How is this even possible.

You find Gwayne and Daeron first. Both of them are bruised, bloodied, and covered in ash, but whole all the same. The younger boy helps his uncle slump against the broken remains of the wall behind him, while the auburn-haired man squints through the blood trickling into his left eye from a deep cut in his brow.

“Ormund,” you say in lieu of a greeting when you approach the two of them. His name comes out in rasps from the smoke hanging thick in the air. “Where is Ormund?”

Daeron looks over his shoulder at you, round cheeks dirty with soot, and shakes his head in wordless response.

Gwayne lifts his head to look at you. His porcelain skin is coated in a thin layer of gore; his auburn hair is stringy with sweat; his pale eyes are bloodshot and watery. A humorless laugh sputters rough from his dry mouth. “Ask your gods,” he spits. “You were so certain of them before, weren’t you?”

You do not flinch at his ire. You only nod.

“Yes, my lord,” you tell him in an even, gentle voice despite the massacre all around you. “I still am.”

You continue on through the remains of the day, until at last you reach the collapsed ruins of the eastern wall. A small glint of silver, half-buried in the rubble, catches the light bleeding through the smoky sky — Ormund’s pomander, you realize, cracked down the middle but still attached to its chain.

You rush towards it without thinking, dropping to your knees beside the fallen timber and stone before clawing at the wreckage with bare hands. “Help me,” you call in a ragged voice to the men limping slowly behind you. Gwayne winces through his own injuries as he and Daeron help you drag the broken beams aside until the man beneath it is revealed.

Ormund lies amid the rubble — one leg bent at too awkward an angle, dark red blood covering half of his face and turning to paste from the ash. The dirt beneath him turns a darker brown color from the pool of crimson underneath him, from a wound you cannot yet see. 

But his chest still rises and falls with weak, shallow breaths under the scratched armor he wears. So you crouch at his side and take his dirty face in your palms and tap gently at his cheek in an attempt to wake him from his unconscious state. “Ormund,” you call to him, voice splintering. “Ormund, wake up, c’mon—”

His eyes are slow to open. 

His lashes flutter across his cheeks before he blinks slowly awake. He squints at the blinding light overhead as his pale gaze comes slowly into focus — more confused than truly aching, too far deep in shock for the pain to hit him truly. When his eyes finally settle on you, concern twists his stained face.

“You’re hurt…” he rasps through a dry throat when he sees the blood splattered across your face. Because even on the verge of death, he is still more worried about you. 

You catch his blood-stained fingers twitching feebly at his side, wanting so desperately to reach but being far too weak to do so. You take his hand in yours instead, and reassure him with a smile. “It’s not my blood.”

That seems to soothe him, if only for a moment. Until his gaze drops down the length of his body, at least, and he sees the damage down to him. He cannot feel the pain from the wounds in his sides exactly, but he can feel the warm blood slowly weeping from them, and the way it wets the ground beneath him. The scent clings to his nose and the very back of his throat — the inherent stench of death.

A low, guttural groan sounds in the back of his throat as he tips his heavy head back against the ground, chiseled jaw clenching tight. “Am I...” he attempts to ask, then swallows hard through the invisible hand choking him. “Am I going to die?”

His weary eyes flit back to yours. Even as the life slips slowly from the soft blue of them, you can see the hope glinting faintly in his gaze — waiting for you to tell him no; waiting for you to work one of your miracles, just like you always have. 

You only give him a weak smile in return. “Yes, my love,” you coo with a slow nod. “You are going to die.”

You feel Gwayne and Daeron go very still behind you.

Ormund’s breath catches beneath his heavy chestplate, as his features crumple with a boyish sort of grief — the grief of a man who’s followed your every word like spoken scripture, only to be abandoned by you in the very last of his moments.

“But you— You said—” he stammers out, choking on his own blood as his eyes dart wildly between yours. “You said that we would… You promised me this war—”

“I promised you victory,” you tell him, smoothing a thumb over the blood and ash on his cheek; as gentle as The Mother, as firm as The Crone. “And I still do.”

His breath trembles through his weak body. Blood rises heavy up and throat and sits thick on his tongue, splattering warm across his chin when he coughs. You cradle his face in your hands as he shudders slowly into death, leaning close enough into him that your foreheads nearly touch — close enough that you may be the very last thing in the world he sees before the darkness takes him.

“Sleep now, my love,” you whisper gently to him. “I’ll see you when you wake.”

You press your mouth to his, tasting the copper and smoke stained on his lips while Ormund goes limp in your hands. His blood stains your mouth when you part from his suddenly still form, turning over your shoulder to face the men standing behind you — their dirty features twisted with similar looks of horror.

