I'm an eagle.

When Joel isn’t letting his mind get all grimed up with rage and disbelief, he can understand the choice you’d made then, even though it makes his stomach twist on itself now.

“He’s so sweet.” You would have said at your wedding, glowing and simpering as you clung to your new husband’s arm. “He’s always making me laugh.”

That’s the way you pick a husband when the horrors of the world are nebulous, foreign concepts, flickering at the edges of your reality like distant stars. But the horrors of the world are at your doorstep now, knocking politely, waiting to be let in. And the idiot you’re shackled to is always opening the door, greeting them like an old friend.

Joel watches your husband over the campfire. He’s sitting closer to its warmth than you are. You’ve wedged your hands between your thighs to keep them warmer. The idiot doesn’t notice. Because it isn’t in his nature to notice much of anything. The pinnacle of human evolution. The end point of an entire species that only ever survived on a planet full of things that wanted to kill and devour its kind by being observant, and your husband doesn’t notice you rubbing your palms together to generate heat.

An echo of the way he didn’t notice he was stepping into a raider trap when your group had drifted into the outskirts of a city during a scavenging trip. He’d screamed for your help like a pig realizing the axe in the farmer’s hand was for an impending slaughter and not for chopping wood. You’d gone running to rescue him without a second thought. Even as his screaming was already attracting a horde of the Infected to the store he'd gotten himself trapped in. You fought bravely, and clever, if not for the fact that the truly clever thing to do would have been to cut your losses.

But you were loyal. You’d be loyal to the bitter end of it all.

If Joel hadn’t been there—a little stronger than you, a little faster, a little more sure with the aiming of his gun—you both would have been dead. The world could do with one less idiot like your husband, as long as he didn’t get himself turned when he finally got himself killed. The world would be a darker, more miserable place without you in it. Joel’s world would be a darker place without you in it.

You deserve a long life. A happy one. You’ll be lucky if you make it another two months lugging around the dead weight that gets to lie beside you in your tent each night.

Joel takes your husband on a supply run. He comes back alone.

He hated to waste the bullet, but you would have cried yourself hysterical if you’d thought your husband suffered at the end. Joel’s conscience is clean when he holds you close and tells you it was over before he even realized.

HANNIBAL LECTER:

You are a gift, and your husband has deluded himself into thinking he is not only worthy of you—but your superior. It’s a baffling notion, one so deeply estranged from the reality of your marriage that it borders on psychosis.

Jack was entirely mistaken when he sent your husband Hannibal’s way with a personal request to mentor the man. Guide him. Hone his skills. “He’s a prodigy, Dr. Lecter,” were Jack’s exact words. From the moment Hannibal set eyes on your husband, he knew the man to be entirely mediocre. His sole talent lay in presenting himself as charming. And it was a thin veneer of charm at that. It had slipped to reveal noxious levels of insecurity the moment Hannibal had opted for polite disengagement instead of indulging the man in his posturing.

Hannibal had no intention of ever seeing the man again. A low-level irritant, like pollen during spring, your husband hadn’t even been worth the trouble of doing away with. Until Jack invited him to a dinner party—and of course, his fool’s gold of a prodigy had been sitting there when he arrived. An ambush. Jack’s dreadfully indirect means of begging Hannibal to reconsider.

You’d blended into the atmosphere of the room at first. Ephemeral. No more noticeable than the wallpaper. Until you’d spoken.

There was a vibrancy to you. A magnetism. He found that it was impossible to look away from you after your eyes had met just the once. Hannibal spent the rest of the evening trying to catch your gaze again. Your husband spent the rest of the evening growing increasingly inebriated. You’d ended the night herding him (unsteady and belligerent) into a taxi while wearing an expression of weary devotion that fit your face like an ill-tailored suit.

Hannibal took him on as a private student, taking such a keen interest in him it caused a stir among his peers. How else was he supposed to become a fixture in your life? You were reserved. Quiet. It took months to begin doing away with the armor you’d built around yourself to withstand the weight of your husband’s corrosive ego.

But for every pleasant conversation or shared laughter, there was your husband sending you off dismissively—in your own home—as if you were little more than a maid. In fragments and moments too minuscule to be considered moments at all, you bewitched him.

“Why don’t you whip up something for dinner, babe? The Doc and I are starving.” The sharp SMACK! of a hand meeting a backside as you make your way towards the kitchen. You freeze in mortification. Hannibal doesn’t so much as blink, only smiles at your husband wanly.

Your husband goes missing. You come to Hannibal sobbing, begging him to join the frenzy of effort Jack’s plunged the department into.

“Of course, of course-” he murmurs, pulling you into the soothing circle of his arms. You haven’t slept in days. Half mad from worry and grief. So many tears shed over an anchor that had been determined to drag you into the depths with it.

But Hannibal knows this is part of the process. You have to grieve the man you’re inventing in your head in retrospect—a kind and playful husband—before you can face the hard reality of the brute you’d given your hand to. He’s looking forward to guiding you through the worst of it until you’ve shed the meager remains of who you were beneath the thumb of the man who had loved you so cheaply.

“When was the last time someone cooked you a decent meal, hm?”

Hannibal relishes in the preparation of this particular feast. He watches hungrily as being looked after lights you up from the inside out, even as your shoulders tremble from bitten-back tears. Haggard with worry, you still take the time to compliment how fresh everything tastes.

Hannibal almost finds it in himself to be surprised—despite his talents in the kitchen, he’d half convinced himself your husband would taste quite rancid.

JARETH (THE LABYRINTH):

You were born to be royalty. Destined to be his.

Instead, you live a perfectly dull human life with a perfectly dull human husband. You were a creature born for elevation, but you had burrowed yourself down into the mud like a common earthworm, and you smiled as you brought this misery onto yourself. Jareth would not begrudge you this happiness if it was a mask you wore to get yourself through the long, dreary mortal days ahead of you. But it was not a mask you wore to survive. You were content. Truly content.

His temper got away from him on the best of days—but he stifled it for you. You did not know any better. Of course you’d made your peace with the meager conditions of your existence. What other choice did you have? You couldn’t have known that Jareth waited for you. Longed for you. Dreamed of the shape of your soul before he had ever set eyes upon your person.

A human man would not rob the Goblin King of his consort.

Feeding poison into your husband’s mind was a small thing. Human hearts were fickle. It was foolish, really, to have given the entirety of yourself to something so volatile. You’d be in much safer hands with Jareth. There was not a power in all the worlds known and unknown that could change the course of Jareth’s heart or his love for you.

He liked to sit at your windowsill, wings fluttering against the glass as he imagined the day when you’d become his. Satisfied to watch as you go from falling asleep in your husband’s arms to sleeping on opposite sides of the bed. You fight more. About money. About intimacy. About nonsense. Insecurities that had never before been spoken aloud now sat between the two of you like a third person. You begin to sleep in the guest room.

Jareth leaves a copy of the Labyrinth on your pillow; you wake up beside it the way you’ll soon wake up next to Jareth. He can close his eyes and imagine the warmth of you.

You read the play. Over and over, you read it. But you never call for him—never ask him to take you away from your suffering. You drag your husband to couple’s therapy, sit across from him, and beg him to see you and hear you no matter how cruel and apathetic he becomes. Your devotion is admirable. It’s also misplaced. You have the heart of a Fae, steadfast and unchanging, obsessive over what draws your eye. There is no spot for Jareth or all the magic and miracles he can offer while your husband soaks your life in all that is ordinary.

The coroner tells you it was a heart attack that took your husband. He was dead before the ambulance arrived. You plan the funeral in a haze. Utterly alone in a way your worst nightmares couldn’t have prepared you for.

You’re getting dressed for the funeral, cloaking yourself in black and the appropriate level of misery for a widow. You stop. Pick up the Labyrinth, flipping through the pages in silence. And then you say the words he’s been waiting desperately to hear—“Goblin King, please take me away from here.”

The crown he’ll place upon your brow will be as breathtaking as you are.

NORMAN BATES:

Norman can’t understand it. He’s turned the shape of your marriage inside out and can’t even begin to understand what you see in your husband.

The man is a brute. Worse than a brute, actually. He's an animal. Mindless and cruel—no better than the coyotes Norman has to occasionally run off the property. But a coyote knows what it is. A low predator, taking meat wherever it can. Your husband would consider himself a far prouder animal, like a lion, king of some distant jungle. He’d spent the last week walking around the motel with his nose scrunched in distaste at anything and everything. Like he thinks he’s better than the air Norman breathes. All the while you wander behind him, like a dog beaten into submission, shooting Norman pitiful looks of apology.

“I’m so sorry for him,” says a glance out the corner of your eye. “I wish he wouldn’t act that way,” goes another. "I’d stop him if only I were brave enough." Your eyes drop to the floor; so much shame is gathered in the slump of your shoulders that it makes his chest ache for you.

Norman knows plenty about not being brave enough to escape. He wonders how quickly your husband broke your spirit. Had it taken years? Months? Or maybe you’d said your sweet “I do’s” with a heart already broken and defeated. He can’t look at the ring on your finger without feeling sick.

“Do you always let him treat you so badly?” Norman had asked suddenly, his tone too biting, revealing too much.

You’d flinched at the familiar sound of an irritated man. Norman pulled himself away from that open chasm of rage immediately. Eyes going soft like candle wax for you. Curling in on himself so that he might seem smaller. He hated the way you held your breath as you watched him calm himself. You didn’t even speak until his jaw unclenched.

“I didn’t at first. But I was only making life harder for myself. It’s easier this way. I’m only sorry you have to see it. We’ll be out of your hair soon, Mr. Bates.”

But Norman doesn’t want you out of his hair. Not soon, or ever. He wonders if you’ll survive your husband. You’re already so tired. He’s met a great deal of tired strangers while running the motel. He’s never wanted to save any of them as badly as he wants to save you—free you. And he knows just how to do it.

You burst into the front office the next morning in a small panic. “He’s gone, Norman! He’s taken the car, and he’s taken all his things, and he left me here! He left me here like garbage! Oh, Norman, what will I do—what am I going to do?”

He wrapped his arms around you, kissing the side of your head reassuringly, “Why, you’ll stay here, of course. You’ll stay here as long as you need. Don’t cry. You’re going to be alright. I’ll make sure of it.”

You go limp against him, trusting and sweet. Norman holds on a little tighter. It’s been so long since he’s had anyone to take care of.

SHANE WALSH:

Your husband was the type of man Shane loved to put behind bars back when the world ran on law and order instead of chaos.

Was there anything more pathetic than a man who stood at an altar, promising “to have and to hold, to love and to cherish,” and then a few years later turn around and start putting his hands on what he was meant to protect? It made Shane mad enough to spit. And the way you defended the man drove him to the very brink of sanity.

No matter how he asked the question—or how clear the answer already was—you always denied the plain truth. Ducking your head, unable to look him in the eyes as you began your usual song and dance, “He’s never laid a hand on me, Shane.”

He must have missed the memo on when bruises and busted lips started falling out of the sky.

Your husband was dangerous. A man that could bring himself to hurt what was (allegedly) most precious to him was a man that didn’t value anything at all. Shane cleaned his gun and surveyed the camp and its makeup—all the kids, the women, the old and sick—taking a mental tally of all the people too weak to defend themselves if your husband decided to take his violence a step further. Lash out just a little more wildly.

You were standing at the edge of camp together. Your husband flinging around his arms, voice on the edge of yelling. He liked that volume. That way, when you’d step closer, begging him to lower his voice, with your face burning from embarrassment, he could start yelling in earnest in order to “show you the difference between goddamn talking and yelling.”

Shane couldn’t watch another second of this. It was his job to protect this group, and the biggest threat right now wasn’t Walkers or a group of violent strangers waiting to strike under the cover of night. The threat was right here. Eating up camp supplies. Scaring the kids. Scaring you. Hurting you. The threat had just given you a shove he could pass off as playful when you tried to press a soothing hand to his arm.

You covered your face. Shane knew you were crying, even from a distance. The tremble in your shoulders gave it away.

“Hey, man! You’re with me today! Need someone light on their feet for this supply run!” Shane called over to your husband, who was all too quick to agree. He always shape-shifted into something polite and obliging in the face of someone bigger and stronger than him. Fucking scumbag.

The plan was to put him down clean. A single bullet in the head, and problem solved. He’d lived like an animal. He should die like an animal. But Shane had thought of all the nights you’d spent cowering at the man’s feet, under his fists, his boot—and a cold rage washed over him.

Your husband was a shitty fighter when it got down to it. It was always that way, though, with men like that. If he’d been any stronger, he wouldn’t have felt the need to make you feel so small.

Shane walks back into camp with his knuckles bloody and raw. He brings back plenty of supplies. He does not bring back your husband. He does bring back the memory of the man’s last moments—begging Shane to stop. Snot, blood, and tears were running down the man’s face in equal measure.

“Did you ever stop when they asked you?” But they both knew the answer to that.

That’s not the story Shane tells you, of course. What you get is soft hands cupping your face, a thumb caressing the apple of your cheek, and “He told me to look after you, so you don’t gotta worry about a thing. Ain’t gonna let a dying man’s wish go to waste.”

HOMELANDER:

How could you love something so fucking ordinary? How could you stand to look at your husband—let alone roll over and let him touch you?

Homelander couldn’t stop looking at the two of you. Shouts of ‘Over here, Homelander!’ and ‘Can you give us a smile!’ would draw his attention away for seconds at a time, and then it would fall back to you like gravity. You were further down the red carpet than you should be. You’d stopped to sign something from some nobody. You were sweet like that. Not sweet for the cameras, or only when important people were watching. Just sweet. It was your nature.

Your husband wraps an arm around your waist. It’s a scrawny, ordinary human arm; he uses it to cinch the lines of your bodies tightly together. You look like a team, the two of you against the world. Despite being surrounded by all these cameras and eyes and insincerity, none of it seems to touch either of you. Nothing is capable of piercing the bubble of your love, which you seem able to manifest anywhere and at any time.

You lean into your husband easily, joyful about it. The back of your head finding his shoulder, and you peer up at him, lovestruck. You’ve got a grin on your face that only a teenager should have. Not someone who’s been married for years.

He cuts his way back towards you, uncaring as he interrupts photos and poses to get to you. “Hey, you crazy kids!” He tries for playful and just barely hits the mark. “We gotta get a move on, or we’ll miss the start of the movie. You can’t miss the start of your own movie!”

