The world felt as if it were falling apart. In fact, it was falling apart. Hawkins had cracked. A gaping hole tore through the town. Ash fell from the sky, snow-like but with a darkness to it. The town shook with earthquakes as buildings fell. Everything in that moment felt hopeless. Vecna had succeeded in opening the four gates.

You. You had failed.

​

You stood just outside of the trailer you had crawled back through, seeing the town start to tear apart. Your eyes shifted up to the person beside you. Eddie. He was badly injured by some demobats, almost didn’t make it out, but you managed to stop the bleeding long enough to get him out of there.

“We…we didn’t make it. We didn’t stop him.” You said in a whisper, your voice shaking as Eddie held an arm across his stomach. There was something about the intensity of the situation that almost made you forget this man, this man who had been your best friend since you were preschool-aged; this man almost died.

​

Eddie finally looked down at you with the smallest bit of tears building up in his eyes. He had tried. He had tried so damn hard to protect this town. For some stupid reason, he was trying to save the town who ultimately hated him.

​

“What now?” Eddie asked in a whisper so soft you almost didn’t hear it. You glanced back at the crack. The upside down was now connected to the real world. You had no idea what would happen now. Whatever it was, it felt devastating. Horrendous. And final. Everything suddenly felt bleak and hopeless.

​

“We find everyone else,” Dustin replied as he stood off to the side. He had returned to the trailer with you after Eddie had been injured. The three of you stood together, watching as the town you had grown up in was becoming something foreign and strange and terrifying.

​

Dustin went to his house first to make sure his mom was okay, while you took Eddie into the trailer to fix him up. He was able to take exactly four steps into the home before he fell onto the couch with heavy breaths.

​

“We need to get these clothes off.” You said as you helped him sit up a bit, pulling the jacket off before carefully pulling off his shirt. He lay back, wincing as you glanced over the cuts he had. Deep ones too. There were so many. You had made some makeshift bandages on a few with his bandana and the bottom half of your shirt. But they were both soaked now with blood.

​

“Is it bad? Lie to me.” Eddie said, that stupid sense of humor he had still seemed to work just fine. You felt the tiniest curl on the corner of your lip as you started to peel back the blood-soaked pieces of cloth.

​

“Barely even a scratch. I think you’ll be fully healed by tomorrow.” You lied, trying to hide the obvious worry that was in your voice. You reached over for the nearest bottle of liquor that sat on the table, something his uncle had always left out. “This is going to sting.”

​

You poured the bottle over the cuts, and Eddie screamed out in pain, along with a few curse words. You hated seeing him like this. You hated seeing the pain you had caused him. He threw his arm up across his forehead as he closed his eyes for a moment.

​

“Sorry…” You whispered as you went to pour a little more. Eddie groaned some more, and his body writhed from the pain. You closed your eyes this time, squinting them as if that would make all of this go away. But it didn’t. Nothing would.

​

You heard sirens in the distance as you dug through the medicine cabinet. Bottles and bottles and bottles of pills. You finally found painkillers along with some needle and thread. It was at least something that could hold off…for now.

​

“Here. Take these.” You said, handing Eddie the pills. He didn’t even hesitate before popping them in his mouth and dry swallowing them. He let out a sigh as his body rested more into the couch.

​

“You didn’t have to do all this. You could’ve just left me there to die, you know?” Eddie mumbled out as you started to carefully stitch him back together. He spoke through winces, though they seemed to be getting smaller as the medicine kicked in.

​

“Why on Earth would I leave you there to die?” You asked with a concentrated tone. You pulled the thread back, watching as the skin slowly started to pull back together just a bit. Eddie let out the smallest little sigh, his head turning to the side so he could watch you.

​

“Because maybe that’s what I was meant to do.” He finally said, and the words alone made you stop what you were doing. You hated those words. Why would he ever be meant to die in the upside down? To you, it made no sense. To Eddie, it was the sacrifice he thought he had to make to protect this town.

​

“You’re delirious with pain. Stop talking.” You finally said after a moment as you went back to cleaning him up. After getting all of the wounds cleaned and stitched, you placed some large bandages and wraps over them.

​

“Am I clean and saved now?” Eddie asked as you grabbed a blanket and tossed it over him. You sat on the floor beside the couch, tilting your head at him as you pulled your knees up to your chest.

​

You and Eddie met as kids and immediately clicked. The two of you would ride tricycles together through the trailer park. You were nearly inseparable. Even when your mother remarried to an insurance salesman, and you moved to the suburbs, you still hung out every single day after school. Your friendship was unmatched.

​

“Here to stay for another 30 years. Minimum.” You teased softly as Eddie turned his head to let his dark eyes meet yours. The smallest smile crawled across his face as his color slowly started to return.

​

“Woohoo.” He said in the most sarcastic and quiet tone. You let out the tiniest laugh as you let your head tilt back just a bit. For a world that was falling apart, this moment felt like nothing but calm.

​

The door opened, and Eddie’s uncle stumbled in. His eyes were wide as he seemed to be wanting to catch his breath. Eddie sat up a bit, a groan coming out from moving too quickly.

​

“Thank God you’re okay,” Wayne said as he walked towards the two of you. He glanced down at Eddie’s injuries before looking at you. His eyes went between the two as he tried to take everything in.

​

“Are you alright? What happened?” He asked, and you quickly stumbled to your feet.

​

Fuck. Think of something. Quick.

​

“He’s fine. Or, well, he will be. We were outside near the playground. It collapsed during the earthquake, and Eddie got hurt, but I helped him.” You managed to say as Wayne’s eyes shot back to Eddie, who just nodded his head.

​

“Yeah. Exactly that.” He said in agreement. Wayne nodded, letting out a breath he seemed to have been holding. He glanced around as the sirens started to get louder in the distance.

​

“I’m going to go check on the neighbors. Stay here.” He said, pointing to the two of us. Thankfully, Wayne was never really one for questioning us. He walked out of the trailer and left us alone inside.

​

You stared for a moment longer before sitting back down beside Eddie. Your eyes went to his once more as he settled into the couch. He let his head roll to the side as his curls followed him. One thing you always liked: those damned curls.

​

“You don’t have to stay here all night, you know?” Eddie said in that soft voice he only ever seemed to use when he was around you. You let out a small laugh, pulling your knees to your chest once more.

​

“Where else would I go? I mean, Hotel Munson is pretty hard to give up.” You teased as Eddie let out the smallest laugh under his breath. You could tell his eyes were getting heavy, the adrenaline of everything starting to crash as his body relaxed from the pain medicine.

​

“Then stay. At least until I fall asleep.” He whispered as his eyes started to close. If you stayed until he fell asleep, you’d be gone in five minutes. You smiled just a bit as you reached up and pushed back one of his curls.

​

“Goodnight, big hair.” You whispered, teasing that nickname you had called him since he was just a small kid with a mop of curls on his head.

​

Upon arriving to Eddie's home, he holds the door open for you.

"Welcome to my mansion, fair lady."

"Thank you, kind sir."

Eddie gives the door to Steve to hold open for Nancy so that he can start looking for what they need.

You follow Eddie to his room while they inspect the living room for anything.

"You...have weapons?"

"Just a knife. My uncle Wayne has a gun, though. Rough neighborhood."

You curiously look at Eddie's room through your own eyes this time, and you stop to look at his guitar.

"I see you found my sweetheart."

"Do you still play?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I think this would make a great weapon."

"...You want me to kill her?"

"The music, Eddie."

"I totally knew what you were talking about. Ah-ha! Found it! Thankfully this thing is loaded and there's some ammo packs."

When Eddie turns around with the gun, your mind flashes back to the one of your worst memories.

Witnessing Brenner kill one of his own scientists.

"...You okay?" Eddie asks, concerned.

"Yeah. We should find a way out of here." You leave the room before Eddie can say anything else.

Soon, you're all looking up at the crack in his living room ceiling.

"This is where..." Eddie's breathing shudders.

You place a hand on his back.

"We need to find a way to breach the crack." Nancy says.

"And we have no idea where Dustin and Robin are."

"I can breach the crack. Just...let me focus."

Everyone stands aside as you lift up your hand.

___________________________________________________

With a very stressful return back to the real world, you, Steve, Nancy, and Eddie return to the boathouse.

"We don't have any idea where Robin and Dustin are." Nancy says.

"What about the walkie we grabbed off the boat?" Steve asked.

"Still nothing." Nancy says.

You huff to yourself, then look at Eddie who's sleeping and covering himself with the tarp like a blanket.

You take mental note of how at peace he looks.

You begin to wonder how anyone could possibly believe such evil of him.