The softness you’d had moments ago slips now into a sterner look. 

“Help me with him,” you command.

And no one dares refuse.

You drag Ormund back to the sept, laying his limp body onto a cold, concrete altar in the depths of its crypt. The stale air there is thick with ghosts and time gone by. The wet, dark cobbles around you glow with the weak candlelight Gwayne fixes onto the walls. Shadows dance in the corners, swallowing the edges of the ancient chamber. Every sound — every drip of water, every scrape of shoe on stone — echoes back twice over.

Ormund’s body is slack and already cooling by the time you get to work on him. Your fingers move with a practiced grace as you unbuckle his ruined armor — piece by shattered piece. His smallclothes follow; you tug the stiff and bloodied fabric from his skin, made a much tougher feat from his heavy and unmoving weight. And when he lies bare before you on the stone bier, you take a cloth and a basin of water Daeron had fetched from the cistern and wash him clean.

The ash and blood fade beneath your hand to reveal the pale, broken canvas of his golden skin underneath it. His chest is bruised a sickly green-purple. He sports a number of gashes score deep along his ribcage from where a sword had cut so mercilessly through him. And his leg, bent wrong at the knee, snaps back into place with one brutal snapping sound beneath your steady hands.

Only when he is clean — washed truly from dirt and sin alike, and left glittering beneath the torchlight — do you take a small knife to a lock of his dark, matted curls. You toss the tendril into the brazier burning low in the corner, and let the orange flame hiss beneath it. Then you draw the same blade across your palm, letting the blood well and drip into the fire beside the offering.

Daeron and Gwayne watch silently from the corner of the dark crypt as you return to Ormund’s body and begin to chant. “We ask the gods to shine their light, and lead a soul out of darkness,” you say in High Valyrian, the foreign language sounding low and thick in your throat. “We beg the gods to share their fire, and light a candle that has gone out. From darkness, light. From ashes, fire. From death, life."

Gwayne shakes his head as he watches with a jaw clenched tight. “This is madness,” He mutters to Daeron. “Chanting over a corpse like some Essosi hedge-witch—”

The boy snaps his head in the older man’s direction, still too deep in his boyhood for his glare to be as intimidating as he means. “You haven’t seen her do the things I’ve seen,” Daeron scolds, still gentle in his way even in his defense of you. “Do not mock her. Not now.”

You pay no mind to the bickering as you focus completely on the pale-blue body before you. Your palms rest flat over Ormund’s marred skin as you inhale a deep breath through your nose, grounding yourself upon him as though you were trying to draw something from the very marrow of his bones. And then you wait.

The chamber falls silent, except for the low crackle of the torchlight. The minutes that pass seem to last an eternity as you wait for Ormund to warm again beneath your palms. He does not. 

No answer comes from the darkness. There is only a suffocating silence, mocking you with everything it refuses to give back. And for the first time, you feel your faith begin to splinter with doubt.

Your eyes burn with unshed tears when the grief you hadn’t let yourself feel before finally hits you. You turn to face the men behind you; the older one smiling cynically, the younger one heavy with a dwindling grief. “I— I’m sorry,” is all you can manage out before you turn sharply on your heel and head back towards the stairwell you entered from. 

Your skirts drag heavy and blood-soaked behind you as you plan to return to the wreckage, and give yourself to the dust.

“Well…” Gwayne hums from behind you in a biting monotone that sears straight through your chest. “Even the great prophetess has her limits, it seems—”

A sharp gasp cuts through the quiet chamber like Valyrian steel.

You freeze mid-step. Your head snaps hard behind you, where you find Ormund’s nude body trembling on the cold, concrete altar. His eyes fly open, wide and wild in the torchlight. His broad chest heaves with violent, rasping breaths as his lungs drag desperately for air. 

“Ormund!” His name tears suddenly through your throat as you rush back to him, nearly tripping over your skirts as you go. Your hands fly to his face, his chest, his scarred ribs — anywhere you can reach to prove to yourself that he’s real, that he’s alive — while Daeron scrambles for the velvet emerald cape discarded by the armor to throw hastily over his uncle’s bare body.

Gwayne remains frozen by the stairwell with his mouth parted in shock, the color long drained from his pale face.

Ormund's eyes dart around the dark chamber in half-frantic confusion before finally settling on you. He rises off the cold stone, naked chest still heaving with shallow breaths. “Wha—" His voice comes out hoarse until he swallows thick through his throat. “What’s happened to me?"

You let out a broken, disbelieving laugh and let the warm tears spill down your ashen cheeks as you cradle his warming face between both hands.

