INACTIVE

His brows pull tight, and the expression cuts through you like glass, but then his hands rise, firm yet gentle, settling on your shoulders. His thumbs stroke the curve of them before sliding down, tracing the warm, bare skin of your arms as if grounding both of you in the reality of this moment.

“No… no, baby, no,” he blurts out, urgency roughening his voice. He grunts softly, adjusting your weight on top of him, his thighs relaxing, his bare cock softening within you — but refusing to let the closeness slip away.

“I’m not scared of your words,” he breathes, shaking his head as though trying to banish the thought from your mind. “I’m not trying to make you regret them. Hell…” His voice cracks, low and raw. “I’m just as scared as you are.”

Your chest tightens as you watch his expression flicker — hesitation, sorrow, something old and festering that you’ve only ever caught glimpses of in the quiet moments when he’d make you both tea and you’d sit out back, staring into the distance. His hands stay on your arms, squeezing, not hard but enough that you feel the tremor in them.

“It’s love..” he starts, but the word hangs heavy, stuck between his teeth. He swallows hard. “It’s love itself that wrecked me once. It gutted me. When she left…” His jaw tenses, eyes flitting away from yours, shame flashing there as though even naming her is a betrayal. “When my wife walked out, it felt like everything I’d built my life around just crumbled into dust, into nothing. The house, the vows, the family dinners, the goddamn future we promised each other… God, our son...” His throat tightens. “Gone. Just like that. And I told myself I’d never, ever set myself up for that kind of fall again. I’d never lose focus on what mattered…”

Your breath catches. He’s never spoken of her like this, never peeled back the grief so raw it still bleeds when touched.

Ted’s eyes find yours again, desperate, searching. “So when you say you love me…” His voice fractures, his thumb brushing absent circles on your skin, nervous, broken. “It terrifies me. Because… I believe you and because part of me wants it. Fuck… I want you — more than I’ve let myself want anything since she left. And that means…” He exhales, trembling. “That means that there is a very real possibility… that you could destroy me too.”

The silence that follows is suffocating, heavy with unspoken truths. You’re still straddling him, his warmth inside you fading but the intimacy deeper than it’s ever been. His eyes, wet and wide, lock with yours as if bracing for your answer — whether you’ll promise him safety, or become the black cloud he’s been running from all these years.

You clear your throat, the sound breaking through the heavy silence. Vulnerability claws at you, and instinctively you try to pull away from his lap. But his arms — broad, unyielding — wrap around you, anchoring you in place.

“No.” His voice is firm, almost commanding. His eyes don’t waver from yours, dark and burning.

“Stay right here.”

Your breath catches, widening your eyes as you feel him stir inside you, his cock twitching back to life with a slow, deliberate throb. The ache between you reignites instantly.

“You won’t hurt me, right?” his words tumble out, low and jagged, almost a plea with his soft brown eyes. “You came into my life for a reason. You keep coming back to me for a reason, don’t you?” His hips buck upward slowly, driving his cock against your drenched walls and you shudder at the way he keeps you pinned down, refusing to let the moment slip away.

“Tell me,” Ted demands, the desperation in his voice tangled with arousal, fear, and something dangerously close to hope. “Say it.”

His eyes plead with you, desperate and unguarded. His thrusts drag in slow, torturous waves, every inch of him curving deep inside you, pressing against the places that make your body shiver.

“Ted… fuck, I — I won’t hurt you. Ted, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to ever leave you. Fuck, I’m trying to concentrate, to tell you, to promise you…” The words spill out between ragged pants, your hands clutching at his shoulders as if holding him steady might help with anchoring you to your own words, to him.

“I wanna love you. I want to make you forget all the bad shit. I, I —” Your voice falters, the weight of it all breaking in your chest, but before you can finish, his mouth crashes against yours. His kiss is bruising, claiming, silencing every fear and vow in one fiery collision.

One of his arms loops under your ass, and suddenly he’s rising, lifting you with him, his cock never slipping free. The world blurs — the television still buzzing nonsense in the background, his sweats pooling uselessly around his ankles now — while he hoists you with raw strength and need.

