongue in your mouth and his hands on your sides, moving slowly up and up and up.

“Fuck,” you mutter, not quite meaning to, and you feel him snicker as he pulls away from you, lowering his mouth to your neck to suck a bruise there, leaving a trail of kisses along your throat and collarbones, the neckline of the dress low enough that he can do so with no trouble.

One of his hands settles onto your chest, squeezing your breast through your dress as the other moves back down, hooking his hand around your thigh and pulling it up and over his hip, letting him grind a bit against you even with too many layers of fabric between you. But your legs are more open now, and you can feel your skirt riding up—you whine quietly as he takes your lips with his again, kissing you slow and deep as he rolls his hips down into you.

He's groping your thigh, rubbing his hand over it, sinking his fingers in, squeezing it as you reach down between your bodies and tug at his shirt, trying to untuck it from his jeans and get it off of him for real this time. And this time, he does let you, the t-shirt stretching a little as you pull at it, yanking it up and over his chest, though it gets stuck beneath his arms since his hands are a little occupied.

You don't care—you leave it there and let your hands skim over his front, fingers tracing through the thick patch of hair on his chest, over his nipples, down to his slender waist, and up over his muscular back, which you can feel stretching and flexing as he keeps his hips moving against your core. You tip your head back and he follows you, wanting to keep kissing you, and you press one of your palms against his back before moving the other once again to his chest, tweaking his nipple with two of your fingers to hear the noise he makes when you do. It ends up being a small moan, which makes you smirk against his mouth, smug—and then you just touch him everywhere you can, his pecs and his stomach and up beneath the shirt too, fingertips trailing over his throat until he's had enough and pushes up and away off of you.

Kneeling above you, he straightens up and you watch as he pulls off his shirt the rest of the way. For some reason, it thrills you a little to see that the freckles on his face extend all over his body, and that there's also a thin trail of hair down from his chest to his bellybutton and then lower. You lick your lower lip unconsciously, not even really thinking about it, but Gator clocks it and he snickers.

“Tit for tat, yeah?” he says, and you don't understand what he means—truthfully, you're still a little caught up in having him on top of you—until he reaches down to the buttons adorning the front of your dress and starts to undo them. They stop at your bellybutton, just where the skirt begins, and he pushes the front of your dress open to expose your torso to him, still covered in the satiny, nude bra you'd chosen to wear beneath the white cotton. Wasting no time, Gator just reaches to push the cups up and off your tits, not bothering to try and undo it or take either garment off of you. No, he just frees your breasts from the bra and then leans back down, taking one of your nipples between his lips before it's even perked up from the way his hands slid over them seconds ago.

“Gator—” you gasp, because he's sucking at your tit like there's nothing else he'd rather do with you, and he has the other one cupped in his hand, thumb swiping side to side over your nipple as it hardens, pebbling beneath his touch.

He hums against your chest, pulling off your nipple with a pop to just lave over the pert bud, dragging his tongue over it as you watch, breath coming thin already, his mouth barely even on you for any time at all and already destroying your resolve.

Gator pushes himself up again, bending one of his legs at the knee to tuck it beneath your leg, the one he'd hiked up onto his hip, and licks into your mouth this time, your spit-slick nipple pressing against his chest, the hair he has there tickling you a little as he kisses you, sucking at your lower lip before drawing away.

“What was it I said?” he asks you, and you meet his eyes, wild, uncertain what he's asking. “The night'a that fire,” he reaches up to brush some hair away from your face. “Said, what...I'd letcha suck me off 'fore I fuck ya real nice, was that it?”

You nod, because you remember, vividly, the way he was saying the most vile shit right to your face, the way he said it without any shame.

“Y'know what?” Gator asks. “I think I wanna hear you say it this time.” He leans down again to kiss you, languorous, lips lingering against yours before he pulls back, his thumb and forefinger pinching your nipple a little as he plays with it, tugging and rolling it back to hardness. “Go on. Lemme hear ya spoil that sweet mouth'a yers.”

You huff a sigh, almost in disbelief, wondering if he's really going to make you, but he just settles his chin down between your tits, his hand still cradling the side of your head, the other still toying with your nipple, and it feels so good that you let your eyes flutter closed to lose yourself in it, the way the pads of his fingers squeeze it, the way his fingers gently card through your hair, the way his jaw flexes when he opens his mouth.

“I'm waitin', doll,” he says, and you take a deep breath, opening your eyes to look down at him.

Flitting your tongue over your lips, you speak. “You said...you said you were gonna finger me until I was crying your name.” His lips twitch at the corners, but he keeps his stoic expression. You continue. “Gonna let me taste you before I—ride you,” you breathe out, and he licks his lips this time, nodding.

“'S right,” he says. “'Nd what else?”

“Wanted me to take your—take your fat cock and bounce on it,” you say, and he grins, which makes the warmth in your cheeks ramp up to blazing heat, and even though you're feeling bashful after saying such filthy things right back to him, he seems completely unaffected other than to be even more into it than he was before you did: He surges up over your body and crashes his lips into yours, kissing you harshly as you lift your hips into him, his body aligned with yours well enough that you can, now. He groans quietly into your mouth and drops his hand from your face down between your bodies, sticking it between your legs and rubbing at your cunt through your panties, matching the satiny feel of your bra.

You curl your hips up against his hand, and he pulls away enough to speak.

“Ya gonna make me fuck ya on yer couch?” he asks, and it's such an unexpected question that you laugh, even though he's making your entire body light up with his hands and his mouth and his solid weight on top of you.

“Get off me then,” you reply, but he doesn't move, instead just tugging your panties to the side and letting his fingers slick through your wet folds, finding your slit quickly enough but not entering you. You take a sharp breath in, and he just kisses you in response.

“I thought you”—you try to say, in between kisses—“didn't want to stay on the couch.”

“I ain't puttin' it in yet, sweets, relax,” he says, and curls two fingers into your pussy, making you draw up, tighten up, shiver a little as he pushes them deeper, the pads of his fingers pressing into your front wall. “Ahh, now thatta girl.”

“Fuck,” you say again, and Gator chuckles.

“Gon' give me a big head,” he says, pulling away from your mouth and letting his chin and lips trail over your chest, over the swell of your breast—the one he isn't still playing with—and takes your nipple back into his mouth, sucking at it while he fingers you slowly, curling both digits inside of you again and again, not to make you come, but to rile you up, you can already tell. He told you it was his plan, and not only are you not in any position to fight him on it, you don't want to either.

Just as you lift a hand to curl it into his hair, Gator pulls back from you, moving away and down between your legs. You trail your hand after him, catching up to him when he lets his lips move over your thigh—not a kiss, just a glancing movement, as he slides his fingers free from your slit and then reaches up. He streaks your wetness over your stomach, curling his hand into the elastic of your panties to pull them down, maneuvering your legs so he can slide them off you, and then he's right back where he was, between your thighs, fingers sliding between your lips to spread you open before him.

Your hand cards through his hair and you tug at him; he moves with you easily, lips curled into a smirk as he buries his face in your pussy, his fingertips still spreading you open, and his tongue delves into your dripping hole before both of his fingers join it, stretching you around himself and you curl your other hand into your skirt, pulling it up and away so you can watch as he goes down on you, pressing his fingers into you as deeply as he can, feeling you squeeze down on them.

He pulls away, not really far at all, and latches his mouth to your clit instead, sucking at it, teasing entrance to your weeping slit with a third finger now.

“Gator,” you whimper, and he flicks his eyes up to look at you, to watch you as you writhe on the couch above him.

You feel his tongue moving against your clit, not bothering to come up for air as he presses his mouth a little harder against your mound, really exploring your folds with his tongue, teasing your clit, its hood, sucking everywhere he can close his mouth around, taking your lips between them and dripping spit and your own arousal onto his chin.

He curls a third finger into you, and your hips buck up into his hand, a sharp gasp of breath sounding from your parted lips, and then, to your dismay—he does pull away.

“Wh—” you start to ask, clenching down on his fingers as he stills them, deep within your pussy. He leaves them hooked there as he moves up and over you, tugging at your walls as he slips them out just an inch and then fucks them back in.

“Now, correct me if I'm wrong,” he says, his voice low, stern; you feel yourself gush a little around him. “I said I wanted ta hear ya cryin' my name.”

You stare up at him, just watching his face as he shallowly finger fucks you.

“Ain't that right?” he pushes.

“You—hah—aren't doing it right then,” you say, and he quirks an eyebrow, lips parting as he tucks his tongue into his cheek, looking just this side of pissed—and your chest swells a little in excitement, knowing you got him with that.

“Oh, yeah?” he says, almost sounding amused as he lets his fingers slip fully out of you; you whine as he does, missing the feeling of being stuffed with three of them. “Well, why don'tcha show me how it's done, since you know better?”

A smirk plays at your lips as you tug your skirt up a little higher, your dress half twisted around your body from how much he had you squirming, how much you were rolling your hips up into his fingers. With your free hand, you stretch your arm down your body and rub your palm flat against your pussy, feeling your warm slickness, the ease with which your fingers move through your folds, and then you press your middle and ring finger against your slit and sigh as you slide them home.

Gator watches, eyes half-lidded, as you slowly work your fingers into your own cunt. You gather the fabric of your skirt up into your hand, your chest exposed, panties on the carpet next to you, thighs spread open, one leg hanging off the couch to give Gator the view he'd wanted when walking up the stairs behind you—and finger your own tight little snatch just so he can watch you do it.

“Fuckin' Christ,” Gator mumbles as the first whimper falls from your lips. He looks up at your face and when he meets your eyes, when he realizes you've been watching his face the whole time, he closes his eyes and swallows, then looks back down at your hand between your legs.

“Help me,” you whisper, and Gator doesn't try to play like he doesn't know what you're asking for—he settles himself down between your legs, one hand on your thigh, splaying out to push you open even more, your hips straining at the position you're in, but you don't even fucking care when he adds his middle finger in along with yours, stretching you out, giving it to you deeper than you can reach, and you groan, loud this time, the sound punched out of your chest as he presses into you a little harder than you're doing it to yourself.

“Gat—or—” you half-shout, biting your lip at the last moment to keep your volume in check. He glances up at you, takes in your smirk, and immediately understands what you're doing.

“You little fuckin' brat,” he says, and leans down to suck a harsh kiss to your breast, just beside your nipple, just beside where you'd want him to put his mouth, and then pulls his finger out of you just to add his own ring finger in beside it.

You stutter out a moan, head pressing back into the couch cushion beneath you, as you let go of your skirt and now you have both hands between your legs, one further down, pressing inside of yourself, and the other with two fingers erratically moving over your clit, because you're so stretched out on four fingers you can't possibly keep an even pattern, not with the way your legs are twitching and your cunt is fucking soaked, your thighs tensed.

Gator's fingers work in tandem to yours, and harder too, still; he's fucking you with them deep and fast, in contrast to the way you're gently curling yours into yourself, your clit on fire as you rub at it, not even sure what you're doing to yourself because you're so fucking worked up already.

“Go on, sweets,” Gator says, taunting you, egging you on. “Y'know ya wanna.” He stretches himself over you, his free hand bracing himself on the back of the couch as he hovers above you, watching your face even as he works his fingers with yours, hears the obscenely slick sounds from between your legs.

“Gator,” you say through clenched teeth, and he leans down closer to you, lips trailing over yours.

“Go on,” he says again, and you sob with the feeling of it all, the overwhelming pleasure, the orgasm just flitting around you, ready whenever you are.

“Gator!” you half-sob, half-shout, and he smirks because he won, but even so he gives you your prize: He kisses you, hard, licking into your mouth as your hips flex up into both of your hands and one of his, his fingers slipping out of you even as your pussy tries to suck him back in, and he gives you a small little, harsh little slap right on your cunt.

“Ah—nn—” you intone, your body tensing, wound up beyond belief, and then you're coming, hard enough that you have to pull your fingers out too because you've never felt yourself tighten up like that, never felt your entire body snap the way it had. You're crying his name and then you're moaning his name and then you're sighing his name, and the whole time he's got his lips on your lips, soaking it in, taking it all as you shift a little beneath him, and then you slap him right on the cheek with your come-drenched hand and he looks down at you in shock, drawing back.

“That's for calling me a brat,” you say, and you laugh at the disbelief written on his face, before he snickers too.

“Guess that's fair,” he says, reaching down to rub his hand between your legs, smearing your release over your quivering pussy. He teases entrance again with two fingers, smirking when you clench up. “Nah.” He shakes his head, still rubbing over your cunt before moving sideways to your thigh. “Let's getcha somewhere more comf'table for my turn.”

He pushes himself off of the couch, looking down at you, limp and pliant, and he reaches out one hand to help you up while he reaches down with the other, adjusting his package in his jeans; he has to be hard by now—you'd be shocked if he wasn't.

Once you're upright, Gator keeps his head bowed just a little, watching as you slide the straps of your dress and your bra down off your arms. You lower the dress down around your hips, stepping out of it before crouching quickly to pick up your underwear too, and then you're bare in your own living room while Gator drinks in the sight of you, fully, for the first time.

“After you,” he says, not even trying to tear his gaze away from your tits, except to let them dip down to your crotch, the patch of hair between your thighs, tufted together with the way you both spread your arousal over yourself. You're still wet and him looking right at you makes you squeeze your legs together, just a little. And of course he notices.

“Don't worry,” he says, stepping closer, one hand moving to your lower back, the other pulling your panties from your hand. “I ain't even close t'done with ya.” He holds up your underwear, like you missed him taking them from the little bundle of clothes you're holding, and sticks them into the back pocket of his jeans. “Little souvenir if ya don't mind.”

“I do, actually,” you say, even though the way he's touching you and looking at you and speaking to you is very much affecting your composure. “They're a matching set.”

He smirks as he lowers his hand and gently gives your ass a little swat to get you moving—and you go, stepping around the coffee table and leading him to your bedroom.

“Maybe ya got another pair I can swipe, then,” he says as he walks behind you.

“Should've figured you for a panty thief, Deputy,” you say, glancing back at him, and he just licks his lips, shrugging.

“I'm a simple man, sweets, don't take much t'make me happy.”

“Pervert,” you say, rounding the corner to your bedroom and flicking the light switch. As soon as you drop your clothes into the laundry basket, he's behind you, his arms wrapped around you, turning you so your front is flush with his, your tits against his chest as his belt buckle presses into your stomach, and his cock, still confined in his jeans, pressing against you even through the taut denim.

“Thought we already covered that one,” Gator practically growls, his forehead resting against yours. “Me 'nd you both, remember?” In the dimness of your bedroom—just one lamp, the low wattage of the bulb turning the light yellow and syrupy through the shade—his eyes look deep green, irises barely discernible from his pupils, and you can't even help yourself when you ignore his question and tip your chin up, meeting his lips in a soft kiss, one gentle enough that it defies the fact that you're naked, his hands are tight around your hips, and you can feel his erection, stiff against your thigh. His mouth moves over yours, not really deepening it but instead just pressing kiss after kiss to your lower lip, coaxing your lips to part, and once your mouth is open for him, he licks into you, his tongue moving against yours as you move your hands over his broad back, arms curling up to hold his shoulders from behind, your chests pressed together, his body warm and firm against yours.

He turns away, the strands of hair that fall over his forehead brushing against your nose as he does, and he steps back, moving you with him as he crosses from your closet to your bed. He sits on the edge and you sink down onto his thigh, your wet core settling onto the dark denim of his jeans, soaking them as you kiss him again, your hands on his chest now, one playing with his nipple the same way he'd done to you, and the other skimming through the hair adorning his belly, right above his waistband.

Gator sighs into your mouth as you curl your fingers around his belt, still worrying his nipple between your fingers, and since you're not showing any signs of stopping your ministrations at his chest, he reaches to help you with his belt himself, each of you using one hand to work it open. You slip the button expertly with one hand, tug the zipper down over him as you trail your lips over his tensed neck, and once his jeans have been worked fully open, you slip your hand inside them and cup him through the cotton of his briefs.

“Ahh...” you say, lascivious. “Thatta boy,” you tease, repeating what he'd said to you earlier, and Gator, bless him, tries to snicker but can't quite manage it now you've got a hand on him. You rub him with your palm, the drag of the fabric giving him the friction you can tell he's craving—he's pressing against your hand with everything he has, one hand on your ass to hold you still on his thigh, the other coming to rest gently on your forearm, not to try to force you to do more, but seemingly just to touch you, to feel you as you're feeling him.

You let your tongue flit over his Adam's apple and feel his body give a kick when you do, your nose bumping the underside of his chin, and then you're curving your hand around him, molding it to the underside of his length, as you lean up and kiss him again, pressing your hand harder into him, stroking him without actually stroking him, and he grunts against your mouth as he bucks his hips forward.

“God damn it,” he mutters, letting his head fall back away from you. “Fuckin' tease, gonna make me beg?”

“Maybe,” you say, but you don't hold to it, just slide your hand up and off his cock, palm flat against his stomach before easing it into his underwear, the elastic tight over your wrist as you finally, finally, get your fingers curled around him. Gator practically keens as you take him in hand, jerking him off for real, the skin of his cock velvet, wet and hot and so hellishly soft you know there's no way you'll stop touching him except to feel the silken weight of him on your tongue. “Let go.”

It's obvious he doesn't want to, doesn't want you anywhere but rubbing your sopping pussy on his thigh, but when you pull against his hold, he releases you and you lower yourself to your knees between his legs. Gator hurriedly lifts himself up as you begin to tug his pants down; he helps you get them to his knees, and you purposely don't look up, keeping your face angled down as you rid him of the rest of his clothes. Just as you're about to look, about to see everything he has to offer you, his index finger curls beneath your chin and he lifts your face up—to his face, not his body, and he holds your gaze as he speaks.

“Didn't ferget what I said, didja?”

You shake your head.

“Wanna hear me say it again?” Gator asks.

You inhale sharply through your nose—you remember every word, but that isn't the same as Gator saying it to you. The drawl of his accent, the words he chooses, the way he says it so matter-of-fact, like he could be talking about anything, when it's actually so depraved that it turns you on—yes. You want to hear him say it again.

“Yeah,” you manage, and he smirks, pulling his hand away from your chin and taking hold of his cock immediately, drawing your eyes to it. He's big—you could tell just by touch, it was blatantly obvious—but seeing his hand wrapped around it, your lips part at just the sight.

Gator drags his hand from the base to the tip, slowly, then lets himself go completely just to take hold of himself again right at the root. You watch as he does it twice more, precome beading at the slit as he touches himself.

“Gonna feed it to ya, sweets,” he says, and your eyes flick up to his face and back down to his cock just in time to watch him move his thumb over the head, smearing the wetness collecting in the slit over himself. “Gonna hold ya right in place and just... ease it on in, real slow. Watch ya choke on it.” Your tongue peeks out at the corner of your lips, pink and fleeting. “Oh, ya like that? Wanna feel it in yer throat?” You nod despite yourself. Gator chuckles, reaches out with his free hand, cups your face. He lets his thumb move over your cheekbone, back and forth. “Sweet thing,” he mumbles, shifting himself closer to the edge of the bed, legs spread wide to give you as much room as you could possibly want. “C'mere 'nd take it.” You shuffle closer on your knees, his hand moving to your jaw, and you open your mouth as he angles his cock down toward your parted lips. “Take it,” he says again, and you do.

His precome is the first thing you register, bright and salty on your tongue. You look up at him as best you can, eyes searching for his face above you, but the further you move onto his cock, the harder it is to see him. His palm stays cradling your jaw, and his other hand moves from his cock to your throat, feeling as it spasms a little even though he's not even that far into your mouth yet. It gives you a sick thrill that he's putting his hand there to feel himself when he enters it, and you hum quietly, feeling his cock twitch against your palate when you do.

Lifting your hands to his thighs, that's where you choose to touch him first as you keep drawing him into your mouth, keep sliding forward onto his length; he's massaging your jaw, your neck, and you swallow around the head just as he bottoms out into your mouth.

“I know that's fuckin' right,” Gator murmurs, leaning back enough that you can see him now, eyes angled up toward him, as he looks right back down at you. “Look'it you. Look'it you fuckin' takin' it, just like that.”

“Mmn,” you hum around him, and he sighs your name quietly, thumb rubbing over your throat. You swallow again so he can feel it, but even so, a thin dribble of saliva escapes from the corner of your mouth.

He snaps his hips forward just a little, and you moan around him this time, eyes slipping closed as you do almost choke on it, managing to suppress it; he doesn't seem to mind. He just holds you there for another few moments before he eases you off him, but only enough that he's still mostly in your mouth, and you take a deep breath in through your nose before you get to work, bobbing your head on his cock while you reposition your hands. You move one up his body again, reaching to push your fingers through the hair scattered across his chest, feeling him up before you pinch his nipple, playing with it as he huffs out a sigh; with your other hand, you press your palm against his bare thigh, using it to brace yourself each time you take him in a little bit deeper, letting the tip just barely graze the back of your throat before you pull off.

Above you, Gator makes a choked noise, like he's trying to hold back for your sake, or maybe his, you have no idea and you don't care. You lean back, the wet shaft sliding out from between your lips; just as you lift your hand off his thigh to stroke him into your mouth, he beats you to it and wraps his own hand around himself.

You look up at him, eyes wide, questioning, but he just moves his other hand from your jaw to the crown of your head, and you know he's not going to let you move now. Not that you even want to, really.

Precome is dripping from him as you suck at the head, your tongue teasing the slit, as he starts to jerk himself off right into your mouth. You hum weakly, eyes fluttering shut at how he's using you, using your mouth, just for his own end, and you hear his lips smack as he parts them to speak.

“Look at me,” he says, and you slowly open your eyes again, bringing your hands to his waist, holding onto him. He presses his palm a bit harder against your head, making sure you stay still. “Ya like it?”

You don't bother trying to nod, instead letting your tongue answer for you, licking slow and flat against his tip. He looses a shuddering breath as he starts moving his hand in earnest, the curl of his index finger bumping your lip each time he strokes himself. The taste of him deepens, darkens a little—you know he's close just by how quickly he's moving his hand now, and you suck at his head as he keeps going.

“Can—can I—” he stammers, and you don't know what he wants to ask but you tighten your hold on his sides, squeezing him, hoping he infers that yes, he can come in your mouth. “Lemme—lemme feel yer throat a-again, oh fuck—”

You blink, then try to drop your jaw a bit more, leaning forward, taking another inch or so of his cock into your mouth.

“Fuck yeah, fuck yeah, f-fuck—” Gator is repeating, absently; he doesn't even seem to mean to say it, and with his question as the only warning you really got, he pulls you right up against him by the back of your head, your nose pressing into the short, curled hair nestled at the base of his cock, as he enters your throat again and comes right down it, pulsing in your mouth as his hips twitch forward too, giving you everything he has, making you take it as you drool around him, lips shiny with spit as your cunt throbs between your legs, the arousal you feel for him, because of him, un-fucking-paralleled.

He pulls out of your mouth as one last weak, feeble spurt of come leaks out of his head, and you swallow that too as his wet prick leaves your lips.

You're panting and so is he, and you look up at him, legs numb from kneeling, as he looks back down at you. He cups your face with both hands, thumbs wiping away the wetness beneath your eyes, and then using the back of his hand to swipe away the residual saliva and come from your chin.

“Y'ok?” he asks, and even though your head is still swimming, you can tell he feels strange even asking it.

“Yeah,” you say, voice scratchy, and he hooks his hands beneath your arms to pull you up, back onto his lap. You don't straddle his leg this time, just sit on it as he keeps one arm around you, the other resting along the top of your knee. His fingers dip between your legs then, rubbing at your thigh, which tells you even with the check in on your well being, he's far from finished.

Good.

You're not done with him yet either.

“Do you need a minute?” you ask, turning to him, and he almost has the decency to look surprised, but just smirks.

“Do you?” he counters, and you laugh.

“No,” you reply, putting your hand on his cheek as you kiss him. He swipes his tongue into your mouth with no hesitation, a quiet groan rumbling in his chest as he tastes himself on you, and then you're standing up and pushing him backwards down onto your bed, standing above him on your knees even as you move to lean over him. You let your chest lower to press into his, but you keep your hips elevated, even as you meet his lips again, kissing him almost lazily.

“Said y'were ready t'go again,” he says, as you draw away for a moment. “What gives?”

“Nothing,” you purr. “I like kissing you, that a crime too?”

“Smartass,” he mutters, and you lower your face to his again; this time, he doesn't question you, doesn't protest, and when he moves his hands to your hips, you slide your knees down so you're laying on top of him properly now, his arms around you, squeezing your ass as you make out with him tangled together atop your sheets.

It turns into something quiet and easy, the two of you cocooned in the faint light from your bedside lamp, your hands exploring his arms and his front, one snaking down to reach for his cock again, and when you do, he gives your ass a quick slap, making you yelp.

“What is with you?” you ask, but you're not mad, you're smiling too much.

“Nothin',” Gator says, but he's amused too, and you can tell. “Just like pissin' y'off.”

“I think you like when I hit you back,” you say, hands sliding to his shoulders to push yourself up so you're sitting on his stomach. You lift a hand and Gator flinches, then realizes you're not actually moving it.

He grins. “Well, y'ain't that subtle about likin' it either, sweets. Forepl—” he says, but he's cut off as you bring your hand down against the side of his face, not hard, not nearly as fierce as he'd been when he hit your ass or—god help you—your pussy. Below you, he just chuckles. “Hey, if yer into it, I ain't gonna complain.”

“Shut up,” you say, sliding down his body, bowing your back to kiss him again even as your slick folds catch the length of his cock between them. He moans softly into your mouth, your wet heat surrounding him, and just as he's about to grab your hips to hold you there, his own body already trying to roll and grind up against you, you're off of him and pulling open your nightstand drawer.

Gator pushes himself up onto his elbows to watch you, and when you straighten up with a handful of condoms, he reaches out for one, snapping his fingers when you don't immediately hand one over.

“Patience,” you chide him, but he just snaps his fingers again.

“Ain't got none,” he answers, then rolls onto his side and crawls up the bed, settling himself down against your pillows. “That's one virtue I was born without.”

“And other virtues do you have, exactly?” you ask, turning to face him properly.

Gator scoffs. “If yer gonna be like that, yer doin' all the work.”

“I thought we already covered that,” you say, echoing him. “What was it, you were gonna give me a taste before you let me ride it?”

Gator scoffs. “Yeah, but way t'make it sound...clinical.”

“Clinical?” you ask, dropping the handful of condoms to the bed, save one, which you palm as you kneel on the mattress, moving closer to him. “How is 'ride it' clinical?”

“Listen, not everyone got the gift'a gab, sweets,” Gator says, and you roll your eyes, unimpressed. He reaches out for you, and you move into his reach, letting him caress your hip with one hand and your thigh with the other. “Why don'tcha give it another shot?”

You hum as his hands move over your bare skin, tearing the condom wrapper slowly. You tuck your chin down to your chest and look at him through your lashes. One of his hands comes up to cup your breast, thumb skimming over your pebbled nipple. “Wanna... let you fuck me,” you start, and he just nods, encouragingly, but you don't miss the hardened eyes, the quirk of his lips into a smirk because you're not good at this, just like he said. “Gonna sit on your cock. Your...” You bite your lower lip, drawing it into your mouth. “Your big, fat cock.” He exhales audibly, letting his other hand move from your thigh to your mound, trailing two fingertips through your folds. “Let you in my—my wet little pussy.”

“Uh huh...” Gator leads you, and even though you know he's just humoring you because it's really terrible dirty talk, you still appreciate him letting you try, even though you'd be certain you were ruining the mood if he wasn't still circling your clit with his index finger, eyes on where his hand is down between your legs.

“Gonna...get you soaking wet,” you try, and he flicks his eyes up at you. “Gonna come all over you.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you answer, firm and assured, and he withdraws his hand.

“Not too shabby,” he says, tugging you down into him by your wrist. “I'll give ya...an A for effort.”

“Fuck off,” you laugh, pulling the condom from the wrapper and rolling it onto him—he's hard again, or maybe still hard. He definitely didn't feel like he'd gotten soft when you were rubbing your pussy all over him—and when you look back up at his face, he's watching you closely, eyes on your hands.

You lick your lip, almost a little self-conscious, and you have no idea why, other than this has started to feel a little less like a one night stand and a little more like something substantial—which you force yourself to forget, because this is Gator Tillman, not someone like Leon who would take you for breakfast tomorrow morning. You're going to wake up, thoroughly fucked out but alone, because Gator Tillman doesn't do bitches more than once (or so is word on the street. His own word).

With one deft hand, you slide your palm up and down over his cock, then throw one leg over him, leaning forward. He reaches up to cup your tits, and you smirk to yourself as you take hold of his cock again, guiding the tip up against your slit; you both gasp at the same moment when the blunt head presses against you, and you meet his eyes as you lower yourself onto him, the stretch immediate and intense.

“Fuck,” you mumble, breath catching in your throat as he flicks your nipples with his thumbs, palming your tits as you press your hands against his shoulders, clinging to them as you spread your knees a little further apart, taking him in deeper—you're clamping down so tightly on him as your body both accepts the intrusion and rebels against it, clenching down like it could force him out, even though you want him inside.

“Tight little bird, ain't ya?” Gator asks, and you tilt your head back, rolling it to the side, the words affecting you and he knows it. He lowers one of his hands to your mound, searching for your clit again, rubbing his fingertip over it as you lift up and then push back down, his cock entering you even deeper this time. Your walls are sucking at him, and when you fit all of him in you, you exhale, chest stuttering.

“Gator...” you whine, and he presses against your clit harder.

“'S ok,” he tells you. “Yer doin' so fuckin' good, y'know that?” His finger traces figure eights over your clit, the throbbing little bead swollen where it's nestled between your quivering folds. “Perfect little pussy,” he says, and you tremble as you press the heels of your hands down against his chest. He pinches your nipple as you lift up off him, the slide eased with how wet you are, and even though most of him is still in you, you feel woefully empty. You drop back down onto him and it's like sliding right back home, putting him back where he belongs.

“Feel ya shakin' around me, sweets,” Gator says, and you sigh as you pull your pussy up over his length again, strong thighs working as you roll your hips back down, and now that you're used to his size, now that you've taken him in a few times, you fuck yourself onto his cock and he's the one who sighs this time.

“God, look at ya,” he goes on, almost like he's just talking to himself. His fingertips swirl around your clit, which you feel twitch against them. “How's—how's it feel, huh? Talk to me.”

“It's—” you begin, but smack your lips together as you swallow thickly, your arousal dripping down his shaft every time you lift up. “God, fuck, it's so good, Gator—”

“Uh huh,” he leads you, pressing his hand a little further between your legs, letting his fingers slide around where he's got you stretched around his dick, feeling the way your pussy tightens and spasms as he rubs your slit from the outside. “What else? Go on, tell me.”

“I'm so—so fucking...you make me so wet, Gat-Gator, I—” you break off to gasp, then moan as he finds your clit again. “I'm—I'm soaking it—you, just like you—like you said, r-right?”

“That's right,” Gator says, and you look at him through half-lidded eyes just in time for him to sit up and wrap his free arm around you, hold you tight to his front and roll you onto your side, and then your back; his cock slips free of you and you whine, mewl, cry for him.

“No, no—put it—put it back,” you say, reaching up to curl your hand around the nape of his neck, tugging him down to kiss you; he obliges you, but after you lick into his mouth, he ducks away and kneels between your spread legs, your gaping pussy on display for him as he props your thighs up on his. Between his legs, his cock is jutting out, shiny with your fluids as he reaches with one hand to ghost his finger over your slit, which clenches up around nothing.

“Put it back,” you say again, only realizing now how desperate that phrasing is, how filthy and uncouth.

He curls two fingers into you, ignoring his rigid cock, pink at the tip, so hard it's straining up and up, the tip nearly against his stomach.

“And you were gettin' on me for my lack'a virtue,” he teases. “Sounds like you ain't got no manners either, missy.” You can only goggle at him for a moment, because before you can really even formulate a response, he eases his fingers out of you, turns his hand over, and brings his palm down on your pussy in a hard smack, making you jump and moan simultaneously; you feel your pussy practically gush as he rubs his full hand over it, the sound of it reaching your ears and turning you on even more.

“That's one,” he says.

“Two,” you correct him, and he cocks his head to the side. “You did one before.”

He looks at you, then chuckles, smirking. “Two.” He pauses. “How many times didja hit me? Figure I oughtta make it even. You can dish it out, but let's see if ya can take it.”

You squirm a little, splayed open before him, wondering if he'd like it more or less if you made it clear you wanted it as much as he did. “Five.”

“Five,” Gator repeats. “Got three more for ya, then.” He moves his free hand to your thigh, rubbing his thumb over the folded skin where your leg meets your mound.

“Just three?” you ask, and he glances up at you. “What?” you ask, hoping you're not overstepping. “Foreplay, right?”

He laughs at that, then leans down to press a kiss to the valley between your breasts. “Yup, just s'more foreplay, sweets.” He straightens up and gives your cunt a quick swat, making you lift your hips up off the bed, your fists curled into the sheets below you.

“How bad ya want it?” he asks, taunting you, and you bite your lip.

“Want what?” you ask.

He rubs your clit with his thumb for a brief moment, then gives your pussy another slap, the sound of it hitting your ears just as sharply as his hand feels against you.

“You know what.”

“Your fat cock?” you ask, and he grins, smug.

“Yeah. My fat fuckin' cock.” He curls three fingers into you, and push your head back into the pillow behind you as he fingers you, his free hand now curled around his cock too, squeezing himself at the base as he fucks into you with his fingers, deep but not deep enough.

“Gator,” you whimper, and he pulls out of you, rubbing from side to side over your tight clit—you shy away, and he smirks.

“Answer,” he says, taking his hand away from you entirely, replacing it with the one he'd just had wrapped around his cock. He teases your clit with it, rubbing in tight little circles.

“Gator,” you try again, but he just raises his hand, palm toward you, readying the final slap, the one you know will ruin you—the one you want so, so fucking bad.

“Answer,” he directs you, and you flex your hips, parting your thighs as much as you can, giving him room for when he brings his hand down on you again.

You cup your own breasts, rolling your perked nipples between your fingers, and your voice is calm and quiet when you answer him. “Please,” you say. “I—want it. Bad.”

“You asked for it, sweets,” he says, and with one last flick of his thumb on your clit, he pulls his hand away, letting you wait in sweet, painful anticipation, and then he slaps your cunt one final time; you're so worked up and strung out and on edge that the shock of it makes you clamp down on yourself, the pressure between your legs so fucking much that it brings you to orgasm, your heels digging into the bed on either side of him as you arch up off the bed, shuddering and shaking as you come so hard you have no control over the sounds you're making or the words you're saying (or trying to say, really).

“Can I come inside ya?” Gator asks suddenly, and you nod, agreeing without even thinking, and as you feel him slide back inside you, your whole body tenses up again, another orgasm building even though you've barely come down from the previous one.

Gator hikes your leg up over his hip on one side, bracing himself on the bed with his other hand, and snaps his hips into you, so hard and fast that the sound of skin slapping skin makes you moan, would get you off even without how good he feels as he moves into you repeatedly.

You pull your other leg up, hand curled around the back of your knee, opening yourself up to try to feel him even deeper, and you do—he's got his knees up on either side of you, fucking into you half feral, animalistic, your fingernails dig into the back of your thigh as you grasp at his shoulder with your other hand and pull him down to kiss him. It's fierce and neither of you wants to yield control to the other, so your lips are around his tongue and his teeth meet your lower lip and you moan into him as he growls into you and then you're coming again, wrapped up in all of it, in Gator, in everything—your cunt flutters around him as he fucks into you even harder, harder, harder, one more time and then his hips still, pressing his full weight into you as he comes, fully sheathed inside of you, a sound punched from his throat that's half laugh and half gasp.

“Oh my fuckin' god,” Gator says after a moment, his lips still against yours, and he pulls out, fingers on either side of his cock to hold the condom on himself, making absolutely sure it stays where it's supposed to.

You breathe out slowly, then inhale deeply, untangling your limbs from his as he lowers himself down onto the bed beside you, limbless, flopping down to stare at the ceiling as his cock flags to one side. You roll over to face him, laying your arm over his stomach, and he turns his head toward you and kisses you back when you try for one more.

“Lemme get up,” he says, because your arm is on him and he doesn't really want to dislodge you. “'Nd you need ta get t'the bathroom.”

“Conscientious,” you quip.

“I ain't givin' no one a UTI,” he says. “See? Virtuous.”

You laugh and push yourself up, away from him, heading to the bathroom. You hear him pad into the kitchen as you close the door behind you and you wonder if he'll still be in the apartment when you finish cleaning yourself up. You do what you need to do, then wash your face and brush your teeth for good measure, and when you open the bathroom door, you see the light's off in your bedroom.

Stepping lightly across the hall, you peek into your room to find Gator back in your bed, under the sheets this time.

“Hi,” you say, and he looks up at you, smirking.

“Hi.”

“You, um. Staying?”

He looks at you like you've grown a second head. “You kickin' me out?”

“No.”

“A'right. Then what, you waitin' fer an invitation t'yer own bedroom?”

In lieu of answering, you cross the threshold, closing the door behind you as you round the foot of your bed and climb in beside him. You wonder for a moment if you should have put something on, but as you settle the sheets down, you notice—no, he's definitely still naked too.

“You always do this?” you ask.

“Do what?” Gator asks, turning toward you, his features starting to become more visible as your eyes adjust to the dark.

“Stay over. After.”

“After?” You see the apple of his cheek round up. “Sweets, we ain't finished yet.”

You have just enough time to formulate a question—the very eloquent “Wait, what?”—before he's back on you again, lips on yours in the darkness, but you can tell it's different this time. It's softer, calmer, like you earned the right to see a part of him he's never shown to anyone else.

One hand comes to rest on your waist, the other cupping your cheek as he kisses you, deepening it, his tongue against yours as he breaks the kiss but does not move away, leaning his forehead against yours.

“Think ya got one more in ya?” he asks, and as you kiss him again, tongue swiping over his lower lip, you smile to yourself at the fact that he now tastes minty just like your toothpaste.

“Do you?” you counter.

Gator laughs. “This shit again? Yeah. Scout's honor. I'm good fer it.”

You feel over the bedspread for one of the condoms you left there, but before you can move away from him to search for real, you hear the crinkle of a wrapper and know Gator already has one in hand.

“You were pretty sure I'd say yes,” you say.

“Hard pressed t’find someone that says no. And you… ain’t that hard t'read, 'f I'm bein' honest,” he ribs you, and you almost decide to slap him again, just for the bit, but instead you kiss him.

“Lie down,” he whispers against your mouth, and as you do, he joins you, pushing you onto your back and then away from him so your back is to his front.

Behind you, the sound of the wrapper tearing comes and you feel the bed jostle a little as Gator strokes his cock, fits the condom on, and then he's got his chest pressed to your back, the head of his cock poking between your thighs.

You reach back behind yourself to help him, guiding him into your slit again, and this time when he enters you, you groan at the feeling of it, a little sensitive but not too much to stop.

Gator's hips press up against your ass as he rolls them against you, his cock slipping in and sliding out, languid movements as he takes you again, slow and easy. He pulls you back against him, one arm beneath your pillow, and the other draped over your side as he rests his hand on your stomach, holding you close.

Sighing heavily, you close your eyes, pushing yourself back against him as he fucks you, unhurried, taking his time like neither of you have a care in the world, nothing to do besides this, besides each other, and as you relax into him, he stretches himself up around you, his lips tracing over your neck, the shell of your ear, giving you tentative kisses like he's shy about what they might mean, like they mean anything in the first place.

“Gator,” you sigh, and you feel his hips kick a little when you do, thrusting inside of you faster, harder, for just a moment before he eases back to the softer pace, the slower one, the one that feels like he feels something.

Shifting his arm beneath you, he cups your breast in his hand, playing with your nipple as he lowers his hand from your stomach down between your legs, feeling your whole body shiver as he rubs his middle finger over your clit. You lean into him, his cheek against the side of your head, as he makes small noises into your ear: whimpers and whines and little breathy puffs, most of which sound like your name.

“Y'gettin' there again?” Gator asks after the two of you move together, writhing beneath the bedsheets, your bodies joined as his arms encircle you, playing with your clit and your nipple in the same way, circling with his fingertip or rubbing over them both identically. It has you simpering for more, lips pursed as you turn your face toward his, and your lips meet just as the fingers between your legs skim over your clit just the right way, and you're coming on his cock again, your chest tight and your thighs squeezing together; you faintly register his hips stuttering too, behind you, as he groans your name into your mouth and then, for the second time, you two are tangled together, a sweaty, spent mess, all the desire you have to move from your bed dissolving into the sheets where you lay.

Neither of you stir for a long moment; it's only when Gator pulls his hips back from yours that you even realize you have to get up, a second time, and clean up—a second time. Gator moves to lay on his back, glancing at you as he eases off the second condom, and you wait for him to sit up before reaching out to graze his face with the back of your hand, very much a half-hearted slap. He gives you an indignant look and you giggle.

“Fuck was that for?” he asks. “Givin' you the best sex'a yer life? Twice?”

“For making me have to get up again,” you say, sticking your tongue out at him, not even sure if he can see you.

“Fuck off,” Gator says, but there's no bite to it at all. You giggle again. “Fuckin' brat.”

This time, when you pretend you're going to hit him again, he grabs your wrist and redirects the momentum to pull you into him.

“Y'don't have ta get up right now if ya let me give ya number...four, was it?” he suggests. “Might as well go fer five, that's the number'a the day.”

“Bullshit,” you say, even as he leans in to kiss you one more time. “You can't.”

“No one said shit about me, sweets,” he says. “Gonna have ya takin' that back right quick.” His lips find yours and you kiss him, letting him in. “Wanna hear ya say it.”

&&

The next morning, Irv wakes you up bright and early to complain about the truck taking up a space in the laundromat's parking lot, but Gator fixes that by 1) cursing Irv out, 2) informing Irv exactly who he (and his daddy) is, and 3) vacating the spot by pulling a Leon and taking you out for breakfast.

——

taglist: @sunriseinhawkins @snoopyharrington @ghostlyriddles @souperbloom @sheisjoeschateau @cheugy-djobe @cpnsteverogers @nowandajenn @configurre @cecesblogg @britt-mf @harringtondarling @valentine-night @charismatickeery @charlston-chews @bearwithegg @starkleila @s3xytosomeone

[thoroughlymimi]

At The Heart Of It : Part Ten - Systole

Gator Tillman x Reader

18+ | minors do not interact

Word Count: 10361

Summary: Somewhere between family chaos, shopping trips and quiet apologies, you and Gator fall completely in love.

Note: A little later than usual but your gal was scream singing karaoke in the car, just girly things you know? Two more chapters to go! And maybe a cheeky surprise. Anyways, enjoy babies!... Mimi <3

Masterlist

Systole

Translation: The Squeeze

From systellein, to draw together or contract.

Ford stood at the stove in a grey t-shirt and jeans, working through an impressive stack of pancakes, a celebratory breakfast for the champions. The kitchen smelled warm and sweet, butter and syrup and coffee. Josie sat in her highchair beside the island, happily smearing banana into her tray with both hands while periodically kicking one socked foot against the chair leg.

You sat on the counter near the coffee machine with your legs crossed at the ankle, nursing a mug of tea while Ford slid another pancake onto a plate.

Maggie crossed through the kitchen after opening the back door, letting a stream of fresh morning air roll through the house. She paused briefly beside the island, sunlight catching against the gold frames of her sunglasses where they rested on top of her head.

“This sun better stick around for tomorrow,” she said. “You could wear that cute summer dress, baby.”

Your mind flashed to the dress hanging in your closet, the one you’d bought with Maggie last week. White cotton, drop waist, lace hem, corset-style bodice, low neckline. And your scar, entirely visible.

You lifted your tea toward your mouth to buy yourself a second.

“Mh-hm,” you murmured. “Maybe, yeah.”

Thankfully, before Maggie could start in on the subject properly, heavy footsteps sounded overhead.

Tucker and Walker appeared at the top of the stairs a second later in sweatpants, hair still sleep-mussed, moving with the loose-limbed soreness of boys who had spent the previous night throwing themselves into other people at high speed for fun.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ford announced, “Dickinson High’s very own Regional Champions, Tucker and Walker Heaton.”

You burst into applause instantly, laughing as Maggie joined in. The twins groaned through their grins.

“Thank you, thank you,” Tucker said, waving one hand like he was accepting an award.

Walker moved carefully down the stairs, one hand briefly pressing against his ribs as he reached the bottom.

“How are the ribs, Walker?” You asked.

“Sore,” he admitted. “But the ice helped. Imma get another out the freezer.”

Tucker wandered behind you as Walker headed for the freezer and without warning, he dropped both arms over your shoulders and leaned his full weight against your back. You made a protesting grunt noise, slapping backward at his arm.

“Jesus Christ, Tucker.”