His hand lands on your shoulder, heavy and broad. You beam up at him. It’s not the smile you’ve been giving your worthless husband all night, but it’s a good smile. Earnest.

“Oh my gosh, you are so right!” You gasp and pull away from your husband to hurry inside. A wave of triumph washes over Homelander to finally see you unsmothered by your husband’s relentless affection. Needy fuck.

You reach back for your husband’s hand, intertwining your fingers, dragging him behind you. He looks like a hapless duckling following its mother. Homelander’s eye twitches; it’s been doing that more and more lately. You stop, realizing Homelander hasn’t moved, and double back for him. You link your arm through his, pulling him alongside you so confidently it feels like you’ve done it a million times before. You make everything feel familiar.

Homelander spends the entire movie watching you and your husband out of the corner of his eye. Whispered jokes. Holding hands. You’re the type of couple everyone rolls their eyes at in public but wishes they could be like in private. Homelander crushes the armrest beneath his fingertips, wishing he was the one holding your hand, wishing he was the one whispering in your ear.

“Do you ever think you got hitched a little too soon?” He asks you the next day, after the rest of the Seven have all trickled out of the debriefing room.

“Huh?” You blink up at him, guileless.

“Do you think you got married too soon? I mean—you didn’t know you’d end up here, in the Seven, back when you got married, right? You were a small-town Supe back then. Barely on Vought’s radar, let alone payroll. You didn’t know you’d have so many options, one day.” He’s spent plenty of sleepless nights wondering how you wound up in the marriage you did. With someone so beneath you. With someone who could never hope to be your equal.

“Sometimes you don’t need to know how your whole future is going to look to know what the best part of it is gonna be. From the moment I met him, I knew my husband was the one. He was the one back then, and he’s the one now.” You say the words so softly. Devoted. Loyal. Interpreting Homelander’s words in the best light, the same way you look at everything else: the bright side.

You deserve the world. Deserve to be with someone who isn’t beneath you on the gene totem pole. You deserve to be with someone who can lift you up—make a god out of you. Or help you see that you already are one. Your husband is keeping you trapped in the muck of humanity by proximity alone. But Homelander can fix that easily.

His only regret is not making it last. Not relishing the moment to the fullest. He’d put his hands on either side of your husband’s skull and squeezed until it had burst like an overripe fruit, spraying his face and suit with viscera and bone fragments. It was instant relief, like swatting a mosquito out of the air before it could bite you or bzzz past your ear.

Vought held a press conference a week later. You stood behind a podium looking weak, terribly alone. You were meant to be part of a pair. “If anyone has any information, please come forward. And honey—if you’re watching this—I love you; we’re gonna get you home soon, okay?”

Homelander steps up beside you, and he wraps an arm around your shoulders, tugging you into his side. “We won’t rest until you’re back home where you belong, buddy.”

A/N: This is my first time writing for anyone in the husband gang in forever. I hope I’m still doing them justice! Also—I finally gave in and tried my hand at Homelander. It had to happen eventually lmao.

if you enjoyed these headcanons consider reblogging, leaving a reply, or an anon! a writer's fuel is engagement. if you really loved this, check out my PATREON: slasherscream, for some exclusive content. this particular story was posted three weeks ago on the patreon, for early access. xoxoxo

A C T I

One - The Station

Two - The Chase

Three - The Cottage

Four - The Three Months

Five - The Tree

Six - The Jeep

Seven - The Room With A Lock

Eight - The Conversation

Nine - The Heat

Ten - The Examination

Eleven - The Drop

A C T I I

Twelve - The Aftermath

Thirteen - The Worst Of It

Fourteen - The Breakthrough

Fifteen - The Bath

Sixteen - The Tears

Seventeen - The Room

Eighteen - The Twenty Minutes

Nineteen - The Seven Weeks

Twenty - The Mark

Twenty One - The Aftercare

A C T I I I

Twenty Two - The Taking

Twenty Three - The Two Days

Twenty Four - The Consequences

Twenty Five - The Thing Between Us

Twenty Six - The Nightmares

Twenty Seven - The Gym

Twenty Eight - The Dream

Twenty Nine - The Morning After

Thirty - The Quiet Weeks

Thirty One - The News

A C T I I I I

Thirty Two - The Hormones

elliot sighed heavily, and threw his phone down onto the table, rattling your coffee and gaining the attention of nearby hotel staff. “i work with fucking idiots, christ. how hard is it to follow instructions?”

“it’s why they keep you around, smartest one on your team,” you said appeasingly, the same rote answer you always gave him when he got in his moods.

“smartest one at the whole fucking firm more like,” he scoffed. you cringed at the scornful looks sent your way from the other couples on the retreat. “useless. the lot of them.”

the french riviera had been a dream destination for you for years, one elliot had known about from early in your dating days. the holiday he’d booked was all inclusive; tailored to honeymooners specifically with romantic activities on and off site and transport easily accessible in order to explore the area.

you felt as though you should’ve been having the time of your life as you sat eating breakfast looking over the beautiful beach view, but you’d never felt emptier. the sight of happy couples around you day after day had only highlighted your husband’s distance.

elliot had promised this trip would change things for you both, for your relationship, but the last six days had proven the opposite. if he wasn’t busy and distracted on his phone, elliot was complaining about the quality of the food, the amenities, even the bloody people.

it was too much and just the morning before you’d been tempted to ask him to cut the fortnight away short when he’d gotten an urgent email and then a frantic call from his boss.

you’d sighed in relief when he’d left you to wander the local area by yourself for the day; happy to escape his negativity for an hour even as you felt guilty for thinking so. you knew he worked hard, you knew his job was important, and his work meant you could afford your luxury apartment in London and be able to take trips like this one without stressing over the cost.

you’d taken the time to go to the market you’d read about on the plane, the place des lices, and tried every free sample of cheese that had been waved your way once you’d gotten there. but you hadn’t been the only one from your hotel to take advantage of the famous food stalls as you recognised the deep scottish brogue of one half of the couple that were staying in the room next to yours; it rose even above the busy hum of french chatter easily.

you’d turned your head and smiled when you caught his pretty husband’s eyes before turning back to the stall merchant and buying a chunk of fresh camembert for elliot to try. you’d been eyeing up the fruit stall further down and were debating the brie too if you spotted some good cranberry jam.

“you’re from the hotel, right?” you suddenly heard from your left. you turned to find the couple a lot closer than before, apparently taking your polite smile as invitation to join you. “i’ve seen you at the pool before. I’m kyle, this is my husband, johnny.”

“nice t’meet ye.”

you’d introduced yourself and shook their hands once your cheese was carefully packed into your tote bag.

“where’s yer chatty husband?” johnny asked, eyes scanning the crowd.

you flushed, a creeping sense of embarrassment rising as you thought of elliot back at the hotel shooing you off before you’d even sat for breakfast.

“oh he had some emergency at work he had to deal with,” you excused. “didn’t need me hanging around distracting him, so i went for a walk.”

“you’re on your own?” kyle asked with a concerned frown.

“yeah, but i don’t mind. i travelled alone a lot before we were together. i’m used to my own company,” you said with a soft laugh.

the pair swapped a silent look before focusing back on you. “well, we’d be happy to have ye if you’re feeling lonely, bonnie,” johnny offered. “we were thinkin’ of goin’ wine tasting after this now that we’ve got our snacks, if you’d like to join.”

you chuckled as johnny raised their bag and wiggled his eyebrows.

“i wouldn’t want to intrude.” you shook your head.

“it beats heading back to the hotel,” kyle cajoled. “unless you had other plans?”

you pursed your lips before letting a small, shy smile grow. “ok. wine tasting sounds fun.”

you had spent the afternoon laughing and eating the cheese, bread and fruits you’d bought at the market over glasses of wine with johnny and kyle, a wide smile never leaving your lips even as the three of you stumbled back up the steps to the hotel.

your phone had stayed silent the entire day and it wasn’t until you were waving goodbye to your new friends and opening the door to your hotel room that you wondered if elliot would be annoyed at you for staying out so long without contacting him.

you smiled a little shakily as you caught him leaving the bathroom with a towel slung around his hips. “good day?”

“fixed their mess if that’s what you mean,” elliot huffed, but he turned to you with a satisfied smile and nodded. he dipped his head down and kissed you sweetly. “what about you? good day?”

“mhm,” you hummed, your smile settling more firmly on your face at his easy mood. “i went wine tasting.”

“oh?” elliot grinned, looking at you a little closer and taking in the signs of your slight inebriation, the way you swayed slightly on your feet and the almost sleepy glaze over your eyes.

“met a few new friends,” you said. “johnny and kyle.”

elliot stiffened for a moment before smiling again, less genuine and with a sharper edge this time. “oh? that’s nice. i’ll be free to spend the day doing whatever you’d like tomorrow, darling. no need for friends on our honeymoon.”

“you will?” you asked as you started to undress, surprised he wasn’t asking for an extra day to check everything with work had settled. you didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth however. “there’s a great market i saw today we could go to. i wouldn’t mind going twice, the cheese is amazing—“

“sure, sure. fine. let’s just sleep now, yeah? i’m exhausted after today,” elliot interrupted as he dried himself off before climbing into bed.

“of course, yeah. we can figure it out over breakfast.”

which brought you back to now, with your croissant and your husband and your beach view and the ever growing pit of disappointment.

you skimmed your eyes over the other couples sat on the veranda with you and felt jealousy bubble and spit in your stomach. it was the small things you longed for, the easy affection you craved; legs hooked together under the table, feeding each other, shy smiles shared behind mugs, little jokes whispered on the breeze.

you felt tears prickle at your eyes unexpectedly and wiped at them hastily before elliot could notice.

“bonnie?” your head whipped up at the familiar voice and you smiled automatically at johnny and kyle as they made their way over. johnny was in a pair of shorts, and you saw a knee brace peek out from the hem.

“mind if we join you?” kyle asked, already pulling out a chair at your eager nod, ignoring the deep frown on elliot’s face.

“and you are?” elliot asked rudely, looking between the two men.

“this is johnny and kyle, the couple i told you about last night.” you laid a gentle hand on elliot’s forearm.

“oh, the wine tasters. right.”

“heard you were busy saving yer boss’ arse yesterday,” johnny said with a pinched smile. “yer bonnie wife didnae mention what ye did though?”

“i work for a powerful man looking after his money,” elliot explained vaguely, with an air of condescension.

you noticed kyle wave over a waitress and quietly order for both him and johnny, his palm settled firmly on johnny’s thigh beneath the table.

“oh aye? tha’s a lotta responsibility then. no wonder yer always looking so stressed on yer phone,” johnny laughed.

“oi, be nice, john,” kyle scolded, but the smile teasing the corner of his lips took away any bite the reprimand held.

“sorry, uh, emmet, was it?”

“elliot,” you corrected quickly.

johnny snapped his fingers and nodded. “right, right. sorry, my memory’s not what it used to be.” he waved at a rough scar at the side of his head.

“so how long have you two been together?” kyle asked as their drinks arrived. you saw elliot sniff at the vast amount of sugar kyle poured into his tea.

“five years,” you answered at the same time elliot answered, four years. you turned to him with a frown. “we’ve been married for two. we met before your promotion, remember?”

“are you sure, darling?” elliot asked.

“yes, elliot. i’m sure.”

kyle and johnny watched silently, eyebrows raised until you turned back to your croissant with a tense jaw.

“time flies ‘n all that,” johnny said, hoping to ease your tension.

“right.” you nodded. “what about you guys? been together long?”

“been stuck with him for a decade now,” kyle huffed, patting his hand on johnny’s leg.

“been blessed by me, more like, cheeky sod,” johnny muttered.

you laughed as kyle leant in to kiss his cheek obnoxiously. “met in the forces, just clicked.”

“been together ever since i caught him starin’ in the showers,” johnny boasted with a grin.

elliot shifted uncomfortably in his chair and johnny’s grin dropped minisculely and his eyes hardened.

“what’re yer plans today then, bonnie?”

“oh, uhm, we’re not quite sure yet,” you said looking to elliot. “maybe the market since elliot missed it yesterday?”

“you should join us on our cruise along the coast,” kyle said. “just us and the captain, and a fair bit of booze; views are meant to be unmissable.”

“sounds better than a market,” elliot chuffed before shrugging. “sure, why not?”

“really?” you were more than surprised elliot was willingly agreeing to spend more time with kyle and johnny given how on edge he’d been just sat with them the last ten minutes.

“what d’ye say, bon?” johnny leant over the small table with a smile, taking up enough space for you to feel surprisingly cornered.

“pretty hard to say no to ‘unmissable’,” you said and forced a laugh.

“great,” kyle said and johnny slumped back into his seat, throwing an arm around the back of kyle chair. “we’ve got an hour before we’re meant to be there so eat up, love.”

elliot bristled at their familiarity with you and wrapped his own arm around the back of your chair, his hand curling around your shoulder and squeezing just a tad too tight. “she’s already eaten.”

“what, that little pastry?” johnny laughed. “you’ll need yer energy for what we’ve got planned, hen.” johnny winked.

you felt yourself flush involuntarily, your heart thumped and your eyes widened at the accidental insinuation and you knew elliot had heard it the same way going by the agitated tap of his leg beneath the table.

“i’ll probably just have another coffee,” you said placating, and smiled thinly when elliot kissed your temple. “i can grab something for on the boat or afterwards maybe.”

“that’s my girl,” elliot spoke into your hair.

---

while kyle and johnny finished up their breakfast, you nipped back into your room to change into your swimwear underneath your dress and met them along with elliot at the steps leading down to the beach.

once you’d left the dock and were deep enough in the water that it became a mesmerising dark blue, it didn’t take much convincing to have you jump in the water with johnny as the boat idled in place. elliot had waved you off with a dismissive glance at his phone when you asked if he’d join and kyle had promised to have the towels ready when you’d both ran out of energy.

“not joining them?” elliot asked, sparing a quick glance at kyle as he sat down next to your husband.