“I’m gonna fuck the shit out of you,” he growls against your swollen lips, his voice guttural, ripping through your bones.

You try to speak, to gather your thoughts, but his lips claim yours again. You can’t process the chaos inside you: his words, your words, the flood of emotions crashing against each other. By the time you catch your breath, you’re already back in his bed, his hands stripping away what’s left of your clothes, his sweats abandoned somewhere in the living room like forgotten proof of restraint.

The air feels different now. Heavy. The very atmosphere of this bedroom — where you’ve spent countless nights — shifts, thick with something deeper than lust. Your nipples harden under that same cool air and then Ted’s mouth closes over one, hot and wet, his mustache scraping and tickling your areola until you moan, sharp and unguarded. He groans in return, the sound moving through you, feeding your need.

You both fall into the mess of tangled sheets, bodies pressing, clutching, desperate.

“Let me worship you…” The words spill from him like a prayer as he drags his mouth down your body, leaving heat in his wake until he reaches your soft, yielding stomach.

“Show me that the risk — that the hurt, the pain — show me it would be worth it.”

Those words nearly undo you. Not in fear, not in regret, but in the way they rip through the very last of the walls you’ve ever built, tearing away the last fragile boundaries you thought you’d kept. You realize, with bone-deep certainty, that this man — the one trembling before you, baring himself in the most fragile way — is worth the same pain, the same risk, the same love.

You nearly gasp as his cock slips from you. It had been buried there for so long, so deep, so constant, that its sudden absence feels like a wound. Your body clenches around nothing, desperate to drag him back in, and you almost weep at the loss. Ted notices immediately.

“So needy…” he hisses, dragging his fingers through his messy curls, smirking down at you like he owns every inch of you.

When you give him lip, challenge his authority, try to talk back — your voice sharp, daring — his response is instant. A firm, stinging smack lands against your throbbing clit.

You jolt. A cry rips from your throat. The pain is sharp, biting, but it melts almost instantly into a pulse of heat that spreads through your stomach and pussy.

“Still feeling needy?” he mocks, his pointer finger circling the very same sensitive nub he just struck, rubbing it slow, cruel, deliberate. The ache sharpens, pleasure edging into something unbearable. You wince, your hips threatening to buck up even through the dizzying mix of pain and arousal, you bare your teeth at him and talk back once again.

His eyes darken and his palm rises.

Another smack. This one harder.

Your weeping cunt jolts under his touch, your clit thrumming from the impact of his massive hand battering it, over and over. Each strike makes your body shiver, your thighs trembling, your voice breaking into ragged moans that only fuels him more.

“God,” he nearly weeps, voice cracking under the weight of the realization. His chest heaves against yours, eyes glassy as if the truth itself is breaking him open. “You came into my bar for a reason.” His tone softens, low and reverent, as though he’s confessing..

“I watched you for what felt like hours… after I should’ve left. I should’ve been home, working on campaign letters, minding my own.” His hand drags lower, fingers parting your folds with deliberate care. He gathers the slick mixture of your arousal and the remnants of his climax from before, warm and dripping as it seeps out of you. His breath falters at the feel of it.

“But I couldn’t walk away.” His eyes flash with memory. “The way your hair was pulled back… that work outfit… how you sat there, so calm, so content at my bar top.” He shudders at the image, his lips trembling before he pushes a finger deep into your soaking cunt. The sound of your body welcoming him makes his jaw clench.

“I had to have you,” he groans, forehead falling briefly against yours, the weight of desire and fear colliding in his words. “But I was so… so scared.”

You can hear your own heartbeat thrumming in your ears. He’s never been this vulnerable before, this open with his words and feeling — and it roots you to the spot, your chest aching with the weight of it. Even as your body trembles around the pressure of his finger buried knuckle-deep inside you, just as he slowly slides it out, leaving you fluttering in a haze.

Keeping his eyes glued to yours, he brings his glistening finger to his lips.

“But now…” his voice cracks, ragged from restraint, “…all these nights. All the dates. All those mornings I made you tea and stacked an ungodly amount of pancakes in front of you…” His throat bobs, and his breath stutters as his tongue slips out to taste his finger, licking your essence from it.