“How about you, huh?” he asked lazily. “How’s Gator?”

Ford barked out a laugh from the stove. You twisted and jabbed Tucker sharply in the ribs. He yelped and stumbled backward laughing.

“That’s enough out of you,” you said. “Gator’s fine.”

Tucker grinned to himself as he dropped into a stool beside Walker at the island. Ford slid two loaded plates across the counter toward them.

“What a way to start the summer, huh?” Ford said.

“Still got, like, three weeks of school.” Tucker spoke through a mouthful of pancake.

Walker pointed his fork at him.

“But Coach did buy us those hoodies though. Like winners hoodies. It’s in my-- Where is my bag?”

“I dunno,” Tucker said. “Ask Baby’s boyfriend.”

“Gator put it in the car,” you said. “You want me to go get it?”

Walker was already halfway through another bite.

“I can go.”

“Eat your breakfast,” you told him. “I got it.”

You pushed off the doorway and crossed back through the kitchen toward the key bowl, fingers sifted briefly through the familiar clusters before finding the Suburban keys.

The morning air felt warmer outside than it had through the kitchen windows, the sun already high enough to heat the gravel beneath your feet. Walker’s duffel sat shoved awkwardly in the back of the Suburban beneath a pile of football gear and Josie’s pram. You grabbed the strap and hauled it free, realising it weighed significantly more than expected.

“Oh my God,” you muttered under your breath, letting out a small grunt as the full weight dragged onto your shoulder. What the hell was in this thing? Bricks?

You reached up onto your toes to pull the trunk shut again and had just pressed it closed when the low growl of an engine rolled across the yard. A truck crawled up the smaller gravel road leading from the Cabin and came to a slow stop beside you. You glanced toward the driver’s seat long enough to meet Logan’s eyes through the open window before looking away again. Then you adjusted the bag higher onto your shoulder and started toward the Big House. The truck door opened behind you.

“Hey, wait up.”

You kept walking.

“What do you want, Logan? I’m in a good mood. I really don’t need you to ruin it.”

“Just gimme a second.”

A hand landed lightly against your shoulder. You stopped more out of annoyance than willingness and turned sharply toward him.

“Why?” you asked. “You got more names you wanna call me?”

Logan moved around in front of you before you could keep walking. For once, there was no grin on his face. No teasing glint in his eyes either. He looked uncomfortable in a way you had honestly never seen before.

“No,” he said quickly. “That’s not… I wanna apologise.”

“You want to apologise?”

“Yeah.”

He rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said. About you being desperate. I just… I saw the jersey, his hands on you, I was just mad and…” He exhaled sharply through his nose. “I dunno. Fucking shocked, I guess.”

“So you decided to take it out on me?” you asked. “In front of everyone?”

The bag dug painfully into your shoulder as you shifted it higher.

“Yeah,” Logan admitted quietly. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’re saying sorry because Brooks told you to, or Ford, or Maggie.” You shook your head. “You aren’t sorry. You're an asshole.”

“Was Gator,” Logan said.

That made you pause.

“He’s the one who wanted me to apologise.”

You lifted one hand slightly like that proved your point entirely. Logan saw the gesture and pushed on anyway.

“But I ain’t doing it just ‘cause he told me to,” he said quickly. “I am sorry. I mean it.”

The weight of the bag finally became too much. You let it drop heavily into the gravel with a dull thud before looking back at him properly.

“Logan, you've been making your stupid little comments at me for years. Why do you suddenly wanna apologise now, huh?” Your throat burned unexpectedly. “Because this time you pissed off Gator? Someone you actually care about?”

There was enough venom in the words that you hated hearing it yourself. Logan’s face changed; his brows knitting together and in his eyes he looked… hurt?

“You think I don’t care about you?”

“Well do you?”

“You’re like my sister,” he said quietly.

His voice cracked slightly around the words.

You stared at him, caught off guard enough that you forgot to respond. Logan looked down briefly at the gravel before meeting your eyes again.

“Last night I was mad,” he admitted. “And I weren’t thinking, alright? Like… it was you and him. My cousin, basically my sister, and my best friend. Like that’s not… I just wasn’t… it was a lot.”

He let out a long exhale.

“I thought he saw you like I did,” he said. “Like our kid sister who we were allowed to poke fun at, but no other jackass was allowed to look at.”

You sighed heavily and dragged a hand across your forehead.

“And all the other times? All the comments about me, my fucked heart, you pulling my hair like we’re in second grade?”

“I dunno, I was just… messing with you.” He shoved both hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t get to mess with Noah. He’s all serious and fucking… weird.”

Despite yourself, your mouth twitched slightly.

“And they all treat you like glass,” he continued. “I didn’t wanna…” He frowned, struggling for the words. “I dunno. You never said anything. You never told me it was upsetting you.”

You looked at him properly then, he meant it. The realisation settled strangely in your chest. Because when you thought about it honestly, Logan had always treated you differently than everyone else. Not cruelly. Never truly cruelly. Irritatingly, definitely. Insensitively sometimes. But refreshingly… normal.

Ford checked your pulse absentmindedly during hugs sometimes. Maggie could spot exhaustion in your face from across a room. Everybody around you adjusted instinctively, softened instinctively, watched instinctively.

But Logan never did.

If you were breathless, he made jokes until you laughed again. If you looked tired, he annoyed you until you snapped at him instead of sinking into yourself. Even after your second surgery in high school, when everybody else had hovered around your hospital bed speaking softly like you might shatter apart in front of them, Logan had shown up every day after school and acted exactly the same as always. Loud. Irritating. Normal.

You looked down at the gravel for a second before shaking your head slightly.

“I never thought about it like that.”

Logan tilted his head a little, watching you carefully now. A crooked smile tugged faintly at his mouth.

“So,” he said cautiously, “can you accept my apology?”

“Depends,” you said, narrowing your eyes at him. “Are you gonna be weird about me and Gator?”

“Depends,” he shot back automatically. “You gonna keep eating his face in front of me?”

A startled laugh escaped you before you could stop it, you shoved hard at his shoulder as you bent to grab Walker’s bag again.

“Fine,” you muttered. “Apology accepted.”

You hoisted the strap back onto your shoulder and started walking toward the house again. Behind you, Logan spoke more quietly.

“You really like him, huh?”

You glanced back over your shoulder.

“Yeah, Logan,” you said honestly. “I really like him.”

“He really likes you too.”

You arched one eyebrow.

“Yeah? He tell you that?”

“He ain’t gotta tell me,” he said. “I know him. He likes you. A lot.”

You held his gaze for a second before nodding once.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Then you turned and kept walking toward the front porch.

You didn't look back again, but a second later you heard the slam of his truck door and the low growl of the engine starting up again. Somewhere beneath the warmth of the morning and the weight of Walker’s stupidly heavy football bag, one thought kept circling quietly through your head.

Logan Heaton had apologised to you.

And he had actually meant it.

You stepped back into the Big House carrying the duffel over one shoulder. Cartoons still blared from the living room, Rhodes sprawled half upside-down across the sofa cushions while Nicky sat cross-legged beside him, utterly absorbed in whatever brightly coloured trash was unfolding onscreen. Neither of them even looked up as you passed.

You rounded the corner into the kitchen where the twins were still sat at the island with Ford. Maggie had now joined them, one elbow resting against the counter, coffee mug in hand.

“Walker,” you complained, “what is in this thing? It weighs more than me.”

Walker stood and crossed toward you, taking the strap from your shoulder before the weight could properly drag you sideways.

“I did tell you I’d get it.”

“Excuse me for being helpful.”

Walker grinned faintly as he hauled the bag up onto the island and unzipped it. A second later he pulled out a dark blue hoodie and held it up proudly for inspection. The Bears logo sat over the left breast. Regional Champions stretched across the right. His surname and number were printed across the back in thick white lettering. Ford gave an approving nod.

“Sweet. Coach sort them?”

“Yeah,” Walker said. “Apparently he ordered them before we even got to the Semi’s.”

“Well,” Ford laughed, “he has you two. Knew it was a safe bet.”

You crossed toward Josie’s highchair while the boys kept talking, lifting her easily onto your hip before grabbing the dishcloth beside the sink to wipe syrup and banana off her hands.

“Is it just the cake you need me to pick up?” you asked Ford.

“Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged. “Do we need balloons and stuff? She’s turning one. She doesn’t know it’s her birthday.”

Maggie cut him a look sharp enough to stop traffic.

“You sound like Brooks,” she informed him. “Miserable old man.”

Ford rolled his eyes, Maggie ignored him completely and turned toward you instead.

“I want it all,” she declared. “Balloons, banners, all of it. She gets the same fuss everyone else gets. Don’t care if she’s just a baby.”

She stepped over and pinched Josie lightly on the cheek before smoothing a hand over the baby’s hair.

“Still your birthday, ain’t it, baby girl?” Maggie murmured. “Want to see you in a pile of presents.”

You smiled and looked over at Ford, he sighed like a man who knew he had already lost the argument before it began.

“I guess we need balloons and stuff.”

Maggie moved behind him and reached straight into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Ma!”

She ignored the protest entirely, pulling his wallet free before flipping it open with expert efficiency. A second later she removed his bank card and handed it directly to you.

“Get whatever you think,” she said. “Find her a cute little dress too.”

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered. “Just rob me.”

Maggie slapped his cheek lightly with one hand before reclaiming her coffee.

“Quit whining.”

She wandered back toward the living room while Ford rubbed dramatically at the side of his face. You balled the damp dishcloth up and tossed it at him. Ford caught it one-handed without even looking.

“Uh-oh,” you teased. “Ford’s in trouble for being a grumpy old man.”

Ford answered by raising a middle finger toward you, though the grin tugging at his mouth ruined any real offence. You laughed and stepped closer to pass Josie over to him. Ford took her, settling her against one arm while she started grabbing for his beard.

“Seriously though,” he muttered, “she’s a baby. I didn’t buy her nothing. Mags is gonna kill me.”

“Well lucky for you, I know how to shop.” You patted your pocket lightly. “And I just so happen to have your card.”

“I don’t know if I like it when you two team up on me.” Ford groaned softly.

You laughed again before glancing toward the twins.

“Did you two get your sister anything?”

Tucker and Walker looked at each other, then back at you.

“Like… what?” Tucker frowned.

“Walker?” You sighed.

“I actually did get her something,” Walker admitted. “It’s already wrapped in my room.”

You pointed at him immediately.

“And the award for Best Heaton Man goes to Walker. Congratulations.”

Walker grinned smugly, Tucker shoved him hard in the shoulder.

“What the hell? Why didn’t you tell me? We could’ve gone halves.”

“Watch the ribs!” Walker complained, shoving him back. “And why are we going halves? We’re not six. I just ordered something off Amazon. Not difficult.”

You shook your head fondly at both of them while gathering up the empty breakfast plates. The dishwasher door was halfway open when the front door opened and shut again behind you. Then came the familiar voice.

“Mornin’.”

You closed the dishwasher with your hip and turned. Gator stood just inside the kitchen entrance in a fitted grey t-shirt and dark jeans, sunglasses hooked into the collar of his shirt, backwards cap low over his hair. Tucker and Walker twisted around on their stools.

“Morning,” Tucker said. “You here to donate some more of your clothes to her wardrobe?”

“Probably best she keeps the jersey,” Walker added. “Won’t be worth nothing when I beat your record and make all-state as a sophomore.”

Gator barked out a laugh as he crossed toward the island and slapped a hand against Walker’s back hard enough to jolt him forward.

“Keep dreamin’,” he said. “You’re good but y’ain’t as good as me.”

Gator’s eyes had already found yours across the kitchen. His mouth tipped slightly at one corner before he winked.

“You ready, baby?”

The word still did something strange low in your stomach every time he said it. You nodded as you rounded the island toward him.

“Yeah,” you said. “Just need to put my shoes on.”

The second you got close enough, his hand slid around your back and pulled you gently into him, easy and familiar now in a way that still startled you. Both twins groaned instantly.

“Alright, we get it,” Tucker complained. “You love each other. Can you just do it somewhere else?”

Ford laughed loudly from behind the island. But your entire body went tense. Love. The word landed sharp and sudden in your chest. You hoped, desperately, that Gator either hadn't heard Tucker properly or hadn't thought anything of it.

Because even if it was true, even if somewhere deep down you thought maybe you did love him already. It was too early for that. Wasn’t it?

Gator felt you tense the second Tucker said it. You love each other. It had been tossed out carelessly, teenage teasing, nothing more than that. But Gator heard it and he knew from the way your shoulders tightened beneath his hand that you had heard it too.

The thing was, Tucker didn't know how right he was.

Gator had been thinking about it more than he wanted to admit over the last few days. Quiet moments mostly. Driving alone. Lying awake at night staring at the ceiling. Standing in the shower too long with his mind running circles around the same thought over and over again.

Love.

At first, he hadn’t even been sure he understood the word enough to apply it to himself. He didn’t really have much experience with it.

His mother was gone. Had been gone so long now that she barely felt real sometimes. He couldn’t say whether he remembered loving her or just remembered missing the idea of having one.

And Roy…

Gator’s jaw tightened instinctively even thinking about him. He didn’t love his father. Most days he barely even liked him.

Love had always seemed like one of those things other people got handed naturally. Families. Good homes. Mothers who hugged too long. Fathers who looked proud when they spoke to you. Gator had spent most of his life feeling slightly outside of all that, watching it happen around him without ever quite touching it himself.

He had never really felt loved by anybody and because of that, for a long time, he had quietly assumed maybe he just was not built for it either.

Then there was you.

Every road in his head always seemed to end there eventually. You and the feeling you gave him that he still did not fully know how to explain. Warmth. Relief. Want. Safety, somehow, even though he was twice your size and had spent most of his life believing he was the one meant to protect people.

It had to be love.

Because what else could it possibly be?

He thought about stupid things now with the kind of clarity that made his chest ache. How back in high school, when he drove you and the boys home, he used to put songs on he knew you liked just because he wanted to hear you sing softly in the backseat. How he watched for your reflection in the rearview mirror more than he watched the road some days.

How after your surgery, when you had been stuck at home recovering for months, he had gone back to his room every night and sat awake googling medical terms he barely understood because he wanted to know how to help if something happened. Wanted to know what to do. Wanted to know how to keep you safe.

How your contact in his phone had a different ringtone from everyone else’s so he would always know it was you calling.

But Tucker didn’t know any of that. And neither did you. So you had gone tense in his arm like the word itself might scare him.

Gator didn’t want that. Didn’t want you uncomfortable or panicked or overthinking something that was supposed to feel easy between you. So instead of kissing your mouth the way he had first intended, he turned slightly and pressed the kiss softly against your hair instead.

Then he looked toward Tucker.

“Don’t worry, Tucker,” he said easily. “You’re a winner now. Girls’ll be all over ya.”

Your laugh came immediately beside him; still his favourite sound in the world.

Tucker held up a middle finger from his stool while Walker started cackling beside him. Gator chuckled under his breath and gave the back of your waist one last gentle squeeze before letting you go. Then he followed you toward the front door while you bent to pull your boots on near the bench.

He waited quietly beside the door until you were done then pulled it open for you, one hand resting against the frame while the bright North Dakota sunlight spilled across the porch between you both.

You called a quick goodbye over your shoulder as you stepped out onto the porch. The front door closed behind you, muting the noise of the Big House down into a warm blur of voices and laughter. A second later Gator took your hand and tugged you gently toward him.

“Now we ain’t got an audience,” he said softly.

He kissed you properly. Not one of the quick little kisses you’d stolen around family lately. This was slow and deep, his hand settling against the small of your back. You melted into him instantly.

When he finally pulled away, his eyes stayed fixed on yours.

“Y’look really pretty.”

The softness in his voice made heat creep into your cheeks. You smiled shyly and reached up to straighten the backwards cap on his head.

“Thank you.”

You kissed him once more, lighter this time, then took his hand and led him down the porch steps toward his truck. Gator opened the passenger door for you, one hand steadying you as you climbed up into the seat. Then he rounded the hood and climbed in beside you.

He tugged his cap off and hooked it onto the cupholder, his hair was loose instead of slicked neatly back like usual. You liked it better this way. Without thinking much about it, you reached across and let your fingers slip into the loose hair at the back of his head.

Gator leaned into the touch and sitting there beside him, morning sunlight spilling warm through the windshield, his hand resting heavy against your thigh, you found yourself thinking how perfect it all felt.

・❥・

The drive into Dickinson felt slow in the nicest way, the kind of morning where neither of you seemed in any hurry to speak. Your legs were folded up beneath you in the passenger seat, one shoulder tipped toward Gator while your hand rested behind his head, fingers absentmindedly twisting through the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Every so often your nails scratched lightly against his scalp, and you felt him shiver.

The truck windows were down, letting the warm air rush through the cab. Sunlight poured across your face in bright bands, the wind lifting strands of your hair as fields rolled endlessly past outside. You let your head fall back against the headrest and closed your eyes for a moment.

The warmth of the sun. The rumble of the truck beneath you. Gator’s thumb moving slowly against your thigh. You felt calm in a way you’d never felt before. So safe. So happy.

Your eyes opened again when the truck slowed and Gator flicked the indicator on, turning into the crowded mall parking lot.

You made a soft noise of protest as you pulled your hand from his hair and started untangling yourself enough to unbuckle your seatbelt. Before you could properly climb down, Gator was already out of the truck and rounding the hood. He opened your door, slid one hand behind your waist and lifted you easily down onto the asphalt like you weighed nothing at all.

He shut the door behind you, locked it, then slid the keys into his pocket before taking a few steps toward the entrance. He held one hand back toward you, fingers flexing impatiently in a silent grabby gesture. Your chest warmed stupidly at how naturally he did things like that. You slipped your hand into his and followed him toward the mall entrance.

Inside, the mall was bright and loud in the particular way only malls seemed to be. Fluorescent lights reflected harshly off over polished floors while some aggressively upbeat pop song echoed through the speakers overhead. Plastic shrubbery sat beside the escalators in giant beige planters, the distant sounds of the arcade drifting faintly from somewhere further inside.

The whole place felt oddly frozen in time, like stepping halfway back into the eighties. You loved shopping. You hated malls. There was something about them that always felt vaguely clinical and claustrophobic at the same time. You moved a little closer to Gator, tucking yourself into the side of him and sliding the hand not holding his into the crook of his arm.

“What shop first?”

“Decorations,” you pointed ahead toward the party supply store near the centre of the mall.  “Apparently Josie needs the full royal treatment.”

Gator huffed a short laugh and steered you both in that direction.

The party supply store smelled faintly of cheap plastic. Every surface was aggressively colourful, aisles crammed with paper streamers, novelty candles, plastic tablecloths and themed birthday decorations for every possible age and interest. Bright foil balloons floated near the ceiling in crowded clusters while handwritten sale signs hung crookedly from shelves that looked older than you were.

You and Gator stood halfway down an aisle lined floor-to-ceiling with banners and balloons organised by colour. Gator frowned thoughtfully at a wall of pastel pink decorations.

“Pink? Ain’t that girly?”

“Yeah,” you agreed. “But it’s not very Maggie.”

“I thought it was for Josie?”

You laughed softly, a smile curling at your mouth.

“It might be Josie’s birthday, but this is all Maggie. Woman lives to make a fuss.”

You stepped closer to the display and started pulling down packs of white and yellow balloons along with a white birthday banner.

“Last year for Rhodes’ birthday she had some company come in with full-size dinosaur statues. It was insane. Rhodes was more interested in the bouncy castle, but people still compliment Mags on the décor all the time.” You shook your head fondly. “Hosting is like… her thing.”

You turned with your arms full, and Gator took everything from you before you even had to ask, barely interrupting the conversation as he shifted the decorations into one arm.

“I remember that,” he said. “Those dinosaurs were cool.”

“And expensive.”

“Ain’t that Maggie’s middle name?”

You laughed again and followed him toward the register. The girl behind the counter looked up the second Gator stepped forward. Her expression shifted almost immediately, posture straightening slightly as her eyes travelled over him with obvious interest.

You felt the flicker of jealousy before you could stop it. Girls had always looked at Gator, that part wasn’t new. But somehow now it felt different, you felt… possessive, almost.

Before the feeling had time to properly settle though, Gator looped an arm around your shoulders and pulled you lightly into his side, pressing an absentminded kiss against your temple while the cashier started scanning the decorations.

The cashier’s smile tightened just slightly.

“That’s $11.98,” she said.

Gator reached into his pocket; you caught his wrist immediately.

“Absolutely not,” you said. “I’ve got Ford’s card. He’s paying.”

You pulled the card from your pocket and tapped it against the machine while Gator took the paper bag from the counter.

The cashier’s eyes flicked toward you briefly, then back to Gator again. You slipped the card back into your pocket as she tore the receipt from the printer with a little more force than necessary before handing it over.

By the time you looked back up, Gator already had one hand held out toward you. You smiled and slipped your fingers into his.

“Thanks,” you called politely over your shoulder to the cashier as Gator led you back out into the mall.

You drifted from store to store together, past perfume counters and overcrowded sale racks and screaming children dragging exhausted parents through toy shops. Gator followed beside you with steady patience, never once complaining, even as the pile of bags hanging from his hands steadily grew more ridiculous.

You picked out a handful of presents for Josie; books she would probably chew more than read, soft toys, tiny shoes she would outgrow in five minutes flat. Then, in a toy store near the far end of the mall, Gator spotted a little wooden rocking horse painted cream and pale yellow.

You immediately shook your head.

“No.”

Gator looked over at you.

“What?”

“You do not need to buy her that.”

“She’ll like it.”

“She’s one,” you argued. “She likes electrical cords and dirt.”

Gator ignored you entirely and lifted the rocking horse box down anyway.

“It’s also huge,” you added as he carried it toward the register. “You have to drag that around the mall now.”

“S’fine,” he said easily.

And somehow, despite carrying a rocking horse under one arm and approximately six shopping bags in the other hand, he still kept reaching for you. You tried more than once to take some of the bags from him and every time he refused.

“S’fine, I got it,” he repeated.

“Gator--”

“Ain’t havin’ my girl carryin’ bags,” he said. “People thinkin’ I don’t look after ya.”

You rolled your eyes at the ridiculous touch of caveman masculinity in the statement. And then, traitorously, found yourself thinking: have I just set feminism back seventy years by finding that incredibly attractive?

In another shop you found Josie’s birthday outfit; a soft yellow summer dress with little bows on the straps and a ruffled skirt.

The whole morning carried on with the same ease. Gator’s hand in yours. His palm resting against the small of your back while you looked through shelves. His arm slung loosely around your shoulders while you walked. Even overloaded with shopping bags, he always seemed to find some way to keep touching you. Like he needed the contact as much as you did.

People moved around you both automatically in crowded walkways, giving space without being asked. Gator barely noticed anyone else, his attention fixed entirely on you whenever you spoke.

And maybe that was the thing you liked most. The attentiveness. The way he listened to you like everything you said mattered. The way his focus settled fully on you whenever you spoke, steady and unwavering. It made you feel important.

By the time you finally left the mall, the afternoon sun had turned the parking lot hot enough to shimmer slightly off the asphalt.

Gator loaded the shopping bags carefully into the truck bed, setting the rocking horse in last, then rounded the truck to open your door for you. One hand settled at your waist as he helped you climb back up into the passenger seat.

“Thank you,” you said softly.

Gator glanced up at you, sunlight catching against his eyes.

“Anytime, baby.”

He drove you back through town with one hand loose on the wheel and the other resting heavily against your thigh while the bags rustled softly in the backseat behind you.

Dickinson rolled past outside in familiar pieces. Gas stations. Feed stores. Sun-faded signs. Pick-up trucks parked crookedly along the roadside. Saturday traffic drifted lazily through town beneath the heat of the afternoon sun. By the time Gator turned onto Benton Street, you had half melted into the seat beside him.

“There,” you said, pointing ahead toward the bakery.

Gator pulled into a roadside space just outside. Before you could properly unbuckle yourself, he was already climbing out and coming around to your side like before. But then something caught your eye. Across the street, outside a café with little metal tables out front, two men stood beside a pair of motorcycles. And both of them were staring directly at you. Your stomach tightened instinctively.

One of them was bigger, broad through the shoulders with a thick grey beard and dark hair swept up into an old-fashioned quiff. A cigarette burned slowly between two fingers as he leaned against the bike. The other man was smaller, thinner, wearing dark sunglasses despite the shade from the café awning. He was speaking to the older man casually enough, but his attention stayed fixed on you the entire time.

A strange uneasy feeling crept over your skin.

Your door opened, Gator stood there with one hand against the frame, sunlight behind him.

“Y’good, baby?”

You pulled your attention away from the men across the street and blinked up at him.

“Sorry,” you said quietly. “Just… those men were staring. Like, intense staring.”

Gator glanced briefly over his shoulder toward the café before leaning in to help you down from the truck. The second your boots hit the pavement, he pressed a quick kiss against the side of your head while reaching back to swing the truck door shut.

“Well,” he said easily, taking your hand again, “they better find someone else t’stare at. ‘Cause you’re mine.”

You let him lead you toward the bakery. But halfway across the pavement, you glanced back once more over your shoulder. The two men were still watching you.

The little bell above the bakery door chimed as Gator pulled it open for you. Cool, air-conditioned air smelling of sugar and fresh bread wrapped around you instantly, a welcome change from the heat outside. Glass display cases stretched along the counter filled with frosted cupcakes, pastries and cakes decorated in soft pastel swirls while old country music crackled quietly through a radio somewhere in the back.

Gator let the door swing shut behind him and his hand slid naturally from yours to the small of your back as you walked toward the counter.

The bakery was owned by Donna Reeves, Brooke’s mom. Which unfortunately meant there was roughly a ninety percent chance whatever happened in this interaction would end up becoming town gossip before dinner. Donna looked up from the till and recognised you immediately, her face breaking into a bright smile.

“How are you, hon? Keeping well?”

“Hi, Mrs Reeves.” You smiled back politely. “I’m good. How are you?”

“Oh well, can’t complain.”

Then her eyes shifted past you toward Gator, her smile faltered ever so slightly as she took in his hand resting against your back. She recovered quickly, but not quickly enough to miss. You could practically hear the gears turning in her head already. By tonight, she would absolutely have you filed away as the main topic in whatever terrifying middle-aged women’s group chat she belonged to. Her attention settled fully onto Gator.

“Deputy Sheriff,” she said warmly. “How are you?”

Gator gave a short nod.

“Ma’am.”

That was it.

His hand dropped from your back as he turned away from the counter, gaze drifting toward the bakery windows and the street outside. Donna looked mildly offended by the lack of charm for approximately half a second before overcompensating with another broad smile.

“You here for Ford’s order?”

“Yes please.”

Donna brightened instantly again as she turned toward the back shelves.

“I can’t believe little Josie is already turning one!”

You kept talking to Donna beside him, all soft smiles and polite conversation, asking after Brooke, nodding along while Donna launched into some story about her sister visiting from Bismarck. Gator only half listened. His attention stayed fixed out through the bakery window toward the street opposite.

The two bikers were still there. They were not openly staring anymore, at least not while you were inside, but Gator knew the second you walked back out onto the sidewalk their eyes would find you again. A pair of old pervs. His jaw tightened slightly.

The bigger one flicked ash from his cigarette while the other leaned back against his bike, talking lazily enough to anyone watching from afar. But Gator noticed the way their attention kept drifting back toward the bakery windows.

Toward you.

Something ugly and protective stirred low in his chest, then he felt you shift beside him. Gator glanced back automatically. Donna was lifting a large white cake box onto the counter while you reached both hands out to take it. Nope, that’s my job, he thought. Before you could even touch it, Gator stepped in and intercepted smoothly, taking the box from Donna with one hand.

You looked up at Gator, already half smiling.

“I could have-”

He arched one brow at you and the sentence died immediately. You pressed your lips together to hide your grin and looked back toward Donna instead.

“Thank you, Mrs Reeves.”

“My pleasure, hon.” Donna beamed at you. “You should come by the house this summer. You and all the girls can sit by the pool. I’ll get Brookie to text you.”

“Yeah,” you said politely. “Sounds good.”

In reality, the thought of spending an afternoon around Brooke’s deeply strange older brothers while wearing swimwear sounded like a nightmare. Beside you, Gator shifted the cake box more securely into one arm before his free hand settled lightly against the middle of your back again.

“Bye, hon,” Donna called.

Gator held the bakery door open for you and the little bell chimed overhead as you stepped back out into the heat of the afternoon.

Immediately his hand found yours again. You crossed the pavement together toward the truck, sunlight glaring off the windshield hard enough to make you squint. Gator opened the passenger door first, helping you climb back up into the seat with one arm before carefully settling the box into your lap.

“Precious cargo,” he murmured.

You smiled as he shut the door and rounded the front of the truck toward the driver’s side. Only then, sitting alone for a moment in the passenger seat, did you glance back across the street. The bikers were still there and they were still staring at you.

・❥・

By the time the sun started dropping low behind the treeline, Gator was still at the ranch. He had brought you home from town and somehow never really left after that.

Ford had invited him to stay for dinner in the casual automatic way people invited Gator into family things. Dinner ended up happening outside on the back porch because the weather was too nice to waste indoors. Maggie lit the citronella candles along the table while the boys argued over barbecue sauce and Josie threw bits of cornbread onto the deck.

Afterward, while Maggie and Ford cleared plates and you packed leftovers away inside, Gator had ended up out in the yard throwing a football around with Tucker and Walker while Nicky chased after them trying desperately to join in and Rhodes launched himself bodily at anyone holding the ball.

Watching him out there had you feeling some type of way. Not because it looked unusual, but because it didn’t.

Gator blended into your family so naturally. He moved easily through the noise and chaos, shoulder-checking Tucker when he got mouthy, letting Nicky cling onto his arm while scooping Rhodes upside down with the other when he got too feral.

He had always been around but now he seemed comfortable. Part of it all, on the inside rather than glimpsing in from the edges.

Now the younger kids were finally in bed, and the Big House had settled into that softer nighttime rhythm it always seemed to find after.

Ford and Tucker were outside on the back porch hanging birthday banners and bunting while Walker sat cross-legged nearby blowing up balloons with the miserable focus of someone deeply regretting volunteering for a task. Maggie sat on the sofa in the living room with a glass of wine in one hand, supervising the whole operation through the open back doors like a tiny glamorous foreman.

“A little higher,” she called. “Tucker, if that banner falls down overnight I’ll bury you in the pasture.”

“Love you too, Mags,” Tucker called back.

You sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the coffee table wrapping Josie’s presents while beside you Gator quietly assembled the rocking horse he had insisted on buying earlier. You folded wrapping paper carefully around one of Josie’s toys before reaching automatically for the tape. But it wasn’t there, you looked around briefly and spotted the roll half under the sofa.

Trying not to lose the carefully folded wrapping paper, you leaned awkwardly sideways and stretched your arm beneath the couch cushion. Your fingertips brushed the tape but not enough to grab it. You adjusted again, trying to pin the paper seam in place with one hand while reaching further with the other. The second your fingers loosened, the wrapping paper started to slip apart.

You were trying to figure out how to reach the tape without losing the entire wrap job when suddenly a hand appeared beside yours. Gator pressed one finger calmly against the paper seam, holding it perfectly in place, he hadn’t even looked away from the rocking horse. One hand still tightened a screw while the other stayed resting against your wrapping. You blinked at him for a second before finally grabbing the tape.

“Thank you.”

Eventually the last present was wrapped and stacked beside the fireplace, little towers of pastel paper and curling ribbon waiting for morning. Gator helped you carry the bigger boxes over while Walker disappeared upstairs complaining dramatically about “permanent lung damage” from blowing up balloons. Tucker followed a few minutes later.

Ford came back in through the porch doors rubbing both hands down his face.

“Please tell me we’re done,” he groaned. “I’m knackered.”

Maggie lifted her wine glass lazily from the sofa.

“All done. You can go to bed, old man.”

“Thank Christ,” Ford groaned. “Night, everybody.”

He dragged himself upstairs without another word.

Maggie watched him go then downed the last mouthful of wine and got to her feet, eyes flicking between you and Gator.

“If you’re staying the night, that’s fine,” she said casually. “But you kids better be safe. I’m far too young to be a great-grandmother.”

“Maggie!” You stared at her in horror.

She passed the empty wine glass into your hands with complete composure.

“Night, baby.”

Then she winked and disappeared down the hallway before you could recover enough dignity to argue. You looked at Gator immediately.

“I’m sorry about… her.”

He just smiled, you shifted awkwardly with the wine glass still in your hand.

“Do you…wanna stay?”

Gator crossed the room in one stride and promptly threw you over his shoulder. A startled squeal left you as you clutched the wine glass with both hands.

“Gator!”

He laughed quietly under his breath and kept walking. As he passed the kitchen, you lifted your head enough to point toward the counter.

“Hang on. Pause.”

He stopped obediently while you carefully deposited Maggie’s glass beside the sink. Then he carried you the rest of the way down the hall. Your bedroom door kicked shut behind him and a second later he dropped you onto the mattress in an undignified heap before collapsing beside you with a heavy exhale. You rolled onto your side toward him, knees tucking up slightly as you edged closer until your nose almost brushed his cheek.

“Thank you for today,” you murmured. “You really didn’t have to take me shopping or carry everything or stay for dinner…”

Gator rolled onto his side too, propping himself up on one elbow. His other hand settled against your hip naturally, thumb slipping beneath the edge of your shirt.

“Y’gotta stop sayin’ it like y’made me do somethin’ I didn’t wanna do.”

His fingers traced slow circles against your skin.

“I wanna do stuff with you,” he said quietly. “Normal stuff. Don’t care what it is. Jus’ wanna be near you.”

You slid your fingers through his hair, enjoying the unfamiliar softness of it without all the gel and careful slicking-back he wore for work.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

His gaze drifted downward toward where his hand rested against your hip instead of meeting your eyes.

“Everythin’s easy when m’with you. Ain’t gotta think ‘bout nothin’.”

“I don’t know if I believe that.” Your hand slid from his hair down the side of his neck before resting flat against his chest. “That you don’t think about anything.”

“I don’t.”

A quiet laugh escaped you.

“Gator, your brain is literally always working.” You rubbed your thumb slowly against his chest. “You’re opening every door before I get there, carrying all my bags. I see you watching exits and rolling my window up before I even realise I’m cold.” You shook your head slightly. “I feel like your brain’s in overdrive all the time. You don’t have to do all that for me.”

His hand stilled briefly against your hip, then resumed its slow movement. Gator lowered himself onto the mattress properly until his face was only inches from yours.

“Don’t gotta think ‘bout that stuff. Treatin’ you right.” His eyes flicked over your face. “S’just… like my body knows what t’do. Knows it’s you.”

Your breath caught quietly and you edged closer until the tip of your nose brushed his. His eyes fluttered shut instantly.

“M’not good at this,” he admitted in a rough whisper. “Like… the talkin’ part.”

You brushed your thumb lightly over his cheekbone.

“I think you’re doing a pretty good job.”

A shaky breath left him.

“I jus’…” His brow tightened slightly. “Feels like m’fuckin’ vibratin’. All the time. An’ then when m’with you it jus’… stops.”

The confession hit somewhere deep inside you. Gator rolled slowly onto his back after saying it, staring up at the ceiling now, his hand slipping away from your hip. You stayed perfectly still beside him, sensing instinctively how much effort this was costing him.

“S’like I got this…” He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Feelin’. An’ I don’t know the name for it. Or maybe I do, an’ m’scared t’say it,” he admitted. “’Cause I don’t wanna… m’gonna fuck it up.”

You looked at him for a long moment before resting your hand gently over his chest again.

“If you say it,” you whispered, “I’ll say it back.”

Gator turned his head toward you then. His eyes looked soft in a way you had never seen before. Open. Almost frightened by how much he meant it.

“That’s not…” He shook his head slightly. “I want you t’mean it.”

“If you say it,” you repeated softly, “I’ll say it back.”

Then you leaned closer until your lips nearly brushed his when you whispered.

“And I’ll mean it.”

Something in his expression broke open. Slowly, disbelievingly, he smiled.

“Yeah?”

You pushed yourself upward until you were straddling his hips, both hands framing his face as you looked down at him.

“If you say it,” you whispered again, smiling now too, “I’ll say it back.”

His smile widened helplessly beneath you. You kissed one of his cheeks softly.

“Say it.”

Then the other.

“Say it.”

Gator’s hands came up suddenly, holding your face carefully between both palms while he looked directly into your eyes.

“I love you.”

The words hit you like sunlight breaking through clouds. Your smile widened so hard it hurt.

“I love you too.”

He kissed you hard then, both hands tightening at your waist as your fingers curled against his jaw. You pulled back only enough to whisper it again against his mouth.

“I love you.”

A kiss against his nose.

“I love you.”

Another against his cheek.

“I love--”

Gator laughed softly and rolled you beneath him in one smooth movement, careful with your body even now, bracing himself above you as he kissed you again.

“I love you,” he murmured against your lips.

Another kiss.

“I love you.”

You giggled helplessly now, fingers catching in the hem of his t-shirt. He kissed you again, slower this time, mouth lingering against yours.

“I love you.”

Your laughter melted softly into the kiss as you tugged his shirt upward. Gator leaned back just enough to pull it over his head and toss it carelessly onto the floor, a crooked smile still sitting warm and boyish across his face.

You watched him shove himself upright with sudden urgency, grinning helplessly as he kicked off his jeans in a rush that nearly sent him straight off the side of the bed.

“Careful,” you laughed. “Jesus Christ.”

His hair had fallen completely loose now, cheeks flushed slightly, chest rising quicker than before as he finally managed to free himself from the second pant leg.

The sight of him standing there in nothing but his boxers, broad shoulders bare, the outline of his cock beneath the fabric impossible to miss, sent warmth curling low through your stomach. You reached for the button of your own jeans, pushing them down your legs before lifting your hips enough to kick them carelessly toward the floor.

Gator immediately started moving back toward you. You stopped him with the sole of your socked foot pressed lightly against his chest. He blinked down at you, and you wiggled your foot pointedly.

“Socks off, please.”

A slow grin spread across his face.

“Yes, ma’am.”

One large hand wrapped gently around your ankle as he lifted your foot toward him. His thumb brushed slowly over your skin while he peeled the sock off inch by inch before tossing it somewhere over his shoulder. Then, unexpectedly, he pressed a soft kiss to the arch of your foot.

“Gator…”

He only smirked against your skin before reaching for your other foot. This time the kisses lingered longer. The arch of your foot. The inside of your ankle. The top of your foot. You were still half laughing softly through your embarrassment when he suddenly caught both your legs beneath his arms and guided them around his waist as he crawled back over you onto the mattress.

The weight of him settled between your thighs, careful even now. His hands slid beneath the hem of your shirt. You lifted your arms automatically and he tugged it over your head before tossing it aside somewhere into the dark room. Then his hand came to the base of your neck, thumb warm beneath your jaw as he leaned down to kiss you again.

You parted your lips for him instinctively, fingers curling into the loose hair at the back of his neck as his tongue brushed softly against yours. His hand slid around your back, fumbling briefly before your bra unclasped. You laughed quietly into the kiss and tugged the straps free yourself, tossing it aside without ever really breaking away from him.

Gator lets himself be pulled toward you, putting an arm out beside your head to catch himself, resting over you and leaning his weight comfortably on his arm. His tongue continues to swipe deep into your mouth, slow and claiming, as his other hand strokes down over your warm skin, skimming your waist before tracing the thin line of the waistband of your panties.

He nudges your legs wider apart with his thigh, pressing firmly until you open for him, and his fingers dip beneath the elastic of your underwear, gliding over the soft curve of your mound before slipping easily between your folds.

You are already so wet for him, slick and hot and ready, and he honestly cannot understand how he got this lucky. That you even acknowledge he exists at all is a miracle, but to be here, to have you beneath him, soaked just for him, so pliant and reactive to every touch… to have you kissing him like he’s something precious, touching him like he matters, knowing that you love him? It’s more than he ever thought he’d deserve.

His fingers glide freely through your slick, rolling steadily over your clit, watching your face change, and when you break from his mouth to gasp sharp and breathless, he leans in close and inhales the very air that leaves your lungs, breathing you in completely.

Your hands smooth over his broad shoulders and down the tops of his arms, gripping tight to the firm, thick muscle of his biceps as his fingers glide lower, teasing slowly at your entrance, circling the tight ring of muscle there before he slips one finger inside with absolute ease. He withdraws it almost immediately, only to add a second as he re-enters, stretching you slow and perfect, and your grip on his biceps tightens instinctively, nails pressing in.

He lowers his face to the crook of your neck, painting small, soft sucking kisses all along the sensitive line of your throat, marking you, claiming you. One of your hands leaves his arm and dives into his loose hair, stroking through the strands at first, then raking your nails lightly along his scalp, making him shiver against you.

His fingers curl deeper inside you, searching, finding that spot, while his thumb comes up to brush firm circles across your clit, and you widen your legs further, desperate to give him more access, to bring him closer, to feel everything he’s willing to give.

His mouth moves down from your throat, along your clavicle, and begins to travel slowly down the line of your scar. You think, not for the first time, about how he does this, whether on purpose or just because it’s you. You’d told him about the men who came before, the ones who looked at that jagged pink line and made you feel like some sort of Frankenstein’s monster, broken and ugly and wrong. But Gator… he has never made you feel that way. His lips glide along the raised skin as if it were any other part of your body, just another piece of you to taste, to adore, to worship completely.

His kisses continue down across your stomach, burning paths over your skin, while two fingers remain curled deep inside you, working you open, and his other hand strokes softly over your shoulder then trails down the centre of your chest.

“Gator… please…” you whimper, unable to wait any longer, needing him closer, needing all of him.

He withdraws his fingers from you agonisingly slow, making you ache at the loss, then pulls back slightly as both his hands come to rest on your hips. He drags your panties down your legs, and you lift your hips to help him, eager to be rid of the fabric, then immediately pull your knees tight up to your chest so he can remove them completely without having to move too far away from you.

He tosses the garment carelessly to the side, and you begin to lower your knees again, but he stops you; grips your ankles together firmly in one hand, holding them in place above you, keeping your knees still tucked tight into your chest.

He uses his other hand to awkwardly tug his boxers down his hips; he doesn’t bother removing them fully, just pulls them down enough to let his cock spring free, heavy and hard. He uses his free hand to grip himself at the base, giving himself a few short, rough pumps, before bringing the tip right to your entrance.

He keeps hold of your ankles, pushing your knees a little tighter into your chest, as he teases the broad, slick head between your folds, gathering your wetness, coating himself in you. He rubs the head up and down, teasing over your clit and your hole in turn, driving you wild, before finally sinking into you in one long, slow motion.

You let out a breathy, drawn-out “fuckkk” as you feel the stretch, the way he fills you up completely. This position has him deeper inside you than he’s ever been, pressing into places no one else has ever reached, and he stills fully inside you, releasing his grip on your ankles so your feet rest against his chest. He strokes a soothing hand slowly down the length of your calf, watching your face carefully.

“Y’alright, baby?” he asks, voice thick and strained.

“Mhmm… s’fuckin’ deep,” you breathe out, head tipping back into the pillow.

“Too much?”

You shake your head quickly, frantically, and deliberately clench your muscles tight around him, sending a clear message that he better not dare pull out.

“Good… so good. Don’t stop.”

You shift your hips a little, inviting him to move, and he does, slowly pulling back until just the very tip remains inside, then sinking back into you with a roll of his hips that makes you see stars. You let out another low, throaty moan. Gator lifts your ankles from his chest, repositioning them to rest either side of his broad shoulders, and again he slowly pulls out, leaving you empty and aching, only to lean over you and kiss you deeply as he buries himself into you once again, all the way to the hilt.

Your hands grip hard into the sheets beside you, knuckles white. He is so deep now, nudging right against the walls of your cervix, and you swear you can feel him in your stomach, everywhere at once. You deepen the kiss, slipping your tongue boldly into his mouth, and he takes the cue, picking up the pace. His hips roll into yours with a steady, heavy rhythm, and you hear the wet, slick squelching sound of your bodies meeting, loud and wanton in the quiet room.

Gator can feel you clenching around his cock in a vice-like grip, squeezing him tight every time he pushes in, and he knows instantly there is no way he is going to last like this. You feel too good; hot, wet, tight, perfect. Fuck.

He reaches down between your bodies to brush his thumb rapidly back and forth over your clit, and you break the kiss immediately to moan right against his mouth, loud and unrestrained.

His eyes lock on, forehead resting heavy against yours, breaths mingling. He flicks his thumb faster, harder, back and forth over that sensitive bundle of nerves, and watches the way your face changes, the way you struggle to keep your eyes open under the overwhelming stimulation from both his fingers and the deep, driving rhythm of his thrusts.

He picks up the pace, driving into you harder, faster, and your eyes finally fall shut, too heavy, too good to keep open. Gator brushes his nose softly along the side of yours, presses a gentle kiss to the corner of your mouth, then returns his forehead to rest against yours, grounding you, keeping you with him.