“I brought you back.”

Ormund is still weak from the death ebbing slowly from his body when you carry him to the least ruined chamber in the eastern wing; the living quarters where the clergy used to sleep. It had survived the worst of the flame, it would seem, though the smoky scent of dragonfire remains. Ormund leans the bulk of his weight against you, with his arm thrown heavy around your shoulder, as you lay him down on the narrow bed pressed against the wall. 

No one speaks a word of what had happened in the crypt. Not now, at least. There will be plenty enough time for that in the morning, for the questions and for the reckoning of what comes after. But tonight, there is only quiet. And stillness. And the promise of another day after this one.

But his body, Ormund finds, is not quite sure how to be alive again. 

He shivers in the cotton sheets while sweat beads along his brow. He’s cold and burning all at once, like his blood cannot decide whether it belongs in a grave or in the world above it. It rushes like freezing ice or a white-hot flame up and down his being. The very marrow of him is still humming with whatever it was you’d poured from yourself back into him. His pulse hammers hard in his neck while the adrenaline surges through him — with nowhere to truly settle, now that the danger has long passed and there is nothing left for him to fight.

But it finds somewhere to go even still; in his stiffening cock that aches and throbs between his thighs despite himself — leaving him whining and rutting against the blankets twisted around his hips. 

He catches your hand when you reach down to check his forehead for fever. He peers up at you with glassy, blue eyes as he smears his mouth to your fingers in a not-quite kiss. “Please,” he rasps against your knuckles. “I need— I need something, my love. Please…”

You shake your head, torn between the ache in your chest and the ache written plainly across his face. “You’re hurt, Ormund. I don’t want to make it worse—”

“You won’t,” he swears and urges you closer with what little strength has returned to his healing body. “You’re the one who brought me back… You couldn’t hurt me if you tried…”

And you could not refuse him — in the same way you were designed by the gods to bring him back to life, you were not fashioned to deny him of anything.

So you settle over his lap with your bare chest pressed flush against his, with your beating hearts as close as you can muster, and give his adrenaline somewhere else to go. 

Your clit rubs against the coarse thatch of brunette hair at the base of his stomach as you glide gently over his scruffy thighs, careful to avoid the poultice clinging to the cuts on his ribcage. Ormund’s cock sits nestled within your velvety walls, jerking faintly within your honeyed depth while his newfound life continues to buzz through his veins. He’s made profoundly sensitive accordingly — so much so that he feels a coil tensing in his stomach already; so much so that the obvious pain in his limbs from the battle feels negligible in comparison. 

He wouldn’t care if you split every wound of his open again, as long as he got to cum inside of you now.

His wide hands dig into your hips, far rougher than he realizes with his slowly building strength, as he tries to rock your hips harder against his — never mind the stinging in his ribcage, or the throbbing in his knee. “Please,” he pants hopelessly against your mouth, his broad nose knocking against the side of yours. “I need it so bad, my love, please—”

Your fingers thread through his wild curls as you shake your head against his. “I don’t want to hurt you,” you pant, lips smudging against his parted mouth.

“Hurt me,” Ormund begs, eyes wide and pleading. “The gods gave me back to you once already… I do not fear what you’ll do with me now…”

His words knock loose something tight in your being. You begin to grind over his lap with a bit more purpose than before, with the intention of milking an orgasm from his body drop by merciless drop. 

“Yes…” Ormund slurs within a sigh when your cunt clenches tight around him. His calloused palms smooth along the canvas of your sweat-slick back — one between your shoulder blades and the other to the small of your spine — to keep you pressed wholly against his battered body. Though the pain only seems to add to his pleasure, which blooms in the pit of his tightening stomach now. He smears wet kisses along the skin of your neck as he buries his pitiful whines there. 

“Don’t stop…” he pleads. “Don’t stop, and I’ll give you all of it, I promise…” 

“Now,” you command in a whisper, lips brushing the shell of his ear — because you cannot stand to hurt him any more than you surely must have already. “Cum now. Cum inside me. Give me all of it—”

Ormund shudders beneath you, not unlike the way he had when he died in your arms. 

Except now, he grumbles a groan of pleasure like thunder in his chest and digs his fingers hard into your soft skin. He holds his breath and tenses for a flicker of a moment; and you feel the very depths of your stomach blooming with warmth on his next trembling exhale, as his sensitive cock twitches within your pulsing cunt. 

You pet him through every wave of his orgasm, until he settles finally just against you with his face hidden completely in your neck. His panted breaths fan warm along your skin — the very proof of his life — while you find it suddenly very difficult to stomach that you had nearly seen the very last of his breaths not so long ago.