The intimacy of it shatters you. Your lungs hitch, your ears burning hot as your breath falters in uneven bursts.

“I should have said it when you did…” he mumbles, licking his finger clean as his gaze burns, almost breaking.

Your chest tightens, everything in you bracing for what comes next.

And then — finally, the soft, raw, devastating truth — he finally breathes the words you’ve been aching for in return:

“I love you too.”

The look between you both seems to burn, your eyes tangled in a pull neither of you dares to break. Your lips part as if you’re going to speak, but Ted cuts you off with a half-crooked smirk, his head shaking side to side ever so slightly — his eyes dark and knowing before he speaks. “You don’t need to say anything… I know, I know.”

“I want you in this bed,” he growls, voice low, vibrating with lust. “Tonight. Tomorrow. Always.” His mouth crashes to yours within seconds, the kiss molten and consuming — less a kiss and more a claiming. His tongue slips his lip and dives into your mouth, his teeth graze, his breath mingles with yours until you can’t tell where you end and he begins. It’s not gentle. It’s filth. It’s Ted finally showing you how deeply you’ve unhinged him.

He fucks you that night until your body can take no more, until the sheets reek of sweat and sex, until you collapse into a sleep so heavy it feels as if you’ve been drugged.

And when the morning comes, you stir to the sound of drawers sliding, wood thudding. Ted stands bare and unashamed at the dresser, his cock heavy and swinging between his thighs, sweat still clinging to his back and the slight curve of his stomach from the night before. The muscles that he has, ripple as his big hands shove things aside, clearing space like a man making room for what he refuses to ever let slip away.

Not just making more room for your clothes.

Making room for you.

“Quite the change in your demeanor from yesterday, hm?” you finally tease, your voice husky, lifting yourself up in the bed, the sheets twisted and pushed aside from the remnants of the night before. Your skin is still flushed, your body heavy with satiation.

Ted doesn’t turn right away, though your sleepy tone — the one he’s grown addicted to — pulls at him. A grin tugs at his lips as he shuts a drawer, his movements unhurried, deliberate. Then he glances over his shoulder, eyes glinting with something darker, something hungrier. “A lot can change in just a few hours…”

The silence between you sparks, magnetic and electric. The stare you share is a current, crackling, threading heat between your bare bodies. It feels as though you’ve become his private anthem, the one song he’ll never stop replaying, the one rhythm he’ll live and die by — your name echoing in his throat like a prayer, a curse, a promise while you think about filling you with his load, over and over. So warm.

Condoms are an afterthought now. An artifact of a distance you’ll never return to. You want all of him. You took all of him. Raw, unguarded, nothing left in between. No barriers, no shields, no fear. It’s all out there now. And you know you’ll never go back to the timid, fragile moments you shared before this.

And yet, the one thought seems to claw at the back of your mind, sharp and relentless… ‘how could she have left him?’

You don’t linger on the thought too long, not when he begins to notice, and then his body is already folding back into yours. His weight, his warmth, his scent — all of it pressing you into the bed.

“Where’d you go, pretty girl?” Ted’s voice is low, a question but also calming, as it starts to pull you back from wherever your mind dared to wander.

You blink as you shake it away quickly and slip your fingers into his — locking them tight, grounding yourself in him. “I’m here… don’t worry, I’m here.”

He studies you like he’s memorizing you, scanning every detail of your face. Then, with a tenderness that makes your chest ache, he brushes a few stray strands of hair away, tucking them back behind your ear with the curve of his roughened fingers.

“You do that a lot, ya know?” he mumbles, his thumb lingering on your temple. “I’m always catching you in some kind of thought.”

You can’t help but smile at his words. There’s something disarming, almost devastating, about the way Ted notices the smallest pieces of you — the habits no one else bothers to notice. Even your constant drifting into daydreams, your mind forever running down winding tracks. Somehow, instead of finding fault in it, he simply sees you. Observing you for a moment before pulling you back.