You've seen true evil all your life, and Eddie's nothing of it.

You turn to Steve and Nancy.

"I can find where they are. I just need focus and some static."

"You've got it." Steve says.

You close your eyes and tune in to the frequency.

"I see them. They're at the station."

"What? What station?" Steve asks.

"Police."

"We were just trying to help!" Robin lies.

"You can't interfere with ongoing investigations without notifying law enforcement first. You and your friend here will be let off for now, but that's with a strict warning. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir!" Robin and Dustin say in sync.

"Now. Who do I notify to take you home?"

"We can walk home, we don't live far from here. She's my sister." Dustin lies.

The cop gives a skeptical glint before sighing.

"Alright, but go straight home. There's too much shit going on as is."

"Yes, sir!" Dustin and Robin say in unison, and scramble.

"Damn kids." The cop mutters.

"What's happening?" Steve asks.

"Just a moment." You say.

Come to boathouse.

"They're at the boathouse." Robin states.

Dustin looks perplexed. "How do you know that?"

"Let's just say I think I got a message from our beautiful friend with powers."

___________________________________________________

A couple of days later, everyone meets together at the boathouse as planned the night that Dustin and Robin came back.

"We have Eddie's guitar for music as distraction. We would just need weapons." Nancy concludes.

"Again. You're all making this sound...super easy." Eddie says.

"... But there's one part I'm leaving out."

"I wish you had told me the bad news first."

"...If we want to defeat Vecna, we have to go back into the Upside Down."

"Nope, nope-" Eddie says, already making up his mind.

"I think she's right. He could never be anywhere in this world. My brother likes the advantage of being unfound." You agree.

Steve and Nancy give you a fond smile.

"So you're up for the challenge?" Steve asks.

"I can't continue letting this happen. We have to do this, even if it's dangerous. Too many lives have been lost."

Eddie's whole demeanor switches.

"I think we should go."

"What?! You just said-" Dustin starts.

"I know what I said... But that was a minute ago!"

"Well...okay, Eddie. We need you for music. Plus, I've been waiting to see you play that cool thing." You smile.

Eddie's breathing pathetically shudders.

"Well. Looks like you're in for a surprise. The Dungeon Master will perform a wicked shred to your satisfaction." He grins.

Your cheeks flush, then everything around you disappears in an instant.

You don't know where you are, but you're cold.

Everything is lifeless; grey.

You look around for any mercy, but there's none.

"Hello, anybody?" You call out.

In the real world, everyone's flipping out.

"Shit, shit, shit." Steve and Dustin scramble around for a Walkman.

"Shit, I don't know what to do!" Eddie panics.

"We just need music!" Dustin also panics.

"We don't know what she likes!"

You run around wherever you are, trying to find a way out but there's dead ends no matter where you go.

You hear the sound of wet footsteps ascending behind you, so you turn around.

Your brother, the monster looks at you.

"Hen...henry?"

"I am no longer Henry. I am the Superior One. And you... seem to have forgotten where you came from. Would you like to remember?"

You try to back up, but you hit a wall.

"No Henry, don't-"

Your images shift back to Hawkins Lab.

"Do you remember when they took us? Said they could make us heroes?"

"I- I remember."

"But you got away. Found yourself a nice little family. Friends. A boyfriend."

You're distorted away from the lab, back to your first miserable location.

You let out a sob and cover your mouth when you see what Vecna has shown you.

Eddie's eyes hollow and blood splattered, his limbs facing the same fate as Chrissy's.

"Do you think he'll save you? Make you whole? In fact, he's making you quite weak. Loving is weak."

"No! It's the strongest I've ever felt." You defy.

"Nothing about you is strong. You're simply a softened lab rat that will fall into the tunnel of normalcy. You and I could do beautiful things together."

Suddenly, that's when you hear it.

Music.

A tear in the illusion Vecna made for you.

"No."

"... What did you say?"

"I said, no!"

With a pushing motion of your hand, Vecna is swept back harshly against boarded windows with a thud, causing him to grunt in pain.

You take the chance to run.

He attempts to hurl whatever he can at you when he recovers, but you keep running until the illusion finally snaps.

You harshly hyperventilate as you're brought back into the real world and your true conscious. You grab on to whoever is holding you.

"Oh, thank God!" Dustin says.

You look down and see two ringed hands holding you close from behind. Shuddering breaths fan your ear, then a sigh of relief.

Jolene

·· 〰 ⚓︎ 〰 ··

It was crazy how quickly time managed to fly during the early months of the year. One moment they were celebrating the small victory of on-site housing, and in a blink of an eye, Sam had managed to successfully prove he could move himself from a bed to his wheelchair with confidence. Just enough proven independence that his doctors at Walter Reed released him for months of ongoing outpatient physical therapy back in Virginia. Randy and Loretta had driven up with their SUV, knowing Jolene’s truck couldn’t successfully provide a comfortable way for Sam to keep his leg elevated during the five-hour drive home. In some ways, it was nice having them trailing behind in hers while she drove Sam in theirs. They’d helped out as much as possible without seeming overbearing by pulling off at gas stops, running in to grab her and Sam food while she gently nudged him awake for meds. 

When they got home, Randy had walked them through all the modifications to the house with an anxious pride. The ramps out front and back were sturdy, and carefully thought over in the way only a man who loved Jolene like a daughter could manage. The door frames had been widened, the fresh trim not yet painted, smelling of sawdust and love. Loretta had spent the days prior shifting the entirety of essential items in the kitchen to the lower cabinets for easy access to accommodate Sam’s needs.

The downstairs bedroom, however, was the hardest hurdle. It was homier than Jolene gave it credit for. Filled with the familiar scent of cedar and the soft glow of the lamps they’d brought down from the second floor. But no amount of decorative pillows or a brand new king sized bed could mask the fact that she was sleeping in the room where her father had taken his final breaths. It was unnerving to be there alone. Luckily between Chewie and Sam that was rare.

The first week back was a blur of exhausting firsts. There was the reunion between Sam and Chewbacca. A moment Jolene had braced for with a mixture of hope and terror. The eighty pound German Shepherd had been vibrating with months worth of suppressed energy when they finally pulled into the gravel drive. Jolene had to practically tackle the dog to keep him from launching himself at Sam’s leg. Eventually, their dog settled into a state of watchful vigil once he calmed. A heavy head resting on Sam’s good knee, his tail thumping against the hardwood every time Sam so much as shifted a blanket. It was almost as if, in that big Shepherd head of his, he was acknowledging that his dad came back, thus it was his responsibility alone to watch over Sam until he was upright to do it on his own.

The rhythm of their days became dictated by the kitchen timer. The ding signaled the rotation of ice packs, the swallowing of pills, or the beginning of the home exercises that left Sam drenched in sweat and shaking with a silent rage. Jolene watched him from the doorway, her heart aching as she saw the Chief Petty Officer tremble as he tried to lift his leg six inches off the mat a few seconds faster than the previous attempt. 

He was improving, though. To Jolene, it was like watching a glacier move. To Sam, it may as well have been the fastest he’d ever felt life move. Jolene assumed it was because he was finally doing something. The messy-headed teenager look she’d teased him about at Walter Reed had stayed. He hadn’t asked for the clippers, and she hadn't offered. Instead, she spent the quiet evenings sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed, her fingers working through the darkening curls, gently working through the knots from laying back most of the day. When she’d first met Sam, they’d hovered between honey brown and medium. Now, likely due to the stress, it was beginning to darken and taken on a more ashen color. Not that she minded at all.

They were finally home, and Jolene found herself breathing deeper. Her ribs started to find their curve again as she actually ate the meals Loretta dropped off. It was a conversation that hadn’t gone over well at all the moment Loretta finally laid eyes on her in February. She’d walked out of the room, away from Sam’s ears only to get met with sternness and a frightening level of love only her Godmother could muster. She’d tossed out promises to start being better about eating. Agreeing that Sam wouldn’t benefit if she was unwell because she stopped taking care of herself along the way. Mostly concessions just to get Loretta to stop yelling in the hallway of a military facility. But being back home finally, Jolene allowed herself to believe for the first time since the phone call in November, that things were finally looking up.

Sam was talking about the future again. Not ‘just the getting through today’ kind of future, but their Little Creek future. He’d spend his PT sessions grilling the therapists about functional movement, his eyes bright with the prospect of the Lead Instructor role once he was back to normal. He was convinced that by the time the Winter was over, he’d be out of the chair for good, and by the end of the year he’d be trading the titanium pins for a pair of combat boots and a whistle. Jolene didn't have the heart to tell him that she’d seen the latest emails from the Personnel Office, or that the "purgatory" they thought they’d left behind in D.C. had followed them home in the form of a thick, manila envelope marked Medical Evaluation Board. She just kept her hand in his hair and watched him sleep, waiting for the inevitable day the Navy would come knocking on their front door to reclaim what was left of their hopeful bubble.