“Uh-uh… eyes open, baby. Need t’see you. Look at me.”

He feels you clench around him again, hard, like you’re trying to physically pull him in deeper, to merge your bodies completely. He watches as you force your eyelids to lift, only for your eyes to immediately roll back in your head, completely lost to the pleasure he’s giving you.

He’s not going to last, you feel too good, but he needs you there with him, needs to see you fall apart. He pistons his hips faster, sharper, his fingers brushing quickly, relentlessly over your nerves, and he feels you quiver beneath him, your pussy pulsing and fluttering around his girth, signalling you’re right on the edge.

“Gator… ohfuck… yes… m’gonna… I’m--”

He singles all his focus onto his fingers dancing over your clit and the hammering motions of his thrusts, pushing into you over and over, hitting that deep spot every single time.

Your thighs are trembling violently beneath him; he can feel the muscles in your calves tensing against his shoulders, your toes curling tight. Then your hands fly up to grip his back, nails sinking sharp and deep into his skin, leaving trails of fire. Gator lets out a little hiss at the initial pain, but it feels incredible, better than anything he’s ever felt. He hopes you leave marks; hopes he carries the scars of you on his skin for days.

And then he feels it, the band snapping tight as you shudder beneath him, moaning out a mix of breathless curses, but it’s the broken, desperate groan of his name falling from your mouth that pushes him right over the edge. His hips stutter and falter, rhythm breaking apart, as he spills himself deep inside you with a raw, guttural groan, emptying everything he has into you.

You continue to shudder and twitch as the aftershocks of your orgasm work their way through your body, every nerve still firing, skin hypersensitive. Gator’s forehead is still resting against yours, his breathing ragged and heavy. His hand has moved from your clit now, instead rubbing slow, grounding strokes over the curve of your hip, calming you, soothing you back down.

He finally pulls out, holding your ankles steady as he gently lowers your legs back down to the bed, one at a time, careful not to jolt you. He shifts to lie beside you, pulling you close instantly. You can’t bring yourself to move yet; your body feels heavy, boneless, still tingling and shaking from the intensity of it all.

Gator pulls you tight against him, your back to his chest, wrapping his arms securely around you, holding you together. He kisses your shoulder softly, his lips warm against your cooling skin.

“I got you, baby. I love you.”

Your hands come up to close over his where they rest against your stomach, lacing your fingers through his, and you sink back into him completely, safe and whole and loved.

“I love you, Gator.”

Taglist: [Comment to be added] @keerygirlie98 @mystickittytaco @imdjoverit @lofi-fics @kristywidget97 @janehartt  @ms-mountebank @eller41 @slutforpumpkins @roridemie

[tinfoileddd]

drag path, chapter 19 - now it's 3am, everyone goes home alone

main masterlist || divider by @/enchanthings || drag path masterlist read on ao3

[morninglesss]

the modern leper, pt. 5

the alarmist // the futurist // the modern leper

Gator Tillman x f!reader

“Is that you in front of me, coming back for even more of exactly the same? You must be a masochist, to love a modern leper on his last leg.” - Frightened Rabbit

wc: 6.8k

Two months. He wasn’t expecting it and he was. That’s the thing about hope - it survives everything you do to it.

You don’t reply on Wednesday. You don’t reply on Thursday. By Friday you’ve opened a new email to his address four times and closed it four times without writing a single word, which tells you something about the state of you that you’d prefer not to look at too closely.

The first draft you actually write happens on Saturday morning, before the usual walk in the Hoh, while Flynn is waiting by the door with his leash in his mouth and the look on his face he has when he’s decided that a dog’s patience has its limits. You write three sentences, you read them back, and then you delete them. Something in you tells you they’re too angry, then the other voice in your head says they’re not angry enough. You’re not sure which, which is its own problem.

You go to the forest, you meet up with the group and you walk. Jean asks how the week’s been and you say better and she says good and you walk through the ferns and the moss and the enormous trees and you think about fifteen emails sent into a silence that wasn’t silence at all, and you think about it’s me, Gator, and you think about the apology you’ve been given without knowing you were waiting for it, and by the time you get back to the car park you feel - not clearer, exactly, but aired out, like something’s been given room to breathe. 

The second draft happens on Sunday evening. This time you get more words out - two paragraphs, then three, the words coming more easily than you expected, which makes you suspicious of them. You read it back and it sounds like someone performing okayness; it’s written like someone who has thought very carefully about how a reasonable, healed, functional person would respond to his email and has written that response instead of an honest one. You delete all of it.

You start fresh.

The third draft is angry. Not at him specifically - or not only at him - but at the whole of it, the six years and the emails and the way it’s been dropped on you in the middle of a summer that was going so well. A summer that had Gabriel and the concert and Tom’s birthday and the cactus flowering, and now has this, this thing sitting in your office between the ocean view and the North Dakota photograph, demanding something you don’t know how to give yet. You write the angry draft in about eight minutes and it’s possibly the most honest thing you’ve ever written and you delete it immediately because honest isn’t always the same as right.

You start fresh.

Flynn, through all of this, maintains a studied neutrality. He doesn’t know about the email. He knows something about you is different - he’s been sleeping closer, checking back on you more on your beach walks, and appearing in the office doorway at intervals that seem almost therapeutic in their regularity - but he doesn’t know what it is, and he can’t ask, and you find the dog’s not-asking more comforting than most people’s asking.

In amongst all of this, your work continues at pace. The Geneva follow-up, the quarterly report for the Board, a new project beginning to take shape that will need input from all three field offices and will be, you can already tell, a huge amount of work, which is the kind of thing you normally look forward to. You mostly look forward to it. It mostly helps.

In the forest the following Saturday Elizabeth talks about her son’s visit - her four grandchildren, the meal she cooked for everyone that took all day, the way they walked into her home and smelled it. Her voice has something in it when she talks about them that you recognise without being able to name. Something that has come through loss and found, on the other side of it, that the things worth having are still there.

Right size, she says, at some point, about something else entirely, a tree or a waterfall or something. Not small. Just the right size.

You think about that on the drive home.

You open a new email when you get back and write. The cactus is still alive. It’s been flowering.

You look at it for a long time.

You delete it.

You start fresh.

****************

Gator doesn’t think about it at all.

That’s not true. He thinks about it the way you think about something you’ve decided not to think about - constantly, at the edges, in the gaps between other things. It’s there on the bus, in the counting of stops, in the halfway mark arriving when it should. It’s there in the kitchen when he’s working at his station - it’s even in the smell of whatever Michael has set up for him to cook that Tuesday. It’s there in Joshua’s office twice a week, in the leather chair that squeaks and then goes quiet, and it’s there when he’s being asked questions that he answers carefully and honestly about everything except the one thing sitting at the back of the room.

It surprises him that Joshua doesn’t push for more from him. He knows Joshua misses very little, so he knows that Joshua is as aware of his not-thinking as he is, but he never pushes for more. He notices it, and saves it for an undecided later - Gator can tell from the quality of the silences, the way that Joshua doesn’t ask - knowing that, eventually, the question will come.

The fact is, the email has been sent. It exists somewhere else in the world now, read or unread or deleted or - he doesn’t know, and he has no way of knowing. He sent it and then any knowing he may have had stopped, which is the part he hadn’t quite prepared himself for. 

Part of him - a voice he’d kept very quiet, that he’d refused to let the rest of him acknowledge - had held onto something small and naive. Not a plan. Not an expectation. Just a spark, buried somewhere underneath all the careful reasoning and the months of Joshua and the she doesn’t have to reply, I mean that - the possibility that sending it might have been the start of something. Something new. Something that hadn’t existed before.

He’d meant it when he wrote that she didn’t have to reply. He means it still. Ninety-nine percent of him means it completely, has accepted it, has built the acceptance into the architecture of his days the way he’s built everything else - methodically, practically, one Tuesday session at a time.

But the spark is still there, small and stubborn and unreasonable, the way hope tends to be when it’s the last thing left. And the waiting - the not-knowing, the silence that could mean anything or nothing, the clock that reset the moment the email was sent and has been running ever since - is slowly, quietly suffocating it.

He hadn’t thought about the clock resetting. That’s the part he hadn’t prepared for.

He tells himself he’s fine with whatever happens. He tells Joshua the same thing, in their Friday session, two weeks after he sent it. Two weeks exactly. He’s felt every minute of them.

“You’re fine with it - fine with it how?” Joshua asks, from his spot on the edge of his desk, the wooden legs creaking as he gets settled.

“Just… I’m fine. I said what I needed to say. Whatever she does with it is up to her. I’m not - it’s not like I’m sitting around waiting for…”

The silence is thick, broken only by the long sip Joshua takes from his coffee.

“What are you doing instead?” 

“Living my life,” he tells him. “The bus. The centre. The group. Cooking. All of it.”

“That’s good,” Joshua pauses for a moment, more coffee, more creaking as he shifts his weight. “And when the bus gets to the halfway mark, what are you thinking about?”

He doesn’t answer that.

“Okay.” He sets his mug down. “That’s okay. We don’t have to go there today.”

They don’t go there. They talk about the group instead - Marie’s walk that morning, what she described, the colour of the river in the afternoon light, less than last week, less than the week before. He talks about Leticia and the new person by the door who still hasn’t spoken. He talks about Robby, who came in last Tuesday with something different in his voice, something that sounded almost like the beginning of acceptance, and how he’d noticed that and hadn’t said anything because some things you notice and don’t name.

Joshua listens to all of it.

“You’re paying attention,” he says, when the silence settles.

“Yeah, I’m trying.”

“You’re paying attention to a lot of things,” Joshua picks up his mug again, and drinks whatever’s left. “Just not the one you’re pretending not to think about.”

Something that might be a smile crosses his face. “Yep, just not that one.”

His routine carries on. The bus, the halfway mark, the centre. In the kitchen on Tuesdays Michael has moved him on from burgers to omelettes, which had seemed frankly impossible the first time he’d tried - the eggs going in, the heat needing to be exactly right, no way to check by sight whether the edges were setting or burning. But the smell tells him. That’s the thing he keeps discovering, the thing that keeps surprising him - the smell tells him. He knows a good omelette now by the way the butter changes when the eggs hit the pan, by the shift in the air just before the edges catch. He knows from the smell and the sound when to take the pan off the heat and put it under the grill. He knows it before Michael says anything. He knows it before he needs to.

He gets it right more often than not now. That still surprises him too.

He meets with Dot most Fridays - coffee at the place on the corner, or lunch somewhere outdoors if the weather’s held, the easy conversation of two people who have stopped needing to explain themselves to each other. He still catches himself, occasionally, slightly startled by the ordinariness of it. That this is just a thing they do. That she just shows up and he just shows up and they drink their coffees and talk about Scotty’s band or Wayne’s fishing boat or the thing that happened in the group on Tuesday, and none of it requires effort or management or the exhaustion of being careful about it. It’s just - there. Easy. His.

She knows he’s waiting. He doesn’t say it and she doesn’t ask, which is its own kind of conversation. Joshua’s not-asking has a different aspect - deliberate, strategic, the not-asking of someone giving him room to arrive somewhere in his own time. Dot’s is simpler than that. It’s the not-asking of someone who has decided he’ll speak when he’s ready, and until then she’ll just be there, which is what she does, which is what she’s always done, which is - he doesn’t have a word for it that isn’t too large or too small. It’s just Dot. It’s just what she is.

He doesn’t tell her he checks his phone more than he used to. That he’s memorised the sound his phone makes for email notifications and finds himself listening for it in rooms where he shouldn’t be listening for anything except whatever’s in front of him. That on the bus, between the fourth stop and the halfway mark, his mind goes somewhere he’s told it not to go and he lets it, briefly, and then brings it back.

He is, by any reasonable measure, fine.

He is not fine.

****************

September arrives with the unsettledness of a season that hasn’t quite decided whether it wants to change - the mornings cooler, the light on the water slightly lower than the weeks before, the heat lifting some days but not others. You notice these things with the part of your attention that isn’t occupied by the email that you still haven’t replied to.

You’ve stopped counting the number of replies you’ve started and stopped. Some are short - two sentences, three, abandoned to the trash bin before they become anything more. Some are long, longer than his email, longer than most of the emails you sent him over five and a half years, and you read them back and delete them because they say too much, or they don’t say the right things, or both. One of them, written on a Thursday evening with Flynn asleep at your feet and the ocean audible through the open window, gets close - close enough that you save it as a draft instead of deleting it, which you’ve never done before, which feels like progress of a kind.

You open it on Friday morning, reread it three times, and then you delete it.

You start fresh.

Jean notices that your quietness in the Hoh has changed. She doesn’t say so directly - Jean rarely says things directly when indirect will do nicely - but she walks beside you on the return leg one Saturday and asks, very casually, how things are sitting with you now, and you say better, I think, and also worse, I think, depending on the day and she says that sounds about right for where you are and you walk in comfortable silence for a while and Elizabeth, ahead of you on the trail, stops beside the big old cedar and says there she is the way she always does and you think about paying attention while it’s here and you think about the draft you saved and deleted and you think soon.

Flynn has started sleeping on your bed again. You’ve stopped telling him to get down.

Sandra from Seaview calls on a Friday morning in late September, a little after nine. You see the care home’s number on your screen and answer it cautiously - in the way of someone who has been half-expecting a call like this without quite knowing they were expecting it.

“I’m so sorry,” Sandra says, without preamble. “Mrs Okafor died yesterday evening. Her daughter and son-in-law were with her. It was very peaceful, in the end.”

You sit down. You’re in the kitchen, you sit down at the table, and Flynn comes to you immediately and puts his head in your lap.

“What happened?” you ask.

“A fall,” Sandra says. “Wednesday morning. She broke her hip. She went to hospital - we had hoped, we thought there was a chance - but she was eighty-four, you know, and her heart wasn’t strong enough for the surgery, and…” You hear Sandra stop, her voice thicker when she speaks again. “She knew Flynn,” Sandra says, which isn’t a non sequitur, which is Sandra’s way of saying she was herself until the end, she was present, she was the woman you knew.

“She always knew Flynn,” you say, quietly, looking at the boy with his head on your thigh and his big eyes watching yours.

“She always knew Flynn,” Sandra agrees.

You sit at the kitchen table after the call ends and look at nothing in particular for a while. Flynn stays. The weight of his head on your lap, patient and certain, the way he always is when something has happened and he’s decided his job is just to be there.

You don’t go to Seaview that Sunday. You can’t quite face Rosemary and the farm in Idaho and the common room games, knowing that at the end of the east corridor the chair by the window is empty. You message Sandra instead - not this week, I hope that’s okay - and Sandra replies Of course. Take your time.

The funeral is on a Thursday in early October, at a church in the next town, a forty-minute drive along the coast road. You wear the dark wrap dress, the one you wore to Tom’s birthday, because it’s the most respectful thing you own that isn’t black - the family had been clear, no black, nothing sad. It was to be a celebration. You add a pink silk scarf.

Flynn is in his yellow collar, which feels right. He should be recognisable. He should look like what he is.

The church is full. Mrs Okafor had been here for nearly fifty years, had known people, had been known. You sit at the back, Flynn settled at your feet, and you listen to a service that moves between English and Yoruba, the minister switching between them with the ease of someone who has been doing it his whole life, and you understand less than half of it and it doesn’t matter because the parts that matter are universal - the love, the loss, the grief of a life that was long and full and is now over.

Adaeze speaks. She’s in her late fifties, with her mother’s upright quality and her warm smile, and she talks about the garden in Lagos and her father Emmanuel and the redwoods and the pie in the Oregon diner that her mother spent thirty years trying to recreate and never quite managed. She talks about a pale dog named Sunday who used to lie heavy and still in the neighbour’s yard, and how her mother had mentioned, in her last months, a dog she saw on Sundays - or Saturdays, she couldn’t always remember which - a big dog, very calm, very good. “I thought she’d dreamed him up,” Adaeze says. “The way she described him, I thought he was a memory she’d made more vivid than it was.”

She pauses to dab her cheeks with a tissue. Her eyes find you at the back of the church. She spots Flynn at your feet, in his yellow collar with the Therapet tag at his chest, his ears forward, his attention entirely on her.

“He’s real,” she says, and her voice does something complicated, and the church is very quiet.

Afterwards, in the car park, Adaeze comes to find you, her husband and children lingering nearby. She crouches down to Flynn, who accepts her attention with the gravity it deserves, and she keeps her hand on his head for a long time without saying anything.

“She talked about him every week,” she says eventually. “Every time I called. ‘Flynn did this, Flynn sat like that, Flynn knows things’.” She looks up at you. “She wasn’t wrong.”

“No,” you say. “She wasn’t.”

“Thank you,” Adaeze says. “For coming. For - ” She stops. “She was happy, you know. There, in Seaview. I worried about her, I always worried, but she was happy. I think Flynn was part of that.”

You don’t trust yourself to say anything so you just nod, and Adaeze squeezes your hand once and goes back to her family, and you stand in the car park in the early October light with Flynn at your side and think about paying attention while it’s here, and Emmanuel saying the trees and the marriage and the children, pay attention while it’s here, and the email in your inbox that you’ve been drafting replies to for two months and deleting and starting fresh every time.

You think to yourself, I know what I want to say.

Not all of it. Not the hard things, not yet. But the first thing. The small thing. The door left open at the smallest possible scale.

You think, soon.

****************

Gator’s denial and not-thinking holds through most of August.

He gets good at it, which is its own kind of problem. He fills the days - the bus, the centre, the group, the kitchen sessions, Dot on Fridays - and the days are full enough that there are long stretches where he’s pretty sure he’s not thinking about it, where the email and the waiting and the silence exist at a distance he can almost mistake for peace. He gets better at the omelettes. Marie describes a yellow door on her walk one Tuesday, the exact yellow of it, and he thinks to himself, she can still see the yellow. He holds onto that.

The anger arrives on a Thursday in early September, the way anger tends to arrive - not announced or building gradually to a readable crescendo, just suddenly there, huge and fully formed, looking for somewhere to go.

It’s a small thing that starts it. He’s in the kitchen at the centre, Michael behind him and slightly to the right, and he’s making something with chicken and he can’t tell if it’s cooked through and he has to ask Michael to check and Michael checks and tells him it’s fine, it’s cooked, but the asking has undone something that had been holding and by the time he gets to eat his lunch he’s sitting with his hands flat on the table and something hot and formless moving around in his chest.

He thinks about the email. He thinks, it’s been three weeks. He thinks, she’s not going to reply.

And then he thinks, I should have known she wasn’t going to reply. I should have known before I sent it. I did know, and I sent it anyway, and now I’m sitting in a café in Stillwater with chicken I couldn’t even check myself and two weeks of silence and -

He stops the spiral before it can twist too far. He picks up his fork, and he eats the lunch he cooked for himself.

He tells Joshua about it on Friday.

“The anger,” Joshua says. “Tell me about the anger. What does it feel like?”

“Like…” He stops for a moment, and then he tries again. “Like I did everything right and it still didn’t work. Which I know isn’t how it works. I know she doesn’t owe me a reply. I know that.”

“But?”

“But I’m fucking pissed anyway.” He shifts in the chair. “Not at her - I want to be clear about that. I’m not pissed at her.”

“So who are you pissed at?”

He thinks about it. “Roy. Mostly Roy. For - for all of it. For making me someone she had a reason to be afraid of. For making it so that even if she wanted to reply she might not, because somewhere in the back of her mind I’m still connected to him, I’m still his son, and -”

He stops.

“No, Gator. That’s yours,” Joshua says quietly. “That thought. That fear. It’s yours and it’s worth sitting with.”

A few weeks ago he would have left the room. He would have picked up his cane and stormed out, as much as a man struggling with sight loss in an unfamiliar building could storm out. He sticks with it now, stays in his squeaky chair, gets comfortable with the discomfort.

“Yeah, it is,” Gator says.

“Do you believe it?” Joshua asks. “That she sees you only as Roy’s son? Do you see yourself as just Roy’s son?”

He thinks about the emails. About fifteen of them, across five and a half years. About I’ve decided to let myself believe you didn’t want to.

“No,” he says. “I don’t think she does. Not sure about me yet.”

“Then the anger,” Joshua says, “might not be about her at all.”

He sits with that for the rest of the session and most of the journey home.

The bargaining comes in the third week of September, quiet and circular and worse than the anger because the anger at least had direction.

It lives in the gaps - the bus journey, the space between finishing dinner and going to bed, the twenty minutes after the group session when he sits in the café and waits for his coffee. It sounds like, if I’d sent it differently. It sounds like, if I’d said the apology more plainly, or less plainly, or earlier, or not at all. It sounds like, if I’d just left it. If I’d just let her have the last word, which was five and a half years of kindness I didn’t deserve, and been grateful. It sounds like maybe I shouldn’t have responded at all?

He brings it to Joshua in pieces, over two sessions, and Joshua listens to all of it without expression.

“What would it change,” Joshua asks, eventually, “if you’d sent it differently?”

“Maybe she’d have replied.”

“Maybe,” Joshua acknowledges. “Or maybe the reply or the silence would have come regardless, and what you’re doing right now is looking for a version of events where you had more control than you did. We’ve talked about control before.”

Gator doesn’t say anything.

“You made a considered decision. You sat with it for months. You wrote it and rewrote it and brought it here and we talked about it and you sent it when you were ready. You did everything you could do.” He waits a moment before he finishes. “The rest isn’t yours to control.”

“I know that,” he says, through gritted teeth.

“I know you know it,” Joshua says, “but knowing it and feeling it are different things. You’re allowed to feel it.”

He nods. He sits with his hands on his knees. Outside the window of Joshua’s office the courtyard is doing something autumnal - he can feel the change in the air through the open window, something crisper, the coolness of the season turning.

“What if she never replies?” Joshua asks. Not cruelly. Just directly, the way Joshua asks the questions that need asking.

Gator sits with it properly.

“Then she never replies,” he says. “And I said what I needed to say and she knows it and that has to be enough.”

“Does it feel like enough?”

There’s a long pause while he thinks about it.

“Not yet,” he eventually answers. “But I think it will.”

October arrives and with it something that isn’t quite peace but is in the same neighbourhood.

He notices it first on a Tuesday morning - the bus, the halfway mark, the patched asphalt - and he realises that he’s gone almost the full journey without thinking about the email. Not because he’s suppressing it, but because the morning is the morning and the bus is the bus and the halfway mark arrived when it was supposed to and there’s something almost - not good, but workable, about that. About the ordinary machinery of a life continuing to turn.

He tells Dot on Friday, over coffee at the place on the corner she’s started driving to meet him at, the one with the outside tables they haven’t been able to use since August.

“I think I’m okay,” he says. “Like actually okay. Not pretending to be.”

Dot is quiet for a moment. He hears her set her cup down.

“What changed?”

“Nothing,” he smiles. “That’s the thing. Nothing changed. She still hasn’t replied and I don’t know if she will and I’m - I’m okay with not knowing. I hope she’s well. I hope she has a good life.” He turns his cup a full three-sixty. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got left on it. I hope she’s happy.”

Dot doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“That sounds like something real.” 

She says it quietly, but there’s something underneath it - relief, maybe, or the warmth of someone who has been quietly worried and is now quietly not worried, and who is too wise to make a performance of either.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I think it is.”

She picks her cup back up. He hears her drink, set it down again. “You know what I think?”

”What?”

“I think that took longer than it should have and less time than I expected. Both of those things are true at the same time.”

He almost laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “That sounds about right.”

They drink their coffee. Outside the window Stillwater goes about its October morning - the ordinary sounds of it, cars and voices, the noise of an expectant Friday that knows the weekend is coming. The coffee is good. Dot is with him. That’s enough. That’s exactly enough.

He tells Joshua the same thing the following Tuesday.

Joshua listens to every word. He makes the sound that means what he’s heard is important.

“I believe you,” Joshua says. “I want you to know that. I believe you mean it.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Is that it? Is that what acceptance feels like? Because it feels very - blah.”

“Yes,” Joshua says. “There’s no big bang. Blah is exactly what it feels like.”

He’s on his way out of Joshua’s office, cane finding the door, when Joshua calls to him. “Gator.”

He stops.

“Whatever happens next, you’re ready for it. I want you to know that too.”

He nods, then finds the door handle and goes out into the October afternoon. The air is cooler now, the smell of the river and the coffee place and the season turning, and he walks the two blocks uphill to the bus stop and waits.

The bus arrives shortly after, and he gets on, and he counts the stops until he’s home again. 

He is not thinking about the email.

He is, for the first time in two months, genuinely not thinking about it.

****************

You write it on a Wednesday.

It’s late afternoon, the light already shifting toward evening, the ocean through the gap in the trees going that shade of grey-gold that only happens in October when the sun is getting low. Flynn is dozing on his bed at the top of the stairs. The Geneva inbox has been cleared. The quarterly report is filed. There’s nothing left to do that isn’t the thing you’ve been not-doing for two months.

You open the draft, with his name at the top followed by a dash and nothing beneath it. You’ve gone past the point of planning, of deciding in advance what you want to say. You’ve spent two months thinking about it, trying and deleting and trying again, and now it’s October and there’s this feeling in your stomach that feels like something close to relief. You’re ready.

You start writing, and you don’t stop. You don’t read it back, and you don’t make any changes as you go. The feeling in your stomach tells you when to stop, and when it does, you hit send on it immediately.

You close the email app and sit for a moment looking at the ocean through the gap in the trees, and then you open the Nairobi repository and get back to what’s left of the day, because that’s what you do, because the data is still the data and Flynn is on his bed and life continues, which is the thing you’ve spent six years learning to trust.

You’ve done the hard thing, maybe the hardest thing, and you don’t think about it for the rest of the day.

Or rather - you think about it the way you think about something you’ve just let go of. You’re aware of the absence of the heaviness you’ve held for two months. It’s not yours anymore. It’s out there now, somewhere in the world, hitting an inbox in Minnesota. What happens next isn’t yours to control.

You save your work at half past six and close the laptop. You look at the cactus for a moment - the left-side listing, the green arms, the windowsill in the fading light.

Okay, you say out loud.

Flynn appears at the door, ears up, hopeful.  

“Yeah,” you tell him. “Come on, let’s go to the beach.”

****************

Joshua’s four o’clock session runs a little long, which it sometimes does when something worth following comes up and neither of them wants to leave it half-finished. Today it’s the acceptance - him trying to articulate what it actually feels like, which is harder than he’d expected, language being an imprecise instrument for something this quiet and this specific. By the time he’s done he’s tired in the good way, the way that means something has been properly worked rather than avoided.

Dot is waiting outside in the car, which she’d offered that morning when she’d called. I’ll pick you up after Joshua, we’ll get Thai on the way back, Wayne’s taken Scotty to her thing. He’d said yes before he’d finished thinking about it, which is still occasionally surprising to him - how easy yes has become, with her.

The Thai place they like is a ten minute detour. She orders for both of them without asking because she’s remembered his favourites, which is its own thing, and they drive the rest of the way to Scandia with the food in bags on the back seat filling the car with the smell of lemongrass and chilli and something sweet underneath.

“Good session today?” Dot asks him between songs she insists on humming along to.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” he corrects himself. “I’m just - learning to get used to knowing things.”

She makes the sound that means she understands that completely and doesn’t need to say so.

The food is on the counter in its containers when he remembers about his phone. He’d switched it off before the session with Joshua - something he’d started doing a couple of weeks before, something Joshua hasn’t asked him about yet but he knows it’s coming. He turns it back on and the email notification pings out loudly - he’s learned the specific sound of it, has been learning it for two months without meaning to, the way you learn the sounds of things you’re waiting for even when you’ve told yourself you’ve stopped waiting.

He freezes, phone in hand.

Dot is telling him something about Scotty, something that happened at breakfast that had made Wayne laugh so hard he’d almost choked on his coffee, and she stops mid-sentence.

“Gator, what is it?”

“Email.” His voice comes out level. He’s proud of that.

“From -?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He navigates to the email with the careful precision he’s developed over months, the voice commands coming automatically now, and he finds it, and the screen reader tells him the sender address.

He sits with that for a moment.

“It’s her.”

Dot doesn’t say anything.

“It’s her,” he says again. Not for Dot. Just to hear it out loud in a real room, in a human voice, after two months of not hearing it anywhere.

He feels Dot’s hand on his arm. “I’ll just -   I’ll go upstairs. Just shout for me when you’re -”

“No. Read it,” he asks. “Will you read it to me?” He holds the phone out toward her. “Don’t soften it. Whatever it says. Just read it. I don’t want to hear it in the text to speech voice. It needs to be real. Please”

“Okay,” Dot says. Her voice is steady. She takes the phone.

There’s a silence while she finds it. He hears her breath change - just slightly, just once - and then she begins.

“Gator.

I’ve written and deleted and re-written this email a hundred times over the last few weeks, but I’ve decided that this is the one I’ll send. I’m tired of overthinking it. Let’s see what I come up with.”

He doesn’t move. He barely breathes. Dot stops, and he can feel her checking on him before she continues.

“Firstly, the cactus. Yes, I still have it. I don’t know if it got damaged in a move, or if I just bought the runt of the litter -” Dot pauses, just a fraction. “- do cacti come in litters? Anyway, this one leans to the left like it’s drunk. It flowered this summer, a cute little pink bloom at the tip of one of its arms. The flower lasted for a little over a month before the petals went crispy and dropped off. I have no idea if it’ll flower again, but for a few weeks there it was glorious. Now, it’s all green and back to normal, like it’s recovering from a burst of energy.”

In the kitchen, something settles. He can’t name it. He just feels it, the way he feels things now - with the whole of him, with the skin of his hands and the quality of the air and the weight of the room around him.

Dot keeps reading.

“I want to say sorry for the way I emailed you, especially the early ones. I’m not going to apologise for how angry I was, but your email address wasn’t the place to put it. I didn’t expect you to ever find them. I’m honestly pretty embarrassed about it. You didn’t ask to be my emotional dumping ground, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

He hears Dot’s voice do something on embarrassed. Just a slight tremor. She keeps going.

“I want you to know that I read your apology. I believe you mean it. I know that was a difficult thing to say, especially when you had to say it out loud in order to write it. So, thank you for that.”

Dot stops reading. Not for long, just for a breath. Just for the time it takes to collect something.

“You said you have a routine now. A life, or something like it I think you said? What does it feel like? Are you happy?”

The kitchen is quiet.

The Thai food is on the counter, still in its containers, untouched. Somewhere in the house a clock ticks. Outside, the October evening has settled over Scandia - the quiet of it, the trees, the distant sound of something moving on the road.

“Take care,” Dot reads, her voice very quiet now, ending with just the name.

He sits in the quiet for a long time. His hands are in his lap. He’s not moving. He’s just there, in Dot’s kitchen, with the cooling Thai food and the clock ticking and the October evening outside, and something happening in his chest that he can’t name and doesn’t need to.

“Are you happy,” he says out loud. Not a question. Just the words, turned over like he’s inspecting them.

“Yeah,” Dot says softly.

“She asked if I’m happy.”

“I know, hon,” Dot says, and he hears her place the phone down on the counter.

He sits with that.

And then something gives way inside him - the collapse of something that has been held very tightly for a very long time finally being allowed to give way. His shoulders drop. His breath changes. He puts his face in his hands and something moves through him that isn’t crying, can’t be crying - the ducts Munch had cauterised in his attack don’t produce tears anymore - but is everything else that crying is, the shaking and the sound of it, low and unsteady, the whole weight of two months and six years and everything before that coming through at once.

Dot moves without hesitation. She comes around the island and wraps her arms around him, reaching up because of the height of him, and he folds down because of the height of her, and it’s slightly awkward and entirely right, and she holds on.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He can’t say anything. He just lets her hold him, in her kitchen, in the house she built with Wayne, in the life she made after everything Roy took from both of them, and he shakes and she holds on and the clock ticks and outside the October evening continues, ignorant of the fact that something has just broken open here and started, very quietly, to let the light in.

She doesn’t let go.

And somewhere in the middle of it all - not as a decision, just as a realisation she becomes conscious of the way you become conscious of things that have been true for longer than you knew - Dot understands that she has forgiven him completely.

She hasn’t forgotten. She hasn’t forgotten what Roy did to them, and she hasn’t forgotten what Gator did to her, to Wayne, to Scotty and the house that Halloween. Those things happened and left their marks and the marks are still there and forgiveness doesn’t erase them.

But she has forgiven him. This man, sitting in her kitchen, sobbing with his face dry and her arms wrapped around him. Who asked her to come and kept asking. Who she turned up for in prison every month for years and thought about daily between every visit. This man, who accepted her help and has stuck to every single condition that the prison, the parole board, the lawyers and therapists and Lorraine Lyon placed on him. 

This man. She has forgiven this man.

She told herself once, at a kitchen island at 3am with a legal pad and a cold cup of tea in front of her, that she would get him out of prison and then he’d be on his own.

She holds him tighter and presses a kiss to his head.

She was wrong about that.

[ms-mountebank]

4 authors you like

Thank you @tinfoileddd for the original tag and for spreading a little positivity on here! Thank you also to @cpnsteverogers for a tag too 😊 It has taken me a while to put this together as there are so so many talented writers and I am currently doing this on my tea break so whoops if there are spelling mistakes 🤣 Here goes!

* @morninglesss I absolutely adore this authors writing! I am constantly looking out for her updates and I urge everyone to go and read her work if you haven’t already. All her work is superb, but my favourite is The Alarmist series. The way she captures Gator is phenomenal! Reading is supposed to make you feel something and her work always moves me so much, the depth she brings to characters is something that really cannot be matched and the attention to detail shows that she puts her heart and soul into her writing, I could read her works over and over again and it would still feel like the first time! Also extra respect for being a Wide Awake veteran from back in the day!😁

* @thoroughlymimi again another author who’s updates I always look forward to, honestly love everything they have written. Again the subtle attention to detail that really aids the building of the stories is phenomenal and again the writing really makes you feel something, you experience each emotion along with the characters in their work. I cannot choose a favourite from their masterlist but their latest piece At the Heart of It has currently captured me. If you haven’t read any of their work you are missing out! 😊

* @sheisjoeschateau I stumbled upon their work when I began reading regularly on here at the beginning of the year and Mercy totally captured me, so much so that Gator very quickly became one of my favourite characters to read. Again the detail and passion that this author puts into their work is completely evident and beyond words and I have all their masterlist on my to read list, I am especially looking forward to starting their Oh So We Do Love Steve piece. They are also currently working on a collab Let’s Show Them We Are Better with @keer-y which I am really loving at the moment 😊

* @tinfoileddd I don’t know where to start with this author! I recently began reading Drag Path, and it has had a hold on me so much that I have been sneaking in chapters at work in between surgeries!! The way they capture Steve and Mel’s characters in that piece of work can both warm your soul and break your heart simultaneously, I have said this to the author privately but one of my favourite quotes from a book I have read many years ago is from Wuthering Heights, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” and that is exactly how I feel about her characters! Also bonus points for being really friendly! 😁

Shoutouts also to @harringtonsdiary @swirledyouintoallmypoems @thecruxchronicles @oohgeminii @kensley-11 @andvys @scoopsahoydjo @m0mmat0rtle @larivervixen @comfycosygirl @heavenknows13 @snoopyracing @buckysgrace @moonstoneandmoonlight @pocketstories @insomniacpen @upsidedownwithemmy @ananthologyofblurbs @discodjo @riddlersoupwrites You are all AMAZING and help me to escape real life when I need to!😍

I am so sorry if I have omitted anyone 😊

[ms-mountebank]

Re-blogging because these writers deserve all the love!❤️

[goth-queen]

[ms-mountebank]

10 songs on repeat

Thank you @morninglesss for the tag! Took me a while because life and shit🤣

There She Goes - The La’s

Slide Away - Oasis

I Am The Resurrection - The Stone Roses

Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol

Life On Mars - David Bowie

Mr Mountebank - Djo

Don’t Delete The Kisses - Wolf Alice

Flightless Bird - Iron and Wine

Pie In The Sky - Post Animal

Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen

All for fun, no pressure tags! @thoroughlymimi @insomniacpen @lofi-fics @comfycosygirl

[morninglesss]

the modern leper, pt. 4

the alarmist // the futurist // the modern leper

Gator Tillman x f!reader

“Is that you in front of me, coming back for even more of exactly the same? You must be a masochist, to love a modern leper on his last leg.” - Frightened Rabbit

wc: 7.2k

An email arrives on a Friday morning in August. You spend a week not looking at it. How do you carry something so unexpected? How do you navigate your life with a bomb in your pocket?

Friday.

You get home from the beach and you still don’t open it.

You stand in the kitchen with your jacket still on and your boots leaving sand on the floor and your phone on the counter face up, and you look at it for a long time. Flynn sits beside you and looks up at the table, with the focused attention of a dog who has decided that whatever you’re doing, he’s doing it with you.

The notification is still there on the screen. Small and ordinary. 

[email protected] 

You pick up the phone and open the email app. You find it immediately at the top of the inbox - it’s the only unread email, everything else processed and filed, because that’s how you work, because you can’t think clearly in clutter. It sits at the top of the inbox like something that knows it doesn’t belong there and has decided to brazen it out anyway.

You delete it.

You put the phone back on the counter, face down, and fill Flynn’s water bowl and stand at the sink and watch him drink, and you don’t flinch or step back when he shakes off his wet snout, sending a spray of water across the cupboard doors and floor and your feet. You just pick up a dry cloth, wipe up the mess, and look out of the window to the trees.

Thirty-one minutes later - you know because you check the time, twice, in the space of those thirty-one minutes, which tells you something about the state you’re in - you pick the phone back up, go to the deleted folder, and restore the email.

You pin it to the top of the inbox, marking it as read but still leaving it unopened. You go into the settings and turn off the preview function so the first line doesn’t show. Then you put the phone in your jacket pocket and take your jacket off at last and hang it by the door with the phone still in it, which is not a solution but is at least a system. You’ve always been able to work with a system in place.

Going upstairs to the office is the next logical step; it’s Friday, you have things to do and one rogue email won’t disturb that. You make yourself a coffee in the kitchen (black today), and climb the stairs with Flynn at your heels. He tries to follow you into the office but you just turn and give him the look, and he reverses himself out of the office and into the bed at the top of the stairs.

You open your laptop and run through the usual Slack updates and requests. You lose yourself in the work, dealing with calls and meetings and another round of reports, until Flynn reappears and sits directly on your feet, which is his way of telling you it’s past his dinner time and he’s being very patient about it but there are limits. You check the clock and it’s nearly seven, which means you’ve been working for the better part of nine hours and neither of you have eaten since breakfast. Flynn rests his head on your thigh and looks up at you with the expression he has when he’s decided that guilt is more effective than urgency.

“I’m sorry baby,” you say as you ruffle his ears. “I’ve neglected you. C’mon, let’s eat.”

You feed him first, as always, spreading the wet food onto a lick mat in the hope he won’t devour it too fast and make himself sick. You open the bottle of wine you’ve been saving for no particular occasion and decide that this is an occasion, and you cook pasta with the good olive oil and the sundried tomatoes and the pesto from the farmers market and you eat it standing at the kitchen counter because sitting at the table feels too deliberate somehow, too much like an event despite the nice wine in the nice glass.

You take the wine bottle and the glass to the living room and put the television on, flicking through the channels until you find something undemanding with a laugh track that you immediately stop following, reducing it to nothing more than habit and background noise. Flynn settles at your feet and starts snoring within ten minutes. Outside the sky dims to twilight without you really noticing, the way late-summer evenings do when you’re somewhere else in your head, and at some point you refill your glass and at some point after that you top it up it again.

Two hours pass like this, or something close to two hours, you’re not really tracking it. You’re busy thinking about things you can’t resolve - going over the same ground in circles, the way you do when something has lodged itself inside your brain and won’t shift. You think about whether it’s really him. If it is, how has he emailed you? Is he out of prison - if so, how? You think about what it might mean if he is out. What it means if he read everything you’d sent over the years - and whether you want it to mean anything at all, which is the question you keep arriving at and then backing away from.

By the time you notice the bottle is three quarters empty the room is fully dark and Flynn has moved from your feet to beside you on the couch, which he’s not supposed to do and which you haven’t stopped him from doing tonight. You scratch between his ears, and he lets out a low huff in response.

You’re aware, with the fuzzy false clarity that comes from being nearly three quarters of a bottle of red deep, that you could pick up the phone right now and write something you’d regret by morning. You are also aware that you want to do that, quite badly - not because you’ve decided anything, not because you know what you’d say, but because the not-knowing has been sitting on your chest since seven this morning and the wine has made the distance between impulse and action feel shorter than it usually is. You want to write something that proves you’re not afraid. You want to write something that shows him that, actually, you are. You want to write something that says, I saw your email address and I deleted it and then I got it back out of the bin thirty-one minutes later and I’ve been carrying it around in my jacket pocket all day and I don’t know what to do with any of this.

You put the remaining wine in the fridge instead, and pour whatever was left in your glass down the sink, and you leave the phone in your jacket pocket.

You wash your face and brush your teeth, and you study yourself in the bathroom mirror for a moment - and you think, tomorrow. Not as a promise, or as any sort of action you intend to follow. Just as a fact. Tomorrow it will still be there. Tomorrow you will be sober and clear-headed and still not sure what to do, but at least you won’t have done something you can’t take back.

You climb into bed.

The room is dark and the window is open and the ocean is rolling gently below the cliff, and you lie on your back and look at the ceiling and think about nothing very successfully for approximately three minutes before the email thoughts start up again.

Flynn appears in the doorway. You hear him first - the soft pad of his feet and his claws on the wood, then the pause where he’s deciding where to go - and then the weight of him lands on the bed beside you, warm and heavy and entirely certain he’s doing the right thing.

He’s not supposed to be on the bed. You’ve been very clear about this. He knows he’s not supposed to be on the bed.

You don’t say anything.

He settles. His breathing slows and evens out, the way it does when he’s decided the situation is handled and he can stand down. You put your hand on his back and feel the rise and fall of it, slow and regular, and you think about the email in your inbox and the jacket on the hook and the thirty-one minutes it took you to restore the email out of the bin, and at some point, without quite deciding to, you sleep.

Not well, but you do sleep.

Saturday

You wake up too early, and your head is staging some sort of rebellion.

You stay in bed until your alarm rings, Flynn a warm weight beside you, and you think about the walking group and decide you’re going. You need the Hoh. You need the cedars and Jean and to move through something ancient and enormous when your own problems are threatening to spill over the sides.

You get up after sitting on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if your stomach will join your head’s rebellion. When it seems unlikely, you shower and get yourself dressed for the walk. You go downstairs and pass your jacket on the hook and tell yourself you’re just checking the time when you dig your phone out of the pocket. The email is still there, pinned and flagged and waiting. You ignore it.

The drive to the forest is even quieter than usual. Flynn sleeps in the back as always but you don’t drink your coffee, just let it go cold in the cup holder, and the road requires more of your attention than it usually does because your mind keeps drifting somewhere you don’t want it to go to.

Jean notices. Of course Jean notices - it’s her job to notice and she’s very good at her job. She falls into step beside you on the return leg and asks how the week’s been and you say fine, busy, lots going on and she says good and walks beside you in silence for a while, which is its own kind of question. 

You don’t answer it.

She tries once more, gently. “You seem like you’re carrying something today.”

“I’m okay,” you tell her. Which isn’t quite the same as saying no.

She considers that. “You don’t have to be okay,” she says. “You just have to keep walking.”

You do keep walking. Through the ferns and the moss and the enormous ancient trees, the light coming down green and filtered, the air smelling of water and earth and something older than either. You put one foot in front of the other and you breathe and you don’t say anything else, and Jean walks beside you and doesn’t push any further, and you are more grateful for that than you know how to say.

At the cars, before you load Flynn into the back, she touches your arm briefly.

“I’ll check in with you this week,” she tells you.

“Okay,” you nod, and that’s the end of it.

The drive home is quiet. Flynn sleeps in the back, snoring over the noise of the engine. You drink the cold coffee because you need something to do with your hands, and the road spills out ahead of you, the trees giving way to the coast, the water appearing in glimpses between the headlands.

Somewhere on the coast road, a lay-by appears and you pull into it without quite deciding to. You sit with the engine idling and Flynn sleeping in the back and the sea just visible through the trees to your right, and you think, I could read it now. Right now, sitting here, before I’ve had time to talk myself out of it.

You sit with that for a while, turning it over.

Then you indicate, pull back onto the road, and drive home.

Sunday

You don’t decide to go to Seaview so much as find yourself there.

The morning happens around you - the alarm, Flynn’s fluorescent yellow collar lifted from the hook, his chin raised for the clip, the drive along the coast road with the ocean calm in the grey morning light. You’re present for all of it in the way you’re present for things when part of you is somewhere else entirely; functional, going through the motions, the muscle memory of routine carrying you when you’re not quite capable of carrying yourself.