Your fingers tighten around his, a silent thank you, before you lean in and brush the faintest kiss against the corner of his mouth. “Just happy, that’s all. Happy in thought,” you whisper, your voice softer than you intended.

He smiles back, wide and genuine, the kind of smile that makes you feel like you’ve built a home inside his chest and when you retreat from the kiss, he holds your gaze. “Good,” he breathes, the word warm against your lips. “Me too.”

The sun filters through the slight sway of the curtains, pale light flickering over the two of you. A crisp draft sneaks in from the cracked window, a reminder that the seasons are shifting, that time is moving forward. Still, for now, the two of you remain close, cocooned in warmth, tangled in sheets that smell faintly of last night.

Eventually, Ted shifts, breaking the silence with his familiar routine. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, stretching his back before standing, his body already angling toward the dresser, toward clothes, toward breakfast. Toward normalcy.

But not this morning. Not today.

You catch his arm before he can take another step, your insistence bright in your voice. For once, you want to turn the rhythm of this ritual on its head. You’ll make him breakfast while he stays with you, while he pours the tea. At first, he tries to argue, his stubbornness bubbling through, but it doesn’t last long. You know the truth, the tides have turned — you’ve already won. His reluctant smile gives him away before the words do.

You find one of his t-shirts and pull it over your head — the same as you’d do every night you’ve stayed. It hangs loose and soft against your bare skin, nothing beneath it, just the way Ted likes. He, meanwhile, scoops up the sweats he abandoned somewhere between the couch and the bedroom the night before, pulling them on and cinching the strings with an easy tug.

Together, you drift toward the kitchen, the morning air quiet but full. Ted finds his phone scrolls through it, thumbing through emails and texts, his face dimly lit by the screen. “Might have to go into the office today,” he murmurs, almost distracted.

The words sting more than you expect, a sharp little twinge in your chest. But underneath the ache is something stronger — certainty. This isn’t casual anymore. You aren’t some “maybe” he entertains between obligations. You can feel the shift in the way he speaks, in how he shares his day with you now, pulling you into the mundane details of his world. The things he once labeled “boring” or “unnecessary” for someone temporary, someone undefined.

You steady your smile as you start pulling ingredients from the cupboards and fridge, clattering them softly on the counter. “That’s okay,” you say lightly. “I’ve been meaning to go to that farmer’s market outside of town. Maybe I’ll finally pick up those apples I keep talking about.”

At that, Ted glances up from his phone. The corners of his mouth lift into a smile that’s impossibly tender, the kind that roots itself in your chest and refuses to leave. “Oh yeah?” he says, placing his phone onto the counter. “Wanna bake an apple pie later?”

Your head snaps back to him, the sharp intake of breath — you find yourself caught off guard by the tenderness of the suggestion. A domestic gesture, nonetheless. Something so small, yet so deep with meaning.

“Bake… a pie together?” The words tumble out of you, fragile, your voice cracking under the weight of surprise.

Ted notices instantly. The way you sound, the look in your eyes — it makes him falter. His mouth twists as if to swallow the vulnerability back down, to undo it. “Or we don’t have to,” he mutters quickly, shoulders lifting in a shrug that pretends at nonchalance. But it isn’t nothing. Not to him. Not to you.

You’re already shaking your head, already trying to reach for him. “No, no. Ted, I —”

But he cuts you off, words tumbling out before he loses the nerve. “Sorry if I’m making this weird. Or… going about it the wrong way. It’s just —” His hand moves in a restless circle over his chest, right where his heartbeat pounds beneath the cotton of his shirt. His eyes flicker to you, then away. “It’s been so long since I’ve done this. Since I’ve… felt this.”

The confession nearly breaks you. That he thinks he should apologize for this? For loving you too quickly? For giving you what you’ve been aching to hear for weeks? The absurdity of it makes your lips curve into a trembling smile as you fight against the sting in your eyes. A breathy, awkward laugh escapes you, thick with relief.

“Gosh — no, Ted… don’t apologize. It’s…” You swallow hard, grounding yourself, your voice firm even as it wavers at the edges. “Yes. I would love to bake an apple pie with you.”

