4.9K New Wordcount Added to 'Simple Causality' ch1
(🔗 Y’can read ch1 of the butchlander timetravel Fix-It AU on AO3!)
(Excerpt Context: the stranger = William Butcher)
Inevitably over time, John began to imagine impossible little things without meaning to. He assembled them from fragments borrowed from training films, educational videos, and stock photographs used during his socialization lessons: a small house with a white picket fence, a neatly trimmed lawn, a dog sleeping somewhere in the yard, and the stranger returning through the front door every evening exactly when he was supposed to. He imagined him shrugging off his coat onto the same chair every day, crushing out cigarettes on the porch, and complaining under his breath about work while John listened nearby. Sometimes there were other people in the happy domestic picture too. A woman appeared occasionally, smiling from a kitchen doorway or sitting beside the stranger on a sofa. Children appeared as well, borrowed from advertisements and old family sitcoms, laughing in the background while they played fetch with the dog. Neighbors waved from across the street. Yet whenever John tried to focus on the scene, his attention drifted stubbornly back to the stranger. The woman blurred first, her face becoming harder and harder to remember, until it was somehow John himself seated beside the stranger on the sofa. He sat beside the stranger at dinner. He rode in the passenger seat of his car. They watched the stars with his head resting against the stranger’s shoulder while fireworks burst somewhere beyond the backyard fence. If the neighbors intruded, eventually they disappeared too. There was never much reason for them to be there. Before long, only the stranger and John remained standing together outside the house.
Even in his imagination, John could not tolerate being pushed to the outskirts for long. The daydreams of the picture-perfect family restructured themselves around this. If the stranger laughed with someone else across the dinner table, the scene shifted until John was the one making him laugh. If he put an arm around someone, sooner or later that person faded from the picture and John found himself tucked against his side instead, as though they had only been keeping the place warm for him. If the stranger came home eager to see someone, it became John waiting for him. It was John who occupied the empty side of the bed at night. John who remained when the rest of the picture quietly fell away. Whenever someone occupied a place John wanted, he replaced them and joyfully continued the daydream.
These daydreams felt less like wish fulfillment than corrections, as though the world had made some sort of mistake and he was harmlessly putting everything back where they were supposed to be in his imagination. John had never lived in a house. He had never celebrated a birthday that was not orchestrated for observation. He had never sat around a dinner table with people who remained afterward. Yet he found himself returning to the fantasy again and again. He imagined eating meals seated across from the stranger every day. He imagined the stranger helping him carve a turkey at Thanksgiving, grumbling the entire time while John stood beside him stealing pieces from the cutting board. He imagined being shaken awake before dawn to watch the Fourth of July parade, both of them wrapped in blankets on the front porch while the neighborhood slowly came alive around them. He imagined standing in a hardware store aisle while the stranger spent twenty minutes comparing two nearly identical screwdrivers and insisting there was a difference. John never cared about the screwdrivers. He only liked that the stranger kept turning to show him each one anyway, as though his opinion mattered.
He imagined hearing the stranger swear from another room because a jar refused to open, then being summoned solely because nobody else in the house possessed super strength. He imagined standing beside him in the checkout line at a grocery store, listening to him complain about the price of tea while John leaned over and informed him that register seven would open in thirty seconds because the manager was already sending someone to relieve the cashier. The stranger never seemed surprised when he did things like that. He just muttered a distracted, “Good lad,” steered the cart in that direction, and trusted John to be right, as though overhearing conversations through three walls was perfectly ordinary. He imagined being summoned every December to place the star atop the Christmas tree. Not because anyone needed his powers, but because the stranger always insisted on waiting for him before decorating the top.
Sometimes the fantasies drifted toward odder little domestic problems. He imagined being sent outside to hold a flashlight while the stranger worked beneath the hood of a car, only for the stranger to become annoyed when John pointed out the exact faulty component using his X-ray vision and accidentally spoiled the entire exercise. He imagined being sent onto the roof to untangle Christmas lights while the stranger shouted contradictory instructions from the lawn below, then called him a smug little showoff when John finished too quickly; in the fantasy, John would always slow down after that, pretending the knots were harder than they were, because the stranger kept looking up at him while he worked. He also imagined standing in the driveway after a snowfall while the stranger cleared the sidewalk, stubbornly refusing help even though John could have cleared the entire street in seconds. The stranger complained bitterly about the cold the entire time while John strolled behind him grinning unabashedly, floating inches above the snow and carrying mugs of tea that never stayed cold for long because he absentmindedly kept them warm with his heat vision.