The car park is half full. You sit in the car for a moment after you’ve turned the engine off, Flynn already standing and eager in the back, and you tell yourself, I could go home. Sandra wouldn’t mind. You could message ahead, say you’re feeling under the weather, and promise to come back next week. 

You do none of those things. You drag yourself out of the car, and open the back for Flynn.

You clip Flynn’s leash to his collar. You watch him become the Therapet version of himself - the shift in his posture, the steadying of his energy, the way he reads the building before he’s even inside it - and something in watching him steadies you too. He knows what’s needed here, he always knows, and you follow his lead - which is maybe the wrong way around, professionally speaking - but today it’s the best you can do.

You move through the visit the way you move through the coast road in fog - carefully, one landmark at a time, trusting that the road is still there even when you can’t see very far ahead. You sit with Rosemary and her stories of the farm in Idaho. The common room is quiet, the television on low, a puzzle abandoned on the nearest table. Mrs Okafor sits in her chair by the window in her room, clear-eyed and smiling today, Flynn settling beside her in his usual spot.

“You seem far away today,” she says at some point, after she’s told you stories about her daughter’s wedding more than thirty years ago.

“I’m sorry.” You force a smile. “I’ve got something on my mind.”

She nods, unsurprised, and pats your forearm. “Emmanuel used to get like that. Something sits on you and won’t get off…” She looks at Flynn. “That’s what he’s for, isn’t he? For when something sits on you?”

You look at Flynn, who looks up at you with the calm attention he brings to everything, and something about the steadiness of him - the way he’s just there, totally present, asking nothing of you except that you stay in the room - makes your throat tighten unexpectedly.

“Yes,” you say, and your voice comes out quieter than you intended. “That’s exactly what he’s for.”

Mrs Okafor strokes his ears and doesn’t say anything else for a while, and the three of you sit together in the afternoon light, the garden beyond the window full of dahlias, Flynn’s breathing slow and even, and you let yourself just be in it. Not thinking about the email. Not thinking about Friday morning on the beach or the thirty-one minutes or the wine or the lay-by on the coast road. Just this room, this woman, this dog, this Sunday afternoon in a care home on the Washington coast when someone is telling you, without quite saying so, that the things that sit on you eventually shift.

You stay with her longer than usual, until the talking tires her out and she falls quiet in her chair.

When you finally stand to go Flynn rises with you, stretching himself out with the determination of a dog who has been still for a long time and has earned the big stretch. Mrs Okafor watches him with the special smile she always has for him, the one that belongs to whatever she’s thinking about when she looks at him - Sunday the pale Lagos dog, maybe, or Emmanuel, or something else entirely that she keeps to herself.

“Same time next week?” you ask, gathering your bag.

“God willing,” she says, which is what she always says.

You lean down and squeeze her hand briefly, which you don’t always do, and she squeezes back with more strength than you expect, and that’s that.

On the way out Sandra falls into step beside you in the corridor, Flynn between you, his tag swinging at his neck.

“Good visit today - she always looks forward to seeing Flynn.”

You smile and lean down to scratch Flynn’s head. “She was better this week. She talked about her daughter’s wedding.”

Sandra nods slowly. “She has good days and she has hard days. Today was a good one.” She moves further down the hallway, and you follow. “I think Flynn helps with that. He gives her somewhere to put her attention that isn’t…”  She stops. “It’s hard, sometimes, when the mind starts running away from you. Having something that’s just warm and real and in the room, that helps.”

You look down at Flynn, who is looking up at Sandra with the hope of a dog expecting a treat.

“Yeah,” you say. “It does.”

You sign out at reception. Dani waves Flynn off with her usual theatrics - goodbye my love, see you next week! - and Flynn accepts the fuss and follows you out to the car park without looking back, which is very him.

You sit in the car for a moment before you start the engine.

The visit has given you what the visits usually do. It has taken you out of yourself for a few hours, put you somewhere that required your attention and Flynn’s attention and left no room for the circular thinking of the last two days. You feel steadier than you did this morning. Not resolved, and definitely not ready, but steadier.

The road on the drive home is quiet, the coast route running alongside the water, the afternoon light lower now, the sea sparkling golden and temporary that you notice without quite being able to hold onto. Mrs Okafor’s voice is in your head - something sits on you and won’t get off.

You think about Flynn, how he’d come to you on the couch without being asked, and the weight of him heavy and present on the bed beside you all night. You think about what Mrs Okafor said - that’s what he’s for - and you think about how long you’ve been managing things alone, putting systems in place, pinning emails to the top of inboxes, letting the wine get you three quarters down before you trusted yourself to stop.

You think, I need to talk to someone. Not today. But soon.

You turn off the coast road and follow the road through the trees toward the cabin, and Flynn stirs in the back seat, sensing home.

Monday

Monday arrives with the blessed relief of having things to do.

You’re at your desk by eight, Flynn on his bed at the top of the stairs, the office smelling of coffee and the faint salt air coming through the gap in the window you’ve left open despite the morning chill. The access report needs its final checks before it goes to your supervisor, and you give it those checks carefully, methodically, the way you do everything - following each thread back to its source, making sure nothing has been left loose. It’s good work. You know it’s good work. You send it across at ten forty-seven with a brief covering note and sit back in your chair and feel, briefly, the satisfaction of having something completed.

…then your inbox refreshes and the satisfaction passes and you’re just a person sitting at a desk with an unread email pinned to the top of a different account, and the day continues.

The Geneva coordinator has questions about next quarter’s template standardisation, which you answer clearly and without drama. The Nairobi call at two runs forty minutes and covers everything it needs to cover - you’re present, you’re useful, you ask the right questions and take the right notes and nobody on the call would know that any part of you is somewhere else entirely.

You are, by any reasonable measure, functioning.

Flynn shifts on his bed at the top of the stairs. You hear him settle, sigh, settle again. The ordinary rhythm of him, the breathing and the small movements, that has been the background of your working days for three years and you’ve never been more aware of it than you are today - the comfort of another living creature nearby, going about his own quiet business, requiring nothing from you except your continued presence in the building.

By five you’ve closed the laptop. You make dinner - something simple, something that doesn’t require you to think - and you eat it and clean up and the evening opens out ahead of you, unstructured, which is when the thinking tends to get away from you.

You make tea tonight, not wine, and take it to the couch. The tv is switched on again, but just like before you’re barely paying it any attention. With no work to worry about and nothing on tv capturing your attention, you let your mind wander.

You’re thinking about the report, you tell yourself. You’re thinking about the Nairobi call. You’re thinking about what Jean said on Saturday - you don’t have to be okay, you just have to keep walking - and whether that applies to weekdays as well as to forests.

And then, somewhere around the third sip of tea, the thought arrives. Not the email. Something underneath the email. Something you’ve been too busy managing to actually look at in any great detail.

How is he emailing from prison?

You sit with it.

It’s been six years, and six years is a long time. Things change - policies, processes, people. Maybe the rules around email access are different than you thought, maybe they vary by facility, maybe - but he said I’m not in jail now, didn’t he? Or something like that, you thought you’d read that in the notification before you turned the preview off, before you -

You haven’t read it. You don’t actually know what it says.

Maybe it isn’t him?

The tea goes cold in your hands.

The thought, once arrived, will not be reasoned away. You try - you are good at reasoning, it is one of the things you’re best at, you follow data to conclusions for a living - but this thought has no interest in being reasoned with. It just sits there, in the middle of your head and the middle of the room, getting bigger and more insistent.

Maybe it isn’t him at all.

Roy Tillman is in a cell in North Dakota. You know this. You have known this since the trial, since the verdict, since the sentencing - you read all of it, every article, every report, sitting in your Montana apartment with your coffee going cold the same way this tea is going cold now, making sure you knew exactly where he was and what had happened to him. He is in a cell in a prison in North Dakota and he will never be released. But, nevertheless, you know he has reach that extends well beyond any cell because Roy Tillman has always had people, has always had channels, has always been the kind of man who manages things from a distance as though distance means nothing to him.

Because to Roy, it never did.

He knew your name. He knew your face. He knew where you worked and what you were worth to him and what you weren’t. He arranged your life in Montana before you’d even arrived - the apartment, the job, everything adequate, everything managed - and you had moved into it like a stage set someone else had built and called it starting over.

What if Roy has access to Gator’s account?

Your hands, you notice, are not entirely steady.

What if Gator is dead and this is Roy’s way of telling me?

You don’t know where that thought comes from. You don’t know why it arrives in that particular way - not what if something happened to Gator but what if Roy is using this to tell me, as though even now, six years and two thousand miles away, your first instinct is to make Roy the subject of the sentence. As though Gator can only exist in this story in relation to his father.

But underneath that thought is another one, quieter and more frightening - what if something has happened to him?

Not Roy’s doing. Not a message. Just - what if, in six years, something happened, and you don’t know, and you’ve been walking around not knowing, and the email in your inbox is someone’s way of letting you know?

Flynn is off his bed before you’ve consciously registered needing him. You don’t know what you did - made a sound, changed your breathing, went very still in the way that means the opposite of calm - but he’s there, his weight against your leg, his nose finding your hand with the accuracy of a trained dog who has been paying attention to you all day from the top of the stairs and has decided that now is the moment to intervene.

You barely register him. Instead, you stand up.

You check the front door. Locked. The back door. Locked. The ground floor windows, one by one, the latches engaged, the glass solid. Then upstairs - your bedroom, the office, the spare room - Flynn following you from room to room, understanding that this is what’s needed and he is not going to make anything of it.

You know, on some level, that you are not doing this because Roy Tillman is outside your cabin. You know that. Roy Tillman is in a cell in North Dakota. The rational part of you knows this and would like the rest of you to catch up.

The rest of you checks the office window twice.

You come back downstairs. Your hands are shaking, the fine, persistent tremor of a nervous system that has been asked to hold something too heavy for too long and is now starting to show the strain of it.

Flynn herds you to the couch. There’s no other word for it - he uses his body, his weight, the gentle insistent pressure of a large dog who knows exactly what he’s doing, until you sit. And then he climbs up beside you, which he’s not supposed to do, and puts his full weight across your lap and his head on your shoulder and stays there. Seventy pounds of German Shepherd, warm and certain, his breathing slow and deliberate as though he’s showing you how it’s done. You dig the fingers of both hands into his thick fur, and hold on.

You call off work for tomorrow with a brief message to your manager - not feeling well, will be back Wednesday - sent before you can second-guess the wording. Then you put the phone face down on the cushion beside you and sit under the weight of Flynn and try to breathe the way he’s breathing.

Roy Tillman is in prison, you tell yourself over and over. Roy Tillman cannot reach you. It’s been six years. You live somewhere he has never been, in a community where people know your name and your dog and the food you bring to a birthday party. You have a life here, a life you’ve built by yourself, a life he cannot touch.

But.

But Roy has people. But Gator’s email address could have been accessed by anyone, could have been given to anyone, could mean anything. But you don’t know what’s happened in six years, not really - you know the broad strokes, the verdict, the sentencing, the things that made it into the news - but you don’t know the texture of it, the daily reality of it, whether Gator is alive or dead or somewhere in between.

But you don’t know.

The television is still on, some comedy, some irrelevant cheerfulness. You don’t turn it off. Flynn breathes. The breeze blows through the trees outside. The evening passes around you, and you sit in the middle of it and shake slightly and breathe and wait for it to be over.

It takes a long time, but it passes. Things do pass. You’ve learned that, if nothing else, in six years of building something new on top of something that was once very broken.

Eventually Flynn shifts, just slightly, and licks your hand once - a brief, matter of fact gesture, nothing sentimental about it - and you put your hand on his head and feel the warmth of his skull under your palm and think, again, I need to talk to someone.

Not tonight. Tonight you just need to get through.

But soon.

Tuesday

You don’t go far today. You take Flynn out for the usual morning walk, a little shorter than usual, just out to the headland and back. You come home and make your coffee. You stand at the sink and look out the window, to the trees and the glimpses of the ocean between them.

You think about what the fear actually is. You’ve been so busy being afraid that you haven’t looked directly at the thing you’re afraid of, and Jean has taught you, over eight months of walking through enormous trees, that looking directly at things is usually less terrible than not looking.

So you take a deep breath, and you look.

Are you afraid it’s Roy? Yes. But Roy in a cell in North Dakota is a contained fear, a known quantity, something you’ve learned to live alongside. He’s there, you’re here.

Are you afraid it’s someone telling you Gator is dead? Yes. And that fear has a form you weren’t expecting - it’s not the abstract fear of bad news. It’s specific. It’s grief-shaped. It tells you something about how much you’ve been carrying without knowing you were carrying it. It tells you something about how you feel about the man, even now.

Are you afraid it’s actually him - alive, out, having read everything you’d ever sent to him over the years - and that you’re going to have to decide what to do about that?

Yes.

That one’s the biggest. That one’s the one that’s been sitting on you since Friday morning.

June Henderson knocks at the door mid-morning, a loaf of sourdough still warm from her oven, the Friday delivery a few days late because she’d been at her daughter’s place in Portland over the weekend. You take it and thank her and she looks at you with the careful attention of someone who has decided not to ask twice and asks you doing alright, love? and you say just a bit under the weather and she nods and goes back down the path and you close the door and stand in the hallway with the warm bread in your hands and think, again, I have to talk to someone.

Wednesday

Jean calls you.

She calls at nine in the morning, which tells you she’s been thinking about Saturday since Saturday, and she’s starting early.

“I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy with work,” she says. “I just wanted to check in.”

You sit down at the desk. Flynn appears and puts his head in your lap.

“I need to talk to someone,” you tell her. “I need to talk about something.”

“Okay, alright, I’m here. Take your time.”

So you tell her. Not the outline you gave her when you first joined the group - left an abusive situation, relocated twice, still working through it - but the whole of it. Stark County. The outpost. The storm. What happened and what he did after. The diner. Roy. Montana. The emails, all fifteen of them, five and a half years of writing into what you thought was silence. And then Friday morning on the beach, the notification, the address you recognised before you’d consciously processed what you were seeing.

Jean listens. She doesn’t interrupt, not once. When you finish there’s a silence that has the quality of something being carefully considered rather than something being filled.

“What are you most afraid of?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “There are a few things. I think I’m afraid it’s not him. That it’s someone else using his address. That something might have happened to him.”

“And if something happened to him,” Jean says carefully, “what would that mean for you?”

You look at Flynn, who is looking at you.

“It would mean I never got to…” Your throat tightens, and you stare at the pinboard, at a North Dakotan snowscape. “It would mean the last thing between us is still the diner. Still him walking away.”

“And what if it is him?” Jean asks. “If he’s alive and he’s out and he’s read everything you wrote?”

“Then I can’t pretend I don’t know,” you say with a sigh. “I’ve spent six years putting it somewhere I don’t have to look at it. If it’s him - if he read all of it - then it’s not something that happened anymore. It’s something that’s still happening. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

“What would it mean for it to still be happening?”

You think about the cactus on the windowsill, still flowering. About the North Dakota photograph you’ve moved everything around but never moved.

“It would mean I have to figure out what I actually want, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Do you need to decide that immediately? Do you need to have a whole plan formulated?” Jean sips something, and you hear her swallow. “Instead of thinking about this as a huge decision to be made now, why not start with something small?”

”Something small,” you echo. “Like…”

“Like giving yourself space from it, if that feels like it would be useful. Or, choosing to read it. At least once you’ve read it, you’ll know one way or the other. I can be there with you if you feel that would help, or you can call me straight after if you need to.”

You don’t say anything for a moment. Outside, you can hear Flynn moving around downstairs, the soft pad of him, checking on things.

“Okay,” you say finally. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s enough,” Jean says, and you can hear her smile with it. “That’s plenty.”

Wednesday  

You wake up angry.

Not sad - you know what sad feels like, you’ve had years of practice with it, you could identify it in a lineup. Not scared, though the fear has been there all week, underneath everything, a low persistent hum. Angry. At the email for existing. At yourself for giving it six days of your life before you’ve even read it. At the way it’s colonised your week - the wine on Friday, the lay-by on Saturday, the panic on Monday, the sourdough you could barely taste when June brought it - all of it, all the texture of the last six days, shadowed by something you haven’t even opened yet.

You feed Flynn. You take him out - the full walk this morning, the beach and around the headland and back, because you need the air and the movement and the stiff breeze of a Wednesday morning on the coast when the light is doing something pale and clean over the water. Flynn runs. You walk. The sea stacks stand in the water the way they always do.

You come home. You shower. You’re at your desk by eight-thirty, which is late for you, and you work steadily through the morning - catching up on what you missed yesterday, clearing the inbox, answering the things that need answering. The work helps. It always helps. You are good at this, and being good at something is its own kind of steadying.

Flynn is on his bed at the top of the stairs. You can hear him breathing.

At almost eleven, your laptop chimes with an incoming video call. Your manager - based in Edinburgh, eight hours ahead, a man you’ve worked with for two years and who manages entirely by instinct and goodwill, which works better than it has any right to. You answer it, and ask him why he’s still working at nine o’clock at night, which he laughs at and says no rest for the wicked. You talk through the Nairobi outputs, the beneficiary definition issue, what the next steps look like. It’s a good conversation, productive, the kind you usually enjoy.

He’s about to sign off when he pauses.

“Just while I’ve got you,” he starts, tentative with it. “I wanted to check in. Is everything okay? You’ve seemed a little subdued this week.”

You open your mouth to say fine, just tired, the report took it out of me - and you don’t say it. Not because you’ve decided not to. Just because the words don’t come, and in the space where they should be you are suddenly, unexpectedly, aware of how tired you actually are. Not from the report. From six days of carrying something around in your jacket pocket and your inbox and the back of your mind and every room you’ve walked into this week.

“I’m okay,” you say instead. “I’ve had something on my mind. Nothing work related. I’m dealing with it.”

He nods, accepts it. “Alright. But you know where I am.”

“I do,” you say. “Thank you.”

You close the window.

You sit at your desk for a moment. Through the gap in the trees, the ocean is doing something in the midday light - grey-blue, restless, the sea stacks solid against it. The cactus on the windowsill to your right catches the light, its small pink flower tilted toward the window.

I’m dealing with it.

You said that. You told your manager you were dealing with it, which means you have to deal with it, which means the six days end here, now, at your desk in your office on a Wednesday at eleven-fifteen in the morning, not as a ceremony, not as a significant prepared moment, but because you’re annoyed and tired and you told someone you were dealing with it and you don’t say things you don’t mean.

You pick up your phone.

You open the email app.

You find it at the top - pinned, flagged, sitting there exactly where you left it. Your thumb hovers over it.

If it’s bad, you tell yourself, you can block the address and move on. You’ve done harder things.

You open it.

You read it once, fast, skimming the surface the way you read things you can’t quite believe are real - catching words and phrases without letting them land. Hey. Unexpected. It’s me. Gator. Fifteen emails. The War On Drugs. Your eyes move down the screen and you don’t let yourself stop, don’t let yourself feel any one thing before you’ve reached the end, because if you stop in the middle you might not be able to start again.

You reach the end.

Do you still have that cactus?

You put the phone face down on the desk.

You sit.

The office is very quiet. Flynn shifts on his bed at the top of the stairs. Through the window the ocean moves in the midday light and the cactus sits on the sill with its small pink flower and the North Dakota photograph is in the upper right corner of the board behind your monitors, the plains flat and white, the road running through them like a sentence that’s lost its way.

You pick the phone back up.

You read it again. Slowly this time. From the beginning.

Hey.

I know this will be unexpected. Fuck, it’s unexpected for me too. But it’s me. Gator.

You stop at it’s me. You read those two words three times. Because the thing about reading something you’ve been afraid of for six days is that the fear doesn’t disappear when you open it - it shifts shape. All week the fear has been diffuse, formless, the anxiety of not knowing. Now it has a face. Now it has a voice - and you can hear it, reading these words, the specific cadence of him, the way he’s always moved through language. Fuck, it’s unexpected for me too - that’s him. That’s exactly him. The self-awareness arriving alongside the profanity, the honesty that comes out sideways because coming out with something directly was never something that came easily to him.

He’s alive.

You sit with that for a moment, just that, before you read further. He’s alive and he’s out and he found your emails and he’s okay, or something approximating it. A city in Minnesota, a routine, other people trying to figure out what comes next. A life, or something close to it.

You read the apology three times.

Not because you don’t believe it - you do, you believed it the first time, you’ve believed he meant it since you read the trial accounts years ago. You read it three times because it’s the thing you’ve been waiting for without quite letting yourself know you were waiting for it, and now it’s here, in plain language, in his voice, and you don’t quite know what to do with the receiving of it.

What I did to you - in the diner, and before - handing you over to him like you were a problem I was done with.

You put the phone face down on the desk again and squeeze your eyes shut tight, counting to ten before you open them again.

You press both hands flat on the surface and look at them. Your hands, familiar and ordinary, on the desk in the office in the cabin you chose, in the community you found, in the life you built.

He handed you over like a problem he was done with. And then he spent - however long it was - inside, blind, carrying that. And somewhere in there he found the email address you’d been writing to for five and a half years and he sat and listened to all of it. All fifteen. The anger in the first one. The Christmas on the kitchen floor. The pottery bowl. The cactus.

I’m saying it into speech-to-text software and I’m just hoping it’s coming out right.

Your throat tightens up around a sob you will not let yourself release.

You read the rest. The hoping. The small things wished for. The question at the end, offered so carefully, the one door left open at the smallest possible scale.

Do you still have that cactus?

You look up from the phone. To your right, on the windowsill, the cactus sits in the midday light, listing slightly to the left, its small pink flower turned toward the glass.

You look at it for a long time.

Then you put the phone down on the desk, carefully, and lean back in your chair, and look at the ocean through the gap in the trees, and let the having-read-it settle around you like weather.

Flynn appears in the office doorway. You haven’t called him. He’s just there, reading you the way he always does, and he comes to you and puts his head in your lap and stays there.

You put your hand on his head and let yourself cry.

You don’t reply today. You’re not ready for that yet. Today you just sit with the having read it, which is its own thing, which is more than enough.

You don’t delete the email, and you don’t block his address.

[morninglesss]

the modern leper, pt. 4

the alarmist // the futurist // the modern leper

Gator Tillman x f!reader

“Is that you in front of me, coming back for even more of exactly the same? You must be a masochist, to love a modern leper on his last leg.” - Frightened Rabbit

wc: 7.2k

An email arrives on a Friday morning in August. You spend a week not looking at it. How do you carry something so unexpected? How do you navigate your life with a bomb in your pocket?

Friday.

You get home from the beach and you still don’t open it.

You stand in the kitchen with your jacket still on and your boots leaving sand on the floor and your phone on the counter face up, and you look at it for a long time. Flynn sits beside you and looks up at the table, with the focused attention of a dog who has decided that whatever you’re doing, he’s doing it with you.

The notification is still there on the screen. Small and ordinary. 

[email protected] 

You pick up the phone and open the email app. You find it immediately at the top of the inbox - it’s the only unread email, everything else processed and filed, because that’s how you work, because you can’t think clearly in clutter. It sits at the top of the inbox like something that knows it doesn’t belong there and has decided to brazen it out anyway.

You delete it.

You put the phone back on the counter, face down, and fill Flynn’s water bowl and stand at the sink and watch him drink, and you don’t flinch or step back when he shakes off his wet snout, sending a spray of water across the cupboard doors and floor and your feet. You just pick up a dry cloth, wipe up the mess, and look out of the window to the trees.

Thirty-one minutes later - you know because you check the time, twice, in the space of those thirty-one minutes, which tells you something about the state you’re in - you pick the phone back up, go to the deleted folder, and restore the email.

You pin it to the top of the inbox, marking it as read but still leaving it unopened. You go into the settings and turn off the preview function so the first line doesn’t show. Then you put the phone in your jacket pocket and take your jacket off at last and hang it by the door with the phone still in it, which is not a solution but is at least a system. You’ve always been able to work with a system in place.

Going upstairs to the office is the next logical step; it’s Friday, you have things to do and one rogue email won’t disturb that. You make yourself a coffee in the kitchen (black today), and climb the stairs with Flynn at your heels. He tries to follow you into the office but you just turn and give him the look, and he reverses himself out of the office and into the bed at the top of the stairs.

You open your laptop and run through the usual Slack updates and requests. You lose yourself in the work, dealing with calls and meetings and another round of reports, until Flynn reappears and sits directly on your feet, which is his way of telling you it’s past his dinner time and he’s being very patient about it but there are limits. You check the clock and it’s nearly seven, which means you’ve been working for the better part of nine hours and neither of you have eaten since breakfast. Flynn rests his head on your thigh and looks up at you with the expression he has when he’s decided that guilt is more effective than urgency.

“I’m sorry baby,” you say as you ruffle his ears. “I’ve neglected you. C’mon, let’s eat.”

You feed him first, as always, spreading the wet food onto a lick mat in the hope he won’t devour it too fast and make himself sick. You open the bottle of wine you’ve been saving for no particular occasion and decide that this is an occasion, and you cook pasta with the good olive oil and the sundried tomatoes and the pesto from the farmers market and you eat it standing at the kitchen counter because sitting at the table feels too deliberate somehow, too much like an event despite the nice wine in the nice glass.

You take the wine bottle and the glass to the living room and put the television on, flicking through the channels until you find something undemanding with a laugh track that you immediately stop following, reducing it to nothing more than habit and background noise. Flynn settles at your feet and starts snoring within ten minutes. Outside the sky dims to twilight without you really noticing, the way late-summer evenings do when you’re somewhere else in your head, and at some point you refill your glass and at some point after that you top it up it again.

Two hours pass like this, or something close to two hours, you’re not really tracking it. You’re busy thinking about things you can’t resolve - going over the same ground in circles, the way you do when something has lodged itself inside your brain and won’t shift. You think about whether it’s really him. If it is, how has he emailed you? Is he out of prison - if so, how? You think about what it might mean if he is out. What it means if he read everything you’d sent over the years - and whether you want it to mean anything at all, which is the question you keep arriving at and then backing away from.

By the time you notice the bottle is three quarters empty the room is fully dark and Flynn has moved from your feet to beside you on the couch, which he’s not supposed to do and which you haven’t stopped him from doing tonight. You scratch between his ears, and he lets out a low huff in response.

You’re aware, with the fuzzy false clarity that comes from being nearly three quarters of a bottle of red deep, that you could pick up the phone right now and write something you’d regret by morning. You are also aware that you want to do that, quite badly - not because you’ve decided anything, not because you know what you’d say, but because the not-knowing has been sitting on your chest since seven this morning and the wine has made the distance between impulse and action feel shorter than it usually is. You want to write something that proves you’re not afraid. You want to write something that shows him that, actually, you are. You want to write something that says, I saw your email address and I deleted it and then I got it back out of the bin thirty-one minutes later and I’ve been carrying it around in my jacket pocket all day and I don’t know what to do with any of this.

You put the remaining wine in the fridge instead, and pour whatever was left in your glass down the sink, and you leave the phone in your jacket pocket.

You wash your face and brush your teeth, and you study yourself in the bathroom mirror for a moment - and you think, tomorrow. Not as a promise, or as any sort of action you intend to follow. Just as a fact. Tomorrow it will still be there. Tomorrow you will be sober and clear-headed and still not sure what to do, but at least you won’t have done something you can’t take back.

You climb into bed.

The room is dark and the window is open and the ocean is rolling gently below the cliff, and you lie on your back and look at the ceiling and think about nothing very successfully for approximately three minutes before the email thoughts start up again.

Flynn appears in the doorway. You hear him first - the soft pad of his feet and his claws on the wood, then the pause where he’s deciding where to go - and then the weight of him lands on the bed beside you, warm and heavy and entirely certain he’s doing the right thing.

He’s not supposed to be on the bed. You’ve been very clear about this. He knows he’s not supposed to be on the bed.

You don’t say anything.

He settles. His breathing slows and evens out, the way it does when he’s decided the situation is handled and he can stand down. You put your hand on his back and feel the rise and fall of it, slow and regular, and you think about the email in your inbox and the jacket on the hook and the thirty-one minutes it took you to restore the email out of the bin, and at some point, without quite deciding to, you sleep.

Not well, but you do sleep.

Saturday

You wake up too early, and your head is staging some sort of rebellion.

You stay in bed until your alarm rings, Flynn a warm weight beside you, and you think about the walking group and decide you’re going. You need the Hoh. You need the cedars and Jean and to move through something ancient and enormous when your own problems are threatening to spill over the sides.

You get up after sitting on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if your stomach will join your head’s rebellion. When it seems unlikely, you shower and get yourself dressed for the walk. You go downstairs and pass your jacket on the hook and tell yourself you’re just checking the time when you dig your phone out of the pocket. The email is still there, pinned and flagged and waiting. You ignore it.

The drive to the forest is even quieter than usual. Flynn sleeps in the back as always but you don’t drink your coffee, just let it go cold in the cup holder, and the road requires more of your attention than it usually does because your mind keeps drifting somewhere you don’t want it to go to.

Jean notices. Of course Jean notices - it’s her job to notice and she’s very good at her job. She falls into step beside you on the return leg and asks how the week’s been and you say fine, busy, lots going on and she says good and walks beside you in silence for a while, which is its own kind of question. 

You don’t answer it.

She tries once more, gently. “You seem like you’re carrying something today.”

“I’m okay,” you tell her. Which isn’t quite the same as saying no.

She considers that. “You don’t have to be okay,” she says. “You just have to keep walking.”

You do keep walking. Through the ferns and the moss and the enormous ancient trees, the light coming down green and filtered, the air smelling of water and earth and something older than either. You put one foot in front of the other and you breathe and you don’t say anything else, and Jean walks beside you and doesn’t push any further, and you are more grateful for that than you know how to say.

At the cars, before you load Flynn into the back, she touches your arm briefly.

“I’ll check in with you this week,” she tells you.

“Okay,” you nod, and that’s the end of it.

The drive home is quiet. Flynn sleeps in the back, snoring over the noise of the engine. You drink the cold coffee because you need something to do with your hands, and the road spills out ahead of you, the trees giving way to the coast, the water appearing in glimpses between the headlands.

Somewhere on the coast road, a lay-by appears and you pull into it without quite deciding to. You sit with the engine idling and Flynn sleeping in the back and the sea just visible through the trees to your right, and you think, I could read it now. Right now, sitting here, before I’ve had time to talk myself out of it.

You sit with that for a while, turning it over.

Then you indicate, pull back onto the road, and drive home.

Sunday

You don’t decide to go to Seaview so much as find yourself there.

The morning happens around you - the alarm, Flynn’s fluorescent yellow collar lifted from the hook, his chin raised for the clip, the drive along the coast road with the ocean calm in the grey morning light. You’re present for all of it in the way you’re present for things when part of you is somewhere else entirely; functional, going through the motions, the muscle memory of routine carrying you when you’re not quite capable of carrying yourself.

The car park is half full. You sit in the car for a moment after you’ve turned the engine off, Flynn already standing and eager in the back, and you tell yourself, I could go home. Sandra wouldn’t mind. You could message ahead, say you’re feeling under the weather, and promise to come back next week. 

You do none of those things. You drag yourself out of the car, and open the back for Flynn.

You clip Flynn’s leash to his collar. You watch him become the Therapet version of himself - the shift in his posture, the steadying of his energy, the way he reads the building before he’s even inside it - and something in watching him steadies you too. He knows what’s needed here, he always knows, and you follow his lead - which is maybe the wrong way around, professionally speaking - but today it’s the best you can do.

You move through the visit the way you move through the coast road in fog - carefully, one landmark at a time, trusting that the road is still there even when you can’t see very far ahead. You sit with Rosemary and her stories of the farm in Idaho. The common room is quiet, the television on low, a puzzle abandoned on the nearest table. Mrs Okafor sits in her chair by the window in her room, clear-eyed and smiling today, Flynn settling beside her in his usual spot.

“You seem far away today,” she says at some point, after she’s told you stories about her daughter’s wedding more than thirty years ago.

“I’m sorry.” You force a smile. “I’ve got something on my mind.”

She nods, unsurprised, and pats your forearm. “Emmanuel used to get like that. Something sits on you and won’t get off…” She looks at Flynn. “That’s what he’s for, isn’t he? For when something sits on you?”

You look at Flynn, who looks up at you with the calm attention he brings to everything, and something about the steadiness of him - the way he’s just there, totally present, asking nothing of you except that you stay in the room - makes your throat tighten unexpectedly.

“Yes,” you say, and your voice comes out quieter than you intended. “That’s exactly what he’s for.”

Mrs Okafor strokes his ears and doesn’t say anything else for a while, and the three of you sit together in the afternoon light, the garden beyond the window full of dahlias, Flynn’s breathing slow and even, and you let yourself just be in it. Not thinking about the email. Not thinking about Friday morning on the beach or the thirty-one minutes or the wine or the lay-by on the coast road. Just this room, this woman, this dog, this Sunday afternoon in a care home on the Washington coast when someone is telling you, without quite saying so, that the things that sit on you eventually shift.

You stay with her longer than usual, until the talking tires her out and she falls quiet in her chair.

When you finally stand to go Flynn rises with you, stretching himself out with the determination of a dog who has been still for a long time and has earned the big stretch. Mrs Okafor watches him with the special smile she always has for him, the one that belongs to whatever she’s thinking about when she looks at him - Sunday the pale Lagos dog, maybe, or Emmanuel, or something else entirely that she keeps to herself.

“Same time next week?” you ask, gathering your bag.

“God willing,” she says, which is what she always says.

You lean down and squeeze her hand briefly, which you don’t always do, and she squeezes back with more strength than you expect, and that’s that.

On the way out Sandra falls into step beside you in the corridor, Flynn between you, his tag swinging at his neck.

“Good visit today - she always looks forward to seeing Flynn.”

You smile and lean down to scratch Flynn’s head. “She was better this week. She talked about her daughter’s wedding.”

Sandra nods slowly. “She has good days and she has hard days. Today was a good one.” She moves further down the hallway, and you follow. “I think Flynn helps with that. He gives her somewhere to put her attention that isn’t…”  She stops. “It’s hard, sometimes, when the mind starts running away from you. Having something that’s just warm and real and in the room, that helps.”

You look down at Flynn, who is looking up at Sandra with the hope of a dog expecting a treat.

“Yeah,” you say. “It does.”

You sign out at reception. Dani waves Flynn off with her usual theatrics - goodbye my love, see you next week! - and Flynn accepts the fuss and follows you out to the car park without looking back, which is very him.

You sit in the car for a moment before you start the engine.

The visit has given you what the visits usually do. It has taken you out of yourself for a few hours, put you somewhere that required your attention and Flynn’s attention and left no room for the circular thinking of the last two days. You feel steadier than you did this morning. Not resolved, and definitely not ready, but steadier.

The road on the drive home is quiet, the coast route running alongside the water, the afternoon light lower now, the sea sparkling golden and temporary that you notice without quite being able to hold onto. Mrs Okafor’s voice is in your head - something sits on you and won’t get off.

You think about Flynn, how he’d come to you on the couch without being asked, and the weight of him heavy and present on the bed beside you all night. You think about what Mrs Okafor said - that’s what he’s for - and you think about how long you’ve been managing things alone, putting systems in place, pinning emails to the top of inboxes, letting the wine get you three quarters down before you trusted yourself to stop.

You think, I need to talk to someone. Not today. But soon.

You turn off the coast road and follow the road through the trees toward the cabin, and Flynn stirs in the back seat, sensing home.

Monday

Monday arrives with the blessed relief of having things to do.

You’re at your desk by eight, Flynn on his bed at the top of the stairs, the office smelling of coffee and the faint salt air coming through the gap in the window you’ve left open despite the morning chill. The access report needs its final checks before it goes to your supervisor, and you give it those checks carefully, methodically, the way you do everything - following each thread back to its source, making sure nothing has been left loose. It’s good work. You know it’s good work. You send it across at ten forty-seven with a brief covering note and sit back in your chair and feel, briefly, the satisfaction of having something completed.

…then your inbox refreshes and the satisfaction passes and you’re just a person sitting at a desk with an unread email pinned to the top of a different account, and the day continues.

The Geneva coordinator has questions about next quarter’s template standardisation, which you answer clearly and without drama. The Nairobi call at two runs forty minutes and covers everything it needs to cover - you’re present, you’re useful, you ask the right questions and take the right notes and nobody on the call would know that any part of you is somewhere else entirely.

You are, by any reasonable measure, functioning.

Flynn shifts on his bed at the top of the stairs. You hear him settle, sigh, settle again. The ordinary rhythm of him, the breathing and the small movements, that has been the background of your working days for three years and you’ve never been more aware of it than you are today - the comfort of another living creature nearby, going about his own quiet business, requiring nothing from you except your continued presence in the building.

By five you’ve closed the laptop. You make dinner - something simple, something that doesn’t require you to think - and you eat it and clean up and the evening opens out ahead of you, unstructured, which is when the thinking tends to get away from you.

You make tea tonight, not wine, and take it to the couch. The tv is switched on again, but just like before you’re barely paying it any attention. With no work to worry about and nothing on tv capturing your attention, you let your mind wander.

You’re thinking about the report, you tell yourself. You’re thinking about the Nairobi call. You’re thinking about what Jean said on Saturday - you don’t have to be okay, you just have to keep walking - and whether that applies to weekdays as well as to forests.

And then, somewhere around the third sip of tea, the thought arrives. Not the email. Something underneath the email. Something you’ve been too busy managing to actually look at in any great detail.

How is he emailing from prison?

You sit with it.

It’s been six years, and six years is a long time. Things change - policies, processes, people. Maybe the rules around email access are different than you thought, maybe they vary by facility, maybe - but he said I’m not in jail now, didn’t he? Or something like that, you thought you’d read that in the notification before you turned the preview off, before you -

You haven’t read it. You don’t actually know what it says.

Maybe it isn’t him?

The tea goes cold in your hands.

The thought, once arrived, will not be reasoned away. You try - you are good at reasoning, it is one of the things you’re best at, you follow data to conclusions for a living - but this thought has no interest in being reasoned with. It just sits there, in the middle of your head and the middle of the room, getting bigger and more insistent.

Maybe it isn’t him at all.

Roy Tillman is in a cell in North Dakota. You know this. You have known this since the trial, since the verdict, since the sentencing - you read all of it, every article, every report, sitting in your Montana apartment with your coffee going cold the same way this tea is going cold now, making sure you knew exactly where he was and what had happened to him. He is in a cell in a prison in North Dakota and he will never be released. But, nevertheless, you know he has reach that extends well beyond any cell because Roy Tillman has always had people, has always had channels, has always been the kind of man who manages things from a distance as though distance means nothing to him.

Because to Roy, it never did.

He knew your name. He knew your face. He knew where you worked and what you were worth to him and what you weren’t. He arranged your life in Montana before you’d even arrived - the apartment, the job, everything adequate, everything managed - and you had moved into it like a stage set someone else had built and called it starting over.

What if Roy has access to Gator’s account?

Your hands, you notice, are not entirely steady.

What if Gator is dead and this is Roy’s way of telling me?

You don’t know where that thought comes from. You don’t know why it arrives in that particular way - not what if something happened to Gator but what if Roy is using this to tell me, as though even now, six years and two thousand miles away, your first instinct is to make Roy the subject of the sentence. As though Gator can only exist in this story in relation to his father.

But underneath that thought is another one, quieter and more frightening - what if something has happened to him?

Not Roy’s doing. Not a message. Just - what if, in six years, something happened, and you don’t know, and you’ve been walking around not knowing, and the email in your inbox is someone’s way of letting you know?

Flynn is off his bed before you’ve consciously registered needing him. You don’t know what you did - made a sound, changed your breathing, went very still in the way that means the opposite of calm - but he’s there, his weight against your leg, his nose finding your hand with the accuracy of a trained dog who has been paying attention to you all day from the top of the stairs and has decided that now is the moment to intervene.

You barely register him. Instead, you stand up.

You check the front door. Locked. The back door. Locked. The ground floor windows, one by one, the latches engaged, the glass solid. Then upstairs - your bedroom, the office, the spare room - Flynn following you from room to room, understanding that this is what’s needed and he is not going to make anything of it.

You know, on some level, that you are not doing this because Roy Tillman is outside your cabin. You know that. Roy Tillman is in a cell in North Dakota. The rational part of you knows this and would like the rest of you to catch up.

The rest of you checks the office window twice.

You come back downstairs. Your hands are shaking, the fine, persistent tremor of a nervous system that has been asked to hold something too heavy for too long and is now starting to show the strain of it.

Flynn herds you to the couch. There’s no other word for it - he uses his body, his weight, the gentle insistent pressure of a large dog who knows exactly what he’s doing, until you sit. And then he climbs up beside you, which he’s not supposed to do, and puts his full weight across your lap and his head on your shoulder and stays there. Seventy pounds of German Shepherd, warm and certain, his breathing slow and deliberate as though he’s showing you how it’s done. You dig the fingers of both hands into his thick fur, and hold on.

You call off work for tomorrow with a brief message to your manager - not feeling well, will be back Wednesday - sent before you can second-guess the wording. Then you put the phone face down on the cushion beside you and sit under the weight of Flynn and try to breathe the way he’s breathing.

Roy Tillman is in prison, you tell yourself over and over. Roy Tillman cannot reach you. It’s been six years. You live somewhere he has never been, in a community where people know your name and your dog and the food you bring to a birthday party. You have a life here, a life you’ve built by yourself, a life he cannot touch.

But.

But Roy has people. But Gator’s email address could have been accessed by anyone, could have been given to anyone, could mean anything. But you don’t know what’s happened in six years, not really - you know the broad strokes, the verdict, the sentencing, the things that made it into the news - but you don’t know the texture of it, the daily reality of it, whether Gator is alive or dead or somewhere in between.

But you don’t know.

The television is still on, some comedy, some irrelevant cheerfulness. You don’t turn it off. Flynn breathes. The breeze blows through the trees outside. The evening passes around you, and you sit in the middle of it and shake slightly and breathe and wait for it to be over.

It takes a long time, but it passes. Things do pass. You’ve learned that, if nothing else, in six years of building something new on top of something that was once very broken.

Eventually Flynn shifts, just slightly, and licks your hand once - a brief, matter of fact gesture, nothing sentimental about it - and you put your hand on his head and feel the warmth of his skull under your palm and think, again, I need to talk to someone.

Not tonight. Tonight you just need to get through.

But soon.

Tuesday

You don’t go far today. You take Flynn out for the usual morning walk, a little shorter than usual, just out to the headland and back. You come home and make your coffee. You stand at the sink and look out the window, to the trees and the glimpses of the ocean between them.

You think about what the fear actually is. You’ve been so busy being afraid that you haven’t looked directly at the thing you’re afraid of, and Jean has taught you, over eight months of walking through enormous trees, that looking directly at things is usually less terrible than not looking.

So you take a deep breath, and you look.

Are you afraid it’s Roy? Yes. But Roy in a cell in North Dakota is a contained fear, a known quantity, something you’ve learned to live alongside. He’s there, you’re here.

Are you afraid it’s someone telling you Gator is dead? Yes. And that fear has a form you weren’t expecting - it’s not the abstract fear of bad news. It’s specific. It’s grief-shaped. It tells you something about how much you’ve been carrying without knowing you were carrying it. It tells you something about how you feel about the man, even now.

Are you afraid it’s actually him - alive, out, having read everything you’d ever sent to him over the years - and that you’re going to have to decide what to do about that?

Yes.

That one’s the biggest. That one’s the one that’s been sitting on you since Friday morning.

June Henderson knocks at the door mid-morning, a loaf of sourdough still warm from her oven, the Friday delivery a few days late because she’d been at her daughter’s place in Portland over the weekend. You take it and thank her and she looks at you with the careful attention of someone who has decided not to ask twice and asks you doing alright, love? and you say just a bit under the weather and she nods and goes back down the path and you close the door and stand in the hallway with the warm bread in your hands and think, again, I have to talk to someone.

Wednesday

Jean calls you.

She calls at nine in the morning, which tells you she’s been thinking about Saturday since Saturday, and she’s starting early.

“I won’t keep you long, I know you’re busy with work,” she says. “I just wanted to check in.”

You sit down at the desk. Flynn appears and puts his head in your lap.

“I need to talk to someone,” you tell her. “I need to talk about something.”

“Okay, alright, I’m here. Take your time.”

So you tell her. Not the outline you gave her when you first joined the group - left an abusive situation, relocated twice, still working through it - but the whole of it. Stark County. The outpost. The storm. What happened and what he did after. The diner. Roy. Montana. The emails, all fifteen of them, five and a half years of writing into what you thought was silence. And then Friday morning on the beach, the notification, the address you recognised before you’d consciously processed what you were seeing.

Jean listens. She doesn’t interrupt, not once. When you finish there’s a silence that has the quality of something being carefully considered rather than something being filled.

“What are you most afraid of?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “There are a few things. I think I’m afraid it’s not him. That it’s someone else using his address. That something might have happened to him.”