As for her shop, being the boss had its perks, mainly the ability to treat her schedule like a rough draft. She’d pop in during the mid-morning to check the progress on a frame alignment or help her lead mechanic. Sometimes she’d help source a hard-to-find part for a classic restoration with Ruth in the front office. She wasn’t pulling full days yet, but those four-hour stretches were her own version of physical therapy. She’d work until noon, her hands getting grease-stained and calloused again, before wiping down and racing back to the house to check on Sam.

Tuesdays and Thursdays were the real anchors of their week, given those were PT days.

Getting him into her truck was still a choreographed dance of grunts and careful bracing. She’d help him leverage his weight from the chair to the passenger seat, tucking his leg into the specific, cushioned configuration he needed to avoid the jarring of the Virginia backroads. Sam usually spent the drive in a focused silence, his jaw set as he prepared for the hour of torture disguised as rehab that awaited him. By the time they pulled back into the driveway around lunch, he was usually a shell of himself. Pale, trembling with muscle fatigue, and smelling of the gym’s stale sweat.

"Come on, Grumpy," she’d murmur, her arm around his waist as she guided him toward the modified bathroom. The shower had become their most sacred ritual. In the hospital, it had been about simple hygiene, but here, it was about trying to get him to relax. She’d get him settled on the newly installed shower bench. The water hot enough to steam up the room and loosen the tight, angry knots in his back. Jolene would step in behind him, her own clothes usually getting damp in the process, and reach for the bottle of expensive, sandalwood-scented shampoo she’d bought specifically because it didn't smell like a pharmacy and the fact the earth fragrance really fit the man she knew who loved to run in the pines back in New England.

She’d work up a thick lather, her fingers disappearing into the dark, unruly curls that had now fully claimed his head. This was the only time Sam truly let the armor go. He’d lean his head back into her touch, shaky exhales escaping him as Jolene used her nails to scrub his scalp. She’d take her time, her fingertips moving in slow, deliberate circles, massaging away the tension of the PT session until she felt his shoulders finally drop.

"Better?" she’d ask, her voice barely audible against the hiss of the spray.

He’d usually just offer a muffled grunt of affirmation, his eyes closed, letting her hands be the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. Once he was dry and settled on the bed, the caregiver in her would resurface, shifting from the soft intimacy of the shower to the clinical nature his recovery demanded. She’d lay out a clean towel beneath his leg, exposed metal catching the light in a way that still made her stomach lurch if she looked at it too long. Cleaning the pin sites was a silent ritual. Jolene would sit on the corner of the mattress, a bowl of saline and a stack of sterile swabs at her side. She’d work with the steady hand, clearing away the crust and discharge from the places where the titanium met the skin. Sam usually looked away during this part, staring at the ceiling or tracing the pattern on the quilt, his body tensing with every cold swipe of the cotton.

"No redness, Sam. The skin looks tight," she’d provide him with updates. She was always checking for the tell-tale heat of infection, knowing the slight swelling would send them racing back to Walter Reed. It was a weight she carried every time she touched him. The knowledge that his recovery was a house of cards, and she was the one tasked with keeping the wind at bay. The worst of it was his heel. It had been a constant battle since those first two weeks in the ICU when he’d been too broken to move. The sore there was stubborn, and still refused to fully close. Jolene would carefully lift his foot, cradling his ankle in her palm to check the dressing before she’d take the time to apply the medicated cream, her touch light as she tried to keep it from turning into a full-blown bedsore.

"Still tender?" she’d ask, though she already knew the answer by the way his toes would curl inward.

"It's fine, Jo. Just do what you gotta do," he’d rasp, the exhaustion of the day finally bleeding into his voice.

She’d finish the wound care with a fresh wrap, before moving on to the rest of the checklist. She’d check the backs of his thighs, making sure no other pressure points were developing, and then move to the nightstand to organize the afternoon cocktail of meds. She was a hawk about the timing, knowing exactly when the nerve blocks would start to wear off and the "lightning strikes" in his leg would begin.

"Three pills, Sam. Then you’re eating this entire sandwich," she’d command, sliding the plate toward him. Jolene learned early on that if she didn't watch him swallow the last bite, he’d neglect it once the lethargy hit. She’d sit there until the plate was empty, watching the color slowly return to his face as the food and the quiet of the house did their work.

Finally, once the dressings were clean, the meds were down, and the sandwich was gone, she’d help him maneuver his pillows into a fortress of support. She’d tuck a final bolster under his knee, making sure the elevation was exactly as the therapists demanded. "You good?" she’d ask, leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead.

"Yeah," he’d breathe, his eyes already heavy, the fog of the painkillers finally winning. "I'm good, Baby."

She’d offer a small, genuine smile, snagging her keys from the dresser. She’d wait until his breathing shifted into that deep, heavy sound of a man who had finally found safety, before she’d quietly click the bedroom door shut. It was only then, she would feel confident enough to walk across the gravel driveway and head toward the shop for the afternoon. And for a few hours, she could be Jolene Johnson, the owner of the best damn mechanic shop in Virginia Beach, while the woman who was holding Sam Walsh together took a much-needed breath.

She tried her best to carve out space for herself. Small, quiet pockets of air where she wasn't just an extension of a medical chart. Truly. But it was a losing battle when everyone around her seemed to exist in a constant state of hunger for updates. She understood, of course. Sam had nearly died. He was currently a miracle with a metal leg, and people cared. But being the sole curator of his trauma meant that every interaction was a reminder of what they’d lost. She found herself unhealthily invested in the most mundane of places. One afternoon, while a teenager at the Piggly Wiggly helped her load groceries into the truck, she’d felt a surge of genuine adrenaline just hearing him mention he went to Princess Anne High.

"I was the kicker there," she’d blurted out, her voice a little too loud, a little too eager. She’d probably weirded the poor kid out, but she couldn't help it. For three minutes, she wasn't the woman with the "injured SEAL boyfriend." She was just a former athlete talking shop with a fellow Cavalier. It was a rare, precious oxygen bubble. No updates on pin-site infections. No debating mobility milestones with a therapist. No logistics talk with Randy or insurance paperwork with the Casualty Liaison. Even at the shop, where she went for sanctuary, she had to dodge Ruth’s well-meaning but heavy-handed inquiries and offers of dropping by groceries. Not to mention, the proximity community was one thing, Sam’s mother was somehow more overbearing despite the hundreds of miles.

Mary had been a persistent, static-heavy presence in Jolene's ear ever since they’d crossed the state line. If the doctors were in charge of Sam’s physical recovery, Mary Walsh considered herself the spiritual foreman. She called twice a day, her voice vibrating with that Northeast Upper-middle class pace barely masked her judgment of the southern grit Jolene was using to keep the house running.

Jolene would grit her teeth, her knuckles turning white against the steering wheel or the kitchen counter, and offer the same patient, hollow reassurances. She was a buffer for him. A human shield between Sam’s fragile ego and his mother’s suffocating concern. Sam didn't have the patience for his mother's fussing, and Mary didn't have the stomach for the raw, ugly reality of Sam’s temper, so the burden fell to Jolene. She was the one who translated his "I’m fine" into something Mary could digest, and Mary’s "He should be treated tenderly" into something Sam wouldn't throw a remote at.

By the time she’d hang up, the weight of the balancing act felt heavier than the truck she was driving. She’d pull into the gravel drive, the gutters overflowing with leaves from months of neglect, heart panging because she knew under normal circumstances he’d already have taken care of it. She loved him. She would walk through fire to keep him breathing. But as she watched Chewbacca jumping on the other side of the door with his tail a happy blur, Jolene felt a pang of envy for the dog. He didn't need to know about complications of Sam's recovery and career. He just wanted a head scratch.

Inside, Sam was likely waking up from his nap, his mind already churning through the day's frustrations. And tucked in the glove box, hidden beneath a pile of napkins and a spare wrench, was the manila envelope from the Navy. She hadn't told him yet that the home visit from the Naval Officer had been scheduled for Friday, mostly because she wanted him to have one more night of believing that he was a man returning to his career, and not a liability being measured for his exit.

"Just a little more time," she whispered to the empty truck, smoothing her hair. She climbed out and headed toward the ramp, the weight of the world settling back onto her shoulders with every step. The house was cool, the air smelling of the lavender-scented floor wax Loretta had used to scrub the place within an inch of its life before they arrived. Usually, the sound of the door was enough to send a ripple through the house, but today, there was only the low, steady hum of the refrigerator.