“Are you hurt?” you ask him, and sigh hard through your nose when you feel him leaking slowly out of you.

Ormund feels a dull ache in his ribs most of all, and a panging in his knee as it sets awkwardly into the correct position, but he shakes his head against your shoulder until the words to respond catch up to him. “No,” he huffs. “I’m— I’m alright.”

He feels your hand tighten in his hair not a moment later. You urge him back from your neck and force his bleary eyes to meet your suddenly hardened ones, still heavy with pleasure but stern all the same.

“If you die on me again, Ormund Hightower, I will kill you,” you warn him in an unwavering deadpan that makes it difficult to tell how much you surely jest.

A weak, breathless laugh rattles out of him then, more felt against your own chest pressed against his than truly heard. “Then let it be by your own hand,” he pleads in a low voice. “And no other’s.”

You’ve never felt like this before. This unknown vile feeling of not belonging. Of being an outsider, someone not part of the group, everyone else chosen over you, leaving you cold and alone and abandoned. Poppy knows this feeling, but it’s been years at this point. Years since Poppy has felt like this.

It used to catch her every once in a while, and she’d sit with the feeling on her own before she’d carefully share a little of it with Joe. That little bit always very quickly tumbled into all of it, and those long, drawn-out conversations about all of Poppy’s insecurities used to be the main reason why Joe always spent a lot of energy on avoiding you.

Poppy would be so upset, so utterly convinced that Mark belonged to you in a way that he’d never belong to her, and it’d tear her apart. There was history between the two of you that she’d interpret as something impenetrable, something she’d never even be able to fully understand, even though her friendship with Joe was very similar, and she’d feel like an outsider trying to squeeze herself into a picture that had already been framed.

It never really helped that Mark would always be very dismissive of her worries.

And you too.

Never to her face, because her worries remained unknown to you for a long time. Mark would sometimes vaguely mention something, but he’d brush over it quickly, so it never needed a reaction from you. You remember Joe mentioning something about her insecurities to you as well, once, and you told Joe to tell her that she didn’t need to worry. She topped the scales, you were sure of it. You were the one who had to listen to Mark go on and on and on about her, so you knew it wasn’t even close.

If anything, you always thought it was kind of silly.

But now, you don’t think it’s so silly anymore.

Joe had texted you after you’d walked out and gone over to your own place. Took the long way home to your empty cold flat that you were treating more as a storage unit than an actual living space at this point. You used to spend hours with Mark on the sofa in your living room, but you couldn’t actually remember the last time you’d sat on it yourself. Most of your time you spent over at Joe’s, which was why you presumed Joe must’ve only texted you after finding that you hadn’t ran off to where he’d expected to find you.

Hey I just got back where are you

You’re not here

Did you go home

Come over please

You’d stared at Joe’s texts for nearly fifteen minutes before you replied ‘ok’ and mentally prepared yourself for the end of life as you knew it. You screwed up, and now you were going to be dealt with accordingly.

You had made her cry.

You cried too, but only after you’d left. Tears for you to feel and for no one else to see.  

When you got to Joe’s, he opened the door before you’d knocked and before he said anything, you confessed, “I nearly didn’t come.”

Joe just nodded, stepping aside without a word, giving you space to walk in. You crossed the threshold feelingly strangely like a guest in a place that had practically become where you lived now.

Your toothbrush lived here. Most of your clothes did too. Joe would go out of his way to make sure his shower held the shampoo you liked to use, and there’d always be a packet of your favourite biscuits in his cupboard.

Little things to make home.

The kind of things that happen when two people are becoming something without ever sitting down to define exactly what that something was. Mostly because you didn’t want to talk about it. You were processing it all at your own pace in your own time, and Joe let you figure it all out whilst he carefully took notice of how he could make his place feel more comfortable for you.

Tonight, though, none of it felt comfortable.

You didn't take your coat off.

Joe noticed, but didn't mention it, closing the front door as gently as he could. Whilst still holding the doorknob, he glanced over his shoulder to see you walk towards his kitchen, coat buttoned up, scarf still wrapped around your neck, bag hanging from a shoulder – ready to leave again at a moment’s notice.

After he followed you and asked if you wanted a cup of tea – a question you didn’t answer, but he popped the kettle on anyway – you awkwardly hovered near the doorway with arms folded tightly enough that your hands disappeared beneath your sleeves, and you waited.

Waited for the scolding. The disappointment. The big sad ‘this isn’t who I thought you were’ speech that would leave both you and him in tears.