“And if something happened to him,” Jean says carefully, “what would that mean for you?”

You look at Flynn, who is looking at you.

“It would mean I never got to…” Your throat tightens, and you stare at the pinboard, at a North Dakotan snowscape. “It would mean the last thing between us is still the diner. Still him walking away.”

“And what if it is him?” Jean asks. “If he’s alive and he’s out and he’s read everything you wrote?”

“Then I can’t pretend I don’t know,” you say with a sigh. “I’ve spent six years putting it somewhere I don’t have to look at it. If it’s him - if he read all of it - then it’s not something that happened anymore. It’s something that’s still happening. And I don’t know what to do with that.”

“What would it mean for it to still be happening?”

You think about the cactus on the windowsill, still flowering. About the North Dakota photograph you’ve moved everything around but never moved.

“It would mean I have to figure out what I actually want, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.”

“Do you need to decide that immediately? Do you need to have a whole plan formulated?” Jean sips something, and you hear her swallow. “Instead of thinking about this as a huge decision to be made now, why not start with something small?”

”Something small,” you echo. “Like…”

“Like giving yourself space from it, if that feels like it would be useful. Or, choosing to read it. At least once you’ve read it, you’ll know one way or the other. I can be there with you if you feel that would help, or you can call me straight after if you need to.”

You don’t say anything for a moment. Outside, you can hear Flynn moving around downstairs, the soft pad of him, checking on things.

“Okay,” you say finally. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s enough,” Jean says, and you can hear her smile with it. “That’s plenty.”

Wednesday  

You wake up angry.

Not sad - you know what sad feels like, you’ve had years of practice with it, you could identify it in a lineup. Not scared, though the fear has been there all week, underneath everything, a low persistent hum. Angry. At the email for existing. At yourself for giving it six days of your life before you’ve even read it. At the way it’s colonised your week - the wine on Friday, the lay-by on Saturday, the panic on Monday, the sourdough you could barely taste when June brought it - all of it, all the texture of the last six days, shadowed by something you haven’t even opened yet.

You feed Flynn. You take him out - the full walk this morning, the beach and around the headland and back, because you need the air and the movement and the stiff breeze of a Wednesday morning on the coast when the light is doing something pale and clean over the water. Flynn runs. You walk. The sea stacks stand in the water the way they always do.

You come home. You shower. You’re at your desk by eight-thirty, which is late for you, and you work steadily through the morning - catching up on what you missed yesterday, clearing the inbox, answering the things that need answering. The work helps. It always helps. You are good at this, and being good at something is its own kind of steadying.

Flynn is on his bed at the top of the stairs. You can hear him breathing.

At almost eleven, your laptop chimes with an incoming video call. Your manager - based in Edinburgh, eight hours ahead, a man you’ve worked with for two years and who manages entirely by instinct and goodwill, which works better than it has any right to. You answer it, and ask him why he’s still working at nine o’clock at night, which he laughs at and says no rest for the wicked. You talk through the Nairobi outputs, the beneficiary definition issue, what the next steps look like. It’s a good conversation, productive, the kind you usually enjoy.

He’s about to sign off when he pauses.

“Just while I’ve got you,” he starts, tentative with it. “I wanted to check in. Is everything okay? You’ve seemed a little subdued this week.”

You open your mouth to say fine, just tired, the report took it out of me - and you don’t say it. Not because you’ve decided not to. Just because the words don’t come, and in the space where they should be you are suddenly, unexpectedly, aware of how tired you actually are. Not from the report. From six days of carrying something around in your jacket pocket and your inbox and the back of your mind and every room you’ve walked into this week.

“I’m okay,” you say instead. “I’ve had something on my mind. Nothing work related. I’m dealing with it.”

He nods, accepts it. “Alright. But you know where I am.”

“I do,” you say. “Thank you.”

You close the window.

You sit at your desk for a moment. Through the gap in the trees, the ocean is doing something in the midday light - grey-blue, restless, the sea stacks solid against it. The cactus on the windowsill to your right catches the light, its small pink flower tilted toward the window.

I’m dealing with it.

You said that. You told your manager you were dealing with it, which means you have to deal with it, which means the six days end here, now, at your desk in your office on a Wednesday at eleven-fifteen in the morning, not as a ceremony, not as a significant prepared moment, but because you’re annoyed and tired and you told someone you were dealing with it and you don’t say things you don’t mean.

You pick up your phone.

You open the email app.

You find it at the top - pinned, flagged, sitting there exactly where you left it. Your thumb hovers over it.

If it’s bad, you tell yourself, you can block the address and move on. You’ve done harder things.

You open it.

You read it once, fast, skimming the surface the way you read things you can’t quite believe are real - catching words and phrases without letting them land. Hey. Unexpected. It’s me. Gator. Fifteen emails. The War On Drugs. Your eyes move down the screen and you don’t let yourself stop, don’t let yourself feel any one thing before you’ve reached the end, because if you stop in the middle you might not be able to start again.

You reach the end.

Do you still have that cactus?

You put the phone face down on the desk.

You sit.

The office is very quiet. Flynn shifts on his bed at the top of the stairs. Through the window the ocean moves in the midday light and the cactus sits on the sill with its small pink flower and the North Dakota photograph is in the upper right corner of the board behind your monitors, the plains flat and white, the road running through them like a sentence that’s lost its way.

You pick the phone back up.

You read it again. Slowly this time. From the beginning.

Hey.

I know this will be unexpected. Fuck, it’s unexpected for me too. But it’s me. Gator.

You stop at it’s me. You read those two words three times. Because the thing about reading something you’ve been afraid of for six days is that the fear doesn’t disappear when you open it - it shifts shape. All week the fear has been diffuse, formless, the anxiety of not knowing. Now it has a face. Now it has a voice - and you can hear it, reading these words, the specific cadence of him, the way he’s always moved through language. Fuck, it’s unexpected for me too - that’s him. That’s exactly him. The self-awareness arriving alongside the profanity, the honesty that comes out sideways because coming out with something directly was never something that came easily to him.

He’s alive.

You sit with that for a moment, just that, before you read further. He’s alive and he’s out and he found your emails and he’s okay, or something approximating it. A city in Minnesota, a routine, other people trying to figure out what comes next. A life, or something close to it.

You read the apology three times.

Not because you don’t believe it - you do, you believed it the first time, you’ve believed he meant it since you read the trial accounts years ago. You read it three times because it’s the thing you’ve been waiting for without quite letting yourself know you were waiting for it, and now it’s here, in plain language, in his voice, and you don’t quite know what to do with the receiving of it.

What I did to you - in the diner, and before - handing you over to him like you were a problem I was done with.

You put the phone face down on the desk again and squeeze your eyes shut tight, counting to ten before you open them again.

You press both hands flat on the surface and look at them. Your hands, familiar and ordinary, on the desk in the office in the cabin you chose, in the community you found, in the life you built.

He handed you over like a problem he was done with. And then he spent - however long it was - inside, blind, carrying that. And somewhere in there he found the email address you’d been writing to for five and a half years and he sat and listened to all of it. All fifteen. The anger in the first one. The Christmas on the kitchen floor. The pottery bowl. The cactus.

I’m saying it into speech-to-text software and I’m just hoping it’s coming out right.

Your throat tightens up around a sob you will not let yourself release.

You read the rest. The hoping. The small things wished for. The question at the end, offered so carefully, the one door left open at the smallest possible scale.

Do you still have that cactus?

You look up from the phone. To your right, on the windowsill, the cactus sits in the midday light, listing slightly to the left, its small pink flower turned toward the glass.

You look at it for a long time.

Then you put the phone down on the desk, carefully, and lean back in your chair, and look at the ocean through the gap in the trees, and let the having-read-it settle around you like weather.

Flynn appears in the office doorway. You haven’t called him. He’s just there, reading you the way he always does, and he comes to you and puts his head in your lap and stays there.

You put your hand on his head and let yourself cry.

You don’t reply today. You’re not ready for that yet. Today you just sit with the having read it, which is its own thing, which is more than enough.

You don’t delete the email, and you don’t block his address.

[thoroughlymimi]

hi! i'm Mimi <3

i use my degree to write fics on the internet, and i won't apologise for it. i have many obsessions and hyperfixations, so expect nothing and everything.

this is an 18+ blog

My Masterlist

Gator Tillman x Reader Series List

Beautiful Broken Things : Six Part Series

Memories of You : Sixteen Part Series

Four Winds : Ten Part Series

At The Heart Of It : Twelve Part Series [In Progress]

Gator Tillman x Reader One Shot List

Quietly

Graveyard Shift

Eddie Munson x Reader One Shot List

Morning Glory

I also upload to Wattpad, I'm @thoroughlymimi there too!

I have a Steve Harrington x OC! fic that is Wattpad only, if you want to read Close To You.

[morninglesss]

An ask from a while ago, that I’d drafted and then put to one side to finish eventually… and eventually is today. The ask was for Gator on a date, or going on your first proper date with Gator.

You’d thought you’d known exactly what Deputy Gator Tillman was.

Not in the specifics - you’re not dumb enough to go looking for those - but the rough idea of him. The way conversations seem to stop when he walks into a room. The way Deputy Bowman laughed a little too loud, a little too long, at something Gator had said once outside the office, and you’d spotted the stress in it. You do know what Sheriff Roy Tillman is, which means you have an idea of what being the son of a bully does to a person, even if you’ve never said that out loud and have absolutely no plan to ever do so.

So you’d thought you’d known the idea of Gator Tillman - and you kept fucking him anyway. That’s on you.

The first time was in September, after a long Tuesday that had ended with both of you still in the building past nine o’clock, and it hadn’t been a decision so much as something that happened in the break room when everyone else had gone home. The weird, annoyed sort-of chemistry between you had always been there. You’d been aware of it the way you’re aware of something loud in a neighbouring room - present, impossible to fully ignore, and not really any of your business - but then one evening it was your business, and then it was over, and you’d both cleaned up and gone home, and that should have been that.

He found you again the following week, sitting up at a bar in town while your friends danced to some god-awful Taylor Swift song. He’d suggested you both get some air - which ended up with him balls-deep inside you in the accessible bathroom, his big hand clamped over your mouth and the light switch digging into your back, the light flickering on and off and on again with each thrust like the world’s worst strobe.

He kept on finding you, in bars and break rooms and your door. He kept coming back.

You’re still not entirely sure why you let him. Or rather, you know roughly why - he is, to put it plainly, an exceptionally good fuck - but you’d expected it to run its course. That’s what these things do. A few weeks, the novelty wears off, you go back to being two people who work in the same building and nod at each other by the coffee machine, no harm done.

Four months later he’s still showing up, and you’ve stopped expecting him not to.

It’s not a relationship. You have to be clear about that, at least to yourself, because clarity feels important. You don’t talk much outside of work. He doesn’t stay when he turns up at your door in the middle of the night when a shift’s gone bad and he needs to put the pent-up energy somewhere. You don’t ask him to, and he doesn’t offer, and the arrangement has a clean, unspoken logic to it that suits you both. You’d barely consider the two of you friends. You’re something more specific and less nameable than that - two people who work thirty feet apart and have discovered, through what was honestly an accident, that they are spectacularly good at getting each other off.

What you didn’t expect - what you genuinely did not factor in at all - was that he’d be funny. Not charming-funny, and not the cruel kind of funny men deploy on purpose, like a tool or a weapon. Just occasionally, accidentally, genuinely funny. The first time it happened you’d been in your kitchen at two in the morning, after, while he was pulling his jacket back on. He’d said something - a dry, throwaway observation about your bright pink coffee maker, of all things, something so understated you almost missed it - and you’d laughed before you could stop yourself. Really laughed. And he’d gone very still, like he wasn’t sure what he’d done, like no-one had genuinely laughed at something he’d said in a long time and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

You’d thought about that look more than you’ve thought about most things that have happened in your bed. Which is saying something. You’ve been trying not to examine why.

****************

It was Brett Kowalski who asked you out. Brett from the county assessor’s office, who is nice and has never done a single thing wrong in his life, which should be a point in his favour but somehow isn’t. He’d asked you outside the Cenex on a Tuesday lunch break and you’d said you’d think about it, which you both knew meant no, and that should have been the end of it. A guy had tried his luck, struck out, and that was that.

Your mistake was mentioning it when you got back to the office.

You’re still not entirely sure why you did. Gator had been in a mood - some family thing, he never said what, but you could tell from the firm line of his mouth that he was not going to be fun today. He was sitting at the break room table while you made coffee, and the silence had an edge to it, and so to break it you’d blurted it out - “Brett Kowalski just asked me out” - mostly just to fill the space.

The change in him was fast. Not dramatic, he didn’t throw anything, but something in his face went dark - darker - in a way that was its own kind of loud.

“Kowalski,” he said.

“From the assessor’s office.”

“Yeah, I know who he is.”

You’d turned around then, leaning against the counter, watching him. “Do you?”

He didn’t answer that. He picked up his coffee and looked at it like it had done something to offend him.

“You’re not going,” he said, eventually.

And that was when you made the decision that has resulted in you sitting in an Applebee’s in Dickinson on a Saturday night, so in retrospect maybe you should have let it go. But something about the flatness of it - you’re not going, like that was just a fact about your life that he was informing you of - had gotten right up under your skin.

“Excuse me? I’m not going? Says who?”

“I’m saying. Kowalski’s a… he’s fucking weak. You’re not going.”

You’d pressed up from the counter and folded your arms across your chest. He’d at least had the sense to pretend not to look.

“If you don’t like it,” you’d said, keeping your voice very pleasant, “maybe you should ask me on a date.”

The look on his face had been almost worth everything that followed.

“Fine,” he said, very careful about keeping his eyes on yours and not anywhere else.

You hadn’t expected that. “Fine?”

“Yeah, I said fine. A date, on Saturday.”

“I pick where we go.” You’d been firm about that. The venue was your choice.

He’d looked like he wanted to argue that, but he’d thought better of it. “Fine. Seven o’clock. Text me the place.”

Which is how you ended up here.

****************

Applebee’s was maybe a little mean. You’ll admit that. But you’d wanted to see what he’d do with it, and the answer - Gator Tillman walking through the door of an Applebee’s in a button-down shirt that he’d clearly ironed badly, looking around the room like he was conducting a threat assessment of the salad bar - has already made the whole thing worthwhile.

He spots you, and doesn’t smile about it. Then he crosses the room and sits himself down with a thud into the chair.

“Applebee’s is where you wanted to go,” he says, flat. “Seriously?”

“I come here all the time,” you say, smiling sweetly. “Great neighbourhood feel.”

He looks around the neighbourhood feel. Two middle-aged women are getting wine-drunk in a booth nearby. A family of five is arguing about whether to get the riblets. Someone has put “Don’t Stop Believin’” on the jukebox in the bar area.

“What neighbourhood feels like this?” he asks, bemused.

The waitress comes over - a high school kid, very cheerful, name tag says Britnee - and you order a strawberry margarita because you’ve decided to commit to the bit. Gator orders a beer, and when Britnee asks which kind he just says don’t care, whatever’s cold in a tone that’s probably a little much for a Saturday night in Dickinson, but Britnee writes it down and disappears with the speed of someone who has good survival instincts.

“You could’ve just said Bud Light,” you say.

“I don’t care what kind it is.”

“I know. But now she’s going to take a while trying to decide which cold beer you’re less likely to scowl at her for bringing.”

He looks at you across the table. In the bleak horror of Applebee’s lighting - which spares no one, it’s one of its few honest qualities - he looks tired. Really, really tired, younger than he usually lets himself seem, and oddly unsure of himself in a way that sits strangely on him.

“I don’t do this,” he says, abruptly.

“Ask for unspecified beer?”

“You know what I mean.”

You do. You look down at your menu. “Why not?”

He doesn’t answer you immediately, choosing instead to pick at a crack in the corner of the laminated menu. You can feel him deciding how much he wants to give you. “Guess I didn’t see the point.”

“Of going out to dinner?”

“Of -” He starts tugging paper napkins out of the caddy, needlessly. “Of all of it. The whole thing.”

You look up. He’s not looking at you, he’s looking at his napkins and then the menu like it requires serious concentration, which given Applebee’s it really doesn’t. You watch his face for a moment.

“What about now?”

He doesn’t answer straight away. Britnee reappears with your drinks and takes your food order - you get a chicken pasta because you’re here now, you might as well, and Gator gets a steak because of course he does - and disappears again.

“Now I’m in fuckin’ Applebee’s,” he says, finally, like that comes close to an answer. Maybe it does.

****************

The thing is, once you get past the first twenty minutes, it gets easier.

It shouldn’t. There’s no reason for it to - he still looks tired and you know picking this place was a little mean of you. But somewhere around the point where you’re arguing about whether Dickinson has anything worth doing on a weekend (you say yes, he says name one thing, you say the bowling alley on Fifth, he says that place has a rat problem, you say you’ve bowled there a few times and never seen a rat, he says that doesn’t mean there isn’t one), something loosens between you. Some held thing lets itself go.

He’s opinionated - which you’d known since you’d walked into the sheriff’s department on your first day three year ago - but in a regular-person way you haven’t had much chance to see before. He thinks the bypass construction has been mismanaged from the start, which, fair. He has thoughts about the new pastor at the Lutheran church that are surprisingly nuanced for someone who you wouldn’t have pegged as a man with nuanced thoughts about Lutheran pastors. He grew up watching old Westerns with his mother, which he tells you almost by accident, mid-sentence - ‘she’d pick the ones with the most horses, didn’t matter what else was in them’ - and then he moves past it so fast, back to the bypass construction or whatever came before, that you almost let it go. Almost. But you catch the small, careful way he’d said she’d, past tense, and you don’t ask, and he doesn’t explain, and that silence between you is different from the others.

Your food arrives and it is exactly as mediocre as Applebee’s food always is, and you say so, and Gator says you picked it, and you say I know, that’s what makes it funny, and he looks at you for a second and then something happens to his mouth that you realise, with a small shock, is him trying not to smile.

“What?” you ask him, a little incredulous.

“Nothing.”

“You almost smiled.”

“I didn’t.”

“Gator. I saw it.”

He cuts into his steak. “Shut up, eat your pasta.”

But the almost-smile stays at the corner of his mouth for a while after, and you find yourself doing something you hadn’t planned on, which is having a good time.

****************

It happens over dessert, which you’d ordered without asking him because you wanted to see what he’d do, and what he’d done was look at the brownie bites the waitress put between you and then pick up a spoon, which felt like a significant moment of growth.

You’re telling him about your cousin’s wedding last summer - the one in Bismarck, the one where the DJ had played Gangnam Style three times and your uncle Gerard had done the dance moves perfectly each time - and Gator is listening in a way that he doesn’t always, really listening, and you’re doing the arm movements a little to illustrate, quietly, so as not to disturb the riblet family, and he laughs.

Not almost. Actually laughs. Short and real and true, there and gone, like he hadn’t meant to and doesn’t quite know what to do with the aftermath.

You feel it happen while you’re still doing the arm movements. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s not a feeling so much as a shift in register - the way a room looks different when someone turns on a lamp you hadn’t noticed was off. You lower your hands. He’s still coming down from laughing, jaw working a little like he’s figuring out what expression belongs on his face now, and you look at him across the sticky table and something you’d been holding at a careful distance closes the gap without asking permission.

Because here’s what you see, across an Applebee’s table with a plate of brownie bites between you - a man who badly irons his shirt for a date he was manipulated into, who has opinions about bypass construction and Lutheran pastors and the imaginary rat problem at the Fifth Street bowling alley, who grew up watching cowboy films with his absent mother, who laughs when he forgets to stop himself, who is capable of making you forget your own name with the flick of his wrist. Who is, against what should be considerable odds, genuinely good company when he stops pulling on the costume of Deputy Gator Tillman.

You’d thought you’d known what he was. You didn’t know this part.

You’re not sure what to do with it, so you eat some of the brownie and let the moment settle, and he does the same, and Applebee’s plays something that might be early 2000s country over the speakers and neither of you mentions it.

****************

Outside, the parking lot is cold and lit orange, and your breath makes small clouds. He walks you to your car without being asked, without making anything of it, and you don’t say a word about it because saying something would make it feel lesser.

You get to your car and turn around. He’s closer than you’d registered, and neither of you speaks, and the silence is not uncomfortable exactly - it’s the kind that’s waiting to see what you’ll do with it.

“We don’t have to call tonight a date,” you offer. “If that’s easier for you to, I don’t know, live with or whatever.”

He looks at you for a long moment. It’s not defensive, something more complicated than that, something moving behind his eyes that he isn’t going to name and you’re not going to ask him to. “It was a date,” he eventually says, firm with it.

“Okay.”

“We’re not doing Applebee’s again.”

“Fine.”

“I’m picking next time.” He nods, once, like a verdict. Then he reaches out and tucks a strand of hair back from your face - delicately, like he’s been deciding whether to do it since somewhere around the brownie bites - and his hand drops and he steps back and the cold air fills the space.

“I’ll call you,” he tells you. It’s not a question. He’s still the Deputy, always still that, but under it something that sounds almost careful.

You think of Brett Kowalski from the assessor’s office. You let him go.

“Yeah,” you say. “You’d better.”

You drive home south through the dark flat nothing of North Dakota, radio low, fields black on either side of the road, and you think about how you had gone into tonight with a very clear idea of what it was. A point being made. A small, petty correction to the way he’d said you’re not going like it was just a fact. You’d had it all mapped out.

You pass the grain elevator outside of town and you’re still thinking about the way his face had looked when he laughed. The surprise in it, like he’d caught himself doing something he hadn’t planned on.

Somewhere on Route 22 it happens - that small, involuntary thing. You notice it because your face is still cold from the parking lot and the smile pulls at skin that was already tight with it, and you’d been so busy thinking about him that you hadn’t noticed it starting.

You don’t try to stop it.

You don’t try to figure out what it means, either. Not tonight. Tonight you just let Route 22 unspool ahead of you in the headlights and you keep the radio low and you don’t stop smiling for a long time after you probably should.

[ms-mountebank]

4 authors you like

Thank you @tinfoileddd for the original tag and for spreading a little positivity on here! Thank you also to @cpnsteverogers for a tag too 😊 It has taken me a while to put this together as there are so so many talented writers and I am currently doing this on my tea break so whoops if there are spelling mistakes 🤣 Here goes!

* @morninglesss I absolutely adore this authors writing! I am constantly looking out for her updates and I urge everyone to go and read her work if you haven’t already. All her work is superb, but my favourite is The Alarmist series. The way she captures Gator is phenomenal! Reading is supposed to make you feel something and her work always moves me so much, the depth she brings to characters is something that really cannot be matched and the attention to detail shows that she puts her heart and soul into her writing, I could read her works over and over again and it would still feel like the first time! Also extra respect for being a Wide Awake veteran from back in the day!😁

* @thoroughlymimi again another author who’s updates I always look forward to, honestly love everything they have written. Again the subtle attention to detail that really aids the building of the stories is phenomenal and again the writing really makes you feel something, you experience each emotion along with the characters in their work. I cannot choose a favourite from their masterlist but their latest piece At the Heart of It has currently captured me. If you haven’t read any of their work you are missing out! 😊

* @sheisjoeschateau I stumbled upon their work when I began reading regularly on here at the beginning of the year and Mercy totally captured me, so much so that Gator very quickly became one of my favourite characters to read. Again the detail and passion that this author puts into their work is completely evident and beyond words and I have all their masterlist on my to read list, I am especially looking forward to starting their Oh So We Do Love Steve piece. They are also currently working on a collab Let’s Show Them We Are Better with @keer-y which I am really loving at the moment 😊

* @tinfoileddd I don’t know where to start with this author! I recently began reading Drag Path, and it has had a hold on me so much that I have been sneaking in chapters at work in between surgeries!! The way they capture Steve and Mel’s characters in that piece of work can both warm your soul and break your heart simultaneously, I have said this to the author privately but one of my favourite quotes from a book I have read many years ago is from Wuthering Heights, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” and that is exactly how I feel about her characters! Also bonus points for being really friendly! 😁

Shoutouts also to @harringtonsdiary @swirledyouintoallmypoems @thecruxchronicles @oohgeminii @kensley-11 @andvys @scoopsahoydjo @m0mmat0rtle @larivervixen @comfycosygirl @heavenknows13 @snoopyracing @buckysgrace @moonstoneandmoonlight @pocketstories @insomniacpen @upsidedownwithemmy @ananthologyofblurbs @discodjo @riddlersoupwrites You are all AMAZING and help me to escape real life when I need to!😍

I am so sorry if I have omitted anyone 😊

[thoroughlymimi]

At The Heart Of It : Part Four- Onus Posteri

Gator Tillman x Reader

18+ | minors do not interact

Word Count: 14131

Summary: A rare night out with the girls takes you to a party in the woods that ends in police lights and panic.

Note: Love how great you guys have been about this. As always I love all your comments and some of the hashtags you guys reblog with have me laughing for hours. Anyway, here is tonight's serving... Mimi <3

Masterlist

Onus Posteri

Translation: Afterload

Literally ‘the weight that follows’. The resistance against which the heart must labour.

Sleep still clung stubbornly to the house when your alarm dragged you awake. For a moment you just stared at the ceiling in the dim blue-grey dark, listening to silence.

You rubbed a hand over your face and reached blindly for your phone to kill the alarm before it woke anyone else. Your body felt heavy with the kind of tiredness that settled deep into your bones after long days and late nights. Somewhere out in the living room Logan was still sprawled across the sectional with a concussion and a hangover brewing like a biblical plague, and if you didn’t move him before the kids woke up there was every chance Rhodes would find the sick bucket and start asking deeply unfortunate questions over breakfast.

You swung your legs out of bed with a quiet sigh. The floorboards were cool beneath your feet as you padded toward the door, still half asleep, hair a complete mess. You reached for the handle before catching sight of yourself in the mirror opposite the wardrobe.

The tank top you’d slept in dipped low across your chest, soft from years of washing, one strap hanging slightly twisted over your shoulder. In the weak early light your scar stood out pale against your skin, running straight down your sternum before disappearing beneath the fabric.

Your fingers instinctively brushed the raised line. Last night, you realised suddenly, you hadn’t thought about it once. Not while cleaning blood off Logan’s face. Not while standing between Gator’s knees with antiseptic on your fingertips and his eyes fixed somewhere carefully above your shoulder. You had been too tired, too irritated, too wrapped up in the moment to think about hiding it.

A strange warmth flickered through you at the memory. Gator hadn’t stared. Most people did eventually. Not always cruelly, sometimes not even intentionally. But there was always a glance.  Still, even if Gator hadn’t looked at it, you sure as hell were not dealing with Logan at six in the morning with your chest half out and your scar on display.

You turned away from the mirror and crossed back toward the wardrobe, tugging open one of the doors. After a second’s consideration you grabbed the first oversized sweatshirt you found and pulled it over your head, shoving the sleeves up your forearms as you headed out into the hallway.

The second you stepped into the living room, the smell hit and you physically recoiled. It smelled like sweat and stale beer and men who had made tragically poor decisions. Underneath all of that lingered the unmistakable sour stench of vomit.

You pinched the bridge of your nose as you crossed quickly to the front door, yanking it open. Cool morning air rushed inside immediately, fresh and clean against your face. You dragged the heavy bench beside the door forward just enough to wedge it open and let the breeze move through the house.

The living room itself looked like the aftermath of a small-scale disaster. One boot abandoned near the fireplace. Logan’s jacket half strung across the playpen. An empty bottle of water tipped sideways on the rug. Logan himself was face down on the sectional, one arm dangling toward the floor. You marched over and shoved his shoulder hard.

“Logan.”

You glanced downward and spotted the bucket beside the couch, at least he’d used it. With a long-suffering sigh, you picked it up carefully between two fingers and headed for the laundry room. The smell followed you the whole way.

“Absolutely vile,” you muttered to yourself.

You emptied the bucket down the utility sink, rinsed it three times, then filled it halfway with clean water before leaving it in the basin. By the time you returned to the living room, Logan had not moved even slightly. You planted both hands on his shoulder and shoved again, harder this time.

“Logan, get the fuck up,” you snapped. “You can take the rest of this hangover home.”

He groaned into the cushion. You grabbed the blanket covering him and yanked it away entirely. Cold air hit him and he curled inward with another groan. A muffled curse came from somewhere inside the sofa.

When he still didn’t move, irritation finally won out. You grabbed his wrist and shoulder and hauled. Logan slid bodily off the sofa and hit the rug with a heavy thud.

“What the fuck?!” he barked, suddenly awake.

Logan dragged a hand down his face and immediately winced when his fingers brushed the swelling around his eye.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded, voice still thick with sleep and last night’s whiskey.

“You are what is wrong with me, Logan.” Your voice stayed low, sharp enough to cut without ever rising. “Take this shit home before the kids get up and see you.”

He gave a disbelieving scoff and bent to snatch his jacket off the floor.

“See what? A hangover?” He shoved one arm into the sleeve and squinted at you through the bruising already darkening around his eye. “Get over yourself.”

“No, Logan, not your hangover.” Irritation was spreading through you now properly, fed by the smell, the noise, the sheer childishness of him standing there bleeding into Maggie’s living room at dawn like a delinquent teenager instead of a twenty-six-year-old man. “I’m referring to the state of your face. The black eye, the lip, the probably broken nose.” You gestured vaguely toward him. “You’re a fucking liability. Starting fights in a bar? Really? Grow up.”

Logan let out a short laugh through his nose like the whole thing was ridiculous.

“We were havin’ a laugh.”

He jerked his chin toward the sofa as he said it, toward Gator, and only then did you properly register that Gator had taken up your offer of the sofa.

He was standing now a few feet behind you, one hand rubbing absently at the back of his neck while the other held the folded blanket. He looked uncomfortable suddenly, caught between wanting to disappear and knowing he couldn’t.

“Aware you don’t understand that concept,” Logan continued, still digging now he’d found a reaction, “because you spend your Friday nights with Ford’s spawn, but some of us can actually enjoy ourselves.”

The words landed exactly where he intended them to, something hot and immediate flared beneath your ribs. It was not embarrassment, not really. More exhaustion. The familiar sting of being spoken to like your life was something small and sad and self-inflicted. Like caring for the people you loved was somehow proof you had failed at being young properly.

“Yeah, looks like you really enjoyed yourself.” Your eyes flicked over his split lip again. “Next time Gator can leave you ass up in the driveway.”

Logan grinned then, mean in that effortless way he had perfected sometime around adolescence.

“Ain’t my fault you’re the boring one.”

You rolled your eyes and moved past him toward the windows, needing the room aired out before the entire downstairs permanently smelled like stale whiskey and sick.

“How’s your friend, Brooke?” he called after you. “Is it Brooke? Now she’s fun.”

Behind you came the quiet sound of Gator huffing a laugh before he could stop himself. It hit you far harder than it should have. You turned your head sharply enough to catch the tail end of his expression dropping, his mouth flattening almost immediately like he regretted it the second it left him.

For some reason that only irritated you more. Maybe because last night had felt… different. Softer somehow. Quiet in a way that had made you lower your guard without noticing. And now daylight had arrived and with it came Logan’s smirking and Gator laughing along beside him. You looked back to Logan.

“Both of you need to fuck off,” you said evenly. “Now.”

Logan raised both hands immediately in mock surrender, grin still sitting smug across his bruised face. Then he turned and headed for the open front door, boots heavy against the hardwood. Gator lingered a second longer. When you glanced at him, he looked almost chastened, shoulders slightly drawn in beneath the broad frame of him. Like he wanted to say something and didn’t know how. In the end, he said nothing at all. He just followed Logan outside into the pale early morning light.

You stood there for a moment in the middle of the living room, jaw tight, before turning away and moving toward the back of the house instead. One by one you unlocked the rear windows and pushed them open, letting cold air sweep through the downstairs in long clean currents.

Outside, somewhere across the gravel yard, you could hear Gator starting his truck but what you didn’t see was him glance back toward the house before driving off.

・❥・

By the time you and Maggie left the ranch, the sun had fully risen over the pastureland, turning the long grass pale gold beneath the wide blue sky. The roads were clear and dry as Maggie guided the Yukon down the county roads toward Dickinson, you sat curled comfortably in the passenger seat with your legs crossed beneath you, watching familiar stretches of land roll past the window.

Maggie drove with one hand loose on the wheel, sunglasses already on despite the weak morning light, platinum hair immaculate even this early in the day. For a while the only sound between you was the low murmur of country music from the radio. Then Maggie reached over without warning and turned the volume down, she glanced briefly toward you before looking back at the road ahead.

“You wanna tell me about all the shouting this morning?”

You looked across at her. The sunglasses hid her eyes, but there was no mistaking the knowing curve of her mouth. Nothing escaped Maggie Heaton for long. Certainly not yelling loud enough to echo through the downstairs before sunrise. You let your head fall back against the headrest with a long exhale.

“Fucking Logan.”

“I mean, I got that,” she said dryly. “Not quite a full explanation.”

Outside the window, telephone poles blurred steadily past. Bare trees, open pasture. The occasional rusted mailbox leaning sideways from weather and time. You folded your arms loosely over your chest.

“Got wasted, started a fight in a bar. Gator brought him home and I heard them come in.” You paused, irritation stirring again at the memory of the smell alone. “Cleaned them up, set them up on the sofa. Apparently the hotel service wasn’t up to par.”

Maggie sighed the deep, world-weary sigh of a woman perpetually surrounded by men behaving badly.

“That boy,” she muttered. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t need you to. It’s fine.” You glanced out the windshield, jaw tightening faintly. “He’s just an asshole.”

There was affection buried somewhere beneath the statement, the exhausted sort reserved for family members who had irritated you your entire life, but it was buried very deep this morning.

“I just…” You rubbed tiredly at your forehead. “He pissed me off extra, especially considering I cleaned him up and emptied a bucket of his sick.”

That earned a sharp laugh from Maggie.

“Oh, Baby.” Her voice softened immediately after, the annoyance giving way to sympathy. She reached across the centre console and squeezed your thigh once, warm and grounding. “Well then. We better go shop all the stress away.”

“On Marshall’s dime.”

Maggie barked out a laugh then, loud and delighted.

“Exactly right, baby.”

The rest of the drive passed easier after that. The mall parking lot was busy in the lazy, meandering way Saturday mornings always were. Families unloading strollers. Teenagers drifting toward the entrance in oversized hoodies. Elderly couples walking side by side with paper cups of coffee clasped in already full hands.

Maggie swung the Yukon neatly into a parking space near the main entrance. Before you had even fully uncrossed your legs and reached down for your purse, Maggie was already climbing out and a second later your passenger door opened from the outside.

You rolled your eyes, though smiling as you took the hand she offered and climbed down from the truck. Maggie had always treated you like something precious, something worth fussing over, and Ford was no different. Between the two of them you had grown up loved in such a large, unwavering way that sometimes you forgot was unusual until other people pointed it out.

The kids were the same. Tucker carrying heavy boxes before you even asked. Walker automatically reaching for your drink if your hands were full. Nicky hovering beside you during errands like a loyal little shadow. Even Rhodes, feral as he was, checked on you in his own strange sticky-handed way.

You sometimes joked privately that no man on earth would ever stand a chance against the standards set by the Heatons. What poor bastard could compete with a family that treated you like royalty?

Maggie slid her arm through yours as you started toward the mall entrance together, pulling you close against her side.

“If we leave here and that trunk is not full,” she declared solemnly, “we’ve failed.”

You laughed properly then, the sound carrying out across the parking lot.

“Maggie, your trunk is big enough for, like… five grown men.”

“Don’t go giving me ideas, baby.”

Maggie only cackled louder, entirely pleased with herself, as the two of you disappeared into the warmth and noise of the mall and headed straight for a shoe store.

By late morning the two of you had developed a rhythm that existed somewhere between shopping trip and military operation.

Maggie moved through stores with frightening efficiency, sunglasses perched on top of her head, handbag hanging from the crook of one elbow while she issued snap decisions on fabrics, colours and cuts with the confidence of a woman who had never once doubted her own taste. Sales assistants flocked toward her instinctively. Maggie had that sort of gravity. People either wanted to impress her or escape her entirely. You trailed beside her carrying a growing collection of bags.

“Maggie,” you protested as she held up yet another pair of boots, “you already own like… five pairs of black boots.”

“These are different black boots.”

The morning blurred pleasantly into changing rooms and mirrors and Maggie pushing hangers into your arms with increasingly questionable justification. There was something comforting about shopping with Maggie. Maybe because she approached it with the same wholehearted intensity she brought to everything else in life. She never half-loved anything. Never half-committed. If she thought you looked good, she said it immediately and loudly and without embarrassment.

You moved from shoes to cosmetics to a home store where Maggie became emotionally invested in decorative hand towels for nearly twenty minutes before finally allowing herself to be escorted back out again. Somewhere along the way the pile of shopping bags multiplying in your hands became genuinely absurd.

“You realise we still have to fit ourselves in the car?” you asked as Maggie paid for another set of candles she absolutely did not need.

“We’ll manage.”

A little while later you found yourself standing inside the fitting room of a boutique near the centre of the mall, surrounded by discarded hangers and soft piles of clothing while Maggie continued passing items over the top of the door.

“One more.”

“Maggie.”

“One more.”

“You’ve said one more six times.”

“And yet here we are.”

You shook your head fondly and pulled the curtain shut again. The dress she’d handed you this time was white with tiny, embroidered flowers scattered across the fabric, light enough to move when you held it up. It had thinner straps than you usually wore and a lower neckline too, the kind that naturally drew the eye downward.

You hesitated for only a second before stepping into it. The fabric settled softly against your skin when you pulled it into place, skimming your body in a way that felt easy rather than clingy. Comfortable. The sort of dress meant for hot summer evenings and porch swings and bare feet against warm wood.

For a moment you simply stood there looking at yourself in the mirror. The scar sat visible against your chest, pale and slightly uneven. Automatically, your shoulders shifted inward. You stared at your reflection for another second before finally pushing the curtain open and stepping out into the fitting area.

Maggie looked up immediately from the armchair outside.

“Oh, baby,” she breathed. “You look gorgeous.”

The sincerity of it hit harder than you expected. You turned instinctively toward the mirror beside the changing rooms, eyes catching first on the dress and then, inevitably, on the scar exposed beneath it. Your hand lifted without thinking, fingertips brushing lightly over the centre of your chest.

Beside you, Maggie stood. You felt her before you saw her, warm and familiar at your back as she came to stand behind you in the mirror’s reflection. Gently, she reached forward and took your wrist, guiding your hand away from your chest.

“You are beautiful,” she said quietly. “We’re buying the dress.”

A small smile tugged reluctantly at your mouth.

“I do like the dress.”

“Good.” Maggie released your wrist immediately, decision already made. “We’re getting the dress.”

Then she turned toward the front counter and raised her voice enough for half the store to hear.

“We’re getting the dress, people!”

You burst out laughing, heat rushing instantly to your face.

“Maggie!”

One of the shop assistants laughed openly while another gave Maggie a thumbs up from behind the register like this had somehow become a group achievement. Still laughing under your breath, you grabbed the edge of the curtain and disappeared back into the changing room while Maggie continued basking in her own victory outside.

By the time the two of you made it back out into the parking lot, the afternoon sun sat high and bright overhead, glinting off windshields and warming the concrete beneath your feet. Your arms ached pleasantly from the weight of shopping bags cutting into your fingers, paper handles looped all the way up your wrists while Maggie carried just as many without appearing inconvenienced in the slightest.

“You know,” you said, shifting the bags higher against your hip, “I think we may actually fill this trunk.”

Maggie pressed the key fob and the back of the Yukon beeped before the trunk lifted open.

“Oh, I think that was a very successful trip,” she replied smugly, already beginning to load bags inside with brisk efficiency. “I will make sure Marshall knows how well we spent his money. Much better than whatever old man crap he would have spent it on.”

You snorted softly and stepped beside her, adding another armful into the growing mountain of purchases.

“Do you only play poker to torture old men?”

“Silly question, baby.” Her mouth curved slowly into a smirk. “Yes. Of course that’s why I play. It's a mere bonus when the old men I am torturing are ones I don't particularly like.”

You laughed again, shaking your head as the trunk finally slammed shut beneath Maggie’s hand. A few minutes later you were both settled back inside the car, Maggie clicked her seatbelt into place before glancing sideways toward you.

“Did you have fun, baby?”

The question should have been easy. Instead, for one strange suspended second, your mind snagged unexpectedly on Logan’s voice from that morning. Fun.  Aware you don’t understand that concept. You stared briefly out through the windshield at the moving crowds crossing the parking lot before forcing the thought back down where it belonged and threw on a smile.

“I did,” you said, turning back toward her. “Thank you, Mags.”

“No one I’d rather shop with.”

You reached over and squeezed her arm once in quiet affection. Then Maggie started the engine, country music flooding softly back through the speakers as the Yukon rolled out of the parking lot.

The road stretched out long and flat ahead of you as town slowly gave way to open land again. Out beyond the windows the world had returned to muted oranges and tall, dry grass, fence lines cutting across the fields in endless straight paths while the radio hummed softly beneath the steady sound of the tires on asphalt.

You had drifted somewhere else entirely. Fun. The word kept circling your head in an irritating little loop. You didn’t even fully understand why Logan’s comment had managed to wedge itself under your skin so deeply. Logan made antagonising comments the way other people breathed.

Maybe it hadn’t even really been Logan. Maybe it had been Gator laughing. That stupid little huff of amusement behind you while Logan talked about Brooke being fun, further suggesting you were decidedly not.

Your gaze fixed vaguely out the passenger window as your thoughts spiralled uselessly onward. Was that what he liked? Girls like Brooke? Loud girls. Easy girls. Girls who drank tequila and danced at parties and flirted effortlessly. Then immediately another thought followed on its heels, sharper and more humiliating. Why did you care what Gator wanted?

You frowned faintly at yourself. You didn’t. Obviously. Except apparently you did a little because the word fun would not leave you alone.

Fun, fun, fun, fun.

The frustration of it made you pull your phone from your pocket. The groupchat sat near the top of your notifications with forty-six unread messages beneath No Boys Allowed 🚫. Normally you would have opened it, skimmed through half the conversation and reacted to a few things before quietly disappearing again.This time, before you could overthink yourself out of it, your thumbs moved first.

                You: what u up to tonite?

                Megan: OMG does this mean ur in? 😍

                You: depends on the plan. Maybe?

                Brooke: YASSSSS!!

                Megan:party? We can pick u up? 💛

            You: ok. fuck it. what time?

                Hannah: OMG! Yes, so glad ur coming!!

                Brooke:  see Paige. just u that sucks 🤬

                Paige:  im sorry. i have plans already

                Megan: get u at 8?

                You: sounds good

                Hannah: what r u all wearing?

You laughed quietly under your breath, of course Hannah’s first concern was outfits, some things never changed. Maggie glanced briefly across at you from behind the wheel.

“The girls?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded once and looked back to the road, but your stomach suddenly tightened with a strange flicker of nerves anyway. Not because Maggie would say no. Maggie had never stopped you from doing anything. If anything, she encouraged you to get out more than you actually did. Still, you found yourself speaking carefully.

“Actually… um.” You tucked your phone back into your pocket. “I was gonna go out with them tonight. Like, if that’s okay? Megan’s cool to pick me up, I don’t need--”

“Of course, baby.”

The interruption came so quickly and so genuinely that you turned to look at her. Maggie looked delighted.

“Go,” she said firmly. “You don’t need permission, you’re an adult. Go with the girls.”

Something in your chest loosened unexpectedly at the enthusiasm in her voice. You smiled despite yourself.

“Now I’m even happier we went shopping today.” She glanced sideways at you again. “You can wear that top. The black one?”

“And the boots with the tassels?”

Maggie gasped softly like the idea was inspired.

“Oh, baby,” she declared, reaching over to pat your knee again, “you are gonna look gorgeous.”

And for the first time since Logan’s stupid comment that morning, the knot sitting beneath your ribs finally eased a little.

・❥・

By the time Megan’s convertible left the paved roads behind, the sky had begun slipping slowly from gold into deepening blue. The radio blasted loud music around the car while the four of you bounced along uneven dirt tracks that the vehicle was absolutely not designed to survive. Every pothole made the suspension complain dramatically beneath you.

“You are going to kill this car one day,” Hannah said for perhaps the fifth time, bracing one hand against the dashboard as Megan took another rut too quickly. Megan barely glanced away from the road.

“She likes adventure.”

“This car likes parking lots.”

Brooke snorted from beside you in the backseat, already halfway through the canned cocktail she’d opened the second Megan picked everyone up.

“She’s rich,” Brooke declared lazily. “The car’s replaceable.”

“I’m not rich,” Megan protested.

“You own a convertible in North Dakota,” Hannah replied flatly. “That’s rich people behaviour.”

You laughed quietly, the sound getting half-lost beneath the music spilling from the speakers. The further out you drove, the darker the roads became, until eventually the trees started to thicken around you and distant music drifted faintly through the open evening air. Ahead, flashes of headlights flickered through the woodland.

