Roses, thorns, and petals

In a kinder world, the one you’d no doubt thought you were going to grow old in together, he would have been an adequate husband. Nothing special. But nothing egregious. A man passive enough to leave you in charge of most things, and so most trouble would have been avoided—in that kind, normal world—by the solid weight of the sensible head on your shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HANNIBAL LECTER:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JARETH (THE LABYRINTH):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NORMAN BATES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SHANE WALSH:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOMELANDER:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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