“figured i’d keep you company ‘til johnny climbs back on board. we’re temporary neighbours after all, yeah?” kyle said. he looked over the side of the boat and shook his head at his husband splashing you despite your giggly squeals of outrage. “married for two years?” he asked out of the blue and waited for elliot to hum his agreement. “what you doing on a honeymoon trip then, if you don’t mind me asking?”

elliot sighed frustratedly as he locked his phone and put it down beside him, knowing he was going to get nothing done with kyle yammering by his side. “we’re busy people, only just found the time together to go.”

kyle raised his eyebrows in shock. “busy indeed.” he looked to elliot’s phone. “got any photos of the wedding?”

elliot nodded once, and not enthusiastically enough for kyle’s liking, as he pulled up the photo folder you’d made on his phone titled ‘happily ever after 🩷’ before handing it to kyle to flip through.

the younger man whistled lowly, eyes glued to the screen as he pinched and moved the photos to zoom in. elliot noticed how he paused on the photos of you, but flicked through the others quickly, not bothering to stop quick enough to take in your bridesmaids’ dresses or the expensive tiered cake or elliot’s flash suit.

he snatched his phone back when kyle licked his lips at a photo of you dancing with your friends.

“lovely gown,” kyle said with a smirk as he watched elliot seethe. “you really got lucky, eh? punching up like that.”

elliot’s eyes squinted in a glare. “excuse me?”

“come on, mate. you can be honest, it’s why you worry about the job, right? you want to keep that going for you so she doesn’t leave you in the dust,” kyle continued to goad him.

“it’s not me that needs to worry about being left behind,” elliot spat. he rubbed his hand over his mouth and jaw to hide his burgeoning smug look, but kyle saw it in his eyes, the self-satisfaction. “i’ve got options. plenty at that.”

kyle stared at him with a blank face. “oh yeah?”

elliot laughed meanly and dropped his hand. “oh yeah.” he tapped his phone against his palm for a moment, seemingly debating something before freezing as he heard you and johnny climb the short ladder back up to the deck, laughing all the while.

“done in already?” kyle asked, his mood already lighter.

“johnny’s knee is aching, thought he could rest it and we’d get a quick drink,” you answered with a wide smile, reaching for one of the beers stored in the boats built-in cooler and handing one to johnny.

“bonnie was jus’ telling me how she used to live in a much smaller area when she was younger,” johnny said as you both sat down opposite to your partners. “but you live in london now?”

“what is it with you two? always asking bloody questions,” elliot complained, hiding his unease behind a laugh.

“just making conversation, mate,” kyle said tersely.

you felt the air grow awkward and jumped in before your husband could make it worse.

“we moved to london for elliot’s work,” you said.

“and you like it?” kyle’s inquisitive, dark eyes had you willing to be more truthful than you would usually be, especially with near strangers.

“i have to admit… i’d always thought we’d be somewhere further from the city; its what i’d always wanted and elliot said he’d liked the idea of somewhere quieter. we met in my home town after all.” you caught elliot’s scornful eye and ducked your head. “but it just didn’t go that way in the end. and london is lovely, the apartment is— lovely.”

“you ever been to scotland?” johnny asked. “the countryside is like nothin’ you’ve ever seen up there.”

kyle nodded. “we’ve lived on the edge of falkland for a few years now; feels like the middle of nowhere sometimes. doesn’t get much better, i haven’t missed the city for years.”

“one of the best decisions we ever made,” johnny agreed, leaning over to kiss gaz softly.

you sighed wistfully.

“don’t think the hills would agree with my dear wife, but maybe we’ll take a trip up there some time,” elliot said unconvincingly. you swallowed thickly at his thinly veiled dig.

“when you’re not so busy, yeah?” kyle said staring your husband down.

elliot’s lips thinned. “yeah.”

“so how’re you finding france so far?” johnny asked. “enjoying yer stay?”

elliot sniffed. “could be better. from how this one went on about the place i was expecting a hell of a lot more,” he said snidely, gesturing to you flippantly. “i’d have picked bali personally.”

your shoulders hunched even as you felt indignation and anger burn the back of your throat. it wasn’t your fault elliot wasn’t taking advantage of the holiday, the lush area and the activities that promised to be unforgettable if given the chance. you knew you’d remember going in the sea with johnny for years to come, but you doubted you’d remember the boring dinners you’d been having with elliot in a month’s time, or at least not so fondly.

“think i’d have put the trip off for longer if i knew what this place was going to be like,” elliot laughed. “in fact—“

“why don’t you shut the fuck up fer once and let yer pretty wife speak, eh?” johnny cut him off with a sarcastic smile.

elliot was shocked into silence and you found yourself stuttering as kyle and johnny focused on you.

“what do you do when you’re not on a late honeymoon, love?” kyle asked.

“uhm, i don’t actually work currently,” you admitted sheepishly, your eyes darted to your husband as he grew redder in the face. “elliot makes enough to cover us financially and finding something in london was harder than expected after i had to suddenly quit my previous job when we moved.”

kyle and johnny cooed sympathetically.

“i’ve picked up painting recently though, which has been different. not necessarily any good at it, but i like it,” you said.

“an artist? yer after my heart, hen. i sketch a little myself,” johnny said. “now ye’ll have to come visit us just so you can paint the views.”

kyle was quick to pull out his phone to share some photos. he stopped on one of johnny on the top of a steep, grassy hill; his arms thrown up the air, backpack on the ground next to him and a wide grin stretched across his face, his mohawk a little longer than it was now and a mess in the wind.

“wow, it’s gorgeous there,” you gushed, trying not to focus on johnny’s strong stance highlighted by the rising sun behind him.

“that’s the view just behind our house,” kyle grinned. “forty minute hike to get there, at most.”

you gawped. “no way.”

johnny nodded.

“think you’re maybe overestimating her painting skills there, boys,” elliot snickered as he looked at the photo. “if you saw what she’s done so far you’d realise it’s definitely just a new hobby.”

“show us,” kyle suggested kindly, not bothering to look at elliot.

you hesitated before reaching for your bag and pulling out your phone. you handed it over with a shy smile.

“oi, these are good, bonnie,” johnny said immediately, stood looking over kyle’s shoulder. his brow was pulled into a frown as he concentrated.

“i’d buy ‘em,” kyle added, looking up at you to smile.

“ha! right, yeah,” you laughed, thinking he was teasing. you put down your beer and took your phone back, dropping it into your bag. you leant in to kiss elliot’s cheek and stood. “who’s going to join me in the water? elliot?”

“i don’t think so, darling. maybe another time,” he said.

“i will.” kyle stood. “did johnny show you how to dive off the front?”

your eyes widened in excitement as you shook your head and followed him, waving at the captain sat at the helm of the small boat as you passed.

johnny watched the pair of you go before turning to glare at elliot silently, not breaking eye contact even as your husband frowned and shifted uneasily, eventually looking down at his phone to avoid johnny’s unwavering, cold gaze.

---

“i don’t like them,” elliot said once you were back in your hotel that evening.

“who? johnny and kyle?”

“who else?” elliot scoffed. “they’re too familiar with you, they— they fawn over you. flirt relentlessly, in front of me—“

“oh come on,” you laughed, unable to stop yourself even as elliot grew angrier at your casual dismissal. “they’re married, don’t be bloody daft.”

“don’t call me stupid.” elliot warned.

“i’m not, i just—“

“whether they’re actually interested in you or not isn’t the point,” elliot seethed. “they’re doing it to wind me up. to get away with humiliating me and you encourage them.”

“i— what? we were just having fun,” you said.

“oh i know, i saw how you clung to them in the water when you thought i wasn’t looking. fucking slut.”

you gaped at elliot, taken aback by his harsh words and sharp tone. you took in a deep breath and tried to level your own voice.

“they’re just friendly.” you bit your cheek. “if anything, you’re just jealous i’m getting more attention than you for once.”

“what was that?” elliot whipped around to face you and you felt your blood run cold even before he took a step towards you. he gripped you roughly by the back of your neck and tugged you forward so his lips rested at your temple and you followed limply, keeping your hands by your sides. “you better not play up tomorrow, darling. whatever they offer, we’re busy. this our honeymoon, not a fucking jolly for you to try and meet other men.”

you seethed in his hold, furious at his accusations and the irony of his ill-placed jealousy. but all the same you nodded gently. “ok, elliot.”

“good.” he kissed your round cheek with a loud, sarcastic smack before turning towards the bathroom. he shed his clothes as he walked, leaving them in a trail you knew he expected you to pick up and closed the door behind him, leaving you stood motionless in the centre of the hotel room.

---

you dodged johnny’s bright grin and kyle’s sweet invites to hang out over the last week of your holiday with a pained grimace.

after the first few mornings of suddenly stilted conversation over breakfast, they stopped joining you and elliot and you were happy they were able to continue enjoying their honeymoon even if you weren’t.

elliot didn’t say in so many words, but he didn’t trust you not to gallivant off if left alone like before, so you were stuck waiting in the admittedly lavish hotel room on the days elliot got pulled back into work over the phone and on his laptop. too important to leave until later, he’d said. but he’d promised each time to take you out for a dinner that had continued to be forgotten about.

with only a few days left you were stuck waiting by the road, the little moped you’d rented for the day parked and so far unused while elliot nipped back up to the hotel to grab his sunglasses. it’d been twenty minutes already and part of you wondered if he’d gotten lost. you wished he’d left the keys with you instead of pocketing them so you could keep yourself entertained with a quick ride around the block, get used to the feel of the bike before joining onto the main road.

a squeaky horn, two beeps in quick succession, had you flinching from your moody thoughts and looking up as kyle and johnny pulled to a stop in front of you.

“long time no see, love,” kyle said. he nodded down at the bike with a grin. “where you off to?”

“and can we join?” johnny asked with a waggle of his eyebrows.

you snorted. “nowhere. not until elliot comes back at least.” you shrugged. “he’s got the keys,” you explained.

“how about we take you for a quick ride then,” johnny offered and kyle immediately started getting off from behind him.

“no, no i couldn’t. thank you. elliot will be back any second, im sure,” you said quickly, worried elliot would grow mad if he saw you sat behind johnny on the bike.

“ok, love,” kyle placated. “how about we swap numbers then, in case we don’t get to see you before your trip is up? i want to see more of your paintings.”

“we’re off home in about two days or so, figured yours would be about the same,” johnny said.

“what about email?” you suggested instead. your couples therapist had suggested regularly reading each others texts to try and gain back trust between the pair of you. the irony that it was now you trying to hide a conversation in your phone wasn’t lost on you, but you knew elliot wouldn’t want you talking to them after this trip. “i can get pretty chatty in a text, so email might be better,” you lied flimsily.

“sure,” johnny nodded along, clearly not believing you. “whatever you’d like.”

“you can have john’s email,” kyle said with a smirk, the expression growing when the scot sighed and swatted at kyle’s thigh behind him.

you watched them with confused amusement until johnny read out his email.

[email protected]

“wow. that’s very myspace of you,” you laughed even as johnny rolled his eyes.

“soap’s an old nickname, you’ll probably hear me call him gaz sometimes too. old habits,” johnny explained.

“from the military?” you confirmed and they nodded.

“i say it when i want him to listen. gets him standing to attention when i call him soap,” kyle said teased.

“anything you do gets me standing to attention, handsome,” johnny said, sultry and playful.

“oh piss off,” kyle laughed as he pushed johnny’s face away, pretending to groan in disgust when johnny caught his wrist and messily kissed his palm. you felt your stomach clench at the brief sight of his tongue poking between kyle’s fingers, lapping at the webbing before he let him go.

his tongue there and gone again in a second. you’d almost think you’d imagined it if you didn’t see the spit glisten in the sun before kyle wiped it on his shorts.

you blinked to clear your head and turned away even as the thought of johnny’s mouth around kyle’s fingers replayed over and over in your head.

turning away meant you caught sight of elliot making his way back. it had your thoughts sobering and you looked back to the couple with an apologetic smile. “i’ll see you guys later hopefully, but if not i hope you enjoy the rest of your honeymoon guys.”

“ye trying to get rid o’ us?” johnny pouted, mischief clear in his eyes.

“no, but I know elliot will want to set off straight away so—“

“we know when we’re not wanted, love,” kyle sighed, winking at you to soften the words and let you know they weren’t offended, just pulling your pigtails. “take a hint, johnny, let’s go check out the beach.”

“aye aye, sir,” johnny saluted lazily before revving the moped back to life and waving at you over his shoulder.

“ready to go?” you jumped slightly at elliot’s voice behind you, you hadn’t realised he was so close already and when you turned around you could see he was tense.

“ready when you are,” you said and moved out of the way of the bike.

elliot didn’t mention johnny or kyle and you were thankful; the day had barely begun, you didn’t need an argument to ruin it already.

you swung your leg over the bike behind him and cuddled close, smiling when elliot rubbed a warm palm over your bare knee next to his thigh. today could be good if you just let it, you reminded yourself as elliot set off clumsily.

you lifted your head from his back once he’d managed to get the hang of controlling the moped a little better, becoming confident on the roads after a few minutes, but you wished you hadn’t.

his collar was rustling in the wind and had slipped loose around his shoulder, revealing a smudged lipstick mark previously hidden by his button up overshirt. you felt your breath hitch, unable to look away even as your eyes started to burn.

your gut clenched and rolled unpleasantly, like you could throw up any moment but your jaw was firmly clenched closed. your hands shook where they were holding elliot at the waist and you finally clenched your eyes closed.

with trembling lips, you held back a sob.

today could be good if you let it, you repeated. so let it.

---

you didn’t see kyle or johnny before you left and you didn’t mention what you saw to elliot either.

instead you went back to london, to the dreary rain and the empty flat and the weekly couples’ appointments.

you lied when your therapist asked how your honeymoon went. you grinned and turned to elliot with wide sparkling eyes and reach for his hand to hold between yours as you simpered, “simply perfect.”

but it wasn’t and elliot new it.

the breaking point was when johnny sent your throw-away email account a message one afternoon with a photo attached at the bottom. you grinned when it loaded on your laptop and you zoomed in to see your smiling face, then kyle’s, then johnnys.

it had been taken on the boat on your way back to the dock after a long day swimming and drinking and laughing. elliot had kept to himself for most of the trip unless spoken to, but after an hour you’d managed to ignore him well enough. it wasn’t until kyle pulled him up on your way back, slapped his phone into elliot’s hand and asked him to take a photo of the three of you with the water and island in the background that you remembered he was there.

“elliot, be a good lad and take the photo for us won’t ya?”

“why not ask the captain—“

“he’s done enough dealing with us fer the day, aye? oh— wait, did ye want tae be in it with us?”