Then the clearing opened up in front of you. It looked exactly like every party you had spent years politely declining invitations to.

Trucks and Jeeps sat scattered unevenly across the clearing, headlights left blazing into the dusk while two floodlights mounted in truck beds washed the whole area in hazy white light. Music boomed from a set of speakers rigged up in the back of somebody’s pickup, a laptop balanced precariously beside them while groups of people drifted in loose circles through the trees.

Coolers sat everywhere. Open tailgates. Beer cans crushed into the dirt. Bonfire smoke curling up through the branches overhead. Someone whooped loudly somewhere off to your left. Megan pulled her convertible into a space beside an old Jeep splattered in dried mud and killed the engine.

You climbed out after the others, boots crunching softly against the uneven ground as the noise of the party swallowed you whole. Laughter. Music. Engines idling somewhere deeper in the trees. For one brief second, nerves tightened low in your stomach.

You suddenly became hyperaware of yourself in a way you had not been while getting ready in your bedroom earlier. The black lace top Maggie had insisted on buying hugged closer to your skin than most things you wore, layered carefully enough to hide your scar but still making you feel exposed somehow. Your new boots added just enough height to feel unfamiliar beneath you, the fringe along the sides brushing softly against your jeans whenever you moved.

Everyone here looked effortless and comfortable. Like they belonged. Megan appeared beside you before you could disappear too far into your own head. She looped her arm firmly through yours, warm and smelling faintly of expensive perfume and vanilla lip gloss.

Megan looked ridiculous in the way only Megan could. Tiny skin-tight dress, huge cut-outs at her waist despite the cold night air, long hair perfectly styled like the wind itself had signed a contract not to ruin it. She squeezed your arm.

“I can introduce you,” she promised. “You’re gonna have a good time, and if you’re not, we can go.”

You looked at her sceptically, though the reassurance still softened something in you anyway. You let her pull you forward through the clearing.

People called greetings to the girls as you passed, most of them directed at Megan, who seemed to know almost everybody by name. Brooke disappeared briefly to hug someone near one of the trucks while Hannah immediately became distracted complimenting another girl’s jacket.

Megan kept hold of you the whole time. Eventually she guided you toward a group gathered around a large cooler near the music. A few girls. Mostly guys. Boots and baseball caps and flannel jackets.

Megan introduced you brightly before you could retreat into yourself. “Everybody be nice.”

A chorus of amused greetings followed. One of the guys standing nearest the cooler straightened slightly when he saw you properly. Tall, broad, sandy-haired. Nice smile. Bryce, you listened vaguely, as Megan introduced him. He bent and reached into the cooler.

“Something a little fruity for the ladies?” he offered, pulling out several brightly coloured cans. “Jenna bought cocktails.”

Megan accepted one instantly with a delighted gasp and Bryce passed another to you.

“And that’s why we love Jenna.” Megan sung.

Laughter moved easily through the group after Megan’s declaration, loose and warm beneath the thrum of music echoing through the clearing. Somebody somewhere behind you shouted over the song currently playing, another voice yelling back louder, while headlights cut long pale beams between the trees and turned the drifting smoke silver at the edges.

The canned cocktail sat cold in your hand. Condensation gathered against your fingers as you looked down at it for a moment, not even really reading the label. You were thinking too hard, which had always been your problem. Every decision passed through a hundred layers of consideration before you ever acted on it. Side effects. Consequences. Risks. Whether it was worth the inevitable conversation if Maggie noticed. Beside you, Bryce mistook your hesitation entirely.

“Oh, here.”

Before you could react, he took the can lightly from your hand and cracked it open with an easy flick of his thumb.

“Don’t want ya breakin’ a nail, beautiful.”

The compliment caught you slightly off guard. Not because it was especially smooth, but because it had been so immediate and effortless, offered with the kind of casual confidence you had very little experience receiving firsthand. You accepted the can back from him, fingers brushing briefly against his.

“Oh, um… thanks, yeah.”

The first sip tasted overwhelmingly sweet, fizzy and fruity enough that the alcohol barely registered beneath it. You were still making sense of the flavour when Brooke and Hannah reappeared at your sides, both of them immediately noticing the drink in your hand. Brooke’s face lit up in exaggerated delight.

“Oh shit,” she said, pointing at you like you had just achieved something monumental. “Okay. Let’s go, girl.”

You laughed despite yourself, warmth already creeping into your cheeks, though whether from embarrassment or the alcohol you couldn’t quite tell. Hannah, softer as ever, leaned slightly closer until only you could hear her over the music.

“You sure?”

The concern in her voice lacked judgment entirely. It was careful in the way only Hannah ever really managed, gentle without making you feel fragile for needing gentleness in the first place. You smiled reassuringly.

“Yeah,” you said. “I’m good.”

And maybe the strange thing was that you were, there was a chance this could actually be… fun.

The night unfolded gradually after that; one song bled into another. Conversations drifted in and out around you. Someone started dancing in the bed of a pickup truck while another group clustered around the kegs laughing loudly enough to echo through the trees.

At first you stayed close to the girls, content simply to exist inside the movement of it all. Megan pulled you into dancing before you could retreat too deeply into yourself, Brooke immediately following suit with absolutely no shame whatsoever while Hannah danced beside you with the uncoordinated enthusiasm of somebody already halfway drunk.

You laughed more than you expected to, that was the thing you noticed first, over the alcohol settling warm beneath your ribs after a couple more canned cocktails, or the way your body had slowly loosened enough to stop standing so stiffly. It was the laughter. Easy and unguarded in a way that felt unfamiliar after so long spent carefully composed.

At some point Brooke disappeared altogether, eventually spotted pressed against the side of somebody’s truck kissing a guy whose name you never caught. Hannah grew steadily drunker as the night went on until you were genuinely impressed she remained upright at all, swaying dramatically whenever she danced and insisting she was “totally balanced” moments before stumbling sideways into Megan.

Megan, to her credit, stayed anchored beside you through all of it. The alcohol had softened the hard corners of your nerves by then. Not enough to make you reckless, but enough that you stopped analysing every interaction before it happened. Enough that when Bryce and another guy Megan had introduced as Alex, wandered back over to where you and Megan were dancing near the trucks, you didn’t immediately tense at the attention.

Alex settled easily beside Megan while Bryce moved in behind you, close enough now that you could feel the warmth of him through the thin lace of your top whenever the crowd shifted tighter around you. The music pulsed through the clearing, heavy bass vibrating beneath your boots while bodies moved shoulder to shoulder in the floodlit dark. Megan leaned closer, lips brushing briefly near your ear so you could hear her over the music.

“You good if I…?”

You followed her glance toward Alex and smiled immediately, loose and warm with drink.

“Go,” you told her. “I’m good.”

Megan squeezed your arm once in thanks before disappearing into the crowd with Alex, leaving you laughing softly to yourself as Bryce’s hands settled more firmly at your waist. He turned you gently to face him then, one hand still resting against your hip while he leaned down closer so you could hear him properly.

“Want another drink?”

You nodded without much thought.

“Yeah.”

Bryce smiled and took your hand, leading you away from the centre of the clearing toward the darker edge of the woods where the music softened slightly beneath the trees. On the way he reached into another cooler and grabbed two more cans, passing one to you before opening his own.

You ended up leaning back against the rough trunk of a pine tree while Bryce stood close in front of you, one shoulder turned toward the clearing behind him. The lights from the trucks flickered weakly through the branches overhead, catching gold at the edges of his hair whenever he moved. Around you the party carried on in waves of noise and music and laughter, but here at the edge of it all things felt quieter somehow.

Bryce talked easily, confidently, asking questions about you while his thumb moved idly against your hip through the denim of your jeans. It was flirtation, definitely, but harmless so far. Close enough to feel intimate, not close enough to feel threatening. And with the alcohol humming softly through your bloodstream and the cold night air against your skin, you let yourself enjoy the attention instead of shrinking away from it.

You smiled when it seemed appropriate, sipping intermittently from the cocktail in your hand while the night swayed pleasantly around the edges. The alcohol sat warm and heavy beneath your ribs now, softening your thoughts, making everything feel just slightly slower than usual. Behind Bryce the floodlights blurred faintly into the darkness between the trees, music still pulsing steadily through the clearing.

Bryce stood close enough now that one arm rested braced against the tree above your shoulder, his body half boxing you into the rough bark behind you. Not aggressively. Just with the easy entitlement of a man who assumed you wanted him there. And maybe, a little drunk and loose and tired of overthinking yourself, you didn’t entirely mind.

Your eyelids had just started to grow heavy when the entire clearing suddenly exploded with flashing red and blue light. At first your brain struggled to process it.

The music faltered awkwardly as rotating sirens washed through the night, painting the trees and trucks and scattered bodies in violent streaks of colour. A low chorus of groans and curses immediately rose up across the clearing.

A few people bolted deeper into the woods in panic, stumbling through the dark between the trees, while most of the crowd stayed exactly where they were with the exhausted resignation of people who had clearly done this before. Bryce was one of those people, entirely unbothered by the intrusion, he kept himself planted directly in front of you, still talking away.

The cruisers rolled fully into the clearing, four of them. Their headlights illuminated the entire clearing as doors opened almost simultaneously and officers began climbing out into the cold night air. Six deputies spread naturally outward across the party, hands resting casually near belts and radios while people started muttering complaints under their breath.

Gator climbed out of the cruiser already irritated. Not because of the party itself. Woods parties happened every few weekends once the weather started turning. Half the county’s teenagers and twenty-somethings seemed biologically incapable of gathering indoors when there were trucks and trees available instead. Usually it amounted to noise complaints, underage drinking, maybe somebody taking a swing at somebody else over a girl.

What irritated him was the timing. It was late and he had been halfway through bad gas-station coffee when the call came through about trespassing and noise out near the private timber lots. Gator swept his torch slowly across the crowd as he walked forward over the uneven ground.

“Get the music off,” he called toward one of the younger deputies. “Check IDs. Anyone gives you shit, throw ’em in the car.”

A couple of the officers split off, already moving through the groups gathered around the trucks while another deputy started yelling for people to stop trying to leave in their vehicles.

Gator kept moving deeper into the clearing, torch beam cutting through drifting smoke and shifting bodies. Most people reacted the same way when the light hit them. Hands up. Complaints. Nervous laughter. Drunk attempts at charm.

Then his torch caught movement further back near the tree line.

A couple pressed up against one of the larger pines. The guy had one arm braced beside the girl’s head while the other hand moved slowly up her denim-clad thigh. At first Gator barely looked twice. Standard drunk party behaviour. Then the girl shifted sharply against the tree. One hand planted against the guy’s shoulder like she was trying to create space between them.

Gator’s expression hardened. He started toward them, torch beam steady, the light lifted higher catching first on black lace and then the girl’s face. And suddenly Gator stopped dead.

The world had started to feel strangely heavy around the edges. At first you had thought it was just the alcohol. But standing there against the tree with Bryce pressed close in front of you, something had shifted into discomfort. Your skin felt too warm. The music, the lights, the movement around the clearing all seemed suddenly distant and far too loud at the same time. Bryce was talking near your ear again, though the words blurred together beneath the ringing pulse in your head. You swallowed hard and blinked slowly.

“I need a sec,” you murmured, trying to steady yourself against the bark behind you. “Can you…”

Your hand pushed weakly at Bryce’s shoulder, but he barely moved. Then a bright torch beam landed directly across the two of you. You squeezed your eyes shut immediately; god, it was bright.  Bryce leaned closer instead of backing off.

“C’mon,” he said against your ear, his hand still sliding upward along your thigh. “Ignore ’em. I want you.”

You pushed at him harder this time, he still didn’t move.

“Bryce--”

Then suddenly everything happened at once. Bryce was ripped backwards so violently the pressure pinning you against the tree vanished instantly. You heard him swear as he stumbled, boots skidding across dirt before he hit the ground hard somewhere beside you. Before your brain could fully catch up, another arm had already wrapped firmly around your waist and you were being guided away from the tree.

Gator slid his arm around you as your body swayed into him, unsteady enough that he instinctively tightened his grip around your waist to stop you stumbling over the uneven ground.

“What the fuck, man?” Bryce spat, wiping mud from his sleeve as he pushed himself halfway upright. “I wasn’t doin’ anything!”

Gator turned sharply enough that the younger man visibly faltered. The beam from his torch landed square across Bryce’s face, harsh white light catching the confusion and indignation there. For one dangerous second Gator seriously considered dragging him back onto the ground. Instead he jerked his chin toward one of the deputies approaching through the clearing.

“Check him in for a night at county’s finest,” Gator said flatly. “An’ wrap this shit up. I gotta sort this one out.”

The deputy grabbed Bryce by the arm before he could say anything else. Gator’s attention had already returned fully to you. His hand remained firm against your waist as he guided you carefully through the clearing, steering you around coolers and truck tires and clusters of suddenly much quieter partygoers.

The arm around your waist tightened slightly as you stumbled again, and something about the familiarity of it finally cut through the haze. You twisted your head sharply.

The profile hit you first. That nose. The slicked-back hair peeking out beneath the deputy’s hat. The hard line of his jaw pulled tight with tension.

Gator.

The realisation landed all at once.

Heat rushed immediately through your chest, tangled somewhere between humiliation and anger and alcohol-fuelled defensiveness. Suddenly you were acutely aware of everything at once: the police lights, the deputies, the partygoers. You jerked hard against his grip.

“What are you doing?” You asked, trying to push out of his grip.

Gator barely reacted beyond tightening his hold enough to stop you stumbling sideways.

“Easy--”

“Leave me alone!”

You shoved at him properly then, palms hitting solidly against his chest as you tried to wrench yourself free. Gator swore quietly under his breath. Then both of his hands closed around the tops of your arms, steadying rather than rough but firm enough that you couldn’t simply pull away.

The cruiser headlights illuminated him sharply now. The bruising still faintly shadowing his eye from the night before. The tension drawn hard through his shoulders. His expression somewhere between furious and alarmed.

“What the actual fuck,” he demanded, breathing hard now himself, “are you doin’ here?”

Gator kept hold of your arms for a second longer, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. You looked wrong. Your eyes were glassier than normal, unfocused around the edges whenever you looked at him, and there was a flush high across your cheeks that had nothing to do with the cold.

You were drunk, and the thought irritated him instantly.

Not because you were here specifically, though that was shocking enough on its own, but because he had found you half-dazed and unsteady with some guy pinning you against a tree while your friends were nowhere in sight. Something protective and ugly had flared hard in his chest the second he realised it was you.

His grip loosened fractionally as he tried to gauge how steady you actually were. Immediately your weight tipped forward. Gator caught you again on instinct, hands tightening back around your arms before you could stumble straight into him.

“What the fuck,” he muttered again, more to himself this time than you. “You been drinkin’? How much’ve you had?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he guided you firmly toward the rear passenger door of the cruiser, one hand sliding back to your waist when your footing faltered again.

“M’takin’ you home,” he said. “Get in.”

“No.”

You pushed sharply against his chest again, trying to twist out of his hold while he reached for the cruiser door. Your boots scraped against the side of the vehicle as you braced yourself stubbornly against it for leverage. You tried to push back against him, but his patience finally snapped clean through. His arm wrapped firmly around your waist and simply lifted you bodily off the ground.

“What the hell, Gator? Put me down! I’m having fun, Gator!” you protested loudly, twisting against him. “Remember? I don’t know how to have fun, so here I am… learning!”

Your feet kicked uselessly once against the cruiser door before dropping altogether as he pinned you securely against his side long enough to yank the rear passenger door open.

“Will ya stop fightin’?” he snapped, breathless now himself as he manoeuvred you awkwardly into the backseat. “Jus’ get in the damn car!”

Eventually he managed it by sheer size advantage alone, getting your legs into the cruiser before you could properly plant your boots again. The second your body hit the seat; he slammed the door shut before you could turn around and launch yourself back out.

Gator stood there for one second breathing hard into the cold air, staring at the closed door while red and blue lights flashed endlessly across the cruiser windows. Thank Christ for the lack of interior handles.

He walked around to the driver’s side, climbing into the cruiser. He started the engine, jaw still tight enough to ache. Your voice came cold from the backseat.

“You’re an asshole.”

Gator glanced briefly into the rearview mirror. You had pulled your knees up toward your chest now, curled tightly against the door with your face turned toward the dark woods outside the window. The flashing lights painted briefly across your features before disappearing again. He exhaled slowly through his nose and shifted the cruiser into drive.

Gator drove in silence. The cruiser hummed steadily along the empty county roads, headlights carving pale paths through the dark while cold night air drifted in through the slight gap in his window. Curled against the back door, you stared out at the dark blur of pastureland sliding past the window and felt yourself sobering far too quickly.

Your head was starting to ache, a dull throbbing pressure behind your eyes that pulsed faintly in time with the lingering bass still trapped somewhere inside your skull. The alcohol haze had thinned enough now that embarrassment was creeping steadily into the space it left behind.

The dancing had been fun. For a little while you had actually managed to stop thinking so hard about yourself. But everything after that sat sour in your stomach now.

Regret curled heavier and heavier inside your chest the more your head cleared, and beneath a little bit of guilt. For yelling at Gator, calling him an asshole when, realistically, he had only been doing his job and he had stepped in when you had been trying and failing to get Bryce off you yourself.

You pressed your forehead briefly against the cool window glass. The drinks had been such a stupid idea, that regret settled deepest of all. Because now you could feel your body beginning to punish you for it.

The first flutter came low beneath your ribs, subtle enough at first that you almost tried to ignore it. Then your heartbeat kicked harder against your chest, uneven suddenly in a way you recognised immediately. thump-thump-^-thump. Your eyes shut at once. No. Not now.

Your hand lifted automatically to your chest, fingertips pressing over your sternum through the thin lace of your top. You rubbed slowly in soothing circles. Breathe slowly. Don’t panic. Panicking only made it worse.

But the rhythm kept climbing anyway, fluttering strangely before catching hard enough that you could hear it beginning to echo faintly in your ears. The sensation spread unpleasantly through your chest, your pulse suddenly too loud inside your own body while cold unease started creeping up the back of your neck.

By the time the ranch finally came into view, Gator’s shoulders ached with tension. The last thing he wanted was to wake the whole damn house, so he killed the headlights halfway up the drive. When he finally brought the cruiser to a stop in the yard, he exhaled slowly before glancing into the rearview mirror, then immediately turned fully around.

Your eyes were squeezed shut now, your body curled tighter into the corner of the backseat than before. One fist was pressed hard against the centre of your chest, breathing shallow and uneven. For one awful second, Gator’s stomach dropped clean out. Shit. He was out of the cruiser almost instantly.

The rear passenger door jerked open hard enough to rattle the hinges as Gator dropped into a crouch beside you, panic already climbing hot and fast through his chest. His hands reached for you immediately, one gripping your forearm while the other hovered uncertainly near your shoulder like he didn’t know where to touch first.

“You okay?” His eyes flicked over your face desperately, fear seeping out in his voice. “Is it your heart?”

You could hear the panic in his voice. But louder than that, far louder, was your heart. It hammered wildly inside your chest now, fast enough that it almost drowned everything else out. The rhythm had lost all steadiness entirely, racing unevenly beneath your ribs. thumpthumpthumpthump^thump. Every strange skipped beat made your body instinctively tense waiting for the next one.

You forced your eyes open. Gator’s face hovered close in the dark beside the cruiser, the panic there startled you a little. His jaw tight with fear, eyes searching frantically across your face. Without really thinking about it, you reached for him. Your fingers caught around his wrist and pulled his hand against your chest, pressing it beneath your own where your heart hammered violently beneath skin and bone and scar tissue.

You tried to explain but the words wouldn’t come properly through the uneven rhythm and shallow breaths.

“It…will… stop…gim--me…sec--ond.”

The second Gator felt your heartbeat beneath his palm, real panic hit him properly. Your heart raced violently against his hand, far too fast, the rhythm catching strangely every few beats in a way that made his stomach twist. thumpthumpthumpthump^thump. You looked terrified beneath it all, trying so hard not to show it, focusing on dragging slow breaths into your lungs.

He didn’t know what to do, that was the part making him feel half-crazy. He could fight people. Arrest people. Handle drunks and crashes and bloody noses and screaming domestic disputes without blinking. But this? Sitting helpless beside you while your heart misfired beneath his hand?

His mind kept snagging viciously on stupid things. Whether he’d been too rough wrestling you into the car. Whether the alcohol had caused this. Whether the panic and lights and shouting had made it worse.

And underneath all of that sat one horrible thought he couldn’t shake loose: What if he hadn’t found you first? What if he’d rolled into that clearing ten minutes later. What if that asshole had kept you pinned against that tree while you got dizzier and more unsteady and nobody noticed something was wrong? The thought made another sharp wave of panic roll straight through him.

Eventually, slowly, the rhythm beneath your ribs began to settle. Not completely, still catching, but the violent racing had eased enough that the roaring pulse was no longer drowning out everything else around you. You could hear the night again.

You swallowed carefully and let your hand fall away from your chest at last. The second you moved, Gator pulled his own hand back too, like he had only just realised how tightly he’d been holding it there.

“Sorry,” you murmured quietly.

“No.” The word came firm and fast. “Don’t apologise.”

His eyes stayed fixed on your face, worry still written plainly across every inch of him despite the slight easing in your breathing.

“I’m sorry if I was too… rough. If I--”

“It wasn’t you,” you interrupted softly. “This was all me and cans of strawberry daiquiri.”

For the first time since the party, the corner of Gator’s mouth twitched faintly upward. Only barely, but enough that you caught it. After another second he pushed himself upright from his crouch and held a hand out toward you.

“C’mon,” he said quietly. “Let’s get ya inside.”

His grip tightened carefully around yours as you climbed out of the cruiser. The second your boots hit the gravel, the uneven ground shifted and you stumbled slightly sideways. Gator caught you immediately. One arm slid instinctively around your waist to steady you while his other hand knocked the cruiser door shut behind you. He started guiding you toward the front door but you shook your head.

“Left my side door open,” you murmured. “Don’t wanna wake Maggie.”

Together you crossed instead along the wraparound porch, boots thudding softly against the wooden boards. Along the side of the house, your room glowed faintly through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows that lined one wall. The porch door leading directly into your bedroom sat unlocked, warm light spilling softly out across the porch boards from the lamps inside.

The warmth of your room hit you softly the second you stepped inside. Gator stayed close behind you as you crossed the room, one hand still lightly at your waist in case you lost your footing again.

“Sit,” he said gently.

You let him guide you down onto the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped beneath your weight while Gator crouched in front of you. His big hands moved carefully as he reached for your boots, far gentler than someone his size had any right to be. One by one he eased them off your feet and set them neatly beside the bed before straightening again to his full height.

“Stay put.”

Then he disappeared briefly out through the doorway toward the kitchen. You sat there quietly while he was gone, elbows braced on your knees, exhaustion settling heavily through your limbs now that the adrenaline had worn off. Your heart still skipping occasionally beneath your ribs, enough to keep you aware of it.

A minute later Gator returned carrying a glass of water. He held it out toward you without a word. You drank deeply, cold water easing some of the lingering dizziness still hanging around your head. Gator hovered nearby while you drank, arms folded loosely across his chest now, eyes still watching you carefully like he didn’t entirely trust you not to pass out if he looked away too long.

“Um…” his gaze flicked around the room briefly, “Pyjamas?”

You blinked at him once before realising what he meant.

“Oh.”

Reaching back across the bed, you grabbed the old, oversized T-shirt crumpled near your pillow, one of Ford’s ancient college shirts that had somehow permanently migrated into your possession years ago. You dragged it closer with tired fingers before handing the water glass back toward Gator.

Then, without really thinking about it, you caught the hem of your black lace top and pulled it up over your head.

Gator’s entire body locked for half a second before he snapped his gaze hard toward the opposite wall like a deeply awkward teenager caught somewhere he shouldn’t be. He heard the soft huff of laughter you let out behind him as fabric rustled and the oversized T-shirt settled into place.

Gator risked looking back far too soon, directly in time to see you unclasp your bra beneath the shirt and tug it free through one sleeve before tossing it vaguely across the room. His eyes widened slightly before he looked away again. You were trying to kill him.

Somewhere behind him he heard you shifting again, buttons clicking softly against denim. Gator glanced back cautiously this time and found you standing beside the bed with your jeans half unbuttoned, one hand hovering uncertainly toward him while you swayed slightly on your feet.

“Can I…” You paused, brows pinching faintly together. “I’m a bit wobbly.”

It took him one embarrassingly long second to realise you were asking for help.

“Oh.” He stepped forward quickly. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”

Carefully, like you might break somehow, he reached out and steadied you by the forearm while you awkwardly stepped out of your jeans. His entire focus stayed fixed determinedly somewhere around the top of your dresser while you finished, jaw tight with concentration.

The second you straightened again; he loosened his grip slightly but kept one arm around you when your balance wavered and guided you gently backward toward the bed. He pulled the blankets back enough to help settle you underneath them. You sank into the warmth with a long exhale, shoulders finally relaxing against the pillows.

Gator reached over and set the glass of water carefully onto your bedside table. You watched him standing there beside the bed, broad shoulders still tense beneath his deputy jacket, and guilt twisted uncomfortably inside your chest again.

“I’m sorry I called you an asshole.”

“S’fine.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

After a second Gator sat down carefully on the edge of the mattress beside you, elbows resting loosely against his knees.

“How you feelin’?” he asked quietly. “Y’need anythin’ else?”

“Um…” You swallowed. “No. I don’t think so.”

But even as you said it, emotion caught unexpectedly in your throat. You looked down at the blankets gathered in your lap instead. The fear had settled in properly now that everything else had calmed down, that horrible creeping awareness of your own body misbehaving beneath your ribs. Your heart still hadn’t settled fully. Every now and then it gave another strange little flutter that caught your breath for half a second before evening out again.

Gator must have seen the shift in your face because his posture changed noticeably beside you, concern settling back over his features.

“Hey,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

“Just a bit scared.”

You blinked quickly and looked away before the tears gathering in your eyes could fully embarrass you.

“I was really stupid, I know I shouldn’t drink. I don’t drink. I dunno why I did it.” Another flutter caught awkwardly in your chest and your hand instinctively moved there again. “Heart still feels a bit funny. Fluttery.”

You hesitated.

“Can you…”

Then immediately stopped yourself. No. Absolutely not. You shook your head quickly.

“No, don’t worry.” You forced a faint smile. “I’ll be alright. Thank you for bringing me home.”

But Gator didn’t move, didn’t brush it off. He just stayed sitting there beside you, eyes fixed steadily on your face.

“Can I what?” he asked quietly.

“It doesn’t matter.” Your voice dropped softer. “I’ll be fine.”

Gator stayed still for a moment, watching you carefully. You looked small curled up beneath the blankets like that. Exhausted. A little teary-eyed despite how hard you were trying not to show it. One hand still resting lightly against your chest every few seconds whenever another flutter caught your attention. And suddenly he understood what you had almost asked him.

“Do y’want me to stay?” he asked.

Your eyes lifted to his and Jesus Christ., something about the way you looked at him then caught him completely off guard. Vulnerable in a way you almost never allowed yourself to be with anybody. Like you were trying very hard not to ask for comfort outright because you were too used to being the comfort for everyone else.

“You don’t have to,” you said quietly.

Gator’s chest tightened painfully.

“Ain’t leavin’ you if you’re scared,I can stay.”

The relief that flickered briefly across your face did something dangerous to him. Before he could sit there and think too hard about any of it, he pushed himself up from the bed and crossed the room toward the door. His boots hit the wooden floor heavily as he toed them off beside the entrance, followed by his jacket and tactical vest, which he set carefully beside them in an untidy pile.

Gator rubbed briefly at the back of his neck before walking around to the other side of the bed. He tugged his hoodie off over his head and dropped it beside the nightstand, leaving him in his dark T-shirt and cargos before finally climbing carefully onto the mattress. He stayed on top of the covers, giving you space, one arm tucked beneath his head as he settled onto his back beside you.

Beside you, Gator lay stiff as a board on top of the blankets. You rolled slowly onto your side to look at him properly. He was staring straight up at the ceiling like he was trying very hard not to acknowledge the fact he was lying in your bed at all. The sight almost made you smile.

Even exhausted and worried and awkwardly rigid, he was unfairly handsome. His features always confused you a little when you looked at them too long. Everything about him sat somewhere between softness and sharpness. Soft mouth. Sharp jaw. Soft eyes. Sharp nose. The bruising still faintly lingering along his cheek from the other night only made him look rougher around the edges, not less attractive.

You realised suddenly that you were staring. Before you could stop yourself, your gaze drifted lower, following the line of his throat where it disappeared beneath the collar of his T-shirt. It was Gator who finally broke the silence.

“That guy…” His voice sounded rougher than usual in the quiet room. “At the tree…”

He stopped there, visibly uncomfortable already. You blinked back toward his face. Gator rubbed one hand down over his mouth and jaw before forcing the next part out quickly, like he wanted it over with as fast as possible.

“Did you wanna…” He grimaced faintly. “Were y’mad at me ’cause you wanted to go with him?”

For a second you just stared at him, then a laugh escaped you before you could stop it. Gator turned his head sharply toward you at once, and the expression on his face made the laughter die immediately in your throat. He was serious, completely serious. You shook your head softly.

“No,” you said quietly. “I didn’t want to go with him…”

“Even if I had,” you continued after a moment, “he wouldn’t have wanted to go with me.”

You rolled onto your back slowly, staring up at the ceiling now because somehow this conversation felt easier when you weren’t looking directly at him.

“He was only trying it because I’d been drinking and still had my clothes on.” Your fingers twisted slightly in the blanket over your stomach. “The second the top came off he would’ve taken one look and bolted.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“Don’t play stupid, Gator.”

“I really ain’t got a clue what you're on about.” He sounded almost frustrated now. “That guy was runnin’ his hands up you like he couldn’t wait to get y'clothes off.”

“Yeah,” you said softly. “That’s what happens. And then they get the clothes off.”

Silence stretched briefly between you before you spoke again.

“In high school… do you remember Dylan?”

Gator’s brows pulled together as he searched for the memory.

“Dylan…” Then recognition flickered. “Senior year boyfriend. Yeah, I remember punchin’ him after he broke up with you.”

Despite yourself, a faint huff of amusement escaped you.

“Well, he broke up with me because we had sex.” You stared steadily at the ceiling. “Said I was ‘breakable’ and needed someone more gentle.”

“Well,” he muttered darkly, “now I wanna punch him again.”

That earned a real little laugh out of you, but once the sound faded, the heaviness settled back in.

“It’s not just him,” you admitted quietly. “The guy after him knew about it beforehand, but when we got to it…” Your throat tightened slightly around the memory. “He told me to keep my shirt on because the scar 'put him off'.”

Beside you, Gator had gone completely still.

“And then the last guy…” You swallowed hard, staring fixedly upward. “Figured I just wouldn’t say anything. Second he saw it, he turned me onto my front and refused to look at me until he came.” A hollow little laugh escaped you then. “Which was actually kinda hilarious because he left me in his apartment afterward.”

The silence that followed felt different somehow. Gator pushed himself up onto one elbow so he could properly look down at you, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and anger.

“They’re all idiots, they’d be fuckin’ lucky t’have you.” His jaw tightened hard. “Fuck them.”

You turned your head toward him then and gave him a small, soft smile. It hurt a little how easily you believed him. Maybe because Gator said things so rarely that when he did, they always sounded honest. The emotion in your chest suddenly felt too large to hold comfortably anymore. Before he could see it fully on your face, you turned your head away again toward the dark windows. A single tear slipped quietly down your cheek into the pillow.

Gator shifted back to lay staring up at the ceiling again, jaw clenched so tightly it had started to ache. Inside his chest, anger simmered hot and ugly. At every stupid fucking man who had looked at you and somehow managed to make you feel ashamed. How dare they. How dare any of them touch you and then leave you feeling like you needed to apologise for your own body afterward.

To Gator, the entire thing felt incomprehensible. The fact any of them had even gotten a chance with you seemed absurd enough already. The idea they’d somehow failed to recognise what they’d been given made him actively furious.

Suddenly little moments started slotting together in his head one by one. That Sunday Maggie had invited him to stay for lunch, and you’d disappeared only to come back wearing a sweatshirt despite the heat. The time Josie had grabbed at the neckline of your shirt and you’d pulled her tiny hand away almost too quickly. All those tiny moments he’d never fully thought about before.

Those men had done that. Made you feel like hiding. Gator swallowed hard, teeth grinding together again. How fucking dare they.

Beside him, the mattress shifted softly and his attention snapped back to you immediately.

You had rolled slightly toward him in your sleep-drunk exhaustion, one arm slipping free over the top of the duvet while your other hand still rested lightly against your chest. Even now, even after everything had settled somewhat, he could still feel the tension lingering in you. The fear. Like you were too worried to properly relax enough to fall asleep.

Slowly, carefully, Gator reached across the space between you. His hand wrapped gently around your wrist. Then he pressed two fingers lightly against the inside pulse point there, feeling your heartbeat moving beneath warm skin. Still skipping every third beat, but steadier now, slower. Gator kept his fingers there, counting.

The warmth of Gator’s hand grounded you, steady and solid against your skin. Every few seconds you could feel the faint pressure shift as he shifted. Your eyes stayed fixed on the dark windows for a moment longer while exhaustion settled heavily through your body.

He stayed because you asked him to.

Gator Tillman. Emotionally constipated, perpetually awkward Gator, had left a whole police scene behind the second he realised it was you. You could still hear the panic in his voice when he yanked the door open. And now here he was in the middle of the night, lying beside you in your bed with two fingers wrapped carefully around your wrist like he could somehow hold your heartbeat steady.

The thought made your chest ache in an entirely different way and slowly, finally, the fear inside you began to quiet. Your eyes drifted closed and sometime not long after that, with Gator’s hand still around your wrist, you finally fell asleep.

・❥・

Sunlight spilled in through the tall porch windows in long golden strips, warming the wooden floorboards and creeping steadily across the bed where you had forgotten to close the curtains the night before. Your eyes opened slowly against the light.

For a moment you lay still, heavy with sleep, disoriented by the unfamiliar warmth beside you. Then memory returned all at once. The party. The cruiser. Gator. You became suddenly aware of how close he was.

Sometime during the night you had shifted toward him in your sleep, seeking warmth or comfort or something quieter you didn’t quite want to examine too closely. And at some point after that, Gator had rolled onto his side facing you. But it was his hand that made your chest tighten softly.

Even asleep, his fingers were still loosely wrapped around your wrist. He had never let go. All night.

The slight movement of your wrist beneath his hand dragged Gator awake instantly. One second he was asleep, the next he was jerking upright internally with pure adrenaline flooding his system. His eyes snapped to your face.

You were awake. Not panicked. Not struggling to breathe. Just lying there looking at him sleep-soft beneath the morning light, hair a mess against the pillow and one side of your face creased faintly from sleep.

Then you smiled at him.

“Morning.”

Gator exhaled so hard it was almost a silent laugh of relief. Only then did he realise he still had your wrist loosely trapped in his hand.

“Shit,” he muttered quickly, pulling his hand back like he’d been caught doing something deeply embarrassing. “Sorry, I was jus’…”

He cleared his throat roughly, visibly scrambling to recover himself.

“Mornin’.”

You shifted carefully upward against the headboard, blankets pooling loosely around your waist as the morning light spilled warmly across the bed. Your body still felt heavy with sleep and leftover exhaustion, but the awful racing panic from the night before had faded. Just a slight headache lingering behind your eyes and a dry mouth.

Reaching toward the nightstand, you picked up the glass of water and held it out toward Gator. He pushed himself upright beside you and accepted it with a quiet. “Thanks.”

You watched him take a long drink, throat moving as he swallowed, sunlight catching against the messy flattening of his hair from the pillow. Even first thing in the morning he somehow still looked unfairly attractive. When he offered the glass back, your fingers brushed his briefly as you took it. You drank some yourself before setting it back on the nightstand and leaning against the headboard again.

“How you feelin’?”

“Not too bad.” You rubbed lightly beneath one eye. “Bit of a headache, but nothing Advil won’t fix.”

Gator nodded, but you could see that wasn’t the answer he actually cared about.

“An’ your heart?”

For one ridiculous second, you became acutely aware of the fact there was a very handsome man sitting in your bed wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and sleep-heavy eyes after spending the entire night holding onto your wrist. And unfortunately, your heart responded accordingly, a soft little flutter moved beneath your ribs. Nothing to do with your health, all to do with him.

“Back to normal,” you smiled faintly. Then after a beat: “Well. My normal.”

“Good.”

Silence settled briefly, soft and almost comfortable. Neither of you seemed in any hurry to move yet. Gator cleared his throat quietly.

“Last night,” he started carefully, “you said somethin’--”

You groaned and dropped your head briefly back against the headboard.

“If I said something embarrassing, please don’t remind me. I do remember calling you an asshole and I am sorry about that.”

“No, not that.” Gator shook his head quickly. “It was before… Y’said somethin’ ’bout havin’ fun.”

You looked at him properly again then.

“An’…” He rubbed a hand briefly against the back of his neck. “I-I wanted t’say sorry. ’Bout what Logan said.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, s’not. An’ I shouldn’t have laughed.”

“Having an audience does encourage him.”

Gator huffed faintly at that, though no real amusement sat behind it. Another quiet pause settled between you afterward. You kept your gaze lowered because the truth was harder to admit than you wanted it to be. Logan’s comments hadn’t really hurt you. Logan had always run his mouth. You could handle Logan. But Gator laughing beside him had. Even if it had only been a reflexive little sound before he caught himself. Even if you knew logically he probably hadn’t meant anything by it.

Gator watched your gaze drop toward your hands and immediately understood he’d hurt you more than he’d realised. The thought sat badly in his chest. Because the truth was, he hadn’t actually been laughing at you at all. But hearing you say Logan needed an audience suddenly made him replay the whole moment differently in his head, and now all he could see was how it must have looked from your side.

Like he’d joined in. Like he was laughing at you with Logan, spurring him on.

“I wasn’t laughin’ at you,” he said quietly.

Your eyes lifted back to his, confusion faintly knitting your brows together.

“It was what he said ’bout your friend.” Gator frowned slightly, trying to remember the name. “Brooke.”

You still looked puzzled.

“She was at the bar when we was there that night. Messy. Throwin’ herself on everybody.” A small shake of his head followed. “Jus’ thought he was makin’ fun of her.”

Understanding flickered softly across your face then. But instead of making Gator feel better, it somehow made the guilt worse. Because now that he thought about it properly, Logan had always talked to you like that. Saying things just sharp enough to sting before passing them off as jokes. And Gator had never stopped him.

The realisation sat heavy in his stomach, because you deserved better than that.

You studied Gator for another second and slowly realised he was being entirely genuine. The seriousness of it caught you off guard enough that a small laugh escaped before you could stop it.

“She’s always had a thing for Logan,” you admitted. “And she’s also kind of always been a mess.”

That finally got a proper laugh out of him too, the tension easing visibly from his shoulders now that he realised you weren’t upset with him anymore. You pulled one knee slightly closer beneath the blankets and sighed quietly.

“I know it was stupid,” you admitted after a moment. “And yeah, I guess Logan’s comment got to me, but also… I’ve just been having a week.”

Gator stayed quiet beside you, listening.

“Brooks has been having more trouble out at the sites, so I’ve been reorganising Ford’s crews to help him out. But Ford also has like…” You squinted vaguely at the ceiling. “Four? Five? Other projects going on right now. And then Nicky got suspended, and I had to sort him out, and I ended up getting into it with his teacher--”

“Hang on.”

Gator shifted suddenly, twisting fully toward you now.

“Nicky?” His brows pulled together. “Suspended?”

“Yeah. Punched a kid in the face.” You rubbed a hand over your eyes dramatically. “Clearly been spending too much time with Logan.”

Gator blinked at you in visible disbelief.

“Why’d they call you?”

“The school?” You lowered your hand again. “Because I’m their second contact and Ford was busy.”

You leaned your head back against the headboard again.

“Turns out Nicky’s been having a hard time and one of the kids keeps making comments about Madison.”

Recognition flickered across Gator’s face.

“Ford’s Madison?”

“Yeah and when I spoke to his teacher, she didn’t even know Madison was dead.” The frustration rose again just thinking about it. “So I got annoyed, obviously. Like, for fuck’s sake. The kid lost his mom. It’s a wonder it’s taken him this long to punch someone.”

Silence settled briefly after that. You stared up at the ceiling for a moment, exhaustion creeping back into your bones now that you’d started talking.

“But it’s my fault too,” you admitted quietly.

Gator frowned immediately.

“I spend all my time with those kids and I…I didn’t notice. He didn’t tell me,” you swallowed. “I never expected that though. He doesn’t punch people.” A faint, half-hearted laugh escaped you. “He wants to be a sheriff.”

Gator huffed softly at that.

“He’s never been in trouble, I thought he was the one I’d never have to worry about.” Your fingers twisted slightly in the blanket gathered in your lap. “But I know he’s been quiet lately, so why didn’t I ask?”

Gator shuffled closer beside you before you could disappear too far into your own guilt.

“Hey,” he said firmly. “No. That ain’t on you.”

“Feels like it is.”

“Yeah, well.” His expression hardened slightly with certainty. “M’tellin’ you it ain’t.”

That earned a faint wry smile from you.

“Thanks. I’d love to tell you that makes me feel better…”

Gator held your gaze steadily.

“M’jus’ tellin’ you the truth. You do everythin’ for those kids and they ain’t even yours. They’re lucky to have you. Don’t beat y’self up.”

You gave him another small, restrained smile before finally pushing the blankets aside. Gator shifted slightly against the headboard, attention following you automatically as you padded barefoot across the wooden floor toward the wardrobe. You pulled one side open and started flicking through hanging clothes with sleepy indecision.

“He wants to be a sheriff?” Gator asked.

You glanced back over your shoulder briefly.

“Nicky?” A soft smile tugged at your mouth. “Mhm. Yeah.” You pushed a few hangers aside thoughtfully. “Every time we drive past one of your guys’ cruisers he tells me that’ll be him someday.”

Gator huffed a quiet laugh.

“He would lose his shit if he knew I was in the back of one last night,” you added, laughing softly yourself now.

“In my defence,” Gator replied dryly from the bed, “y’was resistin’.”

You snorted and grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of overalls from the wardrobe before tossing them onto the mattress beside him.

“Well,” you said, rolling your eyes as you turned back toward the dresser, “you didn’t ask nicely.”

You crouched slightly to pull open one of the lower drawers, fishing around for underwear while Gator’s laughter faded into an amused shake of his head. A bra and underwear followed the rest of the clothes onto the bed beside him.

Gator’s gaze dropped automatically to the pile of clothes you had thrown onto the bed beside him. Immediately, regrettably, it landed on the black lace thong sitting right on top.

For one deeply unfortunate second, his brain supplied the image of you wearing it entirely uninvited. The curve of your hips. Your bare legs disappearing beneath lace. Then, somehow worse, his mind skipped another step further entirely, imagining himself peeling it off you slowly, preferably with his teeth.

Gator blinked hard and looked away so fast it almost hurt his neck. Get a grip. By the time he forced his thoughts back under control, you had already disappeared into the en-suite bathroom without noticing his brief internal collapse.

He exhaled once through his nose and pushed himself off the bed to follow. The bathroom door stood open, you stood bent slightly over the sink washing your face, hair pushed messily back while cold water dripped from your jaw and down the curve of your neck. Gator leaned one shoulder carefully against the doorframe and found himself trying very hard not to stare at the droplets trailing slowly beneath the collar of your oversized T-shirt.

He cleared his throat quietly.

“If you want,” he said, forcing his attention somewhere safer, “you could bring him to the station.”

You reached for a towel, dabbing carefully at your face before glancing toward him through the mirror.

“Nicky?”

“Yeah.” Gator shrugged one shoulder casually, though his pulse had picked up again for reasons he preferred not to examine. “I can show him around. Take him out in the cruiser…”

He watched your expression change in real time. Your entire face brightened and for one terrifying second Gator genuinely thought his own heart stopped in response.

“Seriously?” you breathed. “Gator, that would be amazing. He--he’d love that.”

The excitement in your voice hit him harder than it should have.

“M’on the day shift Monday,” he said quickly, before he forgot how talking worked altogether. “Bring him down. Y’got my number still?”

“Presuming you haven’t changed it since high school,” you replied with a grin, “then yeah, I do.”

God, you looked pretty smiling like that first thing in the morning.

“Thank you, Gator,” you said softly. “This is… he’s gonna be so happy.”

Before he could figure out how to respond to that without sounding like an idiot, you crossed the small bathroom and wrapped your arms around him. Gator went completely rigid, not because he didn’t want you touching him, quite the opposite, actually.

His brain simply stopped functioning for a second. Then awkward instinct finally kicked back in and he patted one large hand uncertainly against your back. Meanwhile his heart was attempting to beat straight through his ribs.