It didn’t come.

You watched Joe reach into the cupboard for two mugs, his and yours, the yellow one you’d jokingly claimed after he’d called you sunshine once when you were holding it. You noticed the briefest second before he put both down on the counter, and you wondered if he’d just had the same earthshattering thought.

“I– I probably won’t stay…” you said to fill the silence Joe left for you to fill. All you got in response was a flick up from his eyes as he prepared your mug of tea before he pushed it to the other side of the island.

It sits there now.

In the silence, with Joe on the other side of it, backside leaning against the counter, you stand by the doorway and don’t know what to do.

You want to leave.

You feel the jitters in your legs, the overwhelming want to move your feet, step by step, and move back towards the door. You unfold your arms, just to feel for your keys in your pocket, but then realise they’re in the bag that’s still on your shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

The careful question catches you so completely off guard that, for a second, you only stare at him. What does is matter if you’re okay? You’re clearly not, and you deserve it a little bit, but it’s painful, and it’d be great if Joe just got this over with quick.

He remains where he is on the other side of the island, arms loose at his sides, face completely unreadable. He has left so much space between you that it feels a bit deliberate, and you cannot decide whether it is kindness or whether he simply no longer wants to come any closer.

A shaky breath escapes you, sharper and more irritated than you intend.

“Can you just… get it over with? Say what you need to say and I’ll go.”

Joe frowns, tucking his chin in a little bit. He looks confused. “Get what over with?”

“This.” You gesture vaguely between you, avoiding his eyes as you blink hard against the tears gathering behind them. “Say whatever you asked me to come over here for so I can leave.” You impatiently shift your weight from one foot the other, annoyed at yourself for being unable to hide your emotions. You’d rather Joe didn’t see.

“Hey,” Joe takes a few steps closer, but doesn’t step past the island. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Ah, so it’s a whole lecture instead of a quick break up. Sounds like something Joe’d do.

“I don’t want you to–… I asked you to come over because you disappeared.”

“I only went home.” You give a one-sided shrug.

“You...” Joe lets a soft breath escape him in a humourless laugh. “You ran off without saying anything. I thought you’d hidden yourself away in the downstairs toilet for a while, but Mark said–”

“I don’t care what Mark said.” You snap, interrupting Joe. Mark has known you for long enough to also put you in place without handling you like precious cargo. He’ll tell you to your face when you’ve been a big old bitch, basically, and you don’t need Joe to repeat what he’s said. You already feel fragile enough as it is.

You watch Joe bite his lips into his mouth as he gives a tiny nod. He seems a bit out of his depth, and you immediately feel bad.

“Sorry, I– I… I can guess what Mark said, y-you don’t… I don’t know. Just, say what you have to say, please.”

Joe doesn’t think he’s ever been more confused by the impatience you’re showcasing. It seems like you don’t want to be here, but also like you can’t wait for Joe to… what, tell you off? He watches you for a moment, hoping that maybe he’ll magically figure you out before he decides to just ask, “Do you think I’m going to tell you off?”

You stay silent, which Joe takes as a ‘yes’ and he feels his heart shatter.

“Darling,” Joe says through a defeated a sigh, and you don’t like how he smiles. He’s fucking smiling.

“No, it’s okay. I made Poppy cry, it was very clear that I fucked up and that you’re all on her side. It’s fine. I get it.”

The audacity of this man seems unlimited; you watch his smile grow wider and you can’t fucking believe it.

“Just say it already. Tell me I went too far, that I need to apologise and give everyone some space.” You watch Joe’s expression suddenly change. “Tell me that you can’t be stuck between Poppy and I, and that it’s better if we–”

“Do you think I’m going to break up with you?”

It’s good Joe cut you off there, because your throat was about to close up entirely. It’s a shame that Joe heard it coming though, and it’s even worse that he’s making you answer that question out loud.

All you can do is look away. Blink hard. Bite back emotion. You don’t want to speak it into the room, so you don’t.

You hear a silent, “Oh…” from the other side of the kitchen, and you hate how the softness in his voice hurts more than his anger would have. “All right.”

Joe looks at you as though he’s only not realising that the conversation you’ve been having in your head for the last two hours bears little to no resemblance to the one he’d been expecting to have with you tonight.

“But that’s not–” Joe starts but stops when you flinch on instinct at his sudden step forward. He halts immediately and holds a hand out that he slowly lowers, eyes wide, and nonverbally tells you, calm down, it’s okay. Your shoulders sag a little, which prompts Joe to walk around the island slowly enough that you never once feel cornered.