“no. thank you.”

they’d thrown their arms around you, pushing and pulling you to their liking until you were stood by the edge of the boat, and smiled. your shoulders were sensitive where johnny’s arm laid over the top - sunburnt you thought at the time - and your hair was still wet from your last dip, but your smile was wide and glowing even as elliot had gritted his teeth.

despite his grumbles he’d done as asked and you’d been dying to see the photo ever since when johnny cooed, “aw, lovely photo to remember ya by.”

now you felt your cheeks heat as you saw how your swim shorts had rucked up high on your thighs, damp and clinging, showing off more skin than you’d realised. your swimsuit at least covered your stomach and cleavage well enough, though johnny’s hand on your shoulder held one of the thick strings of your suit where it had tied at the back of your neck. he was in the middle of playing with it, tugging it so it was taut but not enough to loosen the bow. you don’t remember feeling him pull at the string holding your suit up over your breasts, though you were distracted by the tight hold gaz had on your waist, the handful he’d grabbed as he knocked your hips together.

god no wonder elliot had gotten mad that evening. if you hadn’t known the two were married, you’d have assumed they were trying to get between your legs by this photo alone.

you read the message johnny had sent along with it.

missin you and yer sweet laugh, bonnie!

forgot to send the photo earlier, i think the three of us look well fit, we’ll have to go swimming gain sometime. gaz suggested leucate plage if yer still in love wih france, but im sure there’s a few different au naturel beaches we could try ;)

you sputtered a laugh at that, scoffing at the idea of going to a nude beach especially with those two. bloody hell, elliot would have a fit, you thought gleefully.

but for now we thought you could come visit us like we’d said before? the countryside could be good for you and the ol’ ball n chain. we’d be happy t have ye both for the week, we’ve got the room. just let us know, yeah?

yer handsome pal,

johnny

you shook your head at his theatrics. emailing johnny felt like having a slightly unhinged penpal and reading his emails never failed to brighten up your day, you could hear him in the way he typed. you also loved when you assumed gaz would steal the phone to use his account to talk to you, the lack of scots and shorthand was always a dead giveaway between the two.

you bit your lip and found some of the photos he’d sent previously of their home and garden. it was gorgeous simply put and although the anxiety of admitting to elliot that you’d kept in contact with them had your palms sweating, the deep urge to go visit them ultimately won out.

you bit the bullet over dinner that same night. steak, specially made to soften elliot’s mood.

not that it helped much.

“what?” he dropped his cutlery and pushed back from his seat, needing distance from you as he processed you’d been lying to him. “why would you do that?”

you didn’t have an answer. or not one that elliot would like, so you felt yourself begin to shrug before you thought back to your last session.

“our therapist said it could be good for the relationship if i made some friends separate to yours,” you said.

“she also said you needed to focus trying more with my friends,” elliot reminded.

“but your friends aren’t offering to stay with us for a week in the highlands, elliot. if they were then i’d be all for it!”

“so if i tell my friends that we’ll spend christmas at the ski lodge with them this year, you won’t whine about wanting to be at home together, this time,” he challenged.

you swallowed. he knew you hated skiing and his bitchy judgmental rich friends. it wasn’t even as though it was his easy going friends that liked to go, it was the worst of the bunch that purposely left you out or talked down to you, made it impossible to try without embarrassing yourself.

but fine. you could deal with that this year if it meant your friendship with kyle and johnny was allowed to grow.

“sure,” you said with an obviously fake casual shrug. “so we can go?”

elliot huffed. you sprung out your next argument.

“our therapist also said it was important to let me take the lead a few times. in order to let me regai—“

“regain some power in the relationship, yeah, i know. i was there.” elliot nodded. he seemed to think it over. “this will help you trust me again?”

you reached across the table and held his hand, smiling at him hopefully when he looked back at you. you tried not to think of the lipstick stain in france, tried not to let the hurt cloud you eyes. “yes.” you stood and walked to stand by his chair, chest warming when he wrapped an arm around your waist. “the honeymoon felt forced,” you admitted, making sure to keep eye contact even as he stiffened. “we both felt it, you can admit it, i’m not mad. but this would be new and an adventure. like old times, elliot.”

he nodded a little less resignedly. “sure, old times. ok.”

you smiled, dipped down to kiss him deeply, rubbing his clean shaven cheek with your thumb.

“thank you. this will be fun, i promise. we’ll get to relax and just spend some time together, yeah? no pressure of what we should be doing as a couple or at work or— or—“

elliot softened as he looked at you stutter to find another reason. “yes, darling. it’ll be good.”

you stepped out of his grasp.

“i’ll let them know we can go, what date do you think would be best?”

---

“fucking hell, you had one job. look out for the stupid carved owl in the tree and that’s when we know to turn left,” elliot seethed as he drove, the sun growing dimmer by the minute. you’d spent the entire day driving up north using the directions, had set off that saturday morning in hopes that the traffic wouldn’t be as busy as midweek. “so where are we now? you insisted on following their directions instead of using the satnav, so where the hell does it mention this endless fucking shitty, unpaved road? eh?”

you hunched down in your seat next to him and reread the instructions from soap, hoping to find a clue as to where you were on the, admittedly adorable yet detailed, map he’d drawn. you’d found it endearing when you’d first saw it but now you were thinking it was more of a necessity.

elliot snatched your phone from your hand and split his focus between the dark road and your phone, scrolling erratically to find the directions in the email he wanted. your hand hovered between you, eager to take your phone back but hesitant to foul his mood further.

your eyes caught on movement on the road and you quickly gripped the wheel to swerve and avoid hitting a deer that had wandered out from the trees. “fuck, elliot, watch out!”

he slammed on the breaks and dropped your phone into your footwell as he automatically gripped the wheel to take over from you.

you both sat still, panting; anxiety and adrenaline pumping through your body as you tried to tell it and brain that you were fine, it could calm down, you were ok. you rubbed at your shoulder where your seatbelt had dug in.

elliot started up the car again, silent, and went slower down the road until the headlights caught on a misshapen tree. you squinted before pointing it out. “here, look. i think that’s the owl, go left.”

it only took a few minutes before you could see the lights from kyle and johnny’s farmhouse. the shape of their barn and surrounding smaller outbuildings stark against the natural curves of the hills and trees they were settled amongst.

“we’re here,” you said excitedly. “they said to pull around the side of the barn to the garage they have at the side. their house should be riiight there.” you grinned as you parked directly in front of it on the gravel next to their truck.

“great,” elliot said sarcastically. you didn’t mention his tone knowing that having to drive all day, several hours longer than you’d both expected, would have rankled anyone’s mood.

you climbed out without a word and got your bags out of the back of the car. when you rounded back to the front you found johnny and kyle walking to meet you already, their front door left open behind them.

“bonnie! ye made it,” johnny said as he jogged over to you excitedly. you let go of your suitcase as he pulled you into a hug as soon as you were close enough, scuffing his stubble against your neck in his excitement.

“down, boy,” kyle laughed, nudging johnny out of the way to give you his own hug. once he pulled back he nodded to elliot and smirked. “thought you’d maybe gotten lost, we were ready to start a search party.”

elliot bristled but johnny spoke up before he could defend himself.

“aye, but tea is still warm and ready to be served, an’ ahm fucking starving so let’s get inside yeah?” johnny slapped elliot’s shoulder before leading you all to the house. “done a big roasty fer the pair a’ye, so i hope yer hungry.”

the heat encompassed you as soon as you stepped inside, led through to the kitchen-stroke-dining room. the food smelled divine and the warmth accumulated from the oven and the fireplace had your shoulders relaxing instantly.

the house was far from modern with its mismatched old wooden chairs around the handmade table and the well-loved couch you could spot through in the next room, nothing like your lifeless flat in london. but the farmhouse was still stylish in its own way, in the colour of the cabinets, the throw on couch, the wallpaper leading up the stairs. though more importantly, it was homely. lived in.

“i can imagine the drive wasnae easy for first timers, so sit yerselves down and i’ll plate the food, gaz’ll get the wine,” johnny said.

you pulled out the chair next to elliot, leaving the two opposite you empty.

johnny clapped his hands as if to say voilà when he put down your heaped plates a minute later.

“this looks amazing, johnny, you cooked this?” you asked, eyes round and barely stopping yourself from digging in to be polite.

“have a great sous chef,” he said and patted kyle’s arse when he passed by with the wine. kyle smirked.

“how did you find the drive up, seriously?” kyle asked as he poured your drinks. he took a seat with johnny and gestured for you to start eating; now with permission, you didn’t hesitate.

“it was fine. might’ve been easier if we were given an address instead, satnav might’ve made it quicker,” elliot said as he pushed around some of the steamed vegetables on his plate.

“the views made taking our time worth it though, the valleys we passed were gorgeous,” you gushed. “i didn’t realise there were so many small lakes too.”

elliot sniffed irritably, but you didn’t notice. in fact you’d barely noticed how he played with his food more than ate it as you were too busy chatting and eating. you were going crazy for the hearty roast dinner, you could see in the colour and in the bursting taste of the veg just how fresh it all was; nothing like the store bought stuff you usually got at home.

you hadn’t had anything home cooked in so long that you hadn’t made yourself, and when you told kyle and johnny so they both reared back as though slapped.

“oh love, you’re missing out, that’s not right. don’t worry we’ll take care of you while you’re here,” kyle promised.

elliot cleared his throat. “got any salt?”

johnny’s eyes flickered tersely from elliot to the roast beef he was poking on his plate and back up again. “sure. let me just grab it for ye.”

“cheers,” elliot smiled thinly.

“top up?” kyle asked and gestured to your wine glass. you nodded before turning to elliot, but he wasn’t looking your way so you held your glass out.

“thanks. god, after this and the long drive i think i’ll be ready for bed; sorry excuse for company on the first night,” you apologised.

“we’re just happy to have you here,” kyle assured you as johnny sat back down. your husband doused his food in salt before making a better dent in it, downing his wine quickly afterwards with a wince.

“yeah, i think it’ll be an early one for us tonight, won’t it, darling?” elliot said and started to stand, rudely pushing his unfinished plate away. “in fact, i think i’m pretty tired now.”

you looked down at the last few bites of your meal and the full glass of wine forlornly but stood alongside elliot.

“it really was a fantastic meal, thank you so much, johnny,” you said.

“anytime for you, hen,” he said. “here, let us show you to your room.”

“i’ll grab the dishes while you take them up, johnny. you cooked so i’ll clean,” kyle said, hooking a finger in johnny’s jeans to catch his attention when he stood up. you felt a sharp pang at their easy domesticity. sure they’d said they’d known each other, been together, for a decade, but it still ached that you and elliot where struggling so obviously in comparison despite your sixth anniversary nearing on the horizon.

you gave kyle a fragile smile as you followed johnny upstairs with your bags to your room for the week.

“i’ll leave you to it, see ye in the morning,” johnny said as you settled into your room.

“this is amazing,” you said with a small laugh, disbelief and joy mixing into something like hope as you started to get undressed. the view out of your bedroom looked over the front garden and you felt giddy at the idea of staying with your new friends for the next few days and exploring the area further.

“it’s… quaint,” elliot said.

you turned to him, your mouth pulled tight. “please don’t start.”

“what? it’s just… smaller than what we’re used to,” he said with a shrug, starting to laugh as he gestured at the room. “i mean look at this place, and the bed.”

“keep your voice down at least, elliot,” you hissed, eyes sharp on the closed door of your bedroom.

“darling, you know i get overheated easily, and by the looks of it we’re going to be pressed side by side all night. and i doubt they have a/c,” elliot huffed. he sat down on the bed and rolled his eyes when it squeaked. “oh, come on.”

“we could open the window,” you said stubbornly, ignoring elliot as he shifted to make the bed squeak again.

“and let in the smell of sheep shit? not your brightest idea,” he scoffed. “christ and never mind the bloody noise on top of that. good thing i brought my ear plugs or i’d never get any sleep.”

you bit your tongue when you thought of the constant traffic noises that flooded into your apartment at all times of the day and night, the light pollution that did its best to creep past your blackout curtains.

“i’m sure you’ll get used to it after the first couple of nights,” you said instead and moved to join him in bed. you reached for his hand and squeezed it, leaning in for a kiss, teasing your tongue at his lips for a split second before pulling back. “just… please be nice?”

he sighed.

“fine,” he conceded. “i was just expecting something a little nicer considering the price of the trip we met them on.”

you scowled at him and let go of his hand. “you’re being rude.”

you leant over to turn off your lamp and laid down facing away from him. neither of you noticed the shadows shift under your door, the light footsteps heading away from your room.

---

you woke up the next morning to find elliot already in the shower, you could hear the pipes from the bathroom next door and noticed his suitcase had been half unpacked.

you were grateful he’d let you sleep, you’d gone to bed frustrated and you didn’t want to carry it on this morning. it was a new day and you were eager to have fun.

you walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains. as you gazed out your eyes naturally drifted to johnny, stood near the barn you’d passed on your way in. he was small given the distance but you couldn’t help but stare as he rhythmically chopped logs into smaller, more manageable pieces.

he was sweating, the repetitive action of driving the axe up and then through the thick wood obviously tiring, and you felt water pool in your mouth as you looked on gormlessly.

the sleeves of his thick checked shirt were rolled up his forearms and part of you wished he’d decided to chop the wood in the driveway so you’d have a clearer view of his muscles at work. he wiped his face on his bicep and suddenly turned to the house, to your window.

you ducked away before he could catch you and started to get dressed out of the line of sight the windows may provide. with your face aflame and anxious butterflies rampant in your stomach, you needed to get your head on straight and decidedly not ogle your new friends.

with one last stern word to yourself you headed downstairs back to the kitchen and found gaz pottering around.

“ah morning, love. coffee?” he offered, holding out a cup. you took it gratefully with a small thank you and sat at the table again. there was a plate of toast in the middle, enough slices freshly made made for the four of you, and you reached forward for one. “i was thinking me and soap could show you a hiking trail nearby, make a day of it.”

“the one you showed me on your phone?” you asked, nodding enthusiastically regardless of his answer.

“this one’s even better,” gaz said, smiling fondly. “just might take longer.”

“coffee? thank you, darling,” elliot mumbled as he swiped your coffee from your hands without asking and distracting you from answering gaz. you’d barely had a sip before elliot was finishing the drink off in one go. “mm, bit too milky for my liking,” he told you and sucked his teeth.

“probably because it wasn’t for you,” kyle said flatly. “we’re going on a hike today, care to join or has work called you in already?”

“i’d love a hike,” elliot said brightly. johnny walked in through the front door as elliot continued to talk about the hikes he’d been on before, heading to the sink to wash his hands and leaning up to kiss kyle as he passed. “work can wait for the great outdoors. my wife here knows how much i love going on— on uh, on hikes and finding new trails and mapping them out.” elliot stumbled over his words for a second, taken back by the kiss.

johnny’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh and he turned and winked at you as he opened up a cupboard door that hid his face from your husband.