He imagined hearing that rough clipped accent drifting lazily from another room and following the sound without thinking, words dropping consonants and flattening together in ways John still did not entirely understand. He imagined hearing the kettle whistle from the opposite side of the house and already knowing tea was ready before anyone else did. Sometimes he imagined answering before the stranger even finished speaking, simply because he already knew what he was going to say, the way people who belonged to each other seemed to in films. He imagined television light flickering across the stranger’s face while they occupied the same space in comfortable silence, the stranger absently ruffling his hair, draping an arm across his shoulders, or simply reaching for him without needing a reason except wanting John close. He imagined the weight of the man’s presence becoming so ordinary that John stopped noticing it altogether—just the certainty of him somewhere nearby every morning and every night, making sarcastic remarks aimed only at John, crushing cigarettes out beside half-finished conversations, existing so consistently that the idea of losing him stopped feeling possible.
The stranger occupied every role at once. Sometimes he resembled the father figures from the training films, the protectors who came home from work, who fixed things around the house, and made everyone feel safe. Other times John cast him into the role reserved for the most important person in every photograph, every holiday gathering, and every happy ending—the loving husband whom everyone waited for. The person everyone wanted. The person everyone was happiest to see walk through the door. John lingered on that detail more than any other. The people in those films always looked happiest at the moment someone came home. They smiled before a word was spoken. Before explanations. Before achievements. Before anyone had earned anything. They were simply happy that person existed and had returned. John could not stop thinking about that.
And in every version, John somehow became the person the stranger loved best. Sometimes he was the child being praised. Sometimes he was the brother, best friend, and confidante. Sometimes he was the person waiting at home while the stranger was away. Any role built around being loved, trusted, chosen, needed, or missed eventually became John’s.
Sometimes John became the stranger’s wife. Being the wife made perfect sense; imagining somebody else in the role did not. The wife was the person the stranger loved most, and John could never quite understand why that person wasn’t already him. He imagined standing in the doorway when the stranger came home from work, listening for the familiar sound of his boots on the porch. He imagined the front door opening and the stranger’s face softening the moment he saw him. Sometimes the stranger crossed the room immediately, sweeping John into his arms before he had even put down the groceries and pecking his lips. John imagined setting aside a second cup of tea without needing to ask whether the stranger wanted one. He imagined hearing the stranger come home before anyone else could. The distant rhythm of a familiar heartbeat. Boots on the pavement. A muttered curse when the key caught in the lock. Sometimes John would already be opening the door by the time the stranger reached it. The look of startled amusement that followed never changed. He imagined knowing which side of the bed belonged to him and which side belonged to the stranger. Sometimes John imagined waiting up for him after dark, the television humming softly while red light leaked between his lashes. He would tilt his head and listen beyond the walls of the house, beyond the street, searching through a city full of voices and heartbeats until he found the one that mattered. He imagined recognizing that heartbeat instantly among millions of others and feeling relieved every time he found it. Then he would sit perfectly still and listen to it draw closer.
Other times John found himself occupying the other side of the picture. He became the one returning home instead, carrying groceries through the front door while the stranger waited for him. Sometimes John imagined coming home to find the stranger already waiting on the porch. The stranger always claimed he had simply stepped outside for a cigarette, but John knew better. He had been listening for him. Listening for the distant crack of a sonic boom somewhere beyond the horizon and pretending it wasn’t the highlight of his day. John liked that version best. John sat at the head of the table while the stranger listened to him talk about his day. Sometimes the stranger interrupted only to ask questions, not because he needed answers, but because he wanted to hear John keep talking. Sometimes John fixed things around the house while the stranger followed him from room to room, pointing out what needed repairing and looking to John to handle it. Other times the stranger simply appeared beside him with a mug of tea and stayed there while John worked, content to watch. Sometimes the stranger was the one who rested his head against John’s shoulder while they watched television together. Sometimes he fell asleep there. John always remained perfectly still until he woke up.