Your brain is going at lightning speed. What’s he going to do? If he’s going to hug you, you’ll burst into tears. If he doesn’t, you might just also.

When he’s stood right in front of you, you hold your breath in anticipation and brace for every viable option you can think of. Then, Joe does something that hadn’t even crossed your mind as a possibility.

He reaches out for the strap of your bag. Your shoulders tense instinctively, and it makes Joe pause once more.

“I’m just taking this.”

You don't answer.

Joe gently slides your bag from your shoulder, careful not to jostle you any more than necessary, before setting it on the kitchen island beside your untouched mug of sunshine tea.

He turns back and lets his fingers find the end of your scarf before he starts unwinding it slowly, one loop after another, until the uncomfortable warmth around your neck disappears with it. You silently watch as he absent-mindedly folds it over one arm before his hands move back towards your chest.

The first button of your coat gets undone, followed by the second and the third.

You watch Joe’s hand work and feel how his eyes keep flicking to your face to gage how you’re feeling. It’s making your cheeks fill with heat.

You’re embarrassed.

Clearly, you were wrong. Are wrong. Feel wrong. But Joe’s being very nice about it as he eases the coat from your shoulders, surrendering to the idea of staying.

Joe disappears into the hallway with all of your things, and you listen to the scrape of the coat hanger, the soft thud of your bag to the floor, and then his footsteps that lead him back to the kitchen.  

“Sorry, I–”

“Shoes.”

Before you can even comprehend what he’s just said, Joe crouches in front of you and starts undoing laces. With one hand around your ankle, he takes off a shoe, and then goes for the other, and leaves again to go line them up neatly beside his own without saying another word.

When he returns to the kitchen, sliding his phone back into his pocket after texting Poppy, he secretly thinks to himself that this is a better picture. You, without all of your outside clothes on.  he picks up the mug you'd ignored this whole time.

“Can I tell you a story?” He empties it into the sink, rinses the mug, and start to make another one. “It’s about someone I’ve known for a very long time. Someone I almost know better than she knows herself.”

For a millisecond you’re scared he’s going to say it’s about you, but then you realise he’s talking about Poppy.

“Every now and then, she’d call me, and I would be able to tell by her tone of voice what kind of mood she was in…”

This time, instead of placing the mug of tea where he’d placed it before, Joe steps closer and hands it to you. “Careful, don’t burn yourself.” He warns, before casually leaning back on one of the bar stools. He slouches a bit, looks around, and then says, “So, this friend of mine, she’d call me and– her name is Poppy by the way…”

Despite everything, you huff out the smallest laugh, and Joe has to try his hardest to bite his own smile back.

“She’d ring me, and,” he gestures vaguely around the room. “She’d come in here… well, actually,” he turns his head towards the living room, lets his eyes flick back to you and then nods towards it. “Come here.”

You follow him without really deciding to, mug of tea warm in your hands, trailing after him down the hallway into the living room.

You hover in the doorway a second as you watch Joe sit down on his sofa.

Watch Joe move a cushion that somehow always ends up in the middle of the sofa.

Watch Joe make room beside him.

Then you look beside you, see where you coat hangs on the rack.

Where your scarf drapes down the side.

Where your shoes sit neatly beside his own.

Even your bag has got its own place. A place it goes.

It feels… normal. Like it all belongs there.

Joe sees you study his entryway that’s out of his view, but he can sort of gather what you’re thinking. The arm he’d rested along the back of the sofa without thinking quietly moves to his lap just before you turn back to look into the room. He thinks it’s important that he takes up a bit less space, so a bit more is left for you.

It works. He’s right. You cross the room and sit down next to him, and Joe waits until you’ve settled before continuing.

“Poppy used to sit right where you are now, and she’d tell me all about how she was terrified of this amazing woman Mark had loved for years."

You see where this is going, and you understand the sentiment, but Joe’s wrong.

“It's not the same.”

“It is,” Joe smiles with all the sympathy in the world, needs you to know that he’d never choose Poppy over you, or you over Poppy. He’d never make the choice. You’re both important, and he you’ve no idea how many times I’ve been here before.”

You frown and shake your head. “No.” he doesn’t get it. “It’s not the same.” You wrap both hands around the mug in your hands because you suddenly need somewhere for them to be. You need distraction from the stinging salt water that’s collecting in your eyes once again, and you go for a sip of your tea to help your lips from trembling.

“What do you mean?” Joe asks, voice impossibly soft.

“If Poppy was going to lose Mark, she’d still have you.” You think back to how Poppy excused herself as he fought back tears and then ran upstairs and sobbed because of something you said. Mark was quick to get up and follow his wife, and then, to your horror, Joe did too.