The door was cracked, letting a sliver of the afternoon sun slice across the hardwood floor. Sam was out. Not just resting, but truly, deeply submerged in a narcotic-induced heavy sleep. He was sprawled on his back, the mountain of pillows she’d meticulously arranged still holding his leg in its elevated position. The sheets were kicked down to his waist, revealing the stark contrast of his body. The slightly softened but still corded muscles of his chest and arms, leading way to the thinning shape of his legs and the brutal reality of the fixator below.

"Sam," she whispered, leaning over him. She reached out, her hand hovering over his shoulder before she gently shook him. "Hey, Baby. Time to join the living." He didn't move. She tried again, her voice a little louder, her hand sliding up to the side of his neck where his pulse beat slow and steady. "Sam. Wake up, honey."

He let out a long, shuddering sigh, his head rolling toward her touch. His eyes didn't snap open with the alertness she’d seen for years. There was no bracing for a threat, no immediate tensing of his jaw. Instead, he surfaced slowly, like someone rising through deep, clear water. When his eyelids finally fluttered open, they were unfocused and soft. He looked at her, and for a fleeting, devastating second, the hardened bastard she’d come to know well the last few months was nowhere to be found. The defensive lines around his mouth were gone, smoothed over by the remnants of sleep. He looked younger. Almost boyish in a way. 

"Jo?" he murmured, his voice a thick, sleep-warmed rasp. He didn't ask about his meds. He didn't complain about the ache that always followed a nap. Instead, he reached for her, his hand trailing up her arm until his fingers found the back of her neck, pulling her down toward him with a desperate tenderness. "You're back," he whispered against her skin as she let herself be pulled into his space. He tucked his face into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply. He sounded vulnerable. Like a man who hadn't yet remembered that he was supposed to be angry at the world.

Jolene felt a sharp ache in her chest. A pressure so intense it made her eyes sting. She hadn't realized until this exact moment just how much of him she’d been missing. She’d been so focused on the patient who required frequent medical intervention, the soldier who needed her logistics on paper, and the survivor he was lucky to be that she’d forgotten about the man who used to look at her like she was the only thing that made sense. The version of Sam she’d been living with lately was a fortress she so often felt outside of, but here, in the dim light of her father’s old room, the gates were wide open.

"I'm back," she managed to say, her voice trembling just enough for him to notice. She ran her fingers through his hair, her nails lightly scratching the scalp she’d scrubbed earlier, and he let out a soft, contented hum that vibrated through her own body.

He pulled back just an inch, his thumb tracing the line of her lower lip. His gaze was clear, for once, and filled with a raw, unburdened affection that made her want to sob. "I missed you," he said simply.

It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a sarcastic remark meant to deflect. It was a Glimpse. Seeing him like this, so open and tender, nearly broke her. It was a reminder of the man who existed beneath the titanium and the trauma. The one she was fighting so hard to preserve even as the Navy prepared to write him off as a loss. The one who may never walk properly again, and was doing his best to not be angry or worried about that fact. The man who promised her the world and now demanded too much of it to give her that. She leaned down and pressed her forehead against his, closing her eyes to hide the moisture. She wanted to stay in this moment forever, in the quiet space where the hardware didn't matter and the manila envelope didn't exist. She wanted to hold onto this boyish and sweet version of him before the world rushed back in and he remembered he was broken.

"I missed you too, Walsh," she whispered, her voice fracturing on his name.

She pressed her face into his shoulder, the tears finally winning as they soaked into his t-shirt. To anyone else, it would have sounded like the standard greeting of a girlfriend who’d been gone for a few hours at the shop. But internally, Jolene was grieving a much longer absence. She wasn't talking about the three hours she’d spent at the garage; she was talking about the months she’d spent looking for him in the wreckage of hospital rooms and bureaucracy. She missed the man who didn’t need her this intensely, and instead chose to allow himself to want her.

She stayed there, feeling the tightening of his arm, and let her mind drift back to the version of Sam Walsh she had first fallen for.

It felt like a different lifetime, that first night in the bar. She could still see him sitting at the counter at Randy and Loretta’s. Just a handsome stranger with a half-drank Michelob and a quiet, observant air that had instantly stilled the noise of the room. She’d walked in, fresh off a long two weeks in Baltimore for Elijah’s delivery and welcome home, and had fallen into those honeyed eyes before she could even think to put up a guard. There had been a warmth there that melted into a heat that wasn't aggressive, but steady and sure.

In those early months, she’d grown addicted to the quiet, casual way he claimed her space. It wasn't about the grand gestures, but the small, mindless touches that defined their rhythm. She thought of the way he’d come through the front door after a long day at the base. His uniform smelt of sea salt and jet fuel, and he’d immediately find her at the stove. He wouldn't say a word, just slide a large, warm hand onto the curve of her waist, wrapping himself around her while she stirred a pot of pasta or flipped a grilled cheese. It was a silent check-in, a way of saying I’m back, you’re here, and that’s enough.

At night, when they’d settle onto the couch to catch up on a show, his hands were never still. His fingers would find the bare skin of her shoulder, tracing the lines of her old shop related injuries or the faint freckles there with a distractingly gentle ease. He’d do it while his eyes were fixed on the screen, a subconscious movement that made her feel more seen than any conversation ever could.

Even in sleep, Sam had been a man who craved proximity. She remembered the dozens of times she’d woken up in the middle of the night to find he had shifted toward her, his heavy forearm tossed over her side. He had a habit of abandoning his own pillow, gradually migrating until he was leaning into hers, his face tucked against the back of her neck or his forehead resting against her temple.

Now, as she felt his hand stroking her hair in the quiet of her father’s bedroom, she realized she was holding a ghost of that man. He was still there. She could see him in the boyish curve of his mouth and the way he still sought out her scent, but he was buried under layers of pain and a desperate, clawing need to be useful again. Sam let out a soft, questioning noise, sensing the shift in her mood. "Jo? You're shaking, baby. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she lied, pulling back just enough to wipe her eyes with the heel of her hand. She forced a small, watery smile, desperate to keep the front from crumbling completely in front of him, only daring to look up at his eyes for a brief moment before looking away. "Just glad to be home. I’m just... tired."

Sam’s eyes narrowed slightly, that observant streak she’d so usually associated with him flickering back to life. He didn't entirely believe her.  He was too good at reading her for that, and the narcotic fog wasn't quite thick enough to hide the hitch in her breathing. In the half-light of the room, he didn't let it go. He may not have had the energy for a confrontation, but he had a surplus of that quiet, marrow-deep intuition that had always made him her perfect match.

"Jolene," he murmured, his voice a low, vibrating hum against her ear. He shifted, a small hiss of pain escaping as his leg protested the movement, as he hooked his thumb under her chin, gently forcing her to look up, though she tried to bury her face back into the cotton of his shirt. "Don't do that. Don't hide from me."

"I'm not," she whispered, the lie tasting like salt.

"You are." His touch was impossibly tender, his fingers tracing the wet path of a tear down her cheek with a reverence that made her chest feel like it was being squeezed in a vise. He sounded so much like the man who used to hold her in the dark before the world broke. "Tell me. Is it the shop? Is it Ma? Did someone say something to you?" The gentleness was her undoing. If he had been grumpy, she could have been firm. If he had been distant, she could have been busy. But this raw, soft version of him stripped away every defense she had left.

"It’s just exhaustion, Sam," she whispered, the first silent sob breaking through the dam. She collapsed against him, her forehead pressed into the center of his sternum, her hands fist-clenching the fabric of his shirt as if he were the only thing keeping her from drifting out to sea. "I just wish you weren't going through this. I miss the you who isn't hurting every second of the day."

She cried unlike how she had in the last months. Not the silent, polite tears she shed in the shower or the margins of the day, but the deep, racking sobs of a woman who had been carrying a mountain on her back for months. She cried for the bar in Virginia Beach, for the lightheartedness they once shared, for the future that was on hold and for the terrifying, looming reality of the Friday appointment she hadn't told him about yet. And the worst part of it all, was the excuse she muttered out as to why she was loosing it... was nothing more than a half truth to keep it all at bay.

"I'm okay, baby. Just breathe. I’ve got you," he murmured, his voice lacked even a trace of the detachment that had defined their interactions lately. He pressed a kiss to her temple, his lips lingering there as if he could draw the sorrow out of her skin. But his softness only acted as a catalyst. Every tender word was a reminder of the gentleness they had sacrificed at the altar of his survival, and it made her sob harder, her shoulders shaking with the sheer force of a release that had been months in the making. She felt like a frayed wire finally snapping under the current.