In those versions, the stranger looked at him the way people in the training films looked at heroes—proud of him, certain of him, trusting him completely. He looked at John as though nothing bad could happen while he was there, as though every problem had already been solved the moment John walked into the room. As though John was not something to be studied, managed, tested, or observed, but someone worth depending on. Someone whose judgment could be trusted. Someone whose presence made the world feel safer. Someone people were relieved to see come home at the end of the day.
Most of all, the stranger looked at him as though he had never once doubted that John was good.
The thought of it made something warm and painful unfurl inside John’s chest. In those versions, the stranger never questioned him. Never watched him carefully. Never seemed to be waiting for him to disappoint him. He looked at John as though trust came naturally. As though belief came naturally. As though John had already proven himself and never needed to do so again. As though the stranger had looked at everything John was and found nothing to fear.
After a while, John stopped wanting to imagine him any other way.
Whatever role either of them took up, the ending remained the same. They came home to each other. They looked for each other first. They were happiest when they were together. Nobody else belonged at the center of the picture with them.
Sometimes, though, John caught himself lingering on the wife for a moment, trying to imagine her properly. He never got very far. Any effort never lasted. Sooner or later he found himself wondering why she was even there at all. Why she was sitting beside him when John could have been sitting there instead. Why she was the one waiting by the door when the stranger came home. Why she was the one the stranger kissed goodbye before leaving, and why she should have it simply because she’d gotten there first. Why she was the one the stranger returned to at the end of the day. Why she deserved any of the stranger’s love and attention when John wanted it more, and why wanting it more wasn’t enough to make it his.
What mattered was that they were a perfect family. A loving one. Sooner or later the stranger returned to John, sat beside John, shared a pillow with John, and chose John. Everything else rearranged itself around that outcome. Anyone else who tried to occupy that place, John gradually pushed aside. Whenever the stranger’s attention lingered too long on someone else, John found himself nudging that person farther from the center of the picture. A little farther. Then farther still. Onto the edge of the room. Out of the conversation. Out of the house. Until eventually they simply ceased to exist. Sometimes he did not even realize he was doing it until he looked back and discovered they were already gone. Before long, every road led back to the same destination: John sitting where they had sat, standing where they had stood, receiving the warm smiles and devotion that had originally belonged to someone else.
John regarded each disappearance as an improvement. Nothing important was lost. The stranger never seemed troubled by any of it. He turned toward John instead, and the world was made right again.
Every daydream arrived at the same conclusion eventually. If the stranger had a favorite person, why wouldn’t it be John? If he had someone he loved most, why shouldn’t that be John too?
If there could only be one person at the center of the stranger’s world, John never understood why anyone imagined it could be somebody else other than himself.
Like a child rearranging dolls in a dollhouse, John moved people wherever he pleased. The wife disappeared first. Then the children. Then the friends. Then everyone else. Sometimes only the dog stayed. Whenever someone stood between him and the stranger, John simply nudged them aside until they slipped out of the picture entirely. He never felt guilty. Guilt would have required believing they had as much claim to the stranger as he did. Once they were gone, it was difficult to remember why they had ever been there at all.
John never noticed anything unusual about his fantasies. He never questioned why everyone else disappeared, or why every family in that picture-perfect idyllic life eventually became a family of two. John only recognized what belonged to him and stopped seeing any reason for the rest to remain. The details hardly mattered. What mattered was that the stranger stayed every time. He was there when John woke up. He was there when John went to sleep. No locked doors or walls separated them. No observation glass stood between them. No one removed John for testing. No one escorted him away. No one else became more important. No one else learned the stranger’s habits, his moods, or the rare unwilling half-breaths of amusement that John had already begun collecting and hoarding like treasures. Piece by piece, the stranger had become more familiar to John than anything else in the world.
John even caught himself feeling homesick for it sometimes, before remembering none of it existed anywhere except inside his own head.
Whatever this was, it did not arrive all at once. The feeling rooted itself quietly inside John until every disappearance felt intolerably wrong, like something important had been taken from him without permission. Each absence left him hollowed out and restless, his attention snagging helplessly on the empty space where the stranger ought to have been until he finally returned to John’s line of sight.