When his hand drops from his chest, he doesn’t hesitate. He reaches for you, arms stretching wide before wrapping you in his embrace. His body swallows yours, firm yet achingly gentle and he presses his lips to the crown of your head. The kiss lingers, slow and reverent, as he inhales your scent.

“I really do love you,” he whispers, the words breathed into every strand of your hair, as though he’s trying to stitch them into your very being so you’ll never doubt, never forget, always know it.

After the tender moment, he slips away to take a call while you focus on breakfast. The scent of butter and maple syrup clings to the air as the skillet sizzles. When he returns, phone still pressed to his ear, his gaze immediately hooks on the underside of your ass cheeks — peeking, perfect, just at the hem of the t-shirt you were borrowing, the only thing you’re wearing.

You flip another pancake onto the growing stack, pretending not to notice, when faintly you catch his voice behind you: “Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

A sly smirk curves your lips as you hear his footsteps draw near, slow and deliberate. His presence wraps around you before he even touches you, and then his hands find your shoulders, kneading, rubbing down the tension. “I could get used to this…” he whispers against your ear, his voice thick, husky with lust. “Seeing you like this. Cooking for me. In barely nothing, but somehow everything, all at once...”

Your breath stutters as his hands roam lower, gliding from your shoulders, tracing your sides, mapping your curves. He glances down at the hem of the shirt, his fingers hooking under the edge before lifting it, slow and deliberate, revealing the perfect swell of your ass.

“God…” His voice cracks into a groan. “If only I could eat this instead.”

And you don’t deny him. Not for a second. Your knuckles tighten against the counter, spine arching as you wiggle your hips in invitation. “So do it.”

The noise that leaves him is primal — something between shock, hunger, and worship, just like last night. Before you can even second-guess your words, he drops to his knees behind you like a man starved.

You gasp as his massive hands seize your ass, squeezing, kneading, pushing the cheeks together, then spreading them apart until you feel utterly exposed, vulnerable yet wanted in a way that makes your thighs tremble. His breath fans hot against your most forbidden place.

“Fuck… yes…” he rasps, voice ragged with reverence and lust, before his tongue drags over your tight, puckering hole. The sensation makes your entire body jolt hard against the counter, a shocked cry ripping from your throat.

“Fuck! Ted!” you moan into a whimper, one hand slipping off the counter as the spatula you were once gripping, clatters uselessly to the floor. He doesn’t notice. Doesn’t care. His face is buried between your cheeks, devouring you, his tongue working your asshole with relentless precision.

Sweat beads along your spine, your breath stuttering in broken gasps as your eyes threaten to roll back. His thumbs dig into the plush of your ass, prying you apart wider, locking you in place so you can’t escape the obscene worship he’s unleashing on your tight hole.

The wet, filthy sounds echoing from between your cheeks are pornographic — slick, sloppy, obscene beyond reason. He never slows, not once. His tongue thrusts into you, spearing your tight ring of muscle, stretching your hole open in greedy, pulsing strokes.

Every bit of training, every toy, every moment you spent preparing for this with him — all of it paying off now as your body yields to him, trembling around the pressure. You feel the impossible fullness of his tongue pushing deeper, filling your ass in ways you never dreamed possible, and it shatters every last shred of restraint you had left and when you think you can’t take anymore, he slips away. The back of his hand wiping away the mess that covers his face.

Ted’s breath scorches against your ear, hot and ragged, each exhale making your legs tremble beneath you.

“I’m gonna fuck you now,” he hisses, a promise more than a warning. You hear the subtle thud of his sweats hitting the floor again, followed by the wet sound of spit as he slicks his cock. Once, then twice — just enough to make sure he’s dripping before his fingers return to you, sliding through your mess, pressing inside to test your stretch.

You bite down on your bottom lip, bracing, every nerve pulled taut with anticipation. Your eyes flicker toward the small kitchen window, staring out at birds pecking at seeds in a feeder, so innocent, so ordinary before you shut them tight just as you feel the thick, unyielding pressure of him entering your hole.