“oh, so you two go together?” kyle asked.

“no, no,” elliot laughed like the thought was ridiculous. “i go with my mates. not really her thing.”

you pursed your lips; you hated it when elliot answered for you, especially when he was wrong. which was often. instead of fussing though, you focused your ire on another slice of toast from the centre of the table.

“right.” kyle stood from his chair and went to lean next to johnny on one of the kitchen counters. “we’ll pack a bag full of snacks and drinks and then we can be off. give us fifteen minutes?”

you nodded, thankful for the excuse to leave elliot at the table, and went to grab your walking boots before coming back to wait with elliot near the door.

“quicker to get there from the back,” johnny said and led you through the rest of the downstairs out into the back garden.

it looked like it could spread for acres if not for the looming trees of the forest fencing it in.

to the left was their chicken coop and a small locked shed. if you turned around you’d see your cars parked, the garage and then the barn further up.

the chicken coop was on solid muddy ground, closer to the gravel front, whereas the shed was further up on the flat grassy area that began to rise into a small hill further back and closer to the trees; there was a small iron table sat with four chairs closer to the house and you couldn’t wait to use it, imagining sitting out there for lunch or breakfast.

to your right you took in their allotment, the large raised beds full of blooming vegetables; tall beans climbing the trellis arches from one side to another. you saw noticed the glint of a greenhouse hidden behind it all. everything was encouraged to grow to its fullest and you bet the food they’d served the night before had been grown by their very own hands.

“we’ve got strawberries if ye’d like tae pick some over the next few days,” johnny said as he walked you down to the end of the garden, catching the way your eyes were glued to the allotment.

“i’d love that, i haven’t been strawberry picking since i was little,” you said.

johnny nodded. “settled then.”

---

the hike wasn’t difficult, but living down south in a very flat city hadn’t built up your cardio for the steep hills and climbs at all.

“this is a good place to stop for lunch,” johnny said, apropos to nothing.

he squeezed your arm as he wandered off the path towards the edge of the hill. you were halfway there to the top, but already you were loving the views.

“knee bothering you, johnny?” kyle asked as he pulled out a rainproof sheet from his bag and started placing the food out in the tupperware boxes.

“something like that,” he said.

you laughed when you saw johnny pull out a bottle of wine from his.

“just tryin’ tae make use of all the wine we bought on holiday, hen,” he snickered.

you sat down and helped them spread the food out while your husband paced from the ledge to the path and then to the blanket, only to start again.

“have a seat elliot,” you said encouragingly, patting the space you’d left purposely empty next to you.

he slumped down with a huff and kyle side-eyed him.

“how was your night? sleep well?”

“hope the room wasnae too small,” johnny added, biting into a cheese cracker as he looked to your husband.

you felt your stomach drop and your face heat up. “no, not at all—“

“i think i’m just used to the finer things,” elliot said, picking up one of the packed travel cups pointedly and pouring himself some wine.

“we slept fine,” you said firmly as you frowned at elliot. “it’s perfect.”

“ah, we’re just joking around, hen, no need to fash,” johnny teased. “you pack yer paints?”

“shit.” your face dropped as you looked at him. “i completely forgot when i was packing, i was too excited.”

johnny grinned. “you can borrow mine, it’s alright.”

“if they’re not dried up that is,” kyle said with a laugh. “i’ve not seen you touch paints in years, johnny.”

“they’re water paints, gaz, they’re meant tae be dry,” johnny said with a roll of his eyes. he looked to you and covered the side of his mouth. “yer a breath o’fresh air, ye have no idea. i love him but he doesnae have the eye fer it, you know?”

“im right bloody here,” kyle said exasperatedly, making you laugh.

“fucking hell,” your husband muttered under his breath before standing. “i think i’m gonna go ahead and have a look at the trail, get a lay of the land. i’ll turn around in ten and meet you back here.”

“are you sure?” you asked at the same time johnny warned him, “don’t go off the path.”

“why not?” elliot asked, taking it as a challenge despite johnny’s grave tone.

“go straight so you don’t get lost,” johnny repeated seriously. “it’s a tricky place, these woods. one wrong turn and you’ll ne’er be found.”

elliot stayed silent for a moment, left off kilter by johnny’s intense eyes, before laughing, waving him of with a scoff. “sure thing, johnny.”

you watch your husband walk off with an uneasy feeling before kyle and johnny’s easy going nature distracted you once more.

before you knew it it’d been twenty minutes, but you were too busy talking about how they’d ended up moving out so far away from their original shared home, that you hadn’t noticed elliot wasn’t back yet.

“it’s great here, but it can feel… lonely sometimes, just the two of us,” johnny admitted as he looked to kyle. the handsome man nodded and knocked their knees together.

“i know how that feels,” you said, three cups of wine having loosened your lips.

“yeah?” kyle asked softly, tilting his head to meet your downcast eyes.

you opened and closed your mouth a few times before taking a deep breath.

“i want a baby,” you said weakly, sadly. you were quiet as though hoping not to be overheard. “elliot doesn’t think it’s the right time, but im starting to doubt it’d ever be the right time if it were up to him.”

you blink at the anger that had seeped into your last words and gasped as you realised that you’d actually finally said them out loud. not even your therapist had gotten you to admit this.

“oh god, please forget i said that,” you begged them suddenly, wide eyed and pleading. “please. don’t say anything to elliot about it. i— i think i’ve just drank a little too much,” you tried to excuse yourself.

“hey, it’s ok,” johnny said with a concerned frown.

“i didn’t mean it,” you rushed out.

kyle moved to elliot’s previous spot and pulled you in for a warm hug, calming you down.

“it’s normal to want things and to be disappointed when the person that promised you them can’t deliver,” he whispered. you sniffled and slowly wrapped your arms back around him with a nod, tears building behind yojr closed eyelids. you slumped into his hold further when johnny’s large hand rubbed soothingly across your back below kyle’s arms.

it was nice. simply being between them and being comforted by them was nice.

you leaned back and wiped at your eyes with a sniffly laugh.

“thank you, guys, i— thank you.”

gaz squeezed your shoulder for a moment before finally letting you go.

you felt fidgety, needing to do something with your hands and to keep them from staring at your red rimmed eyed, so you reached for a handful of grapes when it suddenly occurred to you that elliot wasn’t back. you looked at your watch and swore.

“elliot’s not here yet, shit what if he’s lost?”

“he won’t be,” johnny reassured you, standing alongside you and grabbing your shoulders. “he’s an experienced hiker, right? he probably lost track a’time like we did.”

“let’s get this packed away and we’ll go catch up to him,” kyle suggested. you nodded, easily calmed once given easy orders to occupy your busy mind

---

“elliot?” you called out as you walked, johnny and kyle on either side of you, looking out into the trees in case he’d gone off track. “you there? elliot?”

“stop shouting, christ, i’m here,” elliot complained further up the trail. he was slouched against a tree. “took you all long enough.”

“oh my god, what happened,” you said as you crouched next to him, looking at the sorry swollen state of his ankle.

“twisted it looks like, worst-case it could be a sprain,” kyle said from over your shoulder. “should be fine, we can get home with him leaning on our shoulders, right, soap?”

johnny tutted in disappointment as he stared down the path instead of at your injured husband.

“the waterfall was only five minutes away as well,” johnny said to no one in particular. he crouched next to elliot. “c’mon then, let’s get you back.”

your husband bristled. he looked longingly down the trail johnny had gestured to just a moment before.

“we should still go, i’ll be fine,” he insisted. “we should go to the waterfall.”

gaz raised his eyebrows incredulously as he helped elliot stand, but he stayed silent.

“you want to lean on me or johnny?” he asked.

“whoever gets us there quicker,” elliot said, face pinched.

kyle rolled his eyes and set off walking, leaving elliot to wince until he matched kyle’s stride. luckily the walk wasn’t long before the four of you cut off the trail and found yourselves stood at the bottom of the waterfall, a light mist of water splashing at your bare skin from where you stood.

“holy shit.”

johnny nudged your shoulders together with a laugh.

“impressive, right?”

“to say the least,” you huffed.

kyle had helped elliot sit down by the edge of the plunge pool with his leg stretched out as you’d taken in the view with johnny, though you soon took a seat next to elliot when you noticed he was situated as comfortable as could be. you pulled off your shoes and socks and shuffled forwards a little to dip your feet in the water, kicking lightly and grinning even with how the cold bit at your toes.

elliot stayed stern faced even as he looked at the impressive feature, but kyle and johnny took no notice.

they started to undress, throwing their clothes down haphazardly by their bags.

“you coming in?” kyle asked you cheekily.

“we go in every time we’re here, tradition now,” johnny explained once he was stood in his underwear.

“i don’t have my swimsuit,” you said hesitantly.

“jus’ go in yer kegs like us,” johnny dismissed the worry.

“it’s probably for the best she’s said no,” elliot said meanly, one eyebrow raised as he looked over your relaxed form, your stomach rolls obvious and plush under the afternoon sun and your thighs spread thick where they pressed against the edge of the natural pool. you suddenly felt the need to layer up in your baggiest clothes. “she’s happy enough sat with me. isn’t that right, darling?”

you felt embarrassment, hot and sharp, flood from your face to your toes as you stared at him. this was your husband. a man that took delight in belittling you.

“oi,” johnny warned from where he stood waist deep in the water.

you ignored them both and stood suddenly, shucking off your clothes with tight angry movements, a smile only eventually pulling at your lips when kyle wolf whistled playfully.

johnny joined in jeering and clapped as you stepped carefully closer to the edge before jumping in. once you resurfaced, you resolutely faced away from the scowl you knew would be on your husband’s face. you were past caring.

the cold of the water had you sucking in thinner breaths until you acclimatised, and you were grateful it was deep enough to brush your collarbones as you could tell your nipples were babbling from the chill.

“be careful, love, there are fish in here,” gaz said as he drifted closer to your front. his smile was bordering on mischievous but it eased your slight reservations of being in the water. “but don’t worry they don’t bite.”

you felt a sudden pinch on your buttcheek and you squealed before johnny’s laugh and warm chest at your back registered. you flushed hot and dug your elbow back into his ribs as they laughed, both barely giving you space to float alone.

they guided you closer to the waterfall with easy going smiles and it wasn’t until you felt their capable hands on your hips and tummy to keep you from being dragged under as you held your hands under the heavy pour that you looked back guiltily at your husband. you pushed off and away from them but continued to swim a little while longer until elliot kicked up a fuss, bored.

“are we done now? it’s getting dark, we should be heading back,” he spoke up when it looked like the three of you weren’t tiring any time soon. “and then there’s dinner to think of.”

“you offering to cook, elliot?” kyle said as he climbed out of the water.

elliot scoffed. “not likely. with the ankle and all,” he said patronisingly.

gaz smiled thinly. “of course.”

the three of you dried off as best you could before dressing and heading back to the farmhouse with elliot leant between johnny and kyle.

even as your clothes chafed against your damp skin, you couldn’t bring yourself to regret swimming. thought the cold was biting even through your coat, and a warm shower was calling for you back at the farmhouse.

---

once you were back you showered quickly and then ran a bath for elliot. you helped ease him in so he didn’t slip and further injure himself.

“put on a real fucking show today,” he grumbled once he was laid back. you cupped the water over his hair carefully.

“what do you mean?” you grabbed the shampoo and began lathering it.

“don’t play dumb,” he hissed. “acting like that, like a whore, with them. again.”

“i wasn’t—“

“you’re a fucking hypocrite,” he said harshly. “punishing me for one little mistake but now you get to act like this with other men?”

you let your hands hang over the edge of the tub in shock. “you cheated on me. more than once, elliot. that’s not a little mistake.”

“we’re past this,” he said tiredly with a shake of his head, rubbing his hand over his forehead to wipe away the dripping shampoo.

“then why did you bring it up?”

he turned to look at you, disgust clear on his face.

“you’re ugly when you get like this,” he said simply. “leave me to it, i’ll call you in when i need a hand getting out.”

your lip trembled as you stood and went back to your room. as you closed the door behind you, you heard elliot mutter to himself, “he’s an absolute idiot thinking this was only a twisted ankle, clearly not a doctor. the swelling has hardly gone down.”

you didn’t react, heading to the room next door with watery eyes. as you were tidying up your clothes, sniffling back angry and hurt tears, there was a knock on the doorframe. your turned to see johnny with a plate in his hand.

“thought i’d make things easier and bring his tea up fer him,” he said and put it on the bedside table. “do you want me to bring up yours too or will you be joining us?”

“oh, i’m not hungry, thank you johnny,” you said with a watery smile. the food looked delicious but elliot’s words had soured your appetite. “i think i’m just going to go to bed as soon as elliot’s alright.”

“ye sure?”

“mhm.” you nodded.

johnny nodded, said a soft, “let me know if ye change your mind.” he pulled out a pack of pain tablets from his pocket with a little wave and dropped them on the bed and then left.

you waited for elliot’s shout before you went to help him out of the bath and back through to your room. you left him to dry and dress himself and once he was sat on the bed with his food, you turned your back to him and willed yourself to fall asleep quickly.

part two

Jack threw the covers off in an instant. He didn't need to check the app twice to know how fast a six year old’s blood sugar could plummet when it was crashing in the middle of the night.

He grabbed a juice box from the bottom shelf of the fridge, tearing the plastic wrap off the straw as he hurried down the hallway to the bedroom at the end of the hall.

Under a pile of cartoon blankets, a tiny mess of brown curly hair was sleeping.

"Hey, sweet girl," Jack murmured. He knelt by the side of the bed and set the juice on the nightstand, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. "Wake up for Daddy, please?"

She let out a tiny groan, pulling the blanket higher. When he gently pulled it back, he could feel the faint dampness on her forehead. She was clammy, her skin pale, and her little breaths were coming a bit too fast.

"Come on, sweetheart, open your eyes for me," Jack coaxed, slipping his arm under her back to help her sit up.

She felt like a ragdoll, her head rolling heavily against his shoulder. Her eyes fluttered open, glazed with heavy sleep and low-sugar fog. "Daddy..." she mumbled. "'leepy."

"I know you are, baby. I know " Jack said. He grabbed the juice box, guiding the straw to her lips. "I need you to take some big sips of this, okay? Just a few big sips, and then you can go right back to sleep."