Somewhere along the way, John had started craving the stranger’s attention with an intensity that embarrassed him whenever he examined it closely. Not just the comfort of it. The permanence. The idea of waking beside the same person often enough for it to become ordinary, to feel necessary, like he wanted to stay. The thought of being the most important person in someone’s world made a strange ache unfurl in John’s chest, too intense to name properly. Whenever the stranger focused entirely on John—even briefly—he felt a vicious pulse of elation he could not explain, like the world had been restored to its proper shape, and John occupied the exact place of importance he was meant to hold.
This didn’t feel like the kind of soft affection described in his lessons. It felt even stranger than that, messier and harder to define, like the accidental collision of two damaged souls that had been searching for each other across the boundaries of logic, space, and time, as if the stranger had simply drifted through everything else until he had no choice but to stop here. Like someone who had found him specifically and, in doing so, had quietly become John’s. The stranger was like some half-feral stray dog that snarled and hissed and bared its teeth whenever John got too close, only to keep returning anyway—circling back into his space as if it had already decided on him. It tested its sharp teeth against his hand, found it could not hurt him, and still returned to rub against his fingers, as if returning to his side had become the only shape its existence could take—even if it did not know that yet.
The idea arrived with terrifying certainty: if this was what having someone meant, then there was no reason it should ever stop being this person.
John started enduring the Bad Room more easily because he now expected, not hoped, that the stranger would eventually appear beside him afterward. Sometimes he sat with John through examinations no one else acknowledged as cruel, his presence steady even when John’s body was pushed beyond what it should have been able to tolerate. When John screamed, sometimes it was the man’s accented voice he heard beneath the alarms and the doctors, saying things like takes more than this t’keep a nasty little cunt like you down, or c’mon then, we ain’t done yet; I’ll drag your broken bleedin’ carcass over the finish line myself if I have to, or there y’are; mean bastard’s still kickin’. His voice cut through the noise with unnatural clarity, low and rough and impossible to lose beneath everything else, and somehow it always made John hold on harder anyway.
John also started looking for his friend impulsively every time the doors opened, listening for footsteps that never came because the stranger never arrived in any normal way—but with that tiny snapping sound, quick as a magician finishing a trick. Sometimes he would appear only after John had been left alone long enough for the silence and isolation to start feeling claustrophobic. The older man made a point to complain every single time John dragged him into the steel trap of his embrace or when John greedily burrowed into his lap and wrapped his legs as far as they could go around that solid, sturdy waist like he belonged there, holding on like letting go was optional, though he’d always allowed it.
Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump.
Sometimes John listened to that stable heartbeat instead of the scientists, instead of his own thoughts or the mean voice inside his head. It had become his favorite sound, tied only with the clipped rasp of the older man’s accent cutting through sterile silence to mock everything in it without discrimination. His BPM never accelerated into panic beneath John’s attention like everyone else’s did, and it never wavered either. It stayed regular, measured, and unbothered, as constant as a clock, as if it had learned to be that way around him alone.
He buried his face against the man’s throat and breathed him in slowly, lingering there longer than necessary simply because he could. Salt from sweat lingered faintly against warm skin beneath the collar of the wool coat. Cigarette smoke clung stubbornly to the fabric, layered over distilled spirits, cold rain, stale tea leaves, and the unmistakable living warmth of another human body. Sometimes John pressed closer just to feel the rough scrape of the stranger’s unshaven jaw against his forehead or temple when he shifted. Other times he hooked both arms tightly around the man’s shoulders and simply stayed there listening to the steady rhythm beneath his ribs. John memorized every sensation greedily: the texture of rough fabric beneath his fingers, the heat trapped in the stranger’s lap, the weight of heavy arms settling around him, the deep vibration of his voice through his chest whenever he spoke too close. If he learned it well enough—if he repeated it often enough—some irrational part of him believed he could make the stranger stay.
Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump. Badump.
Over time, John began noticing changes. At first, he thought he was imagining it.
The man continued growing younger.
Maybe not dramatically. Nor did the changes happen all at once. But it was enough that John began anticipating it every time he appeared.