His lips stay pressed to your ear, his voice low and coaxing you through it.

“You’re doing so good… deep breath, baby. You can take me, I know it. Let me inside that perfect ass.”

Your knuckles whiten as your grip strangles the countertop, teeth sinking deeper into your lip until you almost taste copper and then he sinks all the way in. You’re split wide, stretched to your limit, every inch of his cock buried deep in your ass. Ted drops his forehead to your shoulder, gasping like the sensation has stolen the air from his chest.

“Fuck… oh, fuck, you did it. You feel unreal.” His words tumble out, praise spilling like water over a broken dam. His hands slide over yours on the counter, anchoring you there, grounding you through the overwhelming fullness.

Then with no time wasted, he starts to move. Relentless. His hips slam into you with brutal rhythm, his pelvis clapping against your ass in hard, wet slaps that echo through the kitchen.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” you cry out, your voice breaking in time with each punishing thrust. Drool pools at the corner of your lips, spilling down your chin as your eyes roll back, white flashing as the pleasure consumes you whole.

Breakfast is now long forgotten. The pancakes you carefully stacked now sit abandoned, cooling on the counter because Ted is too busy claiming your ass, over and over, like it was made just for him. Sweat runs in rivulets down his temples, dripping onto your back and onto the borrowed t-shirt as he groans and whines, his cock dragging against every ridged vein of your asshole, molding it, mapping it, owning it. Making it his.

One of his hands tears away from yours, sliding down, while forcing your torso forward over the counter until you’re bent just enough for him to hit deeper. The same hand snakes to your front and suddenly his thick fingers are pressing against your swelling clit — two of them, working in rough, desperate circles.

“Oh, fuck… you’re gonna come before I do,” he pants, his voice breaking. “I can’t, fuck — I won’t come till you do, baby. C’mon. C’mon… for me.”

His hips piston harder, the sound of skin smacking against your ass, continuing to fill the kitchen, blending with your ragged moans. His fingers torture your clit, rubbing harder, faster, in sync with his thrusts until your legs threaten to buckle beneath you.

“Ngghh! Ted! Oh, Ted! Fuck! Ted!” Your voice is wild, your body wrecked. You’re drooling down your chin, your neck flushed and hot, your face a mask of ecstasy and desperation. And still, he doesn’t let up — he keeps you right there, perched on the edge of collapse.

“Come for me,” he growls against your ear, and the demand rips through you like a saw.

Your thighs begin to shake violently, your stomach tightening. Your whole body seizes as the orgasm tears out of you, violent and unrestrained.

“Oh! My! GOD! — I’m coming!” you scream, so loud the walls can’t contain it. Neighbors, if he had any, would hear but you don’t care. You couldn’t stop yourself if you tried.

Your release gushes through you and instead of slowing, Ted pounds harder into your ass. His once-circling fingers now slam inside your cunt, curling perfectly, making you grind down on him helplessly as wave after wave of your orgasm drowns you.

Ted isn’t far behind. His rhythm falters. Hips jerking, breath ragged as if he’s fighting it, trying to hold back, but then he breaks. With a few more brutal pumps into both your pussy and your ass, he unravels completely.

A strangled groan rips from his chest, loud and almost angry, as he releases, flooding your stretched asshole with hot ropes of cum. It pours into you in thick spurts, so much you swear you can feel it pulsing through every nerve ending, spilling deep where only he belongs, where he’s so desperately tried to be.

His release is messy, guttural. His voice cracking into a yell before it drops into desperate whines. He buries his face into the crook of your neck, his mustache damp against your sweat-slicked skin, muffling his own vulnerability as if he’s ashamed of just how hard you’ve undone him. His cock twitches violently inside you, still pumping seed into your wrecked hole, his body shuddering against yours.

A breathless, almost disbelieving giggle slips out of you, breaking through the haze of overstimulation. The sound makes him tense, but you quickly reach back, fingers tangling into his hair, grounding him. “Don’t hide your face,” you whisper through gasps of air, voice laced with tenderness and ache. “It just shows me how much you really do love me…”

Those words freeze him — force him to lift his head. His eyes, still glassy with release, lock with yours. They’re raw, unguarded, and you see it — that fear, that need, that aching truth he’s carried for too long, all over again. His lips tremble into a small, broken smile.