She shook her head weakly, whining and trying to turn her face into his chest to hide from the straw. "No. 'leepy."

"I know, I know, but you have to," Jack insisted gently but firmly. He kept his arm wrapped securely around her waist, holding her upright against him while his other hand held the juice. "Just a little bit, sweetheart. For Daddy. Right now."

He nudged the straw against her lips again. Feeling the urgency in his voice, she finally relented, taking a few small sips.

But the fog of hypoglycemia combined with the sheer exhaustion of being woken up at one in the morning was too much for a six year old to handle.

As she swallowed the third sip, a huge tear spilled over her lashes, followed by a quiet sob.

"Don't want to," she cried softly, her little shoulders shaking as she buried her face into his neck, her hands clutching at his t-shirt.

The sound of her crying always tore him. Hearing his own daughter sob because her body was failing her in the middle of the night broke through every piece of armor he had.

He wrapped both arms around her, pulling her tightly against his chest, rocking her back and forth in the quiet room. He pressed a warm kiss into her hair, his hand smoothing down her back.

"I've got you," he whispered. "I know it's hard, baby. I know you're tired but you're being so brave. I need you to be strong for just one more minute, okay? Just finish the juice so your tummy feels better."

He pulled back just enough to look at her, wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. He offered the straw again.

Sniffling and hiccuping, she looked at him with watery eyes. She nodded miserably, wrapped her small hands over his big ones around the juice box, and sucked down the rest of it until the straw rattled against the bottom.

"Good girl," Jack breathed, a wave of relief washing over him. "That's it. All done."

Instead of laying her back down against the pillows, Jack couldn't bring himself to let go just yet. Hearing her cry had left his own chest feeling thight.

He shifted his weight on the edge of the mattress and gently pulled her completely into his chest.

She didn't protest, too exhausted to do anything but collapse against him. She tucked her head right beneath his chin, her small face burying into the crook of his neck, while her little arms wrapped weakly around his torso. Jack bundled the cartoon blanket tightly around her small frame, sealing out the chill of the night, and held her close against his chest.

"I've got you," he murmured again against her hair. "Daddy’s got you."

He could feel the slight tremor in her small body from the low sugar, but as the juice began to hit her system, her breathing gradually started to slow down, losing its frantic edge.

Every few minutes, Jack glanced down at his phone screen resting on the nightstand. The app glowed in the dark, showing the red line finally starting to curve upward.

72 mg/dL.

He let out a long breath he felt like he’d been holding since the alarm first woke him.

She was fast asleep now, the tears entirely forgotten. Jack closed his eyes, resting his cheek against the top of her head. He knew he’d be exhausted when his day shift started in a few hours, but right now, there was nowhere else in the world he was going to be.

⋆｡˚☤🩺✧˖°.｡⋆💉

Even if only for an hour.

And yet the walk to the café becomes something else entirely, a slow, reluctant unspooling. A pilgrimage through memory. 

You pass the entrance of Wayne Enterprises.

Your first job. Well, your first real job. 

You can still remember how your family celebrated it - laughter crowding around the dinner table, pride bright and effusive in every smile as they toasted to your new position, to your polished shoes and pressed blouse and little desk on the first floor - a desk assistant. Nothing glamorous, perhaps, but it had felt monumental then, luminous in its own modest way.

The work itself had been simple enough. Greet the guests. Direct the clients. Make the calls. Welcome employees with a practiced smile that eventually became second nature. There was a rhythm to it - neat, predictable, almost comforting.

And sometimes, if fortune happened to glance your way, you would catch sight of a Wayne.

Bruce Wayne himself would occasionally stride through those gleaming doors - immaculate, austere, every line of him composed with effortless grace. A dark trench coat, exquisitely tailored, draped across his frame; his hair slicked neatly back, save for the one obstinate strand that always seemed to slip loose and brush against his sunglasses. He never once looked your way. Not truly. But that had hardly surprised you. He was a busy man - a man burdened with the weight of an empire - and you were only a desk assistant stationed at the periphery of it all.

Sometimes, trailing in his wake, came the intern - Tim Drake, who was whispered about in hushed voices, the boy some claimed would one day inherit Wayne Enterprises in more than name alone. He wore tailored suits, though nothing could soften the stark exhaustion etched beneath his eyes. Dark circles - cavernous enough to swallow your student debt whole - bruised the skin there. Some days, he would spare you a glance, fleeting and unreadable, before vanishing deeper into the building’s polished belly.

There were others, certainly.

But Dick Grayson was the most frequent - the one who slipped so effortlessly into the routine of your days that you hardly noticed how essential he had become until he was everywhere.

Most times, it was only a small thing - a breezy wave tossed your way as he passed by with his gym bag slung over one broad shoulder, charming as ever. You supposed being a Wayne came with certain polished little privileges, and access to the company gym was likely one of them. But sometimes he would stop. And he would linger at your desk with that bright, unguarded warmth of his and ask about the weather, about your shift, about whether you were doing alright - questions so ordinary, so harmless, and yet they always seemed to land with a peculiar softness, as though he were smoothing a hand over parts of you no one else thought to notice.

Afterward, your coworkers would swarm you in a chorus of exasperated groans and theatrical pleading, begging to trade shifts in the hopes that he might stop by for them, too. And on the rare occasions you relented, they would return the next morning with exaggerated pouts and wounded pride, complaining that he never visited the front desk even once.

As if some invisible thread had always guided him there. 

What a foolish, lovely thing first love is - the bright-eyed tenderness, all those golden little habits you never think to guard against. It teaches your heart to bloom before it teaches it how to wither.

The sight of a familiar restaurant a block from Wayne Enterprises pulls your thoughts away.

Your first date with Dick. Or more accurately, the first night that became yours.

By some strange, almost laughable twist of fate, both of your original dates had abandoned you, leaving the pair of you equally stranded beneath the low amber glow of the restaurant lights, nursing the same sharp sting of embarrassment. Dick, with that boyish ease that made everything feel lighter than it was, had invited you to sit beside him at the bar. You remember the stem of your wine glass cool between your fingers, the faint tannic bite of it on your tongue, the way he sipped his IPA with a half-smile curling at his mouth. You had laughed together then - at the absurdity of it, the strange improbability of finding each other in the wreckage of such an evening.

It had felt like the beginning of something tender. The kind of love that only exists before the world teaches it how to bruise.

And after that, the restaurant became yours.

A beloved little sanctuary for anniversaries and celebrations, for small victories and sweeter excuses to sit across from one another and pretend the rest of the world had fallen away. It held the memory of your first true introduction to the Waynes, your hand resting timidly atop Dick’s broad, calloused one while the ring on your finger glimmered beneath the low, honeyed light. It held the breathless wonder of the engagement, the soft delirium of wedding bells, the sacred, shimmering certainty that this - this great and impossible love - would be yours for the rest of your life.

That’s the cruelest part of grief, perhaps. How it doesn’t simply take from the wounded. It lingers like salt in a wound.

Even the flowers arranged outside the café beside Stephanie - pale, delicate, wind-tossed things - look painfully, almost cruelly, like your wedding bouquet.

Maybe it’s only nostalgia.

Maybe grief has made you porous, tender to every resemblance, to every lovely thing that dares to survive him.

Or maybe first love never really leaves the body. Maybe it settles deep in the marrow, sweet and ruinous, and when it’s gone, it leaves behind an ache that no time can quite smooth.

Whatever the reason, all you can manage is a small, brittle smile in answer to Stephanie’s bright, beaming one.

“You look well!”

She rises at once, pulling you into a bright, breathless hug and pressing a quick kiss to your cheek. For a fleeting, shameful moment, you find yourself wishing the family had not been so determined to keep you close. And yet, perhaps that is grief’s cruel little trick - how it doesn’t merely devour the one who carries it most heavily, but sinks its teeth into everyone standing near the wounded animal.

You manage a faint pat against her back before easing into the chair across from her. Your usual order is already waiting at the table.

And all you can do is stare at it.

The glass sits there like a relic from another life, something once ordinary now rendered strangely untouchable. You can hear the ice in Stephanie’s drink clinking softly as it surrenders to the afternoon sun, each delicate sound far too loud in the fragile hush between you.

“What have you been up to?”

You force the words out at last, along with a wavering smile that feels unconvincing even to you. The sort of smile you know Stephanie will see through instantly. Sure enough, her expression softens. Her hand drifts over yours, one finger absently tracing the place where your wedding ring used to rest.

Now there is only the pale band of a tan line - a ghost of metal, a memory etched into your skin where he once belonged.

“Don’t,” she murmurs. “No need for pleasantries. Have you given my offer any more thought? B keeps asking. He… he’s having a hard time with everything. Just like you are…”

“I’m fine in the apartment,” you cut in, too quickly and a tad too sharp.

There is no world in which you would stay at the manor. No world in which you could bear to sleep in that cavernous house with the cemetery visible just beyond the window, laid out in perfect, dreadful view of where your bedroom would be. As though grief itself might stand outside each night and watch you try to rest.

There are a thousand reasons you could never stay with his family. Even if they are kind and accommodating. Perhaps too accommodating. Their grief already hangs so heavily in the air, woven into the very walls, and you cannot bear the thought of becoming one more thing for them to carry.

“You don’t seem fine in the apartment,” Stephanie counters gently.

She props her head against her palm, elbow braced on the table, while the fingers of her other hand lazily stir the straw through her drink. You can only watch the slow spiral of milk dissolving into coffee - pale ribbons folding into darkness.

It reminds you, horribly, of Jason.

A week or two after the funeral, he had tried to kiss you. Grief-stricken, reckless Jason, with sorrow and something uglier flickering in his eyes. As though, being the next oldest, it might somehow fall to him to take care of you. As though love were a vacancy to be filled. You hadn’t seen him since. Nor wanted to.

“I might go stay with my parents for a while,” you say at last, dragging your gaze away from the drink and forcing yourself to meet Stephanie’s eyes. “You know… get out of Gotham.”

The words feel thin, insufficient. Fragile little things dressed up as a plan.

And still, as you look at her, the question rises hot and bitter in your chest. She lost a brother. So how is she sitting there in all that easy radiance? How is she still warm, still recognizably herself? How is the family still moving, hell, still breathing as though the world didn’t split cleanly in two?

How is anything still standing when yours so clearly collapsed?

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

It wasn’t until a few weeks later - on a bleak, rain-swept afternoon - that you found yourself stopping by the manor.

Or, more truthfully, the cemetery.

You had chosen a day when you knew the house would be mostly empty, when the halls would be spared their usual hum of life and mourning alike. You didn’t want an audience for this. You didn’t want pitying looks or hushed voices or anyone trying to piece you back together when you came apart. So you sat there alone in the downpour, before Dick Grayson’s grave, while your sobs cracked loose and spilled through the rain in ragged, broken waves.

What a cruel, impossible thing grief is - to feel your heart shatter into a million splintered pieces, and the only person you want to gather them up, to hold them steady in his warm and faithful hands, is nowhere to be found except six feet beneath the soaked, unforgiving earth.

Then you felt a hand moving slowly down your back.

Not Dick’s, despite the wild, treacherous leap of hope your heart made. No, these fingers were more slender, though no less calloused and familiar with hardship.

Cassandra.

“Sorry,” you sniffled, dragging a mud-streaked hand across your face in a futile attempt to wipe away the tears. Before you could say anything more, she folded herself around you in a quiet, wordless embrace, holding you close without a sound. “Didn’t think anyone was home.”

For a few long moments, the two of you remained there in silence, the rain cascading in silver sheets around you, drumming softly against stone and soil and the bowed slope of your shoulders. At last, Cassandra spoke.

“Let’s get you inside.”

Inside, however, did not mean what you had expected.

You had thought perhaps a dry towel. A cup of tea. A moment to sit in silence somewhere out of the cold. You had not anticipated the bath - though Cassandra insisted upon it with a quiet, immovable resolve that made refusal feel futile. Cass had never been someone you could easily deny. She noticed too much. Read too much. Every tremor and shiver that worked through your body, even the faint reddening of your nose and cheeks from the cold, all of it was catalogued in that perceptive gaze of hers as she sat on the bathroom floor waiting for the water to reach the right temperature.

“I can do that myself, Cass,” you managed at last, huddled on the edge of the room with a white towel draped over your shoulders, your clothes stiff and heavy with rainwater, mud caked thick along the hem. Cassandra only pointed toward the hamper.

She had never been much of a talker. She had always preferred to let actions speak in place of words, as though language itself were something too narrow for all the things she meant.

“Don’t want to leave you,” she said finally. “Steph says she’s worried. I am too.”

That was all.

And yet it was enough to make something uneasy twist inside you. You wondered - not for the first time - whether the family thought you were suicidal. You could not entirely blame them if they did. Grief had hollowed you out so thoroughly that perhaps, from the outside, it looked less like living and more like lingering.

So, too tired to argue, you eased yourself into the warm, bubbling water. Cassandra, thankfully, turned her back as you undressed, and for one selfish moment, you wished she would leave you alone altogether, let you sink into the heat and silence and disappear into your own solitude.

But she didn’t leave.

Instead, she turned only to retrieve a washcloth, kneeling beside the tub so she could gently begin wiping the mud from your skin with careful hands. She didn't even nudge your hands away, leaving your modesty intact as though it, too, is something fragile she refuses to disturb. You stared, rather helplessly, at the ridiculous little rubber duck she had dropped into the bath as well, its bright yellow body bobbing obscenely cheerful among the foam.

“Do you hate us?” she asked at last.

The question struck you so strangely that, for a moment, you thought you had heard her wrong. Almost will you instead of do you. But that made no sense. It was only your mind again - loose, frayed, and wandering too far into its own wounded corners.

Perhaps you had been alone with your thoughts for far too long.

Did you hate them?

You remember the phone call. Remember how the words seemed to splinter the world on impact. Nightwing. Dick Grayson. Found dead after a mission. You had been inconsolable for hours, grief turning you feral, incoherent, unbearable in your anguish. You remember lashing out at Bruce through broken sobs, telling him it was his fault - his fault for letting Dick lead such a reckless, impossible mission, his fault for allowing heroism to devour him whole.

Bruce had never argued back.

He had only gathered you into his arms with that grave, weathered gentleness of his, pressing a kiss to your forehead the way a father might soothe a child undone by nightmare, and let you collapse against him in shuddering pieces.

Perhaps part of you did hate them.

Or, at the very least, hated what they were. Hated the masks. The missions. The city that always demanded blood from the people foolish enough to love it. Hated the merciless shape of heroism and the way it never seemed content until it had taken everything.