The differences were small enough to doubt. A detail here or two that almost didn’t stay consistent between visits. Some of the gray threaded through the man’s dark hair seemed to fade strand by strand. The heavy beard sometimes shortened into stubble, as if time couldn’t decide how long it was allowed to remain. The deep exhaustion in his face retreated little by little, though it never disappeared entirely. The rigid tension in his shoulders loosened on certain days before locking back into place, like his body was always braced for violence even in silence. Sometimes he arrived bleeding. Sometimes he arrived looking older and furious enough to kill somebody. Sometimes staring at John with an expression that felt almost haunted. Other times he looked younger. Less ruined. Like time itself could not settle on what shape it wanted him to wear.
But what changed most wasn’t just on the surface.
The stranger frequently glanced at him when he thought John wasn’t paying attention, or when he didn’t realize John was peeking at him in return. The hatred in the man’s eyes never fully vanished whenever his gaze landed on John, and it never softened into anything too kind or gentle, nothing close to pity or sympathy. What replaced it, when his gaze sometimes lingered too long, was much more complicated. He had stopped looking at John like he wanted him dead. A new precedent took shape instead, a new kind of attention that made John’s stomach do strange, bright little somersaults once he recognized the change for what it was—reluctance, like someone trying very hard not to care but failing spectacularly at it.
This meant his friend was starting to care about him. Or at least, starting to fail at not caring. John didn’t see much difference between the two.
John had noticed it because he noticed everything that stayed long enough with him to matter.
🇺🇸Of the newly added final wordcount, this was the most important addition to seed in:🇬🇧
Once, while John rested half-asleep against his chest, he heard the stranger mutter something so quietly it barely reached him.
“You were supposed to be a monster.”
John tilted his head upward sleepily. “What?”
But the stranger only stared at him strangely, blue eyes reflecting in hazel ones. Something sullen—almost mournful—flickered there before it disappeared. Then his hand—scarred, rough, impossibly gentle—settled at the back of John’s head, not pressing, just anchoring him there as though he had always known the shape of it. “I’m goin’ need you to remember a couple names for me,” he whispered, his accent rumbling against John’s cheek. “These are the people y’shouldn’t kill, alright? And the tossers y’oughta avoid trustin’, if y’can help it. Repeat after me….”
His fingers began to stroke through John’s hair, unhurried and steady, each pass loosening something in John’s shoulders. The touch was warm and grounding, the faint drag of calloused fingertips combing against his scalp drawing a soft, involuntary sound from John as his eyes drifted heavier with each stroke.
“…Becca. Grace. Marvin. Hughie. Annie—Starlight too, same bird. Serge—Frenchie, or the Frenchman if he starts bein’ dramatic about it. Kimiko.” A pause settled between breaths, and the hand slowed, fingertips still sifting lightly through the soft blond strands. “Queen Maeve. If she crosses your path, don’t turn her into an enemy.”
Then his voice dropped further in volume, even lower in register. His fingers stopped stroking. “Stanford Edgar. Madelyn Stillwell. Ashley Barrett. Don’t trust ‘em completely.” He murmured, “There’s a woman called Sage. Clever one. Don’t mistake clever for omniscient. An’ Stormfront—if she ever finds you, walk away. Don’t matter what the bird says or if you find her attractive. She’s rotten. Nazi cunt through and through.” His fingers soon resumed their slow, absent caresses through John’s hair, as if nothing had changed at all. “Got all that?” he murmured, softer now, the words brushing low against John’s ear. “Mind repeatin’ what I just said, luv?”
John nodded. He recited every name obediently, warm and drowsy beneath the steady weight of the man’s heartbeat.
(A/N) - This chapter was originally posted to AO3 on 5/23/26, and if you’ve been following this story in real time, especially if you’ve seen this post, you’ve probably seen me sneaking back in to tweak things over the past week. Sorry. 😭 Perfectionism is a curse, and apparently I am incapable of leaving my WIPs alone even after they’ve been uploaded. For readers who read this chapter before 5/31, there have been some revisions. Altogether, about 4.9K words were added. Most of that is just me polishing prose, expanding a few character beats, and strengthening moments I wanted to hit harder. However, these are the two additions in particular that I consider important enough to call out.
Official ch1 total wordcount (adding +4.9K words for Butcher/Homelander interactions) = 34.4K/?