“And I really, really do…” he breathes, the confession trembling out of him, heavy with everything he’s never dared to say until now.

Your lips meet. Soft, unhurried, tender. It isn’t just a kiss; it’s the unspoken language of everything you’ve both still have left unsaid. When he finally slips free of you, the two of you drift into the shower together. Suds cling to your skin as you laugh, water splashing off the pane and tiled walls. His smile, his laughter, the way his eyes crinkle with unguarded joy — your chest aches as though your heart might burst. The walls are gone, the boundaries dissolved, leaving nothing but him — whole, raw. Totality.

Dressed and warm once again, you trail behind him into the living room. He adjusts his bolo tie with practiced precision, rolling his sleeves up after sliding his jacket into place. He looks as striking now as the first night you met, though the man before you feels infinitely closer.

“Get Granny Smiths,” he says, glancing at you over his shoulder, voice firm yet casual. “They’ve got good tartness, and they hold their shape better when you bake them.”

You clutch the towel against your damp hair and nod with a smile tugging at your lips. “I’ll be sure to get them.”

For a heartbeat, silence lingers between you. Then Ted bends, his lips brushing your forehead and holding there, lingering almost too long, until he finally forces himself to pull away.

“I left a spare key on the counter,” he mumbles against your skin. His voice dips softer, weighted with promise. “Don’t bake that pie without me.”

The tears come at last — hot, brimming, slow and soft — but they’re the good kind, the kind that sting because you’ve held them back too long. You nod, voice catching as you whisper, “I wouldn’t dare.”

“Good girl,” he replies, low and certain, that same conviction he wears like a second skin. Ever the Mayor of this silly town, but now entirely yours.

What an incredible ride! Thank you to everyone who's been here since the first chapter. We have finally reached the end. I may do an epilogue later in the future but for now, the story has ended for these two.

I still have tons of stuff planned for Ted though, so always be on the look out. Thank you again. If you enjoy my work, please consider reblogging as it's the best way for others to enjoy it too. Likes are also appreciated! ♡

it’s as if the world fell to pieces yesterday, when had been a mess for years. you barely remember the before, before when the world was sunnier. 

there’s the guilt, guilt in carrying the life in your stomach. guilt that you’re bringing her into this world, full of hate and death. guilt you bring her into such a broken life, with the infected crawling outside jackson’s walls. but it takes a village — maria and tommy were always here to help, so was the rest of the townsfolk.

and there was joel, sweet sweet joel. your husband, the father of your child. he’d always place a hand over your swollen stomach, proud that he’d marked you as his. proud that you were carrying his baby, his very blood in you. he was so gentle with how he stroked your stomach, how he laid a big hand where you guided it, to feel your daughter kick.

you’re sitting next to him now, on his couch. he’s so warm, and in the last month of your pregnancy, you’ve been feeling all too cold. your hands feel frozen, and he holds them in his own big ones, rubbing them between his own, lacing fingers, pressing palms. it’s good, warm. it feels like life and sun, and not like the cold that you know lies behind jackson’s walls.

“joel?” you look up at him, and he can never refuse those big doe eyes of yours, so wide, looking at him like he hangs the moon and the stars. you’re younger than him, seen less violence than him, he’d been a raider, killed. and you…?

you haven’t. you’re like the sun, luminous. you shine brighter than anyone else in the room, shine even brighter with the glow pregnancy brought out in you. he likes that you’re heavy with his seed, likes that he’s claimed you and everyone in jackson can see that. his star, that he caught whilst hanging the moon. his star, he chose to keep for himself.

“mm?” he grunts back in a reply, his hand gently stroking your knuckles, he likes the dips of the skin there, from the days spent working in the farm. yet soft from all the creams he’d found for you on patrol. 

he’s handsome, the years haven’t been kind to the world, to him. but they’ve been kind to his face. his eyes are big and brown. and they look down at you with such care. 