Your hands drift through the foam, listless and pale, while Cassandra works quietly at your back. You cannot even remember the last time you properly bathed. Maybe this was Cass’s way of telling you that you reeked of grief, that sorrow had become its own clinging, invisible residue.

Eventually, she nudges one of your arms away from where it had been folded protectively across your chest so she can clean there too. You only comply because the silence has become too heavy, too tender to resist. The communications device somewhere in the house crackles faintly through the open doorway, voices blurring together into background static.

You try not to notice how her hands linger.

Then, through the quiet hiss of the comms, one word cuts clean through you.

“Nightwing…”

Your heart lurches so violently it nearly hurts.

“Cass,” you say softly, too softly, your voice thin with sudden panic, “is someone going out as Grayson?”

Your pulse pounds frantically beneath your ribs, and you are almost certain she can sense it, can read it in the sharp change of your breathing, in the way your whole body seems to still around the question. Yet she does not meet your eyes.

“You never answered my question,” she says instead, her voice flat, controlled, emptied of anything too revealing. Then her dark gaze finally lifts to yours. “Will you hate us?”

And there it is.

Not do you hate us.

Will you hate us.

You hadn't misheard her at all.

Your throat tightens.

“I suppose without a Nightwing, the city will go rampant,” you murmur, your voice unsteady, frail around the edges. “Is it Tim?”

Is it Jason?

You don't say that one aloud. The thought alone feels too sharp to touch.

“No,” Cassandra replies. “Wayne Tech has been working on something.”

She sets the towel aside and leans against the base of the tub, one finger idly nudging the ridiculous rubber duck through the thinning foam. And all you can do is stare into its stupid, vacant little eyes, as though they might somehow make any of this less monstrous.

“What do you mean?” Your voice breaks cleanly down the middle.

Wayne Tech had developed something?

“Bruce wants you to take care of it” she says, and for the first time, her voice softens, gentled by something almost apologetic. “So you can train it.”

The word hangs there between you, cold and metallic.

It.

Not him.

Not Dick.

Not Bruce's son.

Not their Brother.

Just it.

“You can sit here for as long as you want,” Cass adds quietly.

Then she rises to her feet at last, though not before lingering a beat too long herself, as though indulging some private reluctance before finally stepping out of the bathroom.

You remain there until the water turns cool around your skin, until the bubbles fade and the warmth leaches away, leaving your fingers wrinkled and your thoughts too loud again.

When you finally stand, wrapping the towel more tightly around your damp body, you open the door to find Cassandra seated just outside, patient and silent, with a neatly folded pile of clean clothes resting beside her.

You suppose she never would have trusted you to be left entirely to your own devices.

Quietly, you take the clothes from her hands and slip them on. Then you sit still, pliant and exhausted, while she dries your hair with slow, careful motions. The towel moves gently through the damp strands, each pass almost maddeningly tender, as though she fears you might come apart again if handled too roughly.

“What is it?” you finally force yourself to ask.

Your voice comes out hoarse, fragile at the edges, worn thin by crying and too many unspoken thoughts.

“Bruce is dropping it off at your house,” Cass says. Then, after the smallest pause, “You could stay here…”

For a moment, you almost ask why.

But the look in her eyes stops you. There is grief there, too - quieter than yours, more tightly leashed, but no less raw for its silence. And suddenly you understand, or at least begin to. You were the closest thing left to Dick, and perhaps that was why they all kept circling back to you, hands outstretched, unwilling to let you drift too far from their reach.

“And you want me to train it?” you ask.

The words leave your mouth too softly, nearly swallowed by the hush of the steam-curled bathroom. Cassandra only tosses the damp towel into the hamper, and your eyes follow each of her methodical movements as though they might somehow prepare you for whatever comes next.

“It’s a robot,” she says bluntly.

Then, perhaps sensing how brutal that sounds, she adds, “More human-like. It has all of Dick’s attributes, but it’s lacking…”

“The humanity,” you finish for her.

The words taste bitter. Hollow. Wrong.

A robot.

A machine shaped in the outline of your husband. A mimicry stitched together from scraps of his mannerisms, his voice, his habits - every beloved detail polished into something artificial and uncanny. Something meant, perhaps, to comfort.

Yet it only feels like cruelty wearing his uniform.

Could they not have let you grieve in peace?

Could they not have allowed him to remain sacred in death, instead of trying to carve his memory into something that might stand where he once had and never once truly be him?

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

A week with the robot, and still you have made no progress.

Bruce calls to ask about each day, his voice low and careful through the phone, always suggesting - with that same grave gentleness of his -that perhaps it would be better if you came back to the manor. Work as a team to develop Nightwing. As though being swallowed by the family’s watchful grief would make your own any lighter to bear.

Tim and Steph stop by, too, arriving with cartons of takeout and little scraps of normalcy, pretending this arrangement is not grotesque. They tend to engage with the thing sitting in your living room, watching you with relentless, unwavering, crystal blue eyes. Steph chatters. Tim pokes and prods at its responses with tired fascination. As if they have their brother again. And through it all, the robot’s attention never strays far from you.

It watches you the way Dick once did - like you are the center of the room without ever having asked to be.

The moment they leave, you give the same command you always do.

“Power down.”

It obeys.

Its body stills all at once, the brightness draining from its face so abruptly that it feels less like shutting off a machine and more like killing something small and pleading with your own hands. You drape a sheet over it afterward, unable to stomach the sight of him sitting there in the stale silence of your apartment until Bruce or one of the others calls it back for another mission.

It behaves as Dick always had around family. That is the most unbearable part. It jokes at the right moments. Smiles with the same dazzling, boyish warmth. Tilts its head when it listens. Speaks in that easy, honeyed cadence that once made even the dullest parts of your day feel gilded.

It's so nearly him that it curdles into horror.

Because something is missing. Not obvious at first. Not in the voice, nor in the smile, not even in the loose-limbed grace of its movements. But in the spaces beneath all of it, where Dick had once been so vividly, achingly alive. The soul of him. The humanity. The soft, foolish, beautiful heart that made all those borrowed pieces belong to a person rather than a performance.

You cannot make yourself call it your husband.

You can't.

So the days slip by in a strange, brittle routine until one gray afternoon you return from the grocery store with aching arms and rain-damp hair, only to find it standing in the middle of your apartment in the Nightwing suit.

Not sitting like usual.

Standing.

Its gloved fingers drift over your things with quiet familiarity, brushing the spines of books, the edge of the kitchen counter, the framed photographs you have not yet found the strength to put away. It turns at the sound of the door, and then it smiles.

That smile.

Bright. Easy. Ruinous.

“You’re home.”

Its voice is warm. Softened at the edges with something tender, almost relieved.

And it sounds so much like Dick that your heart betrays you for a fractured second.

It sounds like those evenings when he would meet you at the door before you’d even set your keys down, all bright affection, wrapping you into his arms as though he had been starved of you all day. It sounds like the laugh against your cheek, the press of his mouth to your neck, the playful little murmur of there you are, pretty, thought I might have to come looking for you before threatening to gobble you whole just for existing so sweetly in his life.

The memory rushes through you so vividly that it almost knocks the life out of you.

But the robot only stands there, smiling in the wreckage of it.

Still. Expectant.

And your stomach drops.

“Power down,” you say, your voice scarcely more than a whisper, dread making it thin and fragile.

It doesn't obey.

The silence that follows feels monstrous.

For one suspended moment, neither of you move. Then it steps toward you.

Not in the cold, mechanical way you had half-feared, but with a hesitant sort of softness that makes your skin prickle all the same. Almost sheepish. Yet, careful. Like Dick, after one of your more ridiculous arguments, when he would linger in the doorway at bedtime with a guilty smile and ask whether he could finally come back to bed or if you meant it about sentencing him to the couch.

That was the worst of it, perhaps. Not that it resembled him. But it knew how to resemble him in the smallest, most intimate ways. In all the gestures your body remembered before your mind could raise its guard.

“B removed that from my program,” it says quietly.

There is something in the android's tone that almost resembles embarrassment, maybe even hurt. A little rueful and fond, as though the memory of being powered down by you is some private domestic grievance rather than a necessary mercy.

“Said you were abusing it,” it adds, with the faintest ghost of humor brushing the words.

Then it - Dick - lifts a hand.

Slowly. Hesitantly.

The movement is careful enough to let you pull away, and somehow that makes the whole situation worse. The broad palm comes to cradle your face with unbearable gentleness, thumb resting lightly near your cheekbone as it tips your gaze back toward it's - Grayson's - blue eyes.

The touch is all wrong.

And far too right.

Warm from synthetic skin. Steady. Familiar in shape, pressure, and tenderness. Familiar enough that grief rises sharp and savage in your throat, because your body remembers this touch with humiliating loyalty. The familiar feeling of leaning into it. Kissing into his palm. Trusting the touch enough to close your eyes.

The machine's blue eyes search your face with a heartbreaking softness.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” it murmurs.

Not coldly. But softly, like something wounded inside of the android's gears.

Then, quieter still, with all the aching cadence of Dick trying to coax you out of hurt feelings, it says, “I know I’m not doing this right yet.”

Your heart nearly pauses in your chest.

Because that sounds like him too. Like Dick after long nights and difficult days, smiling tiredly as he gathered you close and admitted, in that openhearted way of his, that he didn't always know what he was doing, but he wanted so badly to love you well.

Only this thing is wearing stolen skin.

Its thumb strokes once beneath your eye.

“You’ve been so sad,” it says, voice dropping into something almost intimate, a pout adorning its lips. “I don’t like when you’re sad.”

And for one sickening instant, it does not sound like a machine at all.

It sounds like a husband coming home.

You don't move when it presses a kiss to your forehead, when it wipes away your tears with calloused, familiar hands.

And that's what makes it all unbearable.

Because monsters would be so much easier to survive if they didn't know how to sound like him.

His eyes darted open, watering as he coughed. He turned over, wincing at the way his face burned just from the frown that migrated to it, littered with small scrapes. The crown of his head felt hot, his fingers shakily reaching up to touch it.

Sirius blanched at the twenty fingers that hovered from his right palm. He blinked hard. Five fingers. Two of them were slick with crimson blood. He touched his head again and hissed at the sharp sting. He looked back at his hand. More blood.

He must have smacked his head when the blast had gone off. 

Someone yelled again. The ringing in his ears was fading as he clambered to his feet, disorientated and woozy. His knees almost buckled. 

The building to his left was on fire, flames licking at the windows and walls, engulfing the scattered bodies of walkers who had been too close when the bomb had gone off.

He could hardly remember what the original plan had been—he just remembered hesitating, their last homemade explosive in his hand, and he had seen you and James nearly swallowed by the jaws of a dozen walkers—

He realised what the shouting was. 

“Y/N?” Sirius screamed, his hand darting to the knife around his waist as he circled in his spot, trying to look for you. “James? Guys?”

“Sirius!” 

His heart thumped harder than usual and he was nearly sick when he heard James’ voice come from a few feet away. Sirius hurried over, gasping at the sight of James beneath rubble, but he did not hesitate for more than a second before he was reaching down to hoist the metal sheet that had fallen onto him. 

Sirius grunted with effort. James used the last of his upper body strength to help him shove it off of his legs. His face was completely scraped on the left side, bleeding, his lip cut and already slightly swollen. James coughed, welcoming the thick air.

“My glasses,” James panicked. “I’ve no idea where my glasses have gone.”

Sirius thought he saw the circular frames propped neatly on a few broken bricks, but his hand went through nothing when he attempted to grasp them. He swallowed, and chewed his lip desperately, and then he saw them—crushed.

“They’re fucked, Jamie,” Sirius breathed out and watched James’ face crumble. “I know, I know. We can—we just need to find Y/N, and we can get back to the house. Rem will know what to do. He’ll—he’ll know what to do.”

“Where’s Y/N?” James panicked.

“I don’t know,” Sirius exclaimed, and ran a hand through his messy hair, which was a big mistake because it only made his head throb worse, and his hand came back even bloodier. 

“That explosion’s gonna attract more walkers,” James warned. “We need to find her quickly.”

“Shit,” Sirius cursed.

As if on cue, there was a shriek from inside one of the buildings—one that undoubtedly belonged to a human rather than a monster, and one that Sirius and James had grown to, unfortunately, recognise as yours. 

“Come on,” Sirius urged, and grasped James’ wrist.

He yanked him towards what used to be a hotel. He thanked his sort-of lucky stars that James was athletic, so his coordination was still fine despite his lack of sight, and the curly-haired boy did not complain once, just as eager to get to their girlfriend who could be in trouble. 

The revolving door of the hotel had the body of a walker wedged half through it. The black blood trickling from its forehead was fresh as Sirius hurried over it. James almost tripped, but released Sirius’ hand as soon as he saw the blurry shapes in front of him. 

“James, get back,” Sirius urged, his voice wobbling. 

He hoped he wasn’t imagining the six walkers that you were trying to fight off. The floor was littered with five or so bodies, so it was a miracle you were still in one piece, surviving a small herd all by yourself.

You’d found refuge behind the reception desk, which the walkers were too stupid to climb over, their hands reaching out as they groaned and cried for you. You reached forward and plunged your blade through the skull of one, the soft crunch like a survival song as it dropped like bricks to the floor. 

“Sirius,” you called out anxiously. “Behind you.”

Sirius whirled around. He hadn’t even heard the walker snarling behind him, just the faint ringing in his ears from the explosion. He was quick to drive his knife into its temple. It staggered backwards and dropped lifelessly. The noise attracted the attention of a couple of walkers who broke away from the group around you to come to him instead.

Sirius adjusted the grip on his hand. “Yeah, come on,’ he beckoned them, and he hoped that you and James couldn’t hear the anxiety in his tone. “Right here.”

His arm collided with one of their chests, pushing it back so he could stab it through the eyes. Another tried to come for his shoulder at the same time, but Sirius was quickly spinning so the knife made an immediate home in a new head. 

By the time both were down, you had dealt with the few still around you. They lay slumped over and in front of the hotel desk. He breathed out in relief as you wasted not a second to climb over the desk, nearly slipping in blood, stumbling over to him. 

“James,” you gasped, and reached your other arm out, grabbing him by the trim of the plaid shirt he wore open. “Your glasses.”

“I’ll be fine,” James swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Sirius warned.