Halfway through the storm, a bolt of guilt pierced through her grief. She felt a sudden need to pull away, her mind racing with the realization that she was supposed to be the strong one. She was the one who cleaned the pins; she was the one who fought the Navy; she was the one who held the line. She shouldn't be letting a random Tuesday be the thing that finally leveled her. Not after she’d survived the ICU. Not after she’d stood up to Mary Walsh. Or after she’d swallowed the bitter pill of knowing the kind and soft man she’d known was nowhere on the horizon in the wake of what happened to him.

"I'm sorry," she choked out, her voice wet and thick. She tried to push back, her palms flat against his pectorals as she attempted to sit up and wipe the tears from her face with her sleeves. "I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m just tired, Sam. I didn’t mean to... to put this on you."

But as she tried to retreat into her fortress, Sam’s grip tightened. He didn't let her move an inch. The grogginess was gone now, replaced by a sudden alertness that cut through the haze of his meds. He hooked his arm more firmly around her waist and used his other hand to press her head back down against his heart, refusing to let the distance grow between them.

"Don't," he whispered, "Don't you dare apologize, Jolene."

She tried to protest again, a small, muffled sound against his shirt, but he shifted just enough to tuck his chin over the top of her head, holding her there.

"Just stay," he breathed, his hand moving in slow, heavy strokes down the length of her spine. "Please. Just... let me be the one holding the pain for a minute. Let me feel like a man for once."

The honesty in his plea struck her harder than any of his previous outbursts ever had. Because of all the ways he'd needed her these past few weeks, this was different. Before, his needs had been practical. Humiliating, vulnerable, painfully human. There had been those awkward first sponge baths, his pitiful brown eyes fixed on the ceiling while she carefully pulled back his foreskin and cleaned the most intimate parts of him under a nurse's supervision. There were the countless transfers from bed to chair and back again, the constant adjustments, the medications she tracked because he simply didn't have the mental capacity to manage them himself. Those were real needs. Necessary needs. The kind that stripped away every trace of romance or sex appeal between them and left her in the singular role of caretaker. She had become the person who kept him functioning, who carried the weight when he no longer could.

But this was different.

This wasn't him asking her to care for him. It was him asking for the chance to care for her. To shoulder some of the emotional burden she'd been carrying alone. To offer strength instead of borrowing it. As though he'd been starving for an opportunity to give back even a fraction of what she'd given him every day since November. And somehow, that need touched her more deeply than all the others combined.

Jolene stopped fighting his kindness. She let her hands go limp against his chest, her fingers curling into the soft cotton of his shirt as she surrendered to the weight of his embrace. She stayed there, listening to the steady, powerful thrum of his heart. In the quiet of the room, with the late afternoon sun fading against the hardwood, the roles finally blurred. For the first time in a long time, the house didn't feel like a recovery ward. It just felt like home.

She lingered there for a long moment, the steady cadence of his heartbeat against her cheek. But as the silence deepened, the secret she was keeping began to feel less like a hidden burden and more like a betrayal. The warmth of his skin felt unearned while she was holding back a truth that would inevitably shatter this fragile peace. The guilt grew teeth, gnawing at her until she couldn't breathe under the weight of his kindness. Reluctantly, she pulled back just enough to look at him, her eyes red-rimmed and her voice still caught in the back of her throat.

"Sam," she started, her fingers nervously picking at a loose thread on his sleeve. "There’s something... I haven't told you yet. About Friday. The Navy, they're sending someone. A field representative from the PERS office and a medical liaison. They’re coming here, to the house, for a formal evaluation."

She braced herself for the impact. She expected the jaw to lock, the eyes to turn to flint, or for him to pull away in a fit of territorial rage at the thought of a suit sitting in their living room. Instead, Sam just exhaled a long, slow breath, his expression remaining maddeningly neutral.

"I know, Jo," he said casually, his thumb resuming its slow stroke against her temple. "Friday at ten, right? I figured they’d be here by then."

Jolene froze, her heart skipping a beat. She blinked at him, the tears drying on her cheeks as a wave of confusion washed over her. "You know? How? I haven't even brought the paperwork in from the truck yet."

Sam shifted slightly, the bed creaking under his weight, his gaze drifting toward the window where the Virginia sun was beginning to dip behind the pines. "Got a call on Monday," he admitted, his voice leveled out into a low, steady hum. "One of the Chief’s from the Command called my cell while you were at the shop. He gave me the heads-up that the paperwork for the training billet had hit a snag and that the medical board was fast-tracking the home visit."

"You’ve known since Monday?" Jolene sat up fully now, her hands dropping to her lap. She felt a strange, dizzying sensation, like the ground had shifted beneath her. "And you didn't say anything? You just let me sit here and agonize over how to break it to you? Sam, I’ve been losing sleep for three days trying to figure out how to tell you without... without you spiraling."

She searched his face, looking for the anger, the fear, or the stubborn denial that had been his constant companion at Walter Reed. But he just looked tired. Not the medicated tired, but a deep, soulful exhaustion. His calmness was eerie.

"I didn't want to ruin the week," he said simply, reaching out to snag her hand again.

"But Sam, they’re coming to evaluate if you're retainable," she whispered, her voice trembling with the weight of the word. "Don't you get it? This isn't just a check-in. This is the start of the exit. How are you so... okay with this?"

"I'm not okay with it," he countered, and for a split second, the old light of the Chief Petty Officer flickered in his honeyed eyes. "But I’ve spent enough time to know you don't jump the gun on a brief. I'm just waiting for the enemy to show up at the door so I can see what kind of fight we’re actually in. Until then, there's no point in us both drowning in the 'what-ifs'."

Jolene stared at him, her mind racing. She had spent weeks acting as his shield, his translator, and his primary defender, only to realize he had been standing in the rain right beside her, watching the same horizon. The shock of his composure was almost as painful as his previous outbursts. It was a reminder that even when he was broken, even when he was boyish and sweet in the margins of a nap, he was still a man who had been trained to endure.

"You're terrifying sometimes, you know that?" she breathed, her hand tightening around his.

"I'm just a man who’s trying to figure out how to function in those small gaps between meds, Jo," he murmured, pulling her back down into the crook of his arm. "The rest of it? We'll handle it on Friday. For now, just stay here."

The weight of the afternoon finally overtook her. Jolene didn’t mean to sleep. She just meant to close her eyes for a second, relaxed by the rise and fall of Sam’s chest and his fingers in her hair. Yet, when she finally jolted awake, the room was bathed in the bruised purple of twilight. 

"Sam?" she croaked, sitting up and finding the other side of the bed empty, and the man she’d fallen asleep on long gone.

She scrambled to her feet, her joints stiff, and hurried toward the kitchen. She expected to find him struggling, perhaps stuck in a narrow turn or frustrated by a high shelf. Instead, she stopped dead in the doorway. The kitchen was warm. The low, golden light of the stove's hood lamp illuminated Sam, who was positioned in his wheelchair by the island. He’d already cleared a space on the counter. Beside him sat an empty glass dish, and the scent of bubbling cheese and roasted chicken was already beginning to fill the air. He’d simply taken the pre-made casserole Loretta had left and managed to slide it into the oven himself.

He looked up as she entered, a rare, genuine smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You were dead to the world. Figured I could handle a thirty-minute bake without calling in reinforcements."

"Sam, you shouldn't have been leaning over the oven door–"

"I’m fine," he interrupted, but for once, it didn't sound like a defense. He looked settled, his posture relaxed as he patted the arm of his chair. "Go sit down."

Jolene watched him, a lump forming in her throat. Seeing him navigate the kitchen with that spark of stubborn competence felt like a promise. Not a grand one, but a small, precious assurance that the man she loved was still in there. Still fighting his way back to her.

As they ate later by the light of the candles on the table, Sam laughed while recounting a story about Chewbacca's antics that day. The sound caught her off guard. It wasn't the strained, obligatory chuckle she'd grown used to hearing over the past few months. It was his real laugh. Warm and unguarded. One that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made his shoulders shake. The one she'd fallen in love with. The shadows of the Navy and the pins in his leg seemed to retreat into the corners of the room. For the first time in months, she wasn't studying him for signs of pain or mentally calculating his next medication dose, wondering if he'd overexerted himself. She was simply looking at him.

