GOD LOVES YOU

His words settled over Eve with such impossible gentleness that they nearly hurt. She had spent years teaching herself how to survive cruelty, how to properly anticipate disappointment before it arrived. She learned to shrink herself into someone who required as little from the world as humanly possible. There had been a strange comfort in expecting the worst because the worst, at the very least, was familiar. It had a shape and a weight, and it spoke a familiar language that only she seemed to understand. Kindness, however, remained foreign. It slipped through the cracks in the walls she had built around herself, quiet enough that she never really realized it had gotten inside until she found herself standing exactly where she was now, looking into Sunny's eyes while he dismantled beliefs she had mistaken for truth.

His thumb continued its slow path across her cheek, and she had begun to realize, with startling clarity, that no one has ever held her as though she were something precious. Never her father, whose hands had only taught her that love could only ever bruise and bleed. Never the congregation that had spoken about grace while watching suffering with unmoved faces. Hell, not even herself.

She had always believed she was something to be endured before she could ever be considered to be cherished. The realization struck with such force that she felt tears gather before she could stop them. Her vision shimmered just enough to blur the edges of his face, though she could still see the unwavering sincerity in his expression. It frightened her how desperately she wanted to believe him. Hope had always felt a bit too much like standing at the edge of a cliff with nothing beneath her but empty air. Yet Sunny spoke as though there had never been a drop at all, as though she had been standing on solid ground this entire time without realizing it. Eve laughed, though the sound was pitiful and uneven. Trembling around the edges as she lifted a hand to wipe impatiently beneath one eye.

"Gonna make me cry," she whispered, smiling through the tears she could no longer stand to hide. Another small laugh escaped her, softer this time, almost disbelieving. She looked down for a moment, just to gather herself. When Eve cries, she is reminded of a time in which her tears were a means for punishment. She closes her eyes and suddenly she is ten years old again, stood in front of a crowd of watchful eyes. Her eyes spring open, and she instinctively grabs at him. Panic is fleeting. It rises and falls and she loosens her grip. It comes and goes like that, and makes the ground beneath her feet feel unreal and untethered.

His hands remained warm against her waist, anchoring her to the present whenever her thoughts threatened to dip into old memories again. She found herself placing both of her hands over his. She held them gently, as though reassuring herself they would not disappear if she had blinked. When Eve looked back up at him, there was no mask left between them. "I don't reckon anybody's ever fought so hard to change the way I see myself."

Her gaze wandered over his face with quiet wonder, lingering on every expression that betrayed the enormous heart he'd tried so unsuccessfully to hide behind nervous laughter. She thought about all the little things she had come to adore without meaning to: the blush that colored his cheeks whenever he became embarrassed by his own honesty, the way his feelings always seemed too large to fit comfortably inside him, the gentleness that lived in every movement he mad despite the strength his body carried.

She stepped closer until there wasn't even the suggestion of distance left between them, her forehead finding his almost instinctively. She closed her eyes for only a heartbeat, breathing him in, letting herself exist inside the quiet that surrounded them. His heartbeat was close enough that she imagined she could feel its rhythm through the space separating their chests, steady where hers remained hopelessly frantic.

the heat of the afternoon sticks to their skins ; the dulled sound of the fan going off in the corner the only real stirrings in the living room, made up of the draped over bodies of girls who weren't built for the heat that was going on right now. in actuality, their AC was busted ; and both of them were living perpetually BROKE, which meant that right now, they were kinda fucked when it came to cooling off in what felt like a fucking legendary take at a heat wave.

even the tv was off, used to having it flickering as background noise at the least ; something for both girls to feel as if there was more life here than there was, that they were used to. evie was like, getting over having way more space than she was used to, and privacy. and rue, well... she'd been pretty new when evie had been found trying to make her way OUT of there. and rue? fuck it. the only real god in rue's eyes was the deliverance in which she found goodness in the people around her.

and so far, they were doing ok. scraping by, a tiny slope of a place that they split. rue teaching her small things, day by day, recognizing HOW MUCH could be taken from a person when you weren't looking. it kinda freaked her out, to be honest. "i don't wanna do aaaaanything..." she groaned, her voice dragging at the edges. "i swear to god if the bill wasn't fucking $600...."

The apartment had learned the shape of summer in the cruelest of ways. It settled into the drywall until the walls themselves seemed to breathe heat back at them, clinging to Eve's skin with an insistence that reminder her too much of Alabama fields in late July, where the air had always been thick enough to swallow whole. Sweat dampened the collar of one of Rue's old T-shirts she'd claimed as he own months ago, the cotton hanging loose over a pair of worn shorts as she lay sprawled across the floor with one arm shielding her eyes. The fan in the corner did little more than push warm air from one side of the room to the other, its tired oscillation accompanied by an occasional groan that made it sound just as exhausted as the girls.