You feel how a tear breaks free and carves a path down your cheek. Before you can even think of wiping it away, Joe’s thumb finds it before he uses his hand to make you look at him.

“I’m not breaking up with you.”

More tears spill immediately.

“I didn’t think–”

“You did.”

“No but I–”

“You absolutely did. You walked in here wearing every possible escape route.”

He’s right. You’re not sure what to say, you feel embarrassed beyond embarrassed for just about every mistake, every wrong thought you’ve had tonight. After a moment of silence, Joe repeats himself.

“I’m not breaking up with you.”

You manage a second of eye-contact before Joe continues, “The world’s not against you.”

You swallow.

“Mark doesn’t hate you.”

A tear slips free as you mumble, “Yea, well, he should.” Which Joe tries to drown out by raising his voice, speaking over you, “Poppy doesn’t hate you.”

“I made her cry, Joe.”

“Yea… you did.”

“So…”

“So, she cried.” Joe says it so casually, shrugs up both his shoulders like it doesn’t matter at all. That’s a lie. It does matter. It mattered enough for Mark to follow her upstairs immediately, and then it mattered enough for Joe to follow them.

It bothers you that what you said wasn’t even that bad.

You reacted to something vicious she had said.

Poppy’d made a tone-deaf comment that she didn’t know applied to you as well, but it hurt you. Mark should know that what she’d said hurt you.

You’d reacted with a snide comment of your own and it had shocked tears into Poppy’s eyes.

You regretted it immediately.

You shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have said that.

But there’s a part of you that hurts because, apparently your feelings didn’t matter. Mark should’ve said something. He should’ve given Poppy a stupid look and he should’ve disagreed with her. You understand that there’s not a universe in which he wouldn’t have followed her. He was up on his feet before she’d even reached the stairs. She’s his wife. He loves her.

But she said something hurtful.

And then they all chose her over you anyway.

You know that rationally only a couple of seconds passed between the three of them bounding up the stairs and you deciding to walk out the door. You know that there was a conversation happening that you weren’t there to hear, and there’s probably dozens of perfectly reasonable explanations for why things unfolded exactly as they did.

But your brain doesn’t give a shit.

Your brain has reduced the entire evening down to one image.

You, downstairs.

Them, upstairs.

Chosen.

Not chosen.

“Do you know why she called me upstairs?”

To have you for herself, you think cruelly. To make sure she had all the support, and you had none.

That’s not it and you know it but, fuck it, that’s exactly what it felt like.

“I can tell you right now that it’s not what you think.”

It’s amazing what panic can do to memory. It trims away context with frightening efficiency until all that’s left is the thing that hurt.

“She asked me if she overstepped and if she overreacted.”

Joe sees how you frown into your tea, the slightest bit of confusion visible in the barely-there crease of your brow. “But that’s–”

“She felt like an idiot and wanted to know if she’d gone too far.”

The room falls quiet.

“I told her I thought she had.”

You lift your head and stare at him for a moment.

“I also told her I thought you had as well.”

There. Fucking see? Isn’t that just what you’d been telling yourself from the very moment Poppy had rushed up the stairs with the weak excuse of ‘needing to go check on something’ as she was already blinking back tears that your words caused her eyes to fill with?

Joe leans in a little bit and lowers his voice, “Mark didn’t, but that only made Poppy cry more, it was… we had a bit of a situation up there, and– hey,”

You unsuccessfully try to stifle a sob.

“Hey, hey, no.” Joe scoots closer. “No, hey, come on. Don’t cry.” He sighs a quiet breath of relief when he pulls you closer and you let your head fall to his shoulder. “You both just had a really rubbish evening, that’s all.”

You laugh weakly through your tears. “That’s one way of putting it.”

He lets the silence settle for a little while, lets his fingers trace paths up and down your arm, before he softly says, “Do you know what upset her most?”

Immediately your mind starts searching.

The comment.

Your reaction.

The crying.

Mark.

Everything.

Joe sees it happen up close and moves his whole palm to dry your cheeks. “Stop. I can actually hear you thinking.”

A watery laugh escapes before you can stop it.

“It wasn’t what you said.”

“What I said shocked her into walking out and–… I shouldn’t have said that, I d-didn’t even really mean it, I just…” you shrug. “I don’t know. I feel really bad.”

Joe squeezes both his eyes shut for a second, still can’t believe how much his best friend and his girlfriend are alike. He swears you’re the same person sometimes, and all of this is so reminiscent of so many conversations he’s had with Poppy over the years.