The candlelight caught the copper tones hidden in his brown hair. A faint scar near his chin she'd somehow never noticed before despite years together. The way his hands moved when he told a story, animated even while seated. The tiny crease that appeared beside his mouth whenever he was trying not to laugh at his own jokes. She found herself collecting those details without meaning to, storing them away somewhere deep inside her. Like a bear preparing for winter. Like part of her already knew there would be another bad day waiting around the corner. Another morning where pain and frustration hollowed him out and left him snapping at her over something insignificant. Another argument started by a misplaced remote or a forgotten refill or a question asked at the wrong moment. Another day where she'd have to remind herself that the man lashing out wasn't the man sitting across from her now.

So she memorized this version instead.

The easy smile. The softness in his eyes. The way he leaned back in his chair with his arms folded behind his head, looking comfortable in his own skin for the first time in what felt like forever.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Each second stretching longer than it should have, as though the universe itself recognized how rare this was and was reluctant to let it pass. Jolene couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so present. Not trapped in the future, worrying about what came next. Not buried in the past, mourning everything they'd lost.

Just here.

Watching Sam tell a ridiculous story about a dog.

Watching candlelight flicker across his face.

Watching him become himself again.

And for a few fragile hours, she allowed herself to believe that maybe they were finally turning a corner. That maybe the worst was behind them. That maybe this version of him, the one laughing across the table, making her stomach hurt from smiling so much, was the man she'd get to keep from now on.

And somehow despite not having the chance to shower, still covered in grease from the shop, and eating reheated chicken and rice casserole, it was the best night they'd had since the world ended.

·· 〰 ⚓︎ 〰 ··

The meeting hadn't been the explosive confrontation Jolene had braced for. Instead, it was something far more corrosive. A bureaucratic drowning. The Medical Liaison had clearly delivered this speech a thousand times. He sat in her father’s living room and spoke about Sam’s life as if it were a ledger that wouldn't quite balance. He hadn't officially stamped the retirement papers yet. Not because there was hope, but because there was procedure.

"Look," the Liaison had said, clicking his pen. "Technically, you're in limbo. We can't finalize medical retirement until you've hit your Maximum Medical Improvement. You have to finish this course of physical therapy before the board can do the final tally. That's regulation."

Sam had leaned forward, his knuckles white as he gripped the armrests of his chair. "I’m at eighty percent mobility on the charts, for my current marker. Well ahead of what they expected, Sir. By the time I finish the last block of PT, I’ll be ready for the Little Creek billet. I just need a recommendation for the waiver until I can finish."

The officer had looked at Sam, not with malice, but with a weary pity that made Jolene’s stomach turn.

"In my experience, Sam, conditions like yours always hit that disability percentage. Even after the harshest PT, even with the best surgeons, or the most hard working soldiers.  The math just doesn't work for a Lead Instructor role. You can’t be responsible for a range or a team if you can’t carry the weight or there’s concern about small shifts causing serious damages. It’s a liability even in a training setting. You shouldn't get your hopes up."

He’d leaned back, spreading his hands as if offering a consolation prize.

"For now, look at the silver lining. You're in active recovery. That means Uncle Sam is still picking up the tab for every hour of therapy, every pill, and every specialist. Use the insurance. Milk the recovery for everything it's worth. But you need to understand that at the end of this road, the result is likely going to be the same. In my experience, I’d assume you’ll be retiring regardless. Use this time to figure out what a civilian Sam Walsh looks like while you are getting paid to focus on getting healthy. Lord knows there are worse places to be in this economy."

Since the door had closed, Sam hadn't moved. He hadn’t spoken. He had wheeled himself to the window that looked out toward the gravel drive and the distant, blurred line of the trees, and he had simply stopped.

Jolene watched him from the kitchen as she handwashed a full load of dishes, because she couldn't bring herself to break the quiet. Sam was catatonic. His hands, usually so restless, were dead weights in his lap. 

Deep down she knew that to Sam, the “silver lining" of free insurance was just a longer leash on a dog that was already being put out to pasture. Jolene wanted to go to him, to press her face into his shoulder and tell him they’d find another way, but for the first time, she felt like she didn't have the right. She was the one who could still walk out to the shop. She wasn’t the one whose career would be dictated by medical percentages.

She watched the sun track across the floorboards, inching toward his motionless chair, and realized that the boyish, sweet man from Tuesday had been buried under his hope clashing with the unfortunate reality of his situation. The fight wasn't over, but as she looked at the hollowed-out expression on Sam’s face, she feared the warrior had finally decided there was nothing left worth fighting for. She decided to give him space, though it felt more like leaving a man to drown in shallow water. Jolene poured her nervous energy into the house, tackling tasks that didn't require her to look at the hollowed-out expression on his face. She lugged baskets of laundry to the machine. She scrubbed the bathrooms until the scent of bleach burned her throat, and she swept the hardwood floors. And when the common housecleaning was finished she undertook those hardly tackled tasks: scrubbing baseboards, going through every kitchen cabinet to purge old spices or cans, and polishing wood furniture.

Every time she passed the living room, she’d steal a glance. He hadn’t moved. The light had shifted from a pale morning yellow to a sharp, midday glare, and Sam remained a statue in the window.

After three hours, she finally tried to break the seal. She approached him with a glass of water. "Sam? It's time for your afternoon meds."

He didn't blink. He didn't even acknowledge she was in the room. When she reached out to touch his shoulder, he didn't pull away, but he didn't lean in, either. His eyes remained fixed on a spot in the gravel drive, and he refused to maintain eye contact. It was as if he’d pulled a shutter down over his soul, and Jolene was on the outside looking at a blank wall.

She felt helpless panic as she retreated to the kitchen, her hands shaking as she pulled her phone from her pocket. She couldn't do this alone. Not this part. She dialed Randy.

"JJ? Everything okay?" her godfather’s voice was warm, but he caught the tension in her silence immediately.

"Randy... the Navy was here. The liaison," she whispered, leaning her forehead against the cool surface of the refrigerator. "He's... he's gone dark, Randy. He won't look at me. He won't move. He’s just sitting there. I can’t get him to take meds or even notice life moving in front of his face."

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. Randy understood the weight of that sentence better than anyone. Decades ago, a fall had shattered several of Randy’s vertebrae and mangled his knee, ending his career in the SEALs in one brutal afternoon. He came back and Jolene had watched her father set him straight when he realized that there would be a life outside the Navy.

"He feels discarded, Jo," Randy said, his voice gravelly and knowing. "He thinks he’s a burden now, and he’s mad at the world for proving him right."

"Can you come over?" she asked, her voice cracking. "He won't talk to me. I think... I think he needs someone who’s been in a similar situation."

"I'm already grabbin' my keys Baby," Randy replied. "Don't push him, Jolene. Just let the house stay quiet till I get there. He's grievin' a man who hasn't died yet. That's a lonely kind of funeral." She hung up and looked back toward the living room. The sun was hitting the titanium pins in Sam's leg, making them glint. She went back to finding ways to productively keep her hands moving far away from Sam’s vicinity.

Randy’s old truck rumbled into the drive, and Jolene was out the door before he’d even cut the engine. She met him at the bottom of the ramp, her arms crossed tightly over her chest as if she were trying to hold her own ribs together.

Randy climbed out slowly and pulled her into a one-armed squeeze. He didn't ask if she was okay. He could see the shadows under her eyes and the way her hands were trembling. "He's in the same spot," she whispered into his flannel shirt. "He hasn't blinked in an hour, Randy. He won't even look at me. I feel like if I touch him, he’ll just... shatter."

Randy stepped back, adjusting his cap. He looked toward the house, his expression grim and knowing. "He’s in the why me phase, Jo. And the why me phase is real ugly when you've spent your whole life being the one people rely on. You go on and get out of here for a bit. Go to the shop, or go tinker in the barn. I’ll sit with him. We’ll just talk man-to-man."

"I'll give you guys space," she nodded, wiping a stray tear with the back of her hand. "I’ll be in the barn if you need me. I just... I can't watch him look through me anymore."

She watched Randy disappear inside, the screen door clicking shut. She crossed the yard to the barn that housed her personal projects. She pulled the heavy sliding door open, the scent of dust, gasoline, and old leather rising up to greet her. In the center of the floor, under a layer of fine Virginia dust, sat her ’69 Camaro. It was her sanctuary. She walked over to it, her hand tracing the long, aggressive line of the fender. For two hours, she didn't think about medical liaisons or titanium pins. She grabbed a rag and a can of polish and began to work on the chrome, the repetitive motion of her arm numbing the static in her brain. She checked the oil, adjusted a belt, and simply sat in the driver’s seat for a while, gripping the steering wheel and imagining a road that didn't end in a hospital parking lot.