The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and he could feel himself growing woozy again. He felt panic grip him like icy fingers, plunging into his chest and ripping apart his ribcage like a chicken carcass. He swallowed back the sick and placed a hand to the top of his chest where his shirt didn’t cover his skin, wincing at the cool sweat.

Sirius couldn’t help but worry about you and James. If he fainted now, he’d be utterly useless. He still had to work out how you were both going to get James home in one piece—you didn’t need the responsibility of both of your boyfriends being in bad shape. You wouldn’t make it home alive.

Remus would never know what had happened to the three of you, and it would all be Sirius’ fault.

He noticed then that you were wincing at your arm as you pulled it away from James. He could feel the panic rising. 

“Baby,” Sirius murmured when he saw the look on your face—all twisted, like you’d bitten into a lemon. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“Not my arm,” you mumbled. “Just my shoulder. I think I whacked into something during the explosion. I haven’t been able to look—it’s on the back. I had to just–I ran to get those walkers away from you two, I thought you’d both been knocked out—I had to lure them away.”

James pressed a hard kiss to your hairline. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—that must’ve been so scary.”

“There was no other way,” you said, and both boys felt their hearts pang, because before all of this, you had been much more of a sensitive soul. The sight of blood used to make you feel sick, and now you drew it as if you were paid to. 

James suddenly froze. Sirius noticed, and his heart fell into his stomach, because the look of terror that flashed across his vision was almost uncanny. He had never seen James look that way before. All the colour drained from his face, and his lips trembled for a split second.

“James?” Sirius whispered.

“Baby, your shoulder—” James began, and his face crumpled. “Can I look?”

Your face melted quickly, the corners of your mouth dragging downwards as if somebody had strings attached. “What? We can look when we get back,” you said, and Sirius knew you were smart enough to read James’ expression, too.

His heart was pounding so hard he thought he might be sick. He grasped you, whirling you so your back was to him before you could protest. His breath hitched—the white shirt that you wore was slightly ripped by your shoulder blade, stained with fresh blood. 

You went rigid. James watched Sirius, though he couldn’t see his face in much detail. The three of you were deathly still for a few moments, a thick silence engulfing the room. Sirius’ fingers touched the edge of your tank top and pushed it to the side, just past your bra strap.

The air left his lungs. Sirius choked and dropped your shirt immediately, backing away with his bloody fingers to his face. He dropped his head into his hands and listened to the unbearable noise of absolute agony that shredded past James’ throat.

“No!” James pleaded, and then he heard you start to cry, too. “No, Sirius. It’s not—don’t tell me—”

Sirius crouched on the floor, breathing hard, rubbing the heels of his violently-shaking hands into his eyes. He gritted his teeth, suddenly so, so angry at the world for doing this to you. He was furious with himself for setting off that bomb, he was angrier that he suggested you come with him that morning.

It was so avoidable. It had all been so avoidable.

“Am I bit?” You panicked, and let James lift your shirt. 

He buried his forehead against the top of your head, and you only felt worse at the tears that fell onto your skin. Your heart was in your throat. Your shaky fingers tried to reach around to touch it, but you couldn’t reach.

“I didn’t even—I didn’t feel it,” you babbled, wiping your eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise," James whispered, and kissed your forehead. “Don’t—Don’t ever apologise, baby.”

He froze when he felt you pass him the handle of your most-used blade. He stared at your blurred features in horror.

“I don’t want to feel the change,” you pleaded. “I don’t want to feel any less human than I feel now, and I don’t want Remus to see. I don’t want the three of you to watch me go like that.”

Sirius was suddenly off the floor. He yanked the blade from James’ grip, nearly cutting himself. 

“Don’t,” he spat. “We are not putting you out of your misery. We’re taking you back to Remus.”

“I can’t!” You begged him. “I don’t want to say goodbye.” You cried harder. “I’m so stupid!”

“No,” Sirius’ voice broke, and he grabbed you into a hug so bone-crushing that you both felt the twinges of every bruise throughout your body. “You did everything right.”

James swallowed the lump in his throat. “You could have hours left. I—I met someone at the start, they said one of their people lasted three days before the change.”

Sirius closed his eyes. He wanted to tell James his words weren’t as useful as he thought they were, but he supposed it was also his own way of comforting himself. He gripped your arm, your eyes burning into one another, and he kissed your lips tenderly.

“Let’s get you home, yeah?” Sirius suggested scratchily, and interlaced your fingers together, James on his other side.

.✦ ݁˖

Your heart thumped painfully in your chest as the camp bled over the horizon. Dread wedged itself in every corner of your being, your hands trembling on James’ from where you and Sirius had moved so he was in the middle, guiding him through the river you had to cross.

Your shoulder ached, but you kept your mouth shut. There was no point in complaining, especially when it would only make the others feel worse. Besides, Sirius had a nasty cut on his head that you were concerned about, and you stressed about James’ glasses, and where everybody else might find him new ones once you were gone. All of the optician shops were in town centres, which were predominantly overrun by walkers.

Sirius led the three of you around the back of the camp, and through the wired fence. You bolted it back up behind you, a finality that felt like an ice bucket settling over you. It would be the last time you came back to camp, and the last time you locked up behind you. 

You could hear Pandora and her guitar. Barty’s voice was raised louder than the others, and there were even some cheers coming from the courtyard area of the nursery you’d managed to empty and fix up into a safe camp. You yearned to go and join them. 

James knew exactly what you were thinking, and he crushed you into his chest. You were always the first to go bounding over after a run, excited to come back to the found family you’d all created.

“Come on,” Sirius said solemnly.

You pushed open the door to one of the many rooms that had been renovated into a bedroom. Sure enough, Remus lay where he had been that morning, a book in one hand, his other massaging his knee absentmindedly. He lurched up when he heard the door open, his eyes softening before widening at the state of the three of you. 

“What the fuck happened?” Remus urged.

He went to Sirius first, who looked the worst off, tutting as he brushed a thumb over the dried blood that had dripped from his head, down his temple. He noted that you all had rimmed red eyes, and that you looked like ghosts of yourselves—a thick tension in the room that Remus would be oblivious to ignore.

“What happened?” He demanded, one hand still on Sirius as he looked at you and James. “Jamie, love, what happened to your glasses?”

“They broke,” James muttered sadly. 

Remus made a sympathetic sound, but then he seemed to notice the way you wouldn’t look at him, your eyes averted to the floor as if you were guilty of something. His thumb and forefinger found your chin and he tilted you upward, his hazel eyes burning into yours, so warm they felt like pools of honey. You almost couldn’t stand it. Your eyes brimmed with tears quickly.

“Oh, baby,” Remus gasped, and you choked as you were pressed to him immediately, his arms wrapping around you and practically swaddling your shaking form. You grasped onto his jumper for dear life, sobbing into the wool.

“What happened?” He demanded, his voice suddenly firm, and you might have flinched if you thought it was aimed at you. “For fuck’s sake, will somebody answer me!”

“I got bit!” 

Remus went rigid around you. For a moment, he couldn’t believe that the words had left your lips. His frozen arms hesitated to unravel from you, his mouth parting, and he searched your face for signs of some sort of sick prank, but all he saw was swollen lips and teary eyes. 

“What?” He whispered.

“It’s my fault,” Sirius sobbed, burying his face in his hands. “We were surrounded. I tried to distract them with an explosion—I—I broke James’ glasses and Y/N got bitten because of me. And now—and now I don’t know what to do—I don’t know what to do—I don’t know how to—how much I can tell you how fucking sorry I am.”

He clung to you, and your heart shattered even more. You felt sick from nerves as you peppered kisses to his wet face.

“It’s not your fault,” you promised him shakily. “It was going to happen to one of us at some point.”

“It didn’t have to!” Sirius exclaimed, almost pleadingly. “It didn’t have to!”

James placed a supportive hand on Sirius’ shoulder. “You’re scaring her, love.”

Sirius froze, and he planted his face into your side. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you tried to reassure him, and you met Remus’ eyes. “It’s alright.”

Tears streaked down his cheeks, dribbling silently, and your heart snapped because you weren’t sure you had ever seen Remus cry before, except when he’d hurt his knee at the start of the apocalypse.

“It doesn’t hurt,” you murmured, stroking the ends of Sirius’ hair in the way he always liked.  

Remus crumbled back onto the bed and watched you as you soothingly rubbed James’ arm, too. He had to look away, his gaze burning out of the window where he could see the sun beginning to set past the rising hills.

“We should do it before nightfall,” you said, and felt both James and Sirius go so rigid that they were like mannequins between your arms. Remus watched you carefully. “I’d appreciate it if maybe it was one of you, but I understand if it’s too much. I can do it myself, or ask one of the others.”

“No,” James whimpered.

You stroked his hair as if it would soothe him. It only made him feel worse. 

“Let me see it,” Remus said softly.

“You shouldn’t,” you murmured. “I don’t want you to see me any other way—I don’t want you to remember me and even think about those monsters in the same beat. I don’t want to be one of them—I don’t want to be associated with them at all.”

Remus swallowed painfully. “I don’t think I can do it.” Silence filled the room, because Remus was always the person who made the difficult decisions at camp. He kept a level head unlike Barty, who reacted out of anger first, and he had the ability to switch everything off to make the inhumane choice, which James did not.

He was sort of a leader to them all—and Remus had killed people before, when they had tried to take over an old camp they’d had. He’d killed Marlene when the bite had taken over her, and he’d killed his father at the start of all of this, too. He had no choice.

“Remus,” you tried.

“I can’t do that to you,” he warned testily, and you backed down.

You’d hate to spend your last moments arguing with him. 

“I want to go my own way,” you said. 

“Let me see it,” Remus declined. “Maybe we can—maybe it’s not too late. We might be able to cut it out.”

You scoffed and turned around so he could see the blood all over your white shirt. “Good luck hacking half my back from my body.”

You heard him make a strangled noise in the back of his throat. His knee audibly cracked as he shifted over to you. You felt one of his warm hands on your shoulder, his breath on top of your heard, and your heart stopped as he moved your shirt to the side.

The deathly silence made your body tremble. You saw the frown on Sirius’ face as he looked past you at Remus. 

“What is it, Rem?” Sirius asked. “Is it spreading already?”

Remus’ eyes narrowed, and then he pursed his lips and dropped down onto the bed. His hands were shaking so hard that he forced them to cover his kneecaps, just for something to hold. 

“Baby, when did the walker bite you?”

Your nerves flared. “I don’t—I don’t remember, particularly. It must have been right after the explosion. It shocked me, and I couldn’t hear anything for a moment, and then there were about twelve surrounding me at once. I thought maybe it got me then. I didn’t even feel it, I swear.”

“Why did you think you were bitten?”

Your brows knitted together at his tone, and you slowly blinked. “Because—well, because Sirius said I had a bite on me.”

Remus swallowed thickly, and glanced over at Sirius. “Sirius, why would you think this was a bite?”

“It’s not a bite?” Sirius beat you to the question, and you watched his face crumble as he jolted over to you, grasping your shirt and pulling it back. “No, no, no. Look. No. I saw—I saw the teeth marks.”

“There’s no teeth marks?” You gasped, and tried to touch it again, even though you knew you couldn’t reach. “Am I alright?”

“There’s no teeth marks,” Remus confirmed, and James choked, grabbing onto you and pulling you into him. 

Sirius ran a hand through his hair. “I saw it. I saw it, Remus! Do you—do you promise–?”

“Take a look!” Remus urged, a roughness behind his voice as he grabbed Sirius and redirected him to your back. “It’s round, but it’s nowhere near deep enough. That’s a scratch—look, it grazes up to her neck. It’s from glass or something.”

You weren’t sure if you felt relief or confusion. You sank to your knees with James, dizzy.

“Sirius, are you alright?” Remus asked carefully. 

“I hit my head,” Sirius breathed out, his eyes wide and trained on you, distant. “I am so fucking—I am so sorry, I was seeing things before, I was—I thought it was a bite—I swear it was a bite. I didn’t—I didn’t know!”

James made a soft noise. “Sirius, why didn’t you say you’d hurt yourself?”

“We had to find Y/N,” Sirius sniffled. “I was just worried about getting you both back safely—I didn’t think I could imagine something like that—something so fucking—Oh my god. I could have gotten you killed. If Remus hadn’t checked, you’d have been dead! For no reason! Because of me!”

You crawled towards him from where he had collapsed to the floor too, and you grabbed him into a tight hug, careful of his head, which, now that you looked at it, was worse than you had thought before. You let a few tears roll onto his neck, stroking his skin delicately.

“You’re hurt, sweetheart,” you whispered to him. “And your mind was playing tricks on you. God knows it’s happened to all of us at some point.”

“Never to that extent,” Sirius swallowed, his throat bobbing. “That was fucking dangerous.”

“It’s okay,” Remus murmured, and reached across to squeeze his hand. “Sirius, you brought both of them back, thinking Y/N had been bitten and James was blind. You put them first—everybody knows you would never have done anything like that on purpose. It’s not your fault.”

James nodded quickly, and kissed the side of Sirius’ head. “You saved our lives with that explosion. We’d have been walker food if you hadn’t done that.”

Sirius sniffled and nodded, leaning into your chest as he shut his eyes. His whole face was a mix of grey and red, so pale and raw it looked painful. 

“You can’t go to sleep, Sirius,” you murmured to him. “You probably have a rotten concussion. We need to get you to Pandora.”

“You too, for your shoulder,” Sirius said weakly.

“Yeah, I’ll come with you,” you squeezed his hand.

Once Pandora had checked the three of you out, you all went back to your room. Remus had selected himself for duty to wake Sirius up every couple of hours to check on his head, but Pandora had ordered him plenty of rest for the next week, and as if on command, Sirius had fallen asleep as soon as you got back to your room.

Remus kissed you and James, and then saddled up in the second bed beside Sirius. Your head rested on James’ chest, your fingers tracing patterns on his arm. 

“We’ll find you some glasses tomorrow,” you promised him. 

“You should rest, too, you know,” James murmured.

You only hummed back. 

There was a long silence before James spoke again. “Are you still awake?” He whispered.

“Yeah,” you murmured. “Struggling to fall asleep.” You’d never been so grateful to be alive in such a horrible world, but you’d also never been so scared of being bitten for real next time, or if it happened to one of the boys.

“I was terrified,” James whispered, stroking your face. “I was angry with myself that I couldn’t help you, and I…It’s stupid, but all I could think about was that if you were going to go, I couldn’t even see your face properly to give you a goodbye.”

You cooed, and felt your eyes burn. You squeezed him so tight you felt his bones.