She listened to Rue complain without interrupting, the words stretching through the quiet apartment before dissolving beneath the lazy hum of the fan. It made the silence afterward feel heavier somehow, but not uncomfortable. There had been a time when silence had meant danger — when the absence of noise was only the breath someone took before raising their voice, before another order was barked across the farmhouse, before footsteps found their way to her bedroom door. Here, silence simply meant they were tired. Hot. Existing. It was still something she found herself marveling at.

Her gaze drifted toward the dark television screen, catching their faint reflections. Two girls melting into thrift-store furniture they'd rescued from the curb, surrounded by mismatched dishes and secondhand books and half-finished projects. None of it matched. None of it was particularly nice. It was theirs. The thought settled warmly somewhere beneath Eve's exhaustion.

A quiet laugh escaped her, breathy and soft, more felt than heard as she peeled her arm away from her face long enough to glance toward Rue. There was affection tucked into the corners of her smile, the sort that arrived so naturally now she almost forgot there'd been a time she hadn't known what to do with kindness when it was offered to her. Rue had taught her more than how to navigate grocery stores and laundromats and utility bills. She taught her that home could be assembled from borrowed furniture, instant ramen, and someone who never made you earn your place beside them.

"Eugh.." Eve groaned in agreement, her thick Southern drawl slipping free without a second though, lazy from the heat. "I think if I stand up, 'm liable to just evaporate.'' She lifted one hand weakly into the air as if demonstrating the point before letting it flop dramatically back against the floor. "Y'know it's bad when even bein' miserable feels like too much work." Her eyes wandered toward the thermostat they both knew wouldn't magically fixed itself if she stared hard enough.

There was something almost unbearable about the way sunny looked at her.

Eve had lived through enough disappointment to recognize pity, enough grief to recognize obligation, and enough loneliness to recognize the hollow performance of affection when someone merely wished to be kind. What she found in his expression was none of those things. It was open in a way that made her chest ache, earnest enough to leave her feeling exposed beneath it, as though every scar she'd tried to bury beneath humor and stubbornness had suddenly become visible in broad daylight. His gaze rested on her with such uncomplicated fondness that she scarcely knew where to put herself inside of it.

When his hands rose to cradle her cheeks after that hesitant first kiss, she nearly forgot to breathe. The warmth of his palms seemed to steady every frantic thought ricocheting through her mind, through her pulse still fluttered wildly beneath her skin. She let him guide her back just enough to stand, and when his hands settled at her waist, she became acutely aware of the impossible closeness between them. She could hear the quiet rhythm of his breathing, feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and somewhere in that suspended silence she realized that fear and hope occupied nearly identical places in the body. Both made her tremble. Both stole her breath. Both convinced her that one careless movement might change everything.

She then leaned forward again.

The second brush of their lips was impossibly soft, carrying with it an affection so patient that it unraveled something she'd spent years knotting together inside herself. It wasn't urgency that met her there, but devotion, and that somehow frightened her more. Anyone could survive a storm if they saw it coming. It was the quiet sunlight that convinced a person to set down their armor.

She lingered close when the kiss faded, unable to stop the small, incredulous smile that curved across her face. Her forehead hovered near his for a brief moment before she let out the faintest laugh, breathless with disbelief more than amusement, and one of her own hands rose to rest against his wrist where it lingered beside her neck. She traced absent circles with the pad of her thumb without even realizing she was doing it, grounding herself in the certainty that he as here and real.

Her eyes searched his face as though committing it to memory, every softened feature illuminated by a tenderness she could scarcely comprehend. Somewhere deep inside, the frightened parts of her still whispered that this would end the way beautiful things always seemed to, with absence and aching and another piece of herself left behind for someone else to carry away. Those voices sounder quieter now, muffled beneath the steady certainty of his presence.

She swallowed hard before speaking, her southern drawl wrapping warmly around every word until they came out softer than she had intended.

"Y'know," she murmured with a shy little smile that tugged at one corner of her mouth, "I spent a real long time thinkin' I was the sort've person folks eventually got tired of. Thought maybe I was easier t'leave than t'love." The admission hung delicately between them, vulnerable enough to make her cheeks warm, but she did not retreat from it. her fingers curled just slightly around his hand before she continued, voice scarcely above a whisper.

"But when ya look at me like that.." She let out another tiny, self-conscious laugh, shaking her head. "Lord, Sunny, ya make me wanna believe I might've been wrong all this time."