“nevermind.” you blush, after a second, ducking your head, turning your face away so he can’t see the expression on your face. he loves it when you smile like that, it turns him into mush inside. all shy and ridiculous, like a startled deer.

“go on darlin’?” he asks, keeping his hand on yours, keeping his warmth with you. 

“it’s silly joel.” you sigh, before turning back to him, there’s a fondness in your eyes that he sees as they flick down to your stomach. you slip away a hand from him, and press it to your stomach.

“i just.” you pause, something lodged in your throat, “i just…”

he frowns, his hand covering yours on your stomach. fall is colder now, and you’re wearing a knit cardigan to keep you and the baby warm. she isn’t kicking or anything, but you seem so sad, his heart aches.

“you jus’ what, peach?” he asks, his voice all low and gravelly, dripping with worry, his eyes are wide as he looks into your face. he’s always scared with you, scared that something will happen, scared that he’ll loose you too. scared that you’ll slip away like tess did, like sarah did, like everything good was taken from him.

scared. scared that you would go, and so would his daughter with you. somewhere where he couldn’t find you, orpheus, he would make a deal with hades to bring you back. 

“you don’t…” you lick your lips, and take a deep breath. he’s worried, possessive, doesn’t let you out of the house in the last month. he has a hand hovering over you, your stomach, like he tethers you to earth. “don’t worry joel, nothing’s wrong with me.”

“or baby?” he asks, voice rough. of course nothing’s wrong with her, or you’d say something.

“or the baby.” you exhale, and he feels your cool breath on his fingers, comforting, you are alive. alive and in his arms. 

“then what is it, sweetheart.” he traces circles on your stomach, it’s an odd feeling, but you like it. “c’mon, you can tell me, promise, this old man won’t laugh.”  

“not that old.” you sigh, your hand finds his chin, and you rub the stubble lovingly. he needs to shave, and soon. “it’s just, i don’t even know if people do it that often these days, but god. i want my baby to listen to music, heard it helped with development and all that.”

he sees the tip of your nose twitch, and the tears mist your big eyes. the guilt, the guilt of bringing a child into a world like this.

“peach…” he sighs, and tucks a stray strand away from your face. “peach, you ain’t doing anything wrong by her, by bringing her here.”

“feels like i am.” you choke out, and she has a loving father and mother, a sister in ellie, an uncle, aunt. a village behind her. it takes a village. and yet. your heart halts, because she will never have the ordinary joys of what a baby would have had before. toys, stupid dancing fruits on the phone, cartoons. small things.

“how about i play some music, ‘kay?” he lets out a breath, and when he gets up, the chill seeps into your bones. the empty space beside you, once with his warmth, now with the cool pooling around you. 

he comes back a few seconds later, the guitar in his hands. he props up a little further away from you on the sofa, but close enough so that you and the baby can hear him well. 

he sets it up properly, tuning the strings with ear memory. each pluck of the string is gentle, like he is with you, his fingers big and thick and playing each note perfectly.

“you are my sunshine.” he starts, his fingers playing the chords perfectly, and you swear you’ll start crying this very second. the hormones, no, his love for you is choking you. 

the song is so sweet, wrapped up in his rough cadence, like he always has wrapped his love in. he plays it carefully, plays it without tearing up — failing that when he sees you cry. some words get caught in his throat as he continues singing. 

you can feel your daughter kick, and you rest your hand over your stomach as he plays, sunshine — you both are his sunshine. he hasn’t even seen her, and he knows that she’d be like the sun incarnate, just like you. his two stars that he will always orbit, always have their warmth light up their world.

“she kicked!” you call out to him, and he stops playing immediately to cover your stomach with his hand, feel the little feet kick against his hand. his heart thuds in his chest as he feels them, feels your hand grasp his. 

he’d never realised he could get something like this — deserved something like this. ever had the chance to get something like this, after everything, after the world falling to shit. 

you’re going to say something, but it gets caught in the kiss he gives you, all so soft and sweet, his chapped lips against your own soft ones. you’re heavy with his child, you’re completely his, and you love it so much.