The sun was starting to cast long shadows across the barn floor when the heavy door groaned open again. Jolene looked up, her heart leaping into her throat. Randy was walking toward her, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked tired but the set of his jaw was less tense.

She climbed out of the car, wiping her hands on her jeans. "Is he okay? Did he say anything?"

Randy stopped a few feet away, looking at the Camaro and then back at the house. He blew out a long breath that puffed in the cooling air.

"He’s talkin'," Randy said softly. "Not a lot, and most of it’s cussing at the ceiling, but the ice is cracked. I told him about the day I fell. Told him about how I spent three months wishing I’d just hit my head instead of my back so I wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit that came after. Especially with how much of a bastard it made me towards Loretta. It took a long time to stop thinking death would’ve been a better solution than being angry all the time."

Jolene winced, the honesty of it stinging. "What did he say?"

"He asked me how I stopped being angry," Randy replied, a small, sad smile touching his lips. "And I told him the truth. You don't ever really stop being angry at the way it happened. You just eventually get too tired to hold onto it."

He stepped closer, clapping a hand on Jolene’s shoulder. "He’s exhausted, honey. He’s gonna probably keep seeing everything in front of his eyes with malice because it hurts and he feels useless. But he asked if you were still out here 'poking at that damn Chevy'." The relief that washed over her was so physical she felt her knees weaken. "Go on back in there," Randy nudged her toward the house. "I’m gonna head home and tell Loretta to double the batch of whatever she’s making for Sunday. We’re gonna get through this, Jo. It’s not easy, but he’s still alive and that’s what matters. I know that boy in there thinks the world of you, and that’s not something I take lightly."

Jolene let out a breath. "Thank you, Randy. I didn't know who else to call."

Randy’s expression softened, the hard lines of his weathered face crinkling into something warm and steady. He had that distinct, silver-bearded Kenny Rogers energy under normal circumstances. A kindness and gentleness. Today that look had largely been absent given the depth. He pulled her into a final, rib-crushing hug, "You don't ever have to thank me, JJ," he murmured into her hair. "I’m gonna start poppin’ in more often. Not to hover. Mostly just to be a nuisance. Keep his brain off the leg and maybe be a bit less snappy towards you. I didn’t give him an earful today about it, but he’s gotta reel it back in at some point. He said it himself but that’s my job to make sure it’s winding down as the meds ease up more and more."

He stepped back, his hands resting on his belt loops, and looked toward the house with a thoughtful squint. "And listen. If he starts really struggling, I mean really hittin' the bottom of the well, I’ve got something tucked away at my place I can drop off for him."

Jolene wiped a stray smudge of grease from her cheek, her brow furrowing. "What?"

Randy offered a slow, cryptic wink. "Top secret. Only for SEAL eyes, I'm afraid."

Jolene let out a dry, incredulous scoff, a small spark of her usual fire returning to her eyes. "Oh, for God's sake, Randy. Tell me you aren't planning on dropping off some ancient porn stash for my currently narcotic-brained boyfriend. The last thing Sam needs right now is a vintage collection of Playboy to distract him from his PT."

Randy let out a wheezing chuckle, shaking his head as he turned toward his truck. "Nothin' like that, baby. Give me some credit. It's just... a bit of advice I’ve held onto, if one of us falls off the wagon." He climbed into the cab of his truck, "Go check on him."

Jolene watched the taillights of his truck fade down the drive, leaving her in the deepening blue of the evening. She felt the weight of the cryptic promise Randy held for men who had been broken by the service they loved. She didn't know what that entailed, but as she turned back toward the house, she felt a sliver of hope with that in her backpocket.

She walked up the ramp, the wood solid beneath her boots, and stepped back into the quiet. The house felt different now. She moved toward the living room, ready to find whatever version of Sam Walsh was waiting for her. The screen door clicked shut, but Jolene didn't immediately call out. She silently stalked through the entryway, her boots making barely a sound on the braided rug as she navigated the dimming hallway. She was preparing herself for the worst. Bracing to find him still frozen by the window, or a statue of grief in her father’s old chair.

But when she turned the corner into the living room, the space by the window was empty.

A faint scraping sound drew her eye toward the kitchen. There, bathed in the low amber glow of the under-cabinet lighting, was Sam. He had wheeled himself right up to the counter, his large frame awkwardly angled in the chair as he stretched his arms upward. He was reaching the absolute best he could toward the back of the counter, his fingers straining to hook around the handle of the ceramic coffee canister. Right beside the left wheel of his chair was Chewbacca. The big German Shepherd was sitting completely still, ears alert and dark eyes tracking Sam’s every micro-movement. The dog was keeping a respectful distance, ensuring Sam wouldn't unbalance himself and hurt his leg.

Sam was breathing heavily, his entire focus consumed by the six inches between his fingertips and the counter, so he barely heard the soft scuff of her boots. Jolene didn't say a word. She just closed the distance between them, walking up right behind him. She extended her hand and gently placed her palm against the rigid line of his shoulder.

At the touch, the tension left his frame all at once. Sam let out an exhale and settled back into the cushion of the wheelchair, his arms dropping heavily into his lap. He paused for a beat, letting the dog lean its heavy head against his good knee, before he slowly turned his head to look up at her.

In the dim kitchen light, his brown eyes were wide open. Jolene looked down and saw it all. The fiery anger at a body that wouldn't obey, the profound confusion of a man whose roadmap had been torn up, the stark fear of the unknown, and a deep, heavy sadness that broke her heart. She kept her hand on his shoulder, her thumb lightly rubbing the base of his neck. "What are you doing?" she asked.

Sam looked away for a split second, his jaw working as he swallowed hard, before his eyes locked back onto hers. "I was gonna bring you coffee," he muttered. "You were out in the barn. It's getting cold out. Figured you’d want some."

He got quiet then, the hum of the refrigerator filling the space between them. Chewbacca let out a soft whine, his tail giving one hollow thump against the floorboards. Sam reached up, his large, rough hand covering hers where it rested on his shoulder, squeezing tight enough to let her feel the tremble in his fingers. "I didn't mean to scare you like that, Jo," he whispered, looking up at her with a vulnerability that stripped away every last boundary between them. "Earlier. I just... I didn't mean to scare you."

Jolene reached out with her other hand, her fingers gently cupping the side of his face. His skin was warm, the facial hair along his jaw rough against her palm.

"It’s okay," she murmured, "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

She looked past his shoulder to the top shelf where the ceramic canister sat, just out of his reach. Instead of doing what she’d done for weeks and managing the task for him, Jolene simply stretched her arm over his head. Her fingers hooked around the handle, pulling the heavy jar down from the ledge.

But she didn't set it on the counter to start scooping the grounds herself. She lowered it into his lap, placing the weight of the ceramic directly into his calloused hands. "Here," she whispered, keeping her hands over his for a beat. "You make it. I like yours better anyway."

Sam didn't immediately move to open the lid. He just sat there, his fingers curling around the cold ceramic, holding it against his stomach. He stared down at his hands, his breathing slowing until the kitchen was completely silent save for Chewbacca’s heavy sigh as the dog settled flat against the floor. She realized then that in the wake of the Navy liaison’s visit, Sam had completely blown past his afternoon medication window. He’d missed his doses. For weeks, even as the doctors at Walter Reed had started the slow process of weaning him off the heavy-duty narcotics, he had still lived in a perpetual, sluggish fog. That heavy narcotic brain that made his reactions slow and his temper unpredictable.

But right now, the fog was entirely gone. The pain was likely creeping back into his shattered shin, but it had brought his mind back with it. He was fully present, looking at the kitchen, looking at her terrifying sharpness. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple moving in the low light, his grip tightening on the canister until his knuckles turned white.

"The room stopped spinning about an hour after Randy got here," Sam said, his voice dropping into a quiet, raspy register that was entirely devoid of the chemical slur. He didn't look up from the jar in his lap. "The meds... they make everything feel like it's happening under twenty feet of water, Jo. When that guy was sitting on your dad's couch telling me I'm done... I couldn't even think straight enough to argue the way I wanted to."

He finally lifted his head, his gaze locking onto hers.

"I'm sorry I went dark on you," he whispered, his thumb tracing the rim of the canister. "I’m not... I’m not going to be a ghost in this house, Jolene. I’m a bastard right now, and my leg feels like it's on fire, but I'm here."

Jolene leaned her hip against the counter, her posture softening as she kept her eyes leveled with his. The clarity in his gaze was a relief, but it also meant the raw truth of their situation was sitting right there on the wood floor between them.