“S’fine,” he muttered hoarsely.

The second you felt Gator go rigid beneath your arms, embarrassment flooded through you causing you to pull back.

“Sorry,” you said quickly. “Inappropriate hugging. Very hug-gy family.”

Gator huffed a laugh, though he still looked mildly shell-shocked by the interaction.

“S’fine. I should probably get goin’,” he said. “Cruiser’s still in the yard. Don’t want Maggie wakin’ up an’ interrogatin’ me.”

That made you laugh quietly.

“Smart man.”

You followed him back out into the bedroom. Gator crossed toward the pile of discarded clothes by the door and started pulling himself back together, tac vest and jacket. Then finally he sat briefly on the edge of the chair near the door to tug his boots back on, broad hands working quickly at the laces.

You lingered awkwardly near the foot of the bed watching him, suddenly aware that once he walked back out that porch door, everything would probably settle back into whatever normal existed between the two of you before all this. The thought sat strangely in your chest. By the time Gator straightened again fully dressed, you had started wringing your hands together subconsciously in front of yourself.

“Thank you,” you said quietly. “For last night.”

Gator looked up quizzically.

“For staying, I mean.” You swallowed awkwardly. “I’d be really grateful if we could keep it between us… the party, the drinking. Maggie and Ford’ll only panic and Logan’ll give me more shit than he already does and--”

“Hey.” Gator cut gently across the rambling before you could properly spiral. “Why d’you think m’leavin’ before m’seen?”

A small, crooked smile pulled briefly at one corner of his mouth.

“Our secret,” he said simply. “Promise.”

Something warm unfurled quietly beneath your ribs. Then, somehow even worse for your heartbeat, Gator winked at you. Actually winked. Before you could recover enough to respond, he turned and headed out through the side porch door into the bright morning light beyond.

You stood for a moment in the doorway, watching pale sunlight stretch slowly across the hardwood floors while the rest of the ranch still slept. The kids were not awake yet. No thunder of footsteps upstairs, no cartoons already blaring from the television.

Your head still ached faintly as you crossed the kitchen in socked feet. You found the Advil first, swallowed two tablets beneath a glass of water, then pulled a box of cereal down from one of the cupboards. It was a sad excuse for breakfast, but after everything that had happened the night before, you lacked the energy for anything more ambitious.

By the time you sat at the kitchen island with the bowl balanced in front of you, your phone was already in your hand. The groupchat was predictably active.

                Brooke: OMG, that was mad. who called the cops?

                Megan: Alex said it was old man ferguson. i think the woods are part of his ranch.

                Hannah: how did it go with Alex? 😉

                Megan: we had a good night 😉

                Hannah: did anyone get arrested?

                Brooke: Bryce, Peter and Charlie got taken away. think someone snitched it was their party.

                Hannah: knowing them three, they were probably talking shit to the cops

                Megan: everyone get home ok though?

                Hannah: yeah, I left with Brooke.

                Brooke: we hooked a ride with Fitz and the DJ

You read through the messages slowly, relief loosening something tight in your chest. Your name had not come up once.

No one seemed to have noticed Gator pulling you away from the tree. No one had apparently seen him wrestling you into the back of the cruiser while you called him an asshole. More importantly, nobody seemed aware that Deputy Gator Tillman had then spent the night in your bed holding your wrist while he monitored your heartbeat.

The thought made heat creep immediately into your face. You took another bite of cereal and forced yourself to stop thinking about it. Then, before anyone could start questioning where you had disappeared to, you typed out a quick response.

You: home safe, sorry for the late reply. I walked, fell asleep when I got in. thanks for a fun night girls!

The girls would not be awake enough to respond yet anyway, so you slipped the phone back into your pocket leaning back slightly against the kitchen counter and you couldn't help but let your thoughts drift back toward the feeling of his fingers wrapped around your wrist through the night while he silently counted your heartbeat beneath his hand.

Taglist: [Comment to be added] @keerygirlie98 @mystickittytaco @imdjoverit @lofi-fics @kristywidget97 @janehartt  @ms-mountebank @eller41 @slutforpumpkins

[thoroughlymimi]

At The Heart Of It : Part Three - Valva Mitralis

Gator Tillman x Reader

18+ | minors do not interact

Word Count: 8622

Summary: Trouble at school and drunken bar fights, have you playing caretaker once more.

Note: When I tell you every one of these parts is going to be a girthy big boy, I do not jest, this is the shortest one lol. Buckle in b*tches, mama packed the pick guns. Also, I cannot stress enough how long I took planning the chapter titles lol. Had an actual nerd-gasm. I’m a loser, love you. Mimi <3

Masterlist

Valva Mitralis

Translation: Mitral Valve

Named for the mitra. The threshold that prevents the backward flow.

Josie was asleep beside you on the sectional sofa, sprawled on her stomach with one chubby leg kicked out behind her and her face pressed into the cushion. The television murmured softly in the background more for company than entertainment.

Your laptop rested warm against your thighs while invoices and payroll spreadsheets filled the screen in front of you. One of Ford’s crews was out near Emerson today fitting security cameras around several of Brooks’ drill sites. The sabotage incidents had not stopped after Sunday dinner. If anything, they had escalated. Trucks keyed overnight, fuel siphoned, windows smashed. Somebody had even cut through a perimeter fence at one of the sites earlier in the week.

Ford had sent over three invoices that needed approving before close of business, and you were halfway through forwarding them back when your phone began vibrating across the sofa cushion. You glanced automatically toward Josie first before reaching for it.

Dickinson Elementary flashed across the screen. Your stomach dropped instantly, you answered before the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Mrs. Langford from Dickinson Elementary.”

“What happened?”

You were already sitting upright. The question came out too quickly, sharp with panic before she had even managed to explain herself.

 “Nicky isn’t hurt.” Mrs. Langford reassured immediately.

Your heart kept pounding anyway.

“He got hurt?”

“No, no.” A gentler tone now, practiced teacher calm. “There was an incident with another student during recess. Nicky got into an altercation and… he punched another child.”

For a second you genuinely thought you must have misheard her.

“Nicky?”

“Yes.”

You stared blankly ahead at the kitchen island. That didn’t make sense. Not Nicky. Nicky cried when he accidentally stepped on bugs. Nicky apologized to furniture when he walked into it. Nicky still climbed into Ford’s bed during thunderstorms sometimes because he hated loud noises. You were already standing before the thought finished, laptop abandoned on the sofa cushion.

“Nicky punched somebody? What happened? Is he okay? Did someone hit him first? Have you called Ford?”

“We’ve been trying to reach his father,” Mrs. Langford explained carefully. “But he hasn’t answered, and you’re the secondary emergency contact.”

“That’s fine,” you said quickly, already moving toward the front door bench for your shoes. “That’s okay. I’m on my way now.”

You hung up and shoved your feet into your shoes with fumbling urgency before grabbing your keys from the bowl beside the door. The movement stirred Josie behind you, a small sleepy whine sounded from the sofa. You turned and crossed back to her, scooping her carefully into your arms before she could fully wake herself into tears. She folded instinctively against your chest, warm and heavy with sleep.

“I know,” you whispered into her hair as you adjusted her against your chest. “I know, sweet girl. We just gotta get you in the car.”

Her face tucked against your shoulder while you carried her outside. You hurried across the gravel yard toward the Suburban parked near the porch steps. The vehicle technically belonged to nobody and everybody all at once. Between the car seats and school pickups and football practices and grocery runs, it had simply become the kids’ car over time.

You settled Josie carefully into her seat without fully waking her, fastening the buckles while she blinked at you blearily beneath a halo of tangled blond curls.

“There we go,” you murmured. “Good girl.”

Then you climbed into the driver’s seat and backed out onto the gravel road. You tried Ford twice before you even reached the county road. Straight to voicemail. Again five minutes later and still nothing. You gripped the steering wheel tighter.

By the time you pulled into Dickinson Elementary’s parking lot, Josie was awake properly and increasingly unhappy about it. You killed the engine, jumped out and reached into the backseat for her.

“Oh, I know,” you soothed as she fussed against your shoulder. “Josie-jo, I need you to be a good girl, alright? Just ten minutes. That’s all I need.”

She responded with a mournful little whinge and rooted against your sweatshirt looking for food.

“Yeah,” you sighed, kissing the top of her head as you hurried toward the school entrance. “And I forgot snacks. I know.”

The familiar smell of elementary school hit you the second you walked inside. Floor polish and crayons, that sort of day old stench of milk. That strange institutional stickiness every school carried no matter where you went.

The receptionist looked up immediately from behind the desk and smiled.

“Well hi there, how can I help, hon?”

“Hi, sorry, yeah--” You shifted Josie higher on your hip. “I’m here for Nicky. Nicky Heaton. I got a call.”

“Oh,” she said, laughter already creeping into her voice. “Our little Rocky Balboa.”

Your expression must have remained completely bewildered because she softened immediately.

“He’s alright, sweetheart. Let me grab Mrs. Langford.”

You nodded, still trying to reconcile the image in your head of gentle little Nicky with the phrase 'punched another child'. The receptionist disappeared briefly through the office door before returning with Mrs. Langford close behind her. Nicky’s teacher offered you an apologetic little smile.

“Thank you for coming. Nicky’s in here.”

You followed her around the reception desk, Josie beginning to squirm unhappily in your arms now that she was fully awake.

“I’m sorry,” you said quickly. “She just woke up and she’s hungry. I was in a rush.”

“Oh honey, don’t even worry about it,” Mrs. Langford assured warmly before glancing back toward reception. “Connie, can you find this little cutie some snacks please?”

The receptionist’s entire face lit up.

“Of course I can.”

Connie reached her arms out automatically and Josie, social little thing that she was, went without protest.

“Well aren’t you just precious,” Connie cooed, settling her comfortably on her hip. “Let’s go find this pretty girl some snacks.”

You stepped into the small office behind reception and saw Nicky sitting in one of the plastic chairs against the wall. The sight of him stopped something painfully in your chest.

His face was red and blotchy from crying, pale freckles standing out harshly against overheated skin. Damp curls clung untidily to his forehead where he had clearly been rubbing at his face, and his little shoulders were rounded inward in a way that made him look impossibly small. Not once did he lift his eyes when you walked in.

“Nicky,” you said softly, crossing the room at once.

You crouched beside him, smoothing the curls carefully back from his forehead with one hand. He still wouldn't look at you. His gaze remained fixed stubbornly on the floor tiles between his shoes, lower lip trembling faintly despite how hard he was trying to hold himself together.

“Nicky, bud, what happened?”

He swallowed thickly but said nothing. The silence unsettled you more than anything else could have. Nicky was not a child who shut down. Sensitive, yes. Emotional, absolutely. But not withdrawn. You looked up toward Mrs. Langford, standing awkwardly beside the desk.

“Maybe you should take a seat,” she suggested gently.

Something unpleasant stirred low in your chest then. A hot, protective irritation that climbed upward before you could stop it. Until that moment, you hadn't fully realised how instinctive your attachment to Ford’s children had become. Seeing Nicky sitting there crying in a school office while adults discussed him in careful disciplinary language made something in you bristle.

Still, you swallowed it down and moved toward the chair opposite the desk. Mrs. Langford sat opposite you, folding her hands together carefully atop a stack of papers.

“So,” she began in that measured teacher tone that always sounded overly rehearsed, “there was an altercation during lunchtime recess today. Nicky was playing with another student and what initially appeared to be a disagreement escalated quite quickly. Unfortunately, Nicky became very upset and physically assaulted the other child.”

“Physically assaulted?” you repeated before you could stop yourself. “They’re eight years old.”

“Nicky was the only one who became physical,” she replied, posture stiffening. “And the other child has a visible injury. We take incidents like this very seriously, Mrs. Heaton.”

You closed your eyes briefly and inhaled slowly through your nose, forcing yourself not to snap.

“It’s Miss Heaton,” you corrected evenly as you opened your eyes again. “I’m Ford’s niece, not his wife.”

The teacher blinked, visibly wrong-footed by the correction.

“But,” you continued calmly, “that tells me everything I need to know.”

Then you turned toward Nicky again.

“Nicky,” you said gently, “go wait outside with Josie for me, alright?”

Mrs. Langford shifted immediately.

“Well, I--we generally prefer--”

You raised one hand slightly without taking your eyes off Nicky.

“Nicky. Outside. Now.”

He obeyed at once. Quietly. He slid from the chair, grabbed his backpack by one strap and walked from the room without argument, closing the office door softly behind him. The second he was gone; you turned back toward Mrs. Langford.

“I understand you don't know Nicky, clearly at all,” you said, keeping your voice controlled despite the anger simmering underneath it. “And I understand you’ve got a lot of children to manage. But I think it’s probably the bare minimum to know when one of the kids in your class has a dead mother.”

The discomfort that crossed her face was immediate. You leaned forward slightly in the chair, exhaustion and frustration catching up with each other inside your chest.

“If you knew Nicky at all,” you continued, “you’d know this isn’t normal behaviour for him. He’s gentle. He’s sensitive. He cries when people raise their voices at him. So maybe instead of immediately treating him like some violent kid, somebody should’ve stopped to ask why he got upset enough to hit somebody in the first place.”

Mrs. Langford looked genuinely chastened now.

“I’m extremely sorry,” she said quietly. “For the mistake, I mean. And I understand that Nicky has experienced a very difficult loss. But school policy is very clear in situations involving physical aggression. A three-day suspension is mandatory.”

“Well,” you said pushing your chair back, “I guess you’ll see him Wednesday then.”

Your irritation sharpened again as you looked at her.

“Maybe take those three days to learn a little more about the children in your care.”

You didn't wait for a response before walking out. Back in reception, Connie had settled Josie comfortably on her hip behind the desk and somehow procured a packet of baby rusks, which appeared to have solved the majority of the world’s problems as far as Josie was concerned. The baby sat happily chewing on one while Connie bounced her gently.

“There she is,” you murmured softly as you approached.

Josie immediately reached for you with sticky little hands.

“Thank you for watching her,” you said sincerely while settling her back onto your own hip.

“Oh honey, no problem at all,” Connie replied warmly. “She’s an angel.”

You smiled politely despite the lingering tension still knotted in your chest, then turned toward the waiting chairs where Nicky sat quietly with his backpack beside him.

He looked up the second you approached, uncertainty written all over his face. You rested your hand gently against his shoulder and squeezed once before reaching down for his bag. The cluster of plastic keyrings clattered softly together as you lifted it.

“Let’s go, kiddo.”

The drive back to the ranch began in silence. Nicky climbed into the backseat while you settled Josie back into her car seat beside him. She had fully recovered from her earlier unhappiness now that snacks were involved and sat contentedly kicking her little feet while clutching the half-destroyed packet of rusks.

You pulled carefully out of the school parking lot and let the quiet sit for a while. Outside, Dickinson blurred past in stretches of parking lots, gas stations and low brick buildings before giving way once more to long open roads and fields stretching flat beneath the pale sky. Inside the car, the only sounds were the low hum of the engine and Josie’s occasional happy babbling from the backseat.

You kept replaying the conversation with Mrs. Langford in your head, each pass through it irritating you more than the last. You were not angry at Nicky. Upset, yes. Concerned absolutely. But he was eight years old. Eight-year-olds did not always know what to do with their emotions. What unsettled you more was the fact nobody at that school had apparently thought to look beyond the punch itself.

You had stopped trying to call Ford. If he had seen the missed calls, he would have called back already. Which meant he was either underground somewhere at one of the sites or halfway through dealing with another problem Brooks’ company had acquired this week. From the backseat came a small voice.

“I’m sorry.”

You glanced automatically toward the rearview mirror. Nicky sat curled slightly inward against the seatbelt, staring down at his hands in his lap. Your irritation softened immediately.

“Thank you for apologising,” you said gently. “But I don’t think I’m the person you need to apologise to, kiddo.”

“Wesley started it.” Nicky half mumbled.

“Bud,” you said carefully, eyes on the road ahead, “that’s not really the point. You still punched him.”

“He was making fun of Mom.”

The words burst out suddenly, louder than everything else had been, thick with hurt and frustration. Your grip tightened slightly on the steering wheel.

For a second you couldn't think of anything to say at all. The anger drained out of you completely then, leaving only that deep familiar ache the entire family still carried around Madison’s death. You exhaled slowly.

“Nicky,” you said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

In the mirror you saw him shrug one shoulder helplessly before looking back down at his hands.

“Is this the first time?” you asked after a moment. “With Wesley or any of the other kids?”

He shook his head and your stomach sank.

“Do you wanna talk about it now,” you asked gently, “or would you rather talk to your dad later?”

Nicky was quiet for a long moment before finally looking up at you through the mirror.

“They don’t really play with me anymore sometimes,” he admitted softly. “But Wesley’s the only one that’s mean.”

His fingers twisted together anxiously.

“He says stuff about Mom. I got mad.” His voice cracked slightly. “I didn’t mean to punch him.”

Your chest hurt listening to him. You swallowed against the tightness rising into your throat.

“Okay,” you said softly. “Okay, bud. We’ll sort it out. But next time you need to tell somebody, alright? Me. Your dad. Maggie. Tucker or Walker. Anybody.”

You glanced at him again in the mirror.

“We can only help if you tell us what’s going on.”

Nicky nodded solemnly. You let another stretch of quiet settle between you before deliberately lightening your tone slightly.

“Unfortunately for you, though, getting suspended means no school until Wednesday, Mr. Balboa. So now you’re stuck home with me and Josie.”

Nicky looked out the side window toward the passing fields.

“I don’t wanna tell Dad.”

“I’ll tell him,” you promised gently. “But you do still need to talk to him.”

Nicky’s face crumpled slightly at that.

“I don’t wanna make him sad.”

The words hit you so hard it nearly stole your breath. You blinked quickly against the sudden sting behind your eyes and focused harder on the road ahead.

“You’re not gonna make him sad,” you said quietly after a moment. “I promise.”

A few minutes later the familiar gravel road leading toward the ranch appeared ahead of you. You turned through the open gates and drove slowly toward the Big House, dust curling softly behind the Suburban’s tyres.

Ford’s truck was parked in the yard. You parked beside it and killed the engine, the sudden quiet inside the Suburban settling heavily around you for a moment.

From the backseat, Nicky had already spotted the truck. You could see it immediately in the way his expression changed when he looked out the window toward the gravel yard. His shoulders tightened slightly beneath the seatbelt, all the earlier worry returning at once now that home,  and therefore Ford, was directly in front of him.

You climbed out first and opened the rear passenger door to unbuckle Josie. She leaned into your shoulder the second you lifted her free of the car seat, one sticky hand curling into the front of your sweatshirt.

As you adjusted her higher on your hip, Nicky climbed slowly out of the other side of the vehicle, backpack hanging heavily from one shoulder. He looked up at you anxiously. Without really thinking about it, you reached over and took the backpack from him before carefully shifting Josie into his arms instead.

“Hey,” you said gently. “Go play with her for a minute. I’ll talk to him first.”

Nicky looked startled by the offer, but the second Josie settled against his chest and grabbed absentmindedly for the collar of his hoodie, some of the tension visibly eased out of him.

“Okay,” he mumbled.

You nudged the passenger door shut and walked him toward the house. The front door opened into the familiar warmth of the Big House, Nicky stepped inside ahead of you carrying Josie carefully against his chest while you dropped his backpack onto the bench by the door. The weight of all the ridiculous plastic keychains attached to it dragged the bag sideways until it tipped over onto the floor with a clatter.

From somewhere deeper in the house came the low sound of the coffee machine. You followed it into the kitchen where Ford stood at the island with his back half turned toward you, one hand braced against the counter while the coffee pot filled his mug. He still wore his work jacket unzipped over a grey hoodie, dust and dirt streaked faintly across the knees of his jeans from the sites. He looked tired in the particular way he always had lately, like exhaustion lived permanently somewhere behind his eyes now no matter how much sleep he got.

You leaned against the island counter.

“Your phone not working?”

Ford glanced over his shoulder, visibly surprised to see you standing there.

“Huh?”

“Your phone,” you repeated. “School called you. I called you several times.”

“What happened?” His brow furrowed immediately.

“Nicky’s suspended.”

The words landed like a brick, Ford turned fully toward you now.

“What?”

“Before you explode, listen first,” you warned quickly, “He punched a kid.”

“What the fuck--”

Ford quickly moved as though to leave the kitchen, but you stepped forward on instinct and planted your hand flat against his chest to stop him.

“No,” you said firmly. “I said listen.”

Ford looked down at you, startled more than angry now. His jaw was tight, eyes sharp with alarm, but he stopped moving. You kept your hand against his chest while you explained.

“The kid apparently said something about Madison. I don’t know exactly what, but it upset him bad enough to lash out.” Your voice softened slightly. “He’s already apologised. He knows he shouldn’t have hit him.”

Ford’s expression shifted slowly as you spoke, the initial anger draining away into something heavier.

“He’s angry,” you continued quietly. “And now he’s scared. Mostly because he thinks telling you is gonna make you… sad.”

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, dragging one rough hand slowly down across his face.

He leaned back against the counter slightly then tipped his head up toward the ceiling, eyes closing briefly.

“Fuckkkk,” he said again, quieter this time. “I am doing so fucking bad at this.”

The rawness of it made your chest ache immediately. Ford seldom admitted things like that out loud. He carried most things the way he carried lumber or bills or responsibilities; silently and until they physically wore him down. You patted your hand lightly once against his chest before finally stepping back.

“You’re not doing bad,” you said gently.

Ford exhaled hard through his nose before straightening again.

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Talk,” you emphasised. “No shouting. And actually listen to him.”

“Also, his school is a heap of shit,” you added.

Ford gave you a look; you ignored it completely and continued.

“The new teacher didn’t even know Madison was gone. Called me Mrs. Heaton like my name isn’t literally on his contact forms. I might have been a little…” You tilted your hand vaguely. “Blunt with her.”

Now the familiar little smirk properly appeared on Ford’s face.

“Oh, were you now?”

“Sorry you missed it,” you muttered. “Honestly, she probably never wants to see me again.”

Ford watched you over the rim of his coffee mug now, amusement slowly replacing some of the earlier strain.

“Well,” he said lightly, “you’ve always had a little too much Maggie about you.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I’m just saying,” Ford replied, grin widening slightly.

“Next time I’ll let your children suffer then,” you said, reaching for the coffee pot.

Ford barked out a laugh at that and hooked one arm around your neck as he passed behind you, dragging you briefly against his side in a loose headlock. He kissed the top of your head hard enough to muss your hair before releasing you again.

“Thank you for looking out for him,” he said quietly, sincerity threading underneath the humour now. “And sorry for not answering my phone.”

You glanced up at him while pouring your coffee.

“You’re just really lucky I love those kids.”

Ford stepped backward dramatically, one hand clutching at his chest in mock offence while his coffee mug remained balanced in the other.

“You don’t love me?” he asked. “I thought I was the favourite uncle.”

“Hardly much competition,” you snorted softly.

Ford laughed properly then, the sound finally full and warm again as he headed toward the living room.

“I’m telling Brooks you said that.”

“Be my guest,” you called after him. “I can take him.”

・❥・

Friday evening settled softly over the Big House, sunlight fading behind the thick tree line surrounding the property. Inside, though, everything glowed warm. Living room lamps lit, the lingering smell of dinner still drifting faintly through the room alongside the buttery scent of microwave popcorn Tucker had made earlier.

You were sprawled lengthwise across one end of the sectional sofa beneath a thick blanket, tucked comfortably into Tucker’s side. One of his long arms rested lazily across your back while his attention remained fixed on the television, completely absorbed in whatever terrible action film he and Walker had insisted on choosing.

Nicky, exhausted after the emotional disaster of the previous day, had gradually melted sideways against Walker over the course of the film until he was half curled into his brother’s side beneath another blanket. Walker absentmindedly kept adjusting the edge of it around him every so often without even looking away from the screen.

Maggie was in her office working on something, papers spread across every available surface if you knew Maggie at all, probably a lot of very short, demanding phone calls to… whoever Maggie calls. Upstairs, Ford was battling Rhodes through bedtime routines, which mostly consisted of prolonged negotiations with a tiny feral dictator who objected to sleep.

On the television, something exploded spectacularly, Walker leaned forward slightly.

“Oh, that was sick.”

“It literally made no sense,” you muttered.

“That’s because you don’t appreciate cinema.”

“I appreciate good cinema.”

Tucker snorted softly beside you. Before you could continue the argument, the front door opened. Cold air swept briefly through the house alongside the heavy sound of boots against hardwood flooring.

“Ford around?” Logan called as he walked inside.

Nobody answered him. Not because nobody heard him. More because everybody collectively chose not to. Logan wandered farther into the living room anyway, and when nobody acknowledged him a second time, he walked directly in front of the television screen.

“Logan, man,” Walker groaned loudly.

You reached automatically for the remote and paused the movie before one of the boys started throwing cushions. Logan looked down at the sofa with complete satisfaction at the disruption he had caused. You stayed exactly where you were beneath the blanket, only tilting your head back slightly to look at him.

“Ford’s putting Rhodes to bed,” you said, voice clipped.

Logan shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“Thought that was your idea of fun on a Friday night.”

Tucker’s arm tightened fractionally across your shoulders at the comment, protective in that instinctive teenage-boy way that made warmth bloom quietly in your chest.

“I wanna watch the movie, man,” Tucker complained. “What do you actually want?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. Just came to see if Ford wanted to come grab a drink.”

Then Logan’s gaze slid downward toward you sprawled between the boys on the sofa.

“I’d ask you,” Logan drawled, “but I’m aware you prefer the company of children, plus wouldn’t wanna overclock that little heart of yours. Bar generally prefers customers that’ll survive at least a Red Bull”

Before you could respond, another voice cut across the room.

“Logan,” Ford warned from the staircase, “watch your mouth.”

Everyone looked up. Ford was halfway down the stairs, one hand still resting on the bannister, expression already carrying the exhausted irritation of a man who had spent twenty minutes trying to convince Rhodes that his Batman costume was not pyjamas.

“And no,” he continued as he reached the bottom step, “I do not wanna come to the bar and watch you embarrass yourself trying to pick up girls in leopard print bras.”

Logan barked out a laugh as Ford pointed toward the television.

“Now get outta their way.”

“You’re getting old, Ford,” Logan called while backing toward the front door. “You used to be fun.”

“And you peaked in high school.” Ford walked toward the kitchen without missing a beat.

Walker nearly choked laughing and you could feel Tucker stifling a laugh beside you. Ford grabbed his beer from the counter and pointed vaguely toward the door with it.

“Be on your merry way, Logan. I’m sure those short skirts are queuing for you.”

Logan huffed another laugh, shook his head, and let himself back out into the night. The front door slammed shut behind him. Silence settled again for a moment before the film resumed exploding noisily across the television. Ford wandered back over toward the sofa, pausing behind you long enough to rest his hand briefly against the top of your head.

“Ignore him,” he muttered. “He’s a moron.”

“He’s a dumbass,” Tucker agreed.

Ford reached down and flicked him lightly on the ear.

“Language.”

You leaned closer toward Tucker conspiratorially and whispered loud enough for Ford to absolutely still hear it.

“Such a dumbass.”

Tucker's chest rumbled with laughter beneath you. Ford shook his head at both of you before circling around the sofa toward Walker and Nicky.

“Nicky-nugget,” he said gently. “Bedtime, bud.”

Nicky did not move. Walker looked down beneath the blanket where his younger brother was curled into his side, then glanced back up at Ford with amusement.

“Uh, Dad,” he said quietly, “I think he’s already asleep.”

Sure enough, Nicky had completely passed out sometime during the film, one cheek squashed against Walker’s hoodie, mouth slightly open in deep exhausted sleep. Carefully, Ford bent down and lifted Nicky up into his arms without waking him properly. Nicky only made a small sleepy noise and tucked instinctively closer against Ford’s chest. Ford adjusted him higher against his shoulder before heading back toward the stairs.

Walker shifted sideways the second his brother was gone, filling the empty space beside you instead. Between him and Tucker, you were now effectively trapped beneath teenage limbs and blankets. Walker leaned lightly into your side.

“You don’t have to watch movies with us every Friday,” he said after a moment. “Like… if you wanted to go out with Logan or whatever.”

“Ew,” you said, whipping your head toward him with genuine horror. “With Logan? No thank you.”

You pushed yourself upright enough to hook an arm around each twin, dragging both boys dramatically against you.

“I am exactly where I wanna be.”

The boys settled into your sides, Tucker still taller even slouched halfway down the couch and Walker bent like a pretzel to lean against your shoulder. Then you looked back toward the television screen just in time to watch another incomprehensible explosion happen for absolutely no reason. You sighed deeply.

“Although,” you announced, “next time I’m picking the movie. Because this… is shit.”

By the time the film finished, the house had settled into that softer, quieter stage of the evening where everything seemed to slow down at once. Tucker and Walker had finally disappeared upstairs and you stood at the kitchen island filling your water bottle from the fridge dispenser while Ford leaned against the counter nearby nursing a beer, both of you enjoying the rare calm that followed bedtime in the Big House.

The front door opened then closed again a moment later. You heard Maggie before you saw her, not loud exactly, but looser somehow.

A second later she wandered into the kitchen in a cloud of expensive perfume and cold night air, sunglasses still perched on top of her platinum bob despite the fact it was nearly midnight. There was a brightness to her expression that immediately told you she had not only enjoyed herself but likely won.

“What time do you call this, young lady?” Ford joked the second he saw her.

Maggie ignored him entirely at first and made a beeline straight toward you instead. Before you could react properly, she wrapped one arm around your shoulders and planted an exaggerated kiss directly against your cheek.

“Oh my God,” you laughed immediately, leaning away while wiping dramatically at your face. “Margarita Maggie strikes again.”

Ford barked out a laugh behind you.

“Good night, Ma?”

“Great night,” Maggie announced proudly. “Got us some shopping money, Baby.”

Then she gave your backside a playful slap on the way past. You yelped in mock offence while Ford nearly choked laughing into his beer.

“Oh yeah?” you grinned. “Who’s paying this time? Leon or Harvey?”

“Please. Leon folds like wet paper,” Maggie scoffed.

Poker nights were one of Maggie’s favourite hobbies, though hobby felt like too gentle a word for the level of destruction she routinely inflicted on the men involved. Once or twice a month she disappeared into some private dining room or club lounge with a rotating collection of wealthy, greying businessmen from around Stark County and beyond; oil men, developers, lawyers, ranch owners, men who had spent their entire lives being the loudest voice in every room they entered. Then Maggie sat down at the table and quietly robbed them blind.

The men all adored her despite it, or perhaps because of it. You suspected half of them walked into those games knowing full well she would leave with their money and still somehow enjoyed the privilege of watching her do it.

More importantly for you, Maggie treated poker winnings like free money. Which meant they almost always turned into shopping trips. One of the perks of being Maggie’s favourite? You were usually the one she dragged along with her.

“Even better,” Maggie continued smugly. “Marshall.”

Ford let out a low whistle from beside the counter.

“Oh, you robbed Marshall?”

“Old man’s got the worst poker face I’ve ever seen in my life,” Maggie informed you both. “Man practically announces his hand before he puts the cards down.”

“Hope you’re free all day tomorrow, baby,” Maggie continued, pointing toward you. “Because we have big bucks to blow.”

“You gotta start taking it easy on these old men, Ma.” Ford said.

“Psst.” Maggie waved one dismissive hand through the air. “They need to get better at the game.”

“You’re terrifying,” Ford shook his head fondly into his beer.

“And yet,” Maggie replied smoothly, “you love me.”

Maggie stepped closer then and grabbed Ford gently by the jaw, dragging him down to her height despite his dramatic complaints. She kissed his cheek firmly.

“Night, Ma,” Ford said, smiling despite himself as she finally let him go.

Then Maggie turned immediately back toward you. You barely had time to brace yourself before she kissed your cheek again.

“Night, Mags.”

“Night, baby.” She pointed at you warningly as she started backing toward the hallway. “And I mean it. Me and you are shopping tomorrow. I’ve got my eye on a new purse.”

Maggie winked once before disappearing off toward her bedroom, still carrying herself with that impossible combination of elegance and mild intoxication only she seemed capable of pulling off. The house fell quiet again after she disappeared.

You twisted the cap tightly onto your water bottle, still smiling faintly to yourself while Ford shook his head beside you. Ford was still chuckling softly to himself over Maggie bankrupting half the older male population of Stark County when he reached out suddenly and caught you by the wrist before you could wander off toward your room.

You let him pull you sideways into a quick one-armed hug without resistance, your shoulder bumping lightly against his chest. Ford had always been physically affectionate in those easy, absent-minded ways that came naturally after years of raising children and loving people openly. A hand on your shoulder passing through the kitchen. A kiss to the top of your head while reading emails over your shoulder. Pulling you into side hugs whenever you hovered within reach long enough.

Somewhere along the way, you had fallen into a strange in-between space with him. Not quite sibling, not quite parent and child either. Ford had only been seventeen when you were born, still more boy than man himself, and in a lot of ways the two of you had grown up alongside each other rather than separately. Brooks had always felt more distinctly like an uncle, older, busier, slightly removed. But Ford had been there for everything. Hospital waiting rooms. School pickups. Late-night talks on the porch. He had helped raise you while Maggie raised both of you in return. Over time the relationship had settled into something effortless and deeply rooted.

When he stepped back again, his hand lingered briefly at your arm before he tilted your chin upward gently between his fingers.

“Earlier…” he said, expression softening slightly now that the humour had drained away. “With Logan…”

“I don’t pay that dumbass any mind,” you shrugged.

Ford immediately flicked your ear.

“Language.”

You laughed quietly, rubbing at your ear dramatically.

“But,” Ford continued, leaning one hip against the counter now, “I mean it. Ignore him. He’s a jackass who peaked in high school and spends half his life mad his daddy loves his brother more.”

You snorted softly and quickly flicked Ford’s ear back.

“Language.”

Ford looked genuinely offended for about half a second before the corner of his mouth twitched upward again. Then, just as quickly, the amusement faded into something quieter, something sincere.

“You know I’m grateful for you, right?” he asked softly.

The sudden seriousness in his voice made your chest ache a little. You didn’t answer immediately. Instead you stepped forward again and wrapped your arms around him properly this time, resting your cheek briefly against his chest. Ford’s arms closed around you automatically.

“I know you are,” you murmured. “I love you, you big sap.”

You felt the quiet huff of laughter against the top of your head.

“I love you too, Baby.”

For a moment neither of you moved. The kitchen sat warm and quiet around you, the dishwasher humming softly in the background, the rest of the house finally settled into sleep. Eventually you stepped back and grabbed your water bottle from the counter.

“Well, I’m going to bed, I have to mentally prepare for the arm workout that is shopping with Maggie.”

Ford laughed quietly behind you as you started toward the hallway.

“Better buy me something nice tomorrow.”

You glanced back over your shoulder immediately.

“Ha!” You scoffed. “Not a chance, old man. I’m spending every last cent on myself.”

“Selfish!”

You lifted a middle finger at him then grinned all the way down the hallway.

・❥・

You were only half asleep when the headlights swept across your bedroom ceiling. At first it filtered vaguely into your dreams more than your awareness, pale shifting light moving behind your eyelids, but then came the sound of shouting somewhere outside and your eyes opened properly.

For a second you stayed still beneath the blankets, disoriented in the dark. The room around you was dim except for the faint spill of moonlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the intermittent wash of truck headlights cutting across the walls. Your bedside clock glowed somewhere past two in the morning.

A yell sounded from outside. You pushed yourself upright with a tired sigh and swung your legs over the side of the bed, immediately shivering as the cool wood floor met your bare feet. The headlights flashed again through the windows, curiosity finally won out over exhaustion. You pulled one corner of the curtain aside on the window beside the bed, just enough to look out toward the gravel yard.

A truck was weaving its way crookedly up the drive toward the Big House. Logan was hanging halfway out of the passenger-side window hollering complete nonsense into the night air while the truck lurched unevenly beneath him.

“Oh my God,” you muttered under your breath.

The vehicle kept rolling another few feet before Logan leaned too far out of the window entirely and promptly disappeared from view. The truck finally braked.

By the time you left your room, another burst of muffled shouting could be heard from the front yard. Upstairs remained dark. Nobody else had woken yet. The clock near the staircase ticked steadily as you moved barefoot down the hallway and through the open-plan kitchen and dining room toward the front door.

Outside, the gravel yard sat silver-blue beneath the porch lights and moonlight. Gator had climbed out of the driver’s side of the truck and was currently attempting to haul Logan back upright from where he had apparently decided lying spread-eagle in the gravel was a perfectly reasonable life choice. Logan was deeply, catastrophically drunk.

“Y’fine,” Gator was saying with strained patience as Logan swatted uselessly at his arms. “Get up.”

“I am up,” Logan slurred from the ground.

That was when you properly saw the state of them both. Even from the porch you could make out the fresh bruising already blooming across Logan’s cheekbone and jaw. One side of his shirt collar was torn, knuckles scraped raw, dried blood dark against the front of his white t-shirt. Gator didn't look that much better. There was a split at the corner of his mouth, another bruise rising angry and red beneath one eye, his jacket half unzipped and streaked faintly with dirt like somebody had thrown him into a wall at some point during the night.

Your irritation dulled immediately into weary resignation. Of course they had been fighting. You leaned one shoulder against the porch frame, crossing your arms loosely against your chest while you watched Gator attempt once again to drag Logan upright. Logan swore loudly at him for the effort.

“Bring him in here,” you called.

Gator looked up at the sound of your voice and for a second forgot entirely what he had been doing. You stood barefoot beneath the porch light wearing loose flannel sleep pants and a faded vest top, hair messy from sleep and falling untidily around your shoulders. You looked warm. Soft. Half-awake in that unguarded way people only ever were in the middle of the night. The kind of sight a man accidentally carried around in his head afterwards whether he meant to or not.

And they had woken you up, shame prickled faintly beneath his skin. He exhaled quietly through his nose and adjusted his grip beneath Logan’s arm again.

“C’mon,” he muttered.

Logan made a noise of theatrical suffering but finally allowed himself to be hauled upright. Even standing, he swayed badly enough that Gator ended up supporting most of his weight as they staggered across the gravel toward the porch.

As they reached the bottom step, you stepped forward to help. Gator felt it ease when your hand slipped around Logan’s other side, steadying him despite the blood and dirt and smell of whiskey clinging to him. Your shoulder brushed briefly against Gator’s arm as the two of you manoeuvred Logan awkwardly up onto the porch and through the front door.

“M’sorry,” Gator muttered quietly once you were inside. “Was tryna get ‘im back to the Cabin.”

You only nodded toward the living room. Gator half guided, half wrestled Logan toward the sectional sofa while you disappeared briefly into the kitchen without another word. Logan collapsed heavily onto the cushions with all the grace of a dying elk.

A minute later you returned carrying a plastic bowl filled with warm water alongside a washcloth and the battered first aid kit the whole family used.

Gator watched you cross the room. You moved without fuss or panic, still sleepy around the edges but completely composed, like this sort of thing was simply another task to be dealt with before bed. You set the bowl carefully on the side table before kneeling in front of Logan, tucking one leg beneath yourself as you soaked the cloth in the water.

“Stay still,” you murmured, reaching for Logan’s battered face.

Logan immediately swatted at your hand.

“Fuckoff,” he slurred. “M’fine.”

“You are bleeding on Maggie’s sofa.”

“Not bleeding that much.”

“I don’t particularly care about you, Logan,” you informed him evenly. “I care about Maggie’s cream fucking sofas.”

Despite the awkwardness, Gator huffed a laugh through his nose. Logan made another dramatic attempt to shove your hand away, and this time Gator finally stepped forward and caught his wrist.

With Logan finally pinned still long enough, you managed to wipe most of the blood away from his cheek and eyebrow. You finished cleaning the worst from Logan’s face before standing again, stretching briefly where you had knelt on the floor.

Then you looked directly at Gator.

“First door on the left down the hallway,” you said quietly, pointing. “There’s a mop bucket in there.”

Your eyes flicked toward the gravel and blood now tracked faintly across Maggie’s hardwood floors.

“And be quiet,” you added. “Maggie’s asleep.”

Gator nodded and moved off down the hall. You carried the bowl, cloths and first aid kit back through to the kitchen while Logan finally stopped fighting gravity long enough to collapse sideways into the sofa cushions on his own.

You emptied the pinkish water into the sink and rinsed the cloth clean beneath the tap. The kitchen lights were softer than the living room ones, casting everything gold and warm across the marble countertops and dark wood cabinets. Outside the windows, the ranch sat completely black beyond the reach of the porch lights.

By the time you turned back around, Gator had reappeared carrying the mop bucket quietly through the hallway just like you asked. You took it from him with a nod and walked it back through to the living room, placing it directly on the floor in front of Logan’s face. You grabbed the folded throw blanket from the back of the sofa and tossed it over him.

“No sick on the cream sofas either, yeah?” you muttered. “Try not to fucking die while I’m not here to enjoy it.”

Logan made another miserable noise and curled deeper into the cushions, you left him there and looked back toward Gator. The bruising on his face looked a little better under proper light. You tilted your head slightly toward the kitchen.

“Come on.”

He followed without question. The rest of the house remained asleep around you, every sound suddenly more noticeable for it; the low hum of the refrigerator, the soft clink as you set the bowl back down on the island. You pulled one of the bar stools out slightly with your foot and pointed at it.

“Sit.”

Gator obeyed immediately. Something about that almost made you smile. You moved around the island again to refill the bowl properly, soaking a clean cloth beneath warm water before wringing it out carefully between your hands. When you turned back around, Gator was watching you.

There was dried blood beneath his nose and smeared faintly along the edge of his jaw, a split just above his eyebrow, another at the corner of his mouth. One eye was slightly darkening into the beginnings of a bruise. His knuckles looked raw too where skin had split across them.

You stopped directly in front of him, close enough now that your legs brushed lightly against the inside of his thighs where he sat on the stool. You lifted the cloth gently toward his face.

“This might sting.”

Gator gave one small nod. Carefully, you touched the cloth beneath his nose first, wiping away the dried blood in slow strokes. He stayed very still beneath your hands. Much stiller than Logan had.

You became suddenly conscious of how close the two of you were standing. Of the warmth coming off him despite the cold outside. Of the faint smell of aftershave and night air still clinging to his clothes. You focused harder on the cut above his eyebrow.

This felt like dangerous territory to Gator. He kept watching you instead of the antiseptic in your hands. Your hair kept slipping forward over one shoulder while you worked, still mussed from sleep, and every so often you would blow out a soft breath in irritation before tucking it back again. Your eyes stayed fixed determinedly on what you were doing rather than his face, though Gator had a feeling that was intentional now.

And Christ, you were close.

Close enough that he could see the faint crease sleep had left against your cheek. Close enough to notice the thin fabric of your tank top shifting every time you moved. He was trying very hard not to look lower than your face, which became significantly more difficult once he realised you were not wearing a bra beneath the shirt. He looked away immediately after noticing, then hated himself because now he was aware of it.

So instead he focused on your hands. On the softness of your breaths. On the fact you were being impossibly gentle with him despite the hour and the inconvenience. Nobody had touched him like this in a long time, maybe ever.

Your fingers brushed lightly along his jaw again as you cleaned the cut near his mouth and Gator felt his pulse thud once, hard and stupid, somewhere beneath his ribs. You still wouldn't meet his eyes.

The silence stretched another second. Then another.

Finally, mostly because he needed to break whatever this was before he did something dumb like lean into your hand, Gator cleared his throat softly.

“I know what y’thinkin’.”

You looked up at him then for the first time in several minutes. Your hand paused lightly against his jaw, cloth still damp between your fingers.

“Oh yeah?” you asked quietly.

Gator gave the smallest shrug, though his eyes stayed fixed on yours now.

“Yeah. But swear I didn’t start it.”

You waited.

“Went to the bar,” he continued. “Came back an’ Logan was up in some guy’s face. They threw the first punches.”

You scoffed softly and rolled your eyes before returning your attention to the cut above his eyebrow.

“I don’t care who started it.”

The response seemed to throw him slightly. You felt him go quieter beneath your hands. When you glanced down briefly, his gaze had dropped toward his lap instead. You exhaled softly through your nose. Carefully, you wiped another streak of dried blood from the side of his face before continuing.

“You’re always getting dragged into something. Always being reckless and putting yourself in danger for somebody else without thinking about it first.”

Gator’s jaw shifted slightly beneath your fingertips.

“You’ve gotta stop following Logan into shit like this.” The irritation finally crept into your voice then, though it was aimed far more at Logan than him. “He’s a fucking idiot, Gator.”

“Let him get himself out of trouble for once,” you muttered. “Might actually teach him something.”

You wiped away the last trace of blood near the corner of his mouth before finally dropping the cloth back into the bowl. Then you met his gaze again, voice softening.

“You’re better than that.”

Gator swallowed hard once the words left your mouth.