“The thing she couldn’t stop talking about…” Joe pauses for effect, waits until you look him in the eye before he finishes, “… was that you’d left.”

You stop breathing.

“She kept asking where you’d gone, asked Mark if you’d come back, she… she thought you’d gone home because of her and was terrified you’d decided you didn’t want to be her friend anymore.”

Yea. You feel awful. Because momentarily you hadn’t, but only because you thought that she didn’t want to be your friend anymore. And if she didn’t want to be your friend anymore, that automatically meant that neither would Mark. And neither would Joe.

“You see?” Joe’s voice is impossibly gentle. “Same dance. You’re thinking everyone’s stopped loving you, and upstairs, Poppy was doing the exact same thing.”

Something within you sparks the need to leave again. To push yourself out of Joe’s hold, to get up from this sofa, and to make your way to Joe’s front door. Get out. Go over to Mark and Poppy’s. Tell Poppy you’re an idiot, but only if she’ll tell you she’s an idiot as well.

You don’t get up though. It’s too nice where you are. Instead, you curl your toes and squeeze them together as tightly as you can as silence settles in the room.

“Can I tell you though…” Joe begins, waits for you to turn your head to look at him. “How,” he squeezes his eyes tightly shut, “ridiculously proud I am of you?”

The words catch somewhere behind your ribs.

Proud.

Proud of fucking what?

You’d made his best friend cry. You’d walked out and then spent the better part of two hours convincing yourself that everybody you loved had quietly decided they’d had enough of you, only to arrive here already halfway through saying goodbye to a life that nobody else had realised was ending.

There is nothing to be proud of.

And yet...

The warmth of those words still feels nice.

It blooms quietly somewhere beneath your embarrassment, spreading through your chest before you can stop it, leaving you with that horribly unfamiliar feeling of wanting to smile and hide away at exactly the same time. You feel strangely young. Girlish, almost. Like someone has just handed you a gold star you don’t think you’ve earned, and you don’t quite know where to look because part of you wants to insist they’ve made a mistake while another, much quieter part wants to keep it forever.

Still, you scoff, roll your eyes in the hope that it disguises the smile threatening at the corners of your mouth, and mutter a soft, “Of what? I’ve done literally everything wrong.”

Joe huffs a laugh through his nose.

“Okay, well, do you want me to list everything, because I wi–”

“No.”

You grin at each other, you a bit more bashful than Joe, and the sight of it is so welcome after having seen you go through every other emotion, that he pulls you closer. Sticks his nose into your cheek and just holds it there to breathe you in. Then he says, “For staying, mostly.”

“I nearly didn’t.”

“Yea, you looked at the door seven times whilst I made you tea.”

You look down at the mug you’re still holding, tea now gone cold.

“I really wanted to leave.”

“I know.”

“I still kind of do.” You confess, feeling somewhat guilty, but it’s the truth. Joe’s not breaking up with you, the world isn’t imploding the way you thought it was going to, however you still haven’t fixed anything with Poppy, and that still sits heavy in your gut. The fight-or-flight reaction is still present inside of your body.

But Joe just smiles, says, “I know. Why do you think I’m holding you so tightly?” he squeezes extra tight for emphasis, wringing the giggles right out of you. “I think that was probably one of the hardest things you’ve done in a while.”

It’s silly, but he’s right.

Joe’s thumb brushes absent-mindedly across your sleeve and the room falls quiet again. The silence that settles this time is different. Softer. It asks nothing of either of you, and when you sniffle from crying, it just reminds Joe of how happy he is that he got you to stop. After a while, Joe glances at the clock and smiles to himself.

“What?”

“It’s almost nine.”

“I should call Poppy, shouldn’t I?” You start to pull away, already thinking of where you’ve left your phone, but Joe’s arms tighten just enough to keep you where you are.

“We’ve got about five minutes.”

“What?”

“Poppy said she was going to call you,” he settles you a little closer against his shoulder. “So I’m keeping you whilst I still can.”

Part of you wants to fight him off and just call her yourself, but more of you wants to relish this moment for a second longer. The conversation with Poppy needs to happen, preferably sooner rather than later. There are apologies waiting on the other end of the phone, but, Joe’s right. They can wait five more minutes.

For now, neither of you is in any hurry to go anywhere.

You don’t have to leave.

You’d arrived packed to leave but let Joe quietly unpack all of it. The bag came off, the scarf came off, then the coat, and the shoes, and eventually, he managed to find the panic and took that off as well.

Still, the urge of leave hasn’t gone. It’s there, much smaller now, but you can feel exactly where it sits.

The urge to leave stays.

You do too.

---

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