"Okay," she said calmly, "So, what does being here look like, Sam? What do you want from me right now?" She paused, watching the way his jaw tightened, before she gave him the options she’d been mentally cycling through for days. "Do you want me to just not bring it up? Do you want us to put our heads together and plan a strategy for this evaluation? Do you need help thinking about shifting careers? Or do you just want me to distract you, so we can just focus on the day-in, day-out grind of getting you moving?"

Sam looked down at the coffee canister in his lap, his shoulders dropping. The fierce intensity in his eyes faded into unvarnished honesty.

"I don't know, Jo," he admitted, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. "Honestly, I don't know." He let out a breath, finally looking back up at her, his expression thick with a vulnerability that made her throat tight. "I see everything you’re doing. Every single day. I wanted to rush back to that Little Creek job so I could be the one taking care of you once I’m back on my feet. I wanted to pull my weight again. I figured... hell, I figured you deserved an extended vacation for everything you’ve put up with since November."

A small, breathless laugh caught in Jolene’s throat, and she shook her head, a genuine smile breaking through her exhaustion. "Sam, I don't need an extended vacation. I’d go absolutely stir-crazy sitting around the house all day."

The moment the words left her mouth, the air in the kitchen shifted.

Sam went quiet. His gaze dropped back to his lap, his posture stiffening as the weight of her phrasing settled over the situation he found himself in. Jolene’s smile vanished instantly. A spike of regret hit her stomach as she realized exactly how those words sounded to a man who had no choice but to sit around the house all day.

"Sam... I'm sorry," she whispered quickly, her hand sliding down his arm to squeeze his wrist. "That was a terrible choice of words. I didn't mean it like that."

Sam didn’t look up immediately, his thumb continuing its slow circuit around the lid of the ceramic jar. But the tension in his broad shoulders didn't harden into the stone she’d grown to dread. Instead, a slow exhalation escaped his nose, and when he finally lifted his chin, he tried to crack a smile for her. It was a faint, lopsided thing that didn't quite reach the dark circles under his eyes, but it was there.

"Hey. It’s okay," he said softly, his voice rough but steady. "I’m going a bit nuts myself staring at the same four walls and the same pine trees out that window. If I have to watch another infomercial or hear the bedroom clock ticking as the hours pass between the ice packs, I’m gonna lose my mind."

Jolene let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding since Tuesday, her fingers loosening their defensive grip on his forearm, though she didn't move away. Chewbacca, sensing the shift in temperature between them, shifted his weight with a soft grunt, resting his chin heavily on the footrest of Sam's chair.

"Your godfather," Sam started, his gaze drifting toward the darkened hallway where Randy had exited, "he’s a smart old bastard, you know that? He gave me some advice before he left. Some things I probably needed to hear a month ago." Sam paused, his brow furrowing as a brief shadow of frustration crossed his face. He rubbed his temple with his free hand, the clarity in his brown eyes flickering just for a second against the residual weight of the medication still working its way out of his system. 

"Look, I’m being straight with you right now because the fog is lighter than normal," he murmured, looking up at her. "I’m not entirely sure how mentally present I’m always going to be when I have to take the harder stuff on the bad days. When the pin sites start throbbing and the nerve pain acts up, the meds... they take the steering wheel, Jo. I know I’m a bastard to deal with when I'm under. But right now, while I’m actually sitting in the driver's seat? I need to tell you what he said."

Jolene shifted, leaning her weight against the edge of the counter so she was closer to his level, her eyes searching his face. "What did Randy say to you, Sam?"

Sam set the coffee canister down on his lap. "He told me that during moments like this, when the rug gets pulled out from under a man, it’s important that we both start doing things as a team. Real things. Not just the medical routine of it all." He reached out, his fingers winding through hers, his grip tight. "He said my physical health, the leg, the therapy... that’s obviously a joint effort. We don't have a choice on that. You’re the one holding the bandages and I’m the one doing the reps. But he told me we need to stop walking on eggshells for the rest of the stuff."

Jolene swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat, her heart ticking faster. "The rest of it?"

"My career," Sam said firmly, the reality of the situation finally hanging in the air without causing him to flinch. "If Little Creek is off the table, and Uncle Sam is going to push me out into the civilian world at the end of this road, then we don't just sit here and wait for the hammer to fall. We both need to make a plan on what comes next. Together. I need your brain on it, Jo. I need you to help me figure out what the next ridge line looks like, instead of me just brooding in the corner while you handle the grocery lists and praying I don’t cuss too loudly when I shift my leg."

He squeezed her hand, pulling her just an inch closer. "And he told me one more thing," Sam whispered, his thumb rubbing over the back of her knuckles. "He said you’re a Saint till you ain’t." His eyes locked onto hers, dark and demanding and entirely full of love. "I need you to stop harboring the pain of all this alone, Jolene. If I’m going to be useless on a range, fine. If I’m not walking by the end of the year, oh well. But I’m still your man. If you're scared, or you’re angry, or you’re just plain exhausted... you bring it to me. Let me carry my half of the weight. Even if I'm sitting in this damn chair."

Jolene stared at him, her hand swallowed up by the heat of his, the texture of his thumb still working a steady pattern over her knuckles. The absolute clarity in his eyes was blinding. It was the version of Sam Walsh she had been starved for honestly since he left in late June. The commanding man who looked at a problem and wanted to divide the load. She swallowed down the dry ache in her throat, nodding slowly. "Okay," she whispered, her voice cracking slightly before she caught it. "Okay, Sam. I hear you. And I want that. I want to stop hiding it from you."

She took a breath, her chest rising and falling unsteadily. She looked down at their joined hands, then back up into those stark brown eyes, testing the waters of this newfound lucidity. "But if we're doing this... if the fog is really gone right now, and you're in the driver's seat... are you open to hearing me out? Completely? Because if I open that can of worms, I need to know you're actually mentally here to take it in."

Sam’s grip tightened on her hand. His jaw set, but his expression stayed remarkably soft. "I'm here, Jo. Say your piece."

The permission was all it took for the dam to structurally fail. The tears spilled over hot and fast, blurring her vision as a trembling breath escaped her lips. She didn't pull away this time. She let him see her shoulders shake. She let him see the unmitigated exhaustion that had been eating her alive since November 16th turned their lives upside down. "I need you to try," she choked out, her voice fracturing on the words as she leaned a bit heavier against the kitchen counter. "I need you to try the absolute best you can, Sam, to stop being so snappy with me."

Sam flinched, a subtle tightening around his eyes, but he didn't interrupt. He just held onto her.

"I know it’s not your fault," she pleaded, the words tumbling out in an emotional rush, raw and bleeding. "God knows I know you’re in agony, and I know your whole world just got blown to hell. I don't blame you for being angry. But it is so damn hard to work my ass off every single day, running back and forth to the shop, managing the bills, scrubbing the grease off my skin just to come home and then scrub the bathrooms, constantly worrying myself sick about making sure you have exactly what you need, only for every single thing I do to be met with mild hostility. Or for you to just fly off the handle over the smallest, stupidest things."

She wiped at her face with her free hand, but the tears kept coming. The accumulated pain of the last fourteen weeks was pouring out into the space between them.

"Your words hurt, Sam," she whispered, her chest heaving as she forced herself to look straight into his eyes, wanting him to feel the weight of it. "Even when the narcotics are talking, even when you don't mean them, or you don't remember them the next morning... I remember them. Because I'm still hearing your voice say them to me. Then I’m the one who has to sleep next to you with the echo of it ringing in my ear."

She let the silence hang for a moment, lingering in the ache of the kitchen, before the specific memories rushed to the surface.

"Like last Tuesday," she said, her voice trembling. "I spent forty-five minutes rearranging the living room furniture just so your footrest wouldn't catch on the rug when you turned around. You wheeled in, looked at the couch, and just snapped at me to 'stop treating the house like a hospital ward’ and ‘leave my dad’s shit alone.' You didn't even look at me for the rest of the night. You just sat in the dark till you were too tired to fight me when I helped you to bed."

Sam’s throat swallowed hard, his eyes dropping for a fraction of a second as the memory slowly made it through the cleared fog of his mind.

"And two days ago," Jolene continued, a fresh sob catching in her throat, "when I brought you the ice packs for your shin. They weren't cold enough because the freezer door had been left unlatched, and instead of just letting me run down the road to the gas station for ice, you slammed your hand down on the armrest and barked that if I was 'too busy at the garage to mind the simple things at home, you'd just do it your goddamn self.' You know you couldn't get up, Sam. You knew it. But you made me feel like I was failing you because a block of ice melted."

She pulled her hand from his, not out of anger, but because she needed to press both her palms to her face, hiding the ugly sob that tore