You’re better than that.

The sentence lodged somewhere deep in his chest and stayed there. Because nobody said things like that to him. Most folks looked at Gator Tillman and saw trouble before they saw anything else. Roy’s son. Deputy. Loud when he drank. Reckless when he was angry. A man always hovering one bad decision away from another.

But you… You had said it like you believed it. Like it was obvious.

Gator watched you carefully as you finally stepped back from between his knees, and the sudden loss of your closeness felt immediate enough to unsettle him. One second you had been standing there with your hand against his face, warm breath ghosting across his skin, and the next you were moving away again, slipping back into motion like maybe you had no idea what you had just done to him.

He tracked you silently with his eyes while you crossed back around the kitchen island. You dumped the bloody water into the sink first, rinsed the cloth beneath running warm water, then loaded the bowl carefully into the dishwasher. The normalcy of it felt strangely intimate too. Not flirtation, something worse, more dangerous. Care.

You could still feel his eyes on you while you moved around the kitchen. It lingered there between your shoulder blades as you rinsed your hands beneath warm water, steady and quiet enough to make you aware of your own heartbeat again. You tried ignoring it. Focused instead on the familiar motions of drying your hands.

Eventually you glanced back over your shoulder at him. Gator was still sitting on the bar stool exactly where you had left him, elbows resting loosely against his thighs now, bruised face tipped slightly downward while he watched you from beneath the low kitchen light.

“How much did you drink?” you asked.

“Had one.”

You leaned lightly against the counter, folding the dish towel absently between your hands.

“Y’think I’d drive if I was wasted?” he added.

The defensive note in his voice made you smile faintly.

“Just checking.”

For a second neither of you spoke again. Somewhere in the living room Logan snored loudly, which broke some of the tension threatening to settle too heavily between you.

You pushed yourself off the counter then, before turning down the hall to your room. You nod back toward the living room.

“Other half of the couch is free if you want it.”

Gator looked up at you as you shrugged one shoulder.

“Couch is comfy, can’t promise the company’ll be any good.”

A quiet laugh escaped him then, low and roughened from tiredness.

“Thanks.”

You nodded once. Then, before you could think too hard about the strange warmth sitting low in your chest, you stepped backward into the hallway.

“Night, Gator.”

For a second he just watched you retreat, before he remembered how to form words.

“Night.”

Taglist: [Comment to be added] @keerygirlie98 @mystickittytaco @imdjoverit @lofi-fics @kristywidget97 @janehartt  @ms-mountebank

[morninglesss]

the modern leper, pt. 3

the alarmist // the futurist // the modern leper

Gator Tillman x f!reader

“Is that you in front of me, coming back for even more of exactly the same?

You must be a masochist, to love a modern leper on his last leg.” - Frightened Rabbit

The Washington coast. The Hoh Rain Forest on a Saturday morning. A care home corridor. A concert in Seattle and a birthday party that goes on past midnight. A summer that’s been good, and a life that, mostly, fits.

You built this. It’s yours. And most days you wake up and it feels like enough.

The alarm goes at six-fifteen, which on a Saturday morning feels like a statement of intent.

Flynn doesn’t complain. Flynn has never once complained about an early alarm, which is one of the many reasons you’ve decided he’s a better person than most people. He’s at the bottom of the stairs by the time you’ve pulled on your walking layers - the base layer, the fleece, the waterproof that lives by the door - and his whole demeanour is that of a German Shepherd who knows exactly where you’re taking him and has opinions about the pace at which you’re getting ready.

“I know”, you tell him. “Give me five minutes.”

He gives you three.

The drive to Hoh takes just over an hour on a clear morning, which this one is - the marine layer still sitting on the coast when you leave, but the sky opening up as you head inland, the road winding through small towns that are just waking up, gas stations and diners with their lights on, the occasional logging truck heading the other way. Flynn arranges himself in the back seat with the ease of a dog who has made his peace with car journeys and falls asleep almost immediately, his breathing slow and even, one paw hanging off the edge of the seat.

You drink your travel coffee and don’t think about anything specific, which is one of the things the drive has given you over the months of doing this. An hour of not thinking of anything concrete. The road needing enough attention that your mind can’t wander too far, but not so much that it’s effortful. Just the trees and the road and the coffee going cold in the cup holder and Flynn snoring softly in the back.

The car park is already half full when you arrive - hikers, mostly, day-trippers with proper boots and trekking poles, a family unloading a truly impressive quantity of gear from a minivan. Jean’s car is there, and Elizabeth’s, and two others you recognise. You let Flynn out and he shakes himself into wakefulness with the focused energy of a dog who has been resting strategically and is now ready. He sits by your feet while you debate whether to leave your waterproof in the car or not, a dance he’s familiar with. You decide to tie it around your waist before you fix Flynn’s harness around him, the leash thick and red in your hand.

Jean is standing at the trailhead with a thermos and the sense of ease she brings to everything - she’s in her mid-forties, tall, with the kind of calm that doesn’t feel like an act. You’ve been coming to this group for eight months and you’ve never once seen her flustered, which you’ve decided is either a professional skill or a personality trait, possibly both. She smiles warmly when she sees you.

“Hey, you made good time!”

Your fingers dig into Flynn’s coat, calming and familiar. “He’s a reliable alarm clock.”

Elizabeth is already in conversation with one of the other women - Marguerite, who drives in from Forks and always arrives with homemade energy bars that she distributes without asking if anyone wants one, which you’ve come to look forward to more than you’d admit. Elizabeth is in her mid-fifties, solid and upright, with the easy physicality of someone who has been walking seriously for long enough that it shows in how she stands. She was one of the first people you spoke to properly in the group, back when you were still finding your footing in it, and she’d been characteristically direct with you - it gets easier, the walking. The other stuff takes longer, but that gets easier too.

She’d been right about both things.

Flynn goes to her immediately - he always does, something about Elizabeth that he finds reliable - and she lets him sniff her hand and then scratches behind his ears with the confidence of someone who knows dogs.

“He gets bigger every time I see him,” she says, which isn’t true but is the kind of thing you say about a dog you like.

“He’s fully grown,” you tell her. “He’s just dramatic.” You point to where his coat has puffed up, a sign you’ve learned is his way of showing excitement.

The group assembles - six of you this morning, which is a full house. Jean gives Flynn a brief, professional assessment and then leads you onto the trail.

****************

Hoh is not like other forests.

You knew this in the abstract before you came here the first time, eight months ago, nervous and slightly unsure what a walking therapy group would actually involve and whether it would feel strange to process things while moving through trees. It had felt strange, the first time. The second time less so. By the fourth or fifth time you’d understood what Jean had understood from the beginning - that the forest does something to the quality of thought, that the scale of it and the quiet of it and the green density of it changes what it’s possible to say and hear and sit with.

The trail runs through temperate rainforest - old growth, some of these trees hundreds of years old, the canopy so thick and layered that even in August the light comes through filtered and soft, green-tinged, the kind of light that makes everything look slightly otherworldly. The ground is carpeted in moss, every surface of it - the tree trunks, the fallen logs, the rocks - covered in the same deep living green, so that the forest floor looks like something from a different planet, or the same planet at a different time. Sword ferns uncurl from the moss. The air smells of water and earth and something older than either.

Flynn moves through it quietly, which surprises people who don’t know him. He’s different in here than he is on the beach - more considered, slower, his nose working constantly but his body held differently. Like he understands that this place requires a special kind of attention.

You walk. Jean walks beside you for a while, and then beside someone else, and then comes back. That’s how it works - she moves through the group, checking in without making it feel like checking in, asking the kind of questions that don’t announce themselves as questions.

“How’s the week been?” she asks, falling into step beside you.

“Good,” you say. “Busy. The Geneva data finally came through.”

“Is that a relief?”

“Mostly. Now I have to actually do something with it.”

She smiles. You walk in comfortable silence for a minute, the trail bending around a particularly enormous Sitka spruce, its roots raised above the ground like something trying to stand up.

“I’ve been sleeping better,” you offer, because that feels like the kind of thing worth noting.

“Since when?”

“Couple of weeks. Maybe three.” You think about it. “Since I stopped checking my phone before bed.”

“What made you stop?”

“Flynn kept giving me a look,” you say, which is true and also easier than the longer answer, which is that you’d read something about blue light and sleep architecture and had decided, with the concentration you bring to decisions you make for practical rather than emotional reasons, to implement the change immediately and completely. Jean probably knows this about you. She doesn’t push.

Ahead on the trail, Elizabeth has stopped beside one of the big western red cedars - genuinely enormous, the kind of tree that has been growing since before anyone currently alive was born, its bark deeply furrowed and reddish-brown, its canopy somewhere far above.

“There she is,” Elizabeth says, to the tree rather than to any of them. “Look at the size of her! Remarkable!”

Marguerite, beside her, takes a photograph.

“She says the big cedars make her problems feel insignificant,” Jean says quietly, to you, as you approach.

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

Jean considers it. “It’s something. I’m more interested in what she means by insignificant.” She glances at you. “There’s a difference between perspective and disappearing.”

You think about that for the rest of the walk.

****************

On the way back, Elizabeth falls into step beside you.

“You seem well,” she says. Elizabeth says things directly, without preamble, which you’ve come to appreciate.

“I think I am,” you say. “More or less.”

“More or less is good,” she says. “More or less is honest.”

Flynn is walking between you, which he sometimes does on the return leg, positioning himself carefully in the middle as though he’s been assigned to keep the peace. Elizabeth reaches down and touches the top of his head briefly.

“My son’s bringing the grandchildren next month,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about what to cook.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Something that takes all day. I want them to walk in and smell it.” She pauses. “My ex-husband never understood that. That cooking something slowly is an act of love. He thought it was inefficient.”

You walk in silence for a moment, the trail narrowing through a section of dense fern, Flynn dropping back to follow single file.

“What does Jean think about what I said about the cedars?” Elizabeth asks, when the path widens again.

“She finds it interesting.”

Elizabeth makes a sound that might be a laugh. “Of course she does. She’s probably right to. I’ve been thinking about it myself, actually. Whether insignificant is the right word.” She looks up at the canopy. “I think what I mean is - they make me feel like I’m the right size. Not small. Just - the right size for what I actually am.”

You think about that too, for the rest of the drive home.

The walk has given you several things to sit with, which is usually what it does. Jean has a gift for leaving things in you without making you carry them consciously - you’ll be driving home or making lunch or watching Flynn sleep in the evening and something from the morning will surface, fully formed, as though it’s been working itself out while you weren’t paying attention.

Today it’s Elizabeth’s correction; not small, just the right size for what I actually am.

You think you know what she means. You think you might have spent a long time being the wrong size - too small in some places, too much in others, trying to fit into spaces that weren’t made for you. The west coast has given you something like the right size. The cabin, the community, Flynn, the work. Jean and Elizabeth and Marguerite and the others. The Hoh on a Saturday morning.

You think to yourself, ‘I built this’. Not all at once, not without difficulty, not without the kind of losses that leave marks. But you built it, and it’s yours, and most days you wake up and it fits.

Flynn sighs from the back seat, settling deeper into his sleeping position.

“I know,” you tell him. “Me too.”

****************

The fluorescent yellow collar lives on the hook by the front door, next to Flynn’s leash and your own jacket. He knows what it means. When you take it down he sits immediately, without being asked, and lifts his head so you can fasten it around his neck, and there’s something in the formality of that - the way he understands that this version of going out is different from the beach version, that it requires a different version of him - that you find quietly extraordinary every time.

The tag catches the light as you clip it. Therapet. His photo on the front, ears forward, the expression he has when he’s paying attention to something important, which is most of the time.

“Ready?” you ask him.

He stands up. That’s a yes.

Seaview Care Home sits back from the coast road behind a low hedge, a long, low building that was probably built in the seventies and has been added to several times since, the additions visible in the way the roofline changes and the brickwork doesn’t quite match. The car park is half full at this hour - mid-morning, the family visits mostly happening in the afternoons and weekends. You pull in next to a silver Prius you recognise as belonging to one of the other regular volunteers, a retired teacher named Howard who brings a ukulele on Tuesdays and plays it badly but with a lot of enthusiasm, which the residents seem to love.

Flynn waits while you clip on his leash. Then he walks beside you to the entrance with the steadiness he has in here - not slow exactly, just measured, like he’s already reading the building before he’s inside it.

The receptionist - a young woman named Dani who has been here as long as you have and has developed a very specific face of delight when Flynn comes in, which she tries to keep professional and mostly fails - buzzes you through.

“Hi, baby!” she squeals, coming around the desk to crouch down to him. Flynn offers her his paw, which she takes and shakes. “He’s looking well.”

“He had a big weekend,” you say. “Lots of forest.”

“Lucky him.” She slides the sign-in book across the desk. “Sandra’s in today. She was asking if you’d be coming.”

Sandra is the senior nurse on Tuesdays - mid-forties, efficient, with the look of someone who has been doing this job long enough that it has shaped her rather than worn her down. She finds you in the corridor near the common room, Flynn’s tag already swinging as he moves, and gives you the rundown - three residents who’ve asked for a visit, one new admission who might benefit from an introduction if he seems receptive, and Mrs Okafor having a reasonable morning.

“Reasonable is good,” you say.

“For her, right now, reasonable is great,” Sandra says, and something in the way she says it tells you what you already suspected - that the good days are getting further apart.

You start in the common room, the way you always do. Four residents are there this morning - two watching television, one asleep in a chair by the window, one doing something with a puzzle that she immediately abandons when Flynn appears. Her name is Rosemary and she’s ninety-one and she grew up with dogs, she tells you every time, grew up with dogs on a farm in Idaho and she knows a good one when she sees one. Flynn goes to her first, as though he knows, and sits beside her chair while she strokes his ears and tells him about the farm, the same farm she tells him about every week, and he listens with the attention he brings to everything in here, his eyes soft, his body still.

You watch him and think about what Sandra said once about police assessment. You’d read about it when you adopted him - the letter from the trainer, the assessment notes, the careful language used to describe a dog who was too responsive to distress, who would orient toward an upset person rather than maintaining task focus, who found it difficult to sustain drive in high-stimulus environments. Too sensitive, in other words, for the work he’d been trained for.

Looking at him now, you find it hard to imagine him anywhere else. The beach version of Flynn - loose, fast, joyful, entirely animal - and this version, beside Rosemary’s chair, patient and present and reading the room with his whole body - they’re the same dog, and somehow both versions are completely him. You don’t know how he does it. You’re glad every day that someone decided he was wrong for one job without asking whether he might be exactly right for another. You’re glad you were the one who got to find out.

****************

Mrs Okafor’s room is at the end of the east corridor, facing the garden. She has a window that gets afternoon light and a small collection of photographs on the shelf above the bed - her husband, a younger version of herself in a dress you think is extraordinary, her daughter’s wedding, grandchildren at various ages. A plant by the window that her daughter brings and replaces when it gets too leggy, always the same kind, something green and trailing that you don’t know the name of.

She’s awake when you knock, sitting in the chair by the window with a blanket across her lap despite the August warmth, her hands folded in the way of someone who has learned to be still.

“There he is, Ọmọ mi,” she says, when Flynn comes around the door. Not to you - to him, always to him first, which you’ve decided is absolutely the right order of things.

Flynn goes to her carefully, the way he always does in here, and lowers himself to sit beside her chair, his head at exactly the right height for her to reach without straining. She puts her hand on his head. He stays very still.

“He’s been in the forest,” you tell her, settling into the chair across from her. “Big walk on Saturday.”

“He likes the forest,” she says, with the certainty of someone stating a fact rather than guessing. “Dogs know about forests.”

“I think you’re right.”

She strokes his ears slowly, rhythmically, and looks out the window at the garden where someone has planted late dahlias that are just beginning to come in. Her eyes are clear today - you’ve learned to read the difference, the days when she’s fully present and the days when she’s somewhere between here and somewhere else. Today she’s here.

“My husband took me to see the redwoods once,” she says. “Before Adaeze was born. We drove down the coast, all the way to California. I’d never seen anything so tall.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought, these were here before anyone I’ve ever known was born, and they’ll be here after.” She swallows, her mouth dry, and you pass her the small plastic tumbler of water from the nearby tray. “I found that very comforting.”

You think about Elizabeth and the cedars. Not small, just the right size for what I actually am. You think about Jean’s quiet note of interest, the difference between perspective and disappearing.

“Did your husband feel the same way?” you ask.

“Emmanuel?” She smiles, something private in it. “Emmanuel thought everything was temporary and that was why you had to pay attention. The trees, the marriage, the children. Pay attention while it’s here.” She looks down at Flynn. “I’ve been thinking about him more than usual lately.”

“Is that alright?”

“It is what it is,” she says. “He was a good man. I was lucky, which I knew at the time, which is the important thing.”

Flynn shifts slightly, settling his weight, and Mrs Okafor’s hand moves with him without her seeming to notice, the contact maintained without effort, as though her body and his have reached a quiet agreement.

You sit with her for forty minutes. She tells you about Lagos - the garden, the kinds of flowers she and her mother grew, the way the light was different there, warmer and more certain than Washington light. She tells you again about the drive down the coast to see the redwoods, Emmanuel at the wheel, Stevie Wonder on the radio, a diner somewhere in Oregon where she had the best apple pie she’d ever eaten and has never found again. She tells you Flynn reminds her of a dog her neighbour had in Lagos, a big pale dog named Sunday who used to lie in exactly this way, heavy and still, as though he’d always been there.

Flynn stays exactly as he is. Patient. Present. Holding the space.

On the way out, Sandra stops you in the corridor.

“She was good today,” she says. “Really good.”

“Yeah, she was,” you say. “She talked about her husband a lot.”

Sandra nods, something careful in it. “She doesn’t always know where she is. Tomorrow might be harder. But, she always knows Flynn.”

You think about that on the drive home, Flynn quiet again in the back seat, the coast road running alongside the water, the afternoon light sparkling on the surface of it.

Some things, you think, don’t need the whole mind to hold them. Just the oldest part.

****************

The alarm on your phone goes at six o’clock exactly, but Flynn is usually awake before that.

You hear him shift on his bed at the top of the stairs - the noise of a large dog rearranging himself with purpose, which is different from the sound of a large dog rearranging himself in his sleep - and by the time the alarm actually sounds he’s already at the bedroom door, alert and upright, his whole demeanour suggesting that he has been awake for some time and has been very restrained about it.

“I know,” you tell him, silencing the alarm. “Give me a minute.”

He gives you a minute. Barely.

The walk takes you along the coast path, the same route you do every morning - down through the community, past the Hendersons’ place where the lights are already on in the kitchen, out to the headland and back. The morning is clear, the kind of August morning that reminds you why you live here, the water showing off in the early light, all silver and grey-green, the sea stacks rising out of it like they always do. Flynn runs the sections where you let him run and walks the sections where you ask him to walk and checks back on you at regular intervals with the laser-guided reliability of a German Shepherd who has decided this is his job and he’s going to do it properly.

By seven forty-five you’re back. You feed him, make coffee, shower, and you’re at your desk upstairs by eight-fifteen.

The office is the smaller of the two bedrooms, which when you moved in you’d thought might feel like a compromise and has instead felt exactly right. The desk runs perpendicular to the window - your idea, something you’d read about, the theory being that you want the light source to the side rather than behind or in front. What it actually gives you, when you look up from the left monitor and turn your head, is an uninterrupted line of sight through a gap in the trees to the ocean. A rectangle of water and sky, framed by Douglas fir, changing colour and quality throughout the day depending on the light and the weather.

You couldn’t work without it now. You’ve tried, on the days you take the laptop to a café in town for a change of scene, and something is always slightly wrong, some low-level unease you can’t account for until you’re back at your own desk with the water in your peripheral vision and things settle.

The room itself is organised in the way that makes sense to you and probably to no-one else. The desk is clear - you can’t work in clutter, the desk has to be clear - but everything around the desk has accumulated into a kind of controlled chaos; the bookshelf behind you with its mix of technical references and novels and a stack of notebooks you keep meaning to sort through, the filing system that made more sense when you set it up eighteen months ago, the cardboard box that arrived randomly from Billings three weeks ago and is still waiting to be dealt with.

Behind the monitors, pinned to the corkboard that takes up most of the wall, is the life you’ve been living since you got here.

Postcards pinned up, sent to you from friends - Esha and Kim’s honeymoon in Oaxaca, a card from a former colleague now based in Edinburgh, something from Melbourne from your cousin who travels constantly and sends physical mail from everywhere she goes, which you’ve decided is an act of love in an age when no-one sends physical mail anymore. Polaroids you’ve taken yourself; the beach in winter, Flynn as a puppy, the Hoh forest in early spring when the trilliums come up, a dinner party that went on until two in the morning and ended with everyone dancing badly in someone’s kitchen. A postcard of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting you bought at a museum in Portland two years ago which has been moved twice, but always ending up back on the board.

And, tucked in the upper right corner, a photograph cut from a magazine. You don’t remember which one - something with good photography, National Geographic maybe, or one of the glossy travel supplements. The photograph is of the North Dakotan plains in winter - flat, white, the horizon a barely-there line between snow and sky, a single road running through it like a sentence that’s lost its way. You’d cut it out and pinned it up without thinking about it too closely, the way you sometimes do things that you understand perfectly well and choose not to acknowledge.

It’s been there since the second month. You’ve moved everything else around it. But you haven’t moved it.

The cactus is on the windowsill to your right, the same kind as you had on your old office desk in Stark County. You’d bought when you were in Montana, then took it with you when you moved out here. It still lists slightly to the left; it always has, something in the quality of the original soil or the original pot that you’ve never managed to correct. This morning it has a flower at the top, a small bright pink thing that appeared two days ago and which you keep turning to look at, not quite believing it. Three years and two moves and the thing has finally decided to flower again.

You don’t know what to make of that. You’re choosing not to make anything of it.

****************

The Geneva data is a quarterly breakdown from three field offices - Nairobi, Dhaka, and Port-au-Prince - tracking resource allocation against projected need across six programme areas. It’s the kind of data that looks straightforward until you get into it, and then reveals itself to be the kind of data that has been compiled by three different teams using three slightly different methodologies and two different versions of the reporting template, which means that before you can do anything useful with it you have to spend two hours standardising the inputs and checking for the places where things don’t quite line up.

You like this part. You know that’s not a normal thing to like, but you’ve made your peace with it. There’s something satisfying about taking a thing that looks like noise and finding the signal in it, about following a discrepancy back to its source and understanding why it exists. Your supervisor calls it an eye for data. You think of it more as a special kind of stubbornness - you just can’t leave something alone when it doesn’t add up.

Flynn is on his bed at the top of the stairs, visible through the open office door. You can hear him breathing. Occasionally you hear him shift, or sigh, and you notice it the way you notice the ocean - as background, as presence, as something that tells you the world is continuing in its ordinary way.

By ten you’ve standardised the Nairobi and Dhaka inputs. The Port-au-Prince data is messier - the field coordinator there is thorough but has a tendency to include supplementary information in the main data fields, which means you have to read every entry rather than just running the filter. You make a note to mention it to your supervisor, carefully and without making it sound like a complaint, because the Port-au-Prince coordinator works sixteen-hour days in a city that makes sixteen-hour days necessary and the last thing he needs is someone in Washington state emailing to say his spreadsheet formatting is suboptimal.

You make yourself a second coffee. You come back upstairs. You keep going.

At eleven-thirty something catches.

It’s a small thing - a discrepancy between the projected and actual figures in one of the nutrition programme sub-categories, the kind of thing that could easily be a data entry error, which is what you assume it is until you check the entry and realise it isn’t. You follow it back through the Dhaka inputs, then cross-referenced with the previous quarter’s report, and find the same discrepancy appearing in Q1, smaller but present, which means it isn’t an error, it’s a pattern.

You sit back in your chair.

“Okay,” you say, to no-one in particular.

Flynn lifts his head from the top of the stairs.

“Not you,” you tell him. “The data.”

He puts his head back down.

You follow the pattern. It takes forty minutes. What you find, at the end of it, is not dramatic - a reporting inconsistency that appears to stem from a definitional disagreement between two programme teams about what counts as a direct versus indirect beneficiary, which has been quietly distorting one sub-category’s figures for at least two quarters. It’s the kind of thing that, left uncorrected, compounds. The kind of thing that matters.

You write it up carefully, flag it for your supervisor with a note that’s clear without being alarmist, and attach the documentation. Then you send it and sit for a moment looking at the sent message, with the pleased satisfaction of someone who has found the thing and named it and handed it to the right person.

Outside, through the gap in the trees, the ocean is doing something in the noon light - brighter now, more blue than grey, the kind of bright blue that only happens in August.

You save your work and push back from the desk.

“Come on then,” you say.

Flynn is already on his feet at the top of the stairs, knowing.

****************

The beach at lunchtime is different from the beach at seven in the morning - more people, the tourist families from the rental cabins, a group of kayakers launching from the far end, someone flying a kite that Flynn watches with professional suspicion. You walk the waterline with your sandwich and your coffee in its travel cup and let him run, and the morning’s data settles somewhere in the back of your mind, and the afternoon stretches ahead of you, and the ocean waves keep rolling in.

You look out at the sea stacks. You think about the cactus flowering. You think about Elizabeth’s correction - not small, just the right size for what I actually am - which has been surfacing at odd moments all week, the way things from the Saturday walk tend to.

You finish the sandwich. Flynn comes back to check on you, sand on his nose, tail going.

“Yeah,” you tell him. “We’re having a good morning.”

You mean it.

****************

Saturday, you go to Seattle for a show. Kim drives down, Esha takes over somewhere around Aberdeen, and you sit in the back with Gabriel and watch Washington state speed past out the window - the coast giving way to timber country giving way to the long flat approach to Tacoma, the city resolving itself out of the haze in the early evening light. Gabriel has long legs and has arranged them at an angle to give you both space, which you’ve noticed without commenting on, the way you’ve been noticing things about him all summer without commenting on them.

He’s easy to be around. That’s the thing you’ve kept coming back to, the thing that’s made the summer what it’s been. He asks questions and listens to the answers. He laughs easily and at the right things. He’s been here since June, staying in Kim and Esha’s spare room while he gets his affairs in order before moving out to Sweden, and somewhere between the first communal dinner in late June and now he’s become a fixture - at the beach bonfires, at the impromptu suppers, at the Saturday morning farmers market in town where he always buys something impractical and delicious and shares it with whoever’s nearby.

He’d brought you sea salt caramel ice cream from a stall three weeks ago and fed it to you from a small wooden spoon without ceremony, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and you’d thought, oh. So it’s like that.

“What’s the band like?” he asks, somewhere around Olympia.

“I don’t know,” you say. “I’ve been listening to their stuff this week. It’s good. Atmospheric.”

“Kim said the singer is incredible live.”

“Don’t trust her judgement, she cried at a Sufjan Stevens concert,” Esha says from the driver’s seat, without looking away from the road.

“That’s a completely normal response to Sufjan Stevens,” Kim cuts in before anyone can rip into her too hard.

Gabriel catches your eye. You look out the window before you smile too much.

****************

Seattle arrives the way it always does when you’ve been living on the coast for a while - suddenly, too much of it, the scale of a city that you’ve forgotten how to read after months of knowing every face in your community. You park south of the venue and walk up through the early evening crowds, Esha and Kim ahead of you, Gabriel beside you, close enough that your arms brush occasionally on the busier sections of the pavement.

The Showbox is already busy when you arrive - the line moving steadily, the potent energy of a crowd that knows it’s in for a good night. Inside it already smells of people, beer, the warmth of a space that’s been filling up for an hour. The stage is set, the lights low, the support act’s equipment still being cleared.

You find a spot near the front, the four of you together, close enough to feel the sound properly. Kim and Esha have drinks. Gabriel has a beer. You have something with elderflower in it that you can’t quite identify and which is very good.

“You’re a front-of-crowd person,” Gabriel says, close to your ear because the room is getting louder.

“Always,” you say. “You?”

“I’m whatever the person I’m with is,” he says, which lands somewhere between cheesy and sincere and you decide it’s both.

Deep Sea Diver take the stage without much preamble - just the band finding their positions, a brief adjustment of levels, and then the sound arriving, filling the room from the floor up. It’s layered and atmospheric, the kind of music that exists in the space between things, guitars doing something intricate underneath a voice that carries over all of it, clear and unadorned. The crowd responds immediately, that collective settling that happens when a room decides it’s in good hands.

You stop thinking about most things.

This is what live music does for you, what it’s always done - it requires enough of your attention that the rest of you gets a rest. The data, the access report, the Geneva discrepancy, Elizabeth and the cedars and the cactus flowering - all of it recedes, and there’s just this, the sound moving through the room and through you, and the people around you in the dark, and Gabriel beside you, close enough that you can feel the warmth of him.

At some point during the third song Kim and Esha drift further back - you catch a glimpse of them finding a spot near the bar - and then it’s just you and Gabriel in the crowd, which is something you feel you both notice without either of you acknowledging it.

His hand finds yours during the fifth song.

He doesn’t make anything of it. He just finds it, in the dark, and holds it, and you let him, and the music continues.

You move, gradually, by degrees, toward the edge of the crowd where it’s darker and slightly less dense. Not leaving - just finding a different position, a quieter pocket at the side of the room where the sound is still everything but the press of the crowd is less. His hand still in yours.

The set builds toward its end. The last song is bigger than the others, something the crowd have been waiting for, that sort of song that earns coming at the end of the night. Around you people are swaying slightly, leaning into each other, responding to whatever the band asks of them.

Gabriel turns toward you.

The lights are still low. The song is still playing, just, the last notes holding.

He leans down and kisses you in the dark, just before the house lights come up, one hand at your jaw, slow and deep, like he’s been thinking about it for a while and has decided now is exactly right. You kiss him back, holding nothing in, pulling him closer. The crowd begins to stir around you, the music ending, the room beginning its return to itself.

The house lights come up.

You step back. You’re both smiling, which feels right.

“That took way too long to happen,” he says.

“I think it happened just right,” you say, feeling the heat in your cheeks.

Kim finds you thirty seconds later, slightly flushed, Esha behind her with coats. She looks between you and Gabriel and says nothing, which means she’s noticed everything, which means you’ll be hearing about it later.

The drive back takes longer than the drive down - Gabriel at the wheel as promised, you in the passenger seat with your cardigan pulled around you, Kim and Esha in the back where they last approximately twenty minutes before they’re both asleep, Kim leaning against the window, Esha’s head on her shoulder.

The highway unspools ahead of you, the city lights fading behind, the dark of the timber country opening up on either side.

“So,” Gabriel starts, the kiss lingering between you.

“So,” you agree.

He drives well - comfortable in the dark, one hand on the wheel. The radio is low, something ambient, no lyrics to get in the way.

“I’m glad we did that,” he says.

“The show, or…?”

“Both,” he says. “Definitely both.”

You watch the road for a while. The headlights pick out the yellow line and the dark trees and not much else.

“Thursday,” he says eventually. “The Henderson dinner.”

“Thursday,” you confirm.

“And between now and Thursday… still want us to take you home? You could come back, with us, if you wanted.”

You don’t miss the hint of hope in his voice. It would be so easy to say yes.

“I have a report to finish,” you say. Which is true. Which is also, you’re aware, a version of the truth that’s doing some work.

“You sound very dedicated to your job,” he says, without any edge to it. “Guess I’ll see you Thursday then.”

“Yeah, you’ll see me Thursday.”

He smiles at you, then turns back to the road. You look out at the dark trees going past, the coast getting closer, the scent of the ocean starting to come through the vents even before you can see it.

In the back seat, Esha snores once, briefly, and then stops.

Gabriel laughs, quiet, so as not to wake them. You laugh too.

It’s a good drive home.

****************

The charcuterie board takes you the better part of an hour to assemble on Thursday afternoon, which you do at the kitchen island with Flynn watching from his spot in the corner with the concentration of a dog who has decided that where there is food being arranged, his supervision is required. You toss him the occasional cube of cheddar, which he catches out of the air with an eager snap, and then he settles, letting you get on with your prep.

It’s a large board - the biggest you own, the one that lives in the back of the cupboard and only comes out for Christmas or occasions like this - and by the time you’re done the food covers most of it; three cheeses, three kinds of cured meat, cornichons and olives and fresh honeycomb and the good crackers, a cluster dried apricots and candied walnuts from the jar you’ve been saving. You stand back and look at it and decide it’s good. Flynn looks at it and decides it’s excellent.

The brownies are already done, cooled and cut, covered in foil on the counter. You’d made them yesterday evening, from a recipe you’ve made enough times that you don’t need to look at it anymore, the one with the good dark chocolate and the sea salt on top. You’d eaten one while they were still warm from the oven, which is cook’s prerogative and the correct thing to do, and then you’d covered the rest and forced yourself to leave them alone.

You change into a wrap dress the colour of the inside of a fig, dark sandals, your hair left loose. You look in the mirror and think, fine. Good, actually. You pick up the covered board with both hands, balance the brownie tray on top, and set off down the path.

The Henderson garden is already full when you arrive - Tom has strung lights between the apple trees and along the fence, and the long trestle table runs almost the full length of the garden, covered in a patchwork of tablecloths, already crowded with candles and food and bottles and the colourful disorder of a communal meal that’s been assembled by sixteen people each bringing their favourite thing.

June takes the charcuterie board from you immediately, smiling brightly like she’s been waiting just for this.

“Oh, I told Tom you might make up one of these again,” she says. “He still talks about the board you put together last Thanksgiving!”

Tom himself is at the far end of the garden with a group of men from the community, holding a beer, looking the way people look on their birthdays when they’ve decided to be happy about the number rather than conflicted. He’s sixty-five and looks it and carries it well, the kind of man who has spent enough time outdoors that age has settled into him rather than against him. You catch his eye across the garden and raise your hand and he raises his beer with a smile, and that’s enough.

Esha finds you first, then Kim, then the general absorption into the party that happens when you know most of the people in a space and the wine is good and someone has put music on low enough that you can talk over it. You find your seat - the table has a loose arrangement rather than a strict one, people drifting and resettling as the evening moves - and the food comes around and the conversation does what conversation does at long tables, running in sections, the person on your left for a while and then the person on your right.

Gabriel is across the table and three seats down.

You’re aware of him the way you’ve been aware of him all summer - peripherally, steadily, the soft awareness of someone whose position in a room you don’t mean to track. He’s in a white linen shirt tonight, the sleeves rolled up, talking to someone you half-know, laughing at something. He catches you looking once and doesn’t look away, which tells you everything you already knew.

The brownies go around and come back with two left, which Tom declares a triumph.

“This might be my favourite thing on the table,” he says loudly, which causes a brief and good-natured argument about the merits of Liz Hansen’s potato salad.

The evening gets livelier and then the temperature drops a touch and someone brings out blankets and nobody leaves. The lights in the apple trees sway gently, strung between the branches. Someone brings out a guitar from the house and plays it adequately, which is all anyone needs. You drink two glasses of wine slowly and then switch to water, because you know Gabriel is travelling tomorrow and you’re aware of wanting to be alert for however tonight goes.

Long after eleven, the table has loosened into smaller conversations, Kim and Esha have claimed the end near the guitar player, and Gabriel moves around the table and takes the empty seat beside you.

“This place always puts on a good party. Every time I visit there’s always been something to celebrate.”

“Tom deserves it,” you answer, turning in your seat to face him. “He holds this whole place together without realising.”

“Yeah, Kim says the same thing.” He reaches across and takes one of the two remaining brownies. “Can I?”

“They’re not mine anymore.”

He smiles and tears one in half, taking his time with it. “They’re very good.”

“I know, I made them,” you wink, which makes him laugh.

You talk. The easy kind, the kind that doesn’t announce itself as anything - the summer, Sweden, what he’s going back to, what you’re staying for. He asks about the Therapet work, which Kim had told him about, and you tell him about Flynn and Mrs Okafor and the Hoh on Saturday mornings, and he listens the way he always listens, like what you’re saying is the thing he most wants to hear right now.

“You’ve built something good here,” he says.

“I have,” you accept. Not modestly, not with qualification. Just, yes. I have, it’s mine.

He looks at you for a moment. “I’m glad I got to see some of it.”

“Me too.”

You leave at the same time, which you say isn’t planned but is also entirely planned. Kim hugs you goodbye with the loose warmth of someone who is a little drunk and very happy and has thoughts about how your evening with her brother should go that she’s being restrained enough not to voice. Esha squeezes your hand. Tom shakes Gabriel’s hand and then pulls him into a brief back-slappy hug, the way men do.

The path back through the community is quiet at this hour, the lights in the cabins mostly low, the sound of the party fading behind you. You know Flynn will be on his bed at the top of the stairs, waiting for you.

You reach the gate to the path that leads to your cabin.

You stop.

“Do you want to come in?” you ask him. “For coffee, or -”

“Yes,” Gabriel says. Simply. Not making you finish the sentence.

****************

The cabin is warm from the day’s heat, the windows still open, the sound of the ocean coming through them. Flynn comes down the stairs when he hears the door. He assesses Gabriel with the calm thoroughness of a dog who takes his guarding responsibilities seriously, accepts the hand Gabriel offers without drama, and then returns to his bed at the top of the stairs, settling quickly.

“He’s very professional,” Gabriel says, watching as Flynn moves upstairs. “Esha said he was a police dog?”

“He’s a failed police dog. He’s too nice, couldn’t complete the training apparently. But, he still takes the guard dog job seriously.”

You make coffee you both know isn’t entirely the point, and you drink some of it, and Gabriel leans against the kitchen counter with his cup and looks at you across the kitchen island the way he’s been looking at you, on and off, since he arrived back in June.

“I’ve been thinking about the concert,” he says.

“Have you?”

“Mostly, I’ve been thinking about the end of it.”

You smile, amused. “Mm.”

He sets his cup down, on the island across from yours. He comes around to your side slowly, the same considered quality he brings to everything, and his hand finds your jaw the same way it did in the dark of the Showbox, the same certainty, and he kisses you properly this time - no crowd around you, no music ending, just the two of you in your half-lit kitchen with the ocean coming through the windows and Flynn tactfully absent at the top of the stairs.

You kiss him back. His hand is warm at your waist. You think, briefly and with some satisfaction, yes. Good decision.

He follows where you lead, which you hadn’t quite anticipated - you’d imagined he’d be attentive, but not like this, not with this kind of attention, like he’s decided that tonight he wants to know exactly what you need and is prepared to give you it completely. And what you need, you find, is to be a little less poised, less held-together than usual. Something in you has been kept tightly wound for longer than you’d realised, and here, in your own cabin with the ocean coming through the windows and no-one asking anything of you, it loosens. You go somewhere slightly rougher than you’d expected and he comes with you, matching you with his kiss and his touch and in the way he undresses you, right there in your kitchen, giving nothing less than what the moment asks for and asking nothing more than what this is.

It’s enough. More than enough.

He takes your hand and you lead him upstairs, past Flynn’s bed at the top of the landing - Flynn cracks one eye open, decides nothing requires his intervention, and closes it again - and into your room, where the window is open and the curtain moves in the breeze coming off the water. You shut the door, and let what’s been building all summer finally pull you both under.

Later, you lie on your back with his arm across your waist, the sound of the ocean below, the room quiet around you. The weight of him beside you is easy, undemanding. Your own space, with someone new in it. Not strange. Just different, and good, and enough.

“Tell me something,” he says to you, and to the ceiling, the huskiness of his voice cutting through the dark.

“What kind of something?”

“Any kind. I just like hearing you talk.”

You think about it. “The cactus in my office flowered this week. It’s been alive for years and it’s only flowered a couple of times, and now it’s doing it again.”

He turns his head towards you. “Is that good?”

“I think so,” you say. “I’m choosing to think so.”

He makes a sound of approval. His thumb moves against your waist, once, and stills.

“So, Sweden,” you say, after a while.

“Yeah, Stockholm tomorrow,” he confirms. Not sad. Just accurate.

“Are you ready?”

“I think so.” He moves closer, his hand splayed over your stomach. “Are you alright with - this?”

“More than,” you tell him, hand covering his. “This is exactly what I needed.”

You mean it. He seems to know you mean it, which is the thing about Gabriel - he doesn’t need you to perform more than you feel, and he doesn’t perform more than he feels, and that ease is the whole reason why this summer has worked.

You sleep.

****************

Early the next morning he makes coffee while you shower, which you find in the kitchen when you come down, Flynn already fed and sitting by the back door waiting to go out. Gabriel is dressed, his jacket over the back of the chair, his easy presence filling the kitchen in a way that feels temporary and still fine.

“I should get back,” he says, a little reluctantly. “Kim will want to check in before I head to the airport.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “I know. She’s going to miss you.”

He comes around the island. He kisses you once, properly, his hand at your face.

“Good luck with the report,” he says, lips against your forehead.

“Good luck with Sweden.”

He scratches Flynn behind the ears on the way out - Flynn accepts this as his due - and then the door closes and his footsteps go down the porch steps and along the path, and then it’s just you and Flynn and the morning and the coffee he made, which is delicious.

You stand at the kitchen window with it and look at the trees.

“Well,” you say to Flynn, who is listening with his head tilted. “That was a good night out.”

Flynn wags his tail once, in what you choose to interpret as agreement.

You finish the coffee slowly, standing at the window, watching the trees sway softly - the light coming through in pieces, the unique green-gold shade of early August sun filtered through Douglas fir. The ocean is audible from here if you listen for it, which you do, the low constant presence of it underneath everything.

Flynn waits. He’s good at waiting when he can see the lead on the hook by the door, which means he knows the walk is coming and has decided that patience is the correct strategy. He sits very upright and breathes at you pointedly.

“Alright,” you tell him. “Give me ten minutes.”

You go upstairs. You pull on your walking layers - the base layer, the jacket, no fleece today, the walking shoes already by the door downstairs. You brush your teeth. You look at yourself in the bathroom mirror briefly, just on the right side of underslept, and you decide last night was a very good night after all.

You come back downstairs. Flynn is exactly where you left him, sitting very upright, the model of restraint.

“Good boy,” you tell him with a ruffle between his ears, and clip on his leash.

The path through the community is quiet at this hour - a little before seven am, the Friday morning settling in around you, the evidence of the party entirely gone from the Henderson garden. The lights are on in Tom and June’s kitchen. Another early riser further along has music playing from their cabin, low and indistinct.

You think about the report. The Dhaka nutrition sub-category, the beneficiary definition discrepancy, whether your supervisor has responded yet. You’d checked before you came downstairs and there’d been nothing, which either means she’s thinking about it or she hasn’t seen it yet. Either way, nothing to do until she does.

You think about Gabriel, briefly - back at his sister’s by now, Kim probably making him more coffee and asking questions he’ll answer patiently because that’s who he is. You think about him without pulling on it, the way you’ve gotten good at not pulling on things. He was here. The summer was good. Sweden will be good too, probably, for him.

The path bends. The cliff edge appears.

Below it, the beach. The sea stacks standing proud out in the sea. The water, grey-green and lively, the mist still sitting on it in the way it does on August mornings before the sun gets to work. Flynn is already pulling gently toward the path down, his whole body angled forward, ready.

“Okay,” you say, unclipping his leash. “Go on then.”

The tide is on its way out, the sand near the waterline firm and dark. Flynn moves along the water’s edge with the loose, purposeful energy he saves for this - nose down, tail going, busy at it. You walk behind him at your own pace, hands in your jacket pockets, leash hanging over your shoulder, the travel mug finished and clipped to your bag.

It feels like a good morning. Clear-headed, the way you sometimes are after a night that went well and ended cleanly. No residue, no second-guessing. Just the beach and Flynn and the lazy Friday feeling of a week almost done.

There’s a big driftwood log near the creek mouth, the root ball rising out of the sand. Flynn gives it his usual assessment and moves on.

You walk the line between wet sand and dry.

You’re thinking about nothing in particular - or rather, you’re thinking about the Dhaka data in the background, the low hum of a problem partially solved, and in the foreground just the beach and the morning and the sound of the waves - when your phone buzzes in your jacket pocket.

You reach for it without breaking stride. Your supervisor, maybe. Or the Geneva coordinator following up. You pull it out, glance at the screen as you walk.

You stop.

The sender address sits in the notification bar, small and ordinary, the way any email looks. Eight letters, two numbers, and a domain name.

[email protected]

The tide comes in fast around your shoes.

Flynn barks once from somewhere ahead - his I’ve found something bark, bright and certain, carrying back along the beach toward you.

You don’t move.

The sea stacks stand in the water. The mist thins just above the surface. The morning continues around you, unchanged, the waves rolling and the breeze moving through.

You look at the notification for a long time.

Then you put the phone back in your pocket.

“Flynn,” you call. Your voice sounds normal. “Come on, bud.”

He comes, trailing sand and satisfaction, and falls into step beside you. You turn back the way you came, toward the path, toward the cabin, toward whatever comes next.

Your phone sits in your pocket the whole way home, untouched, a small and ordinary weight that in reality is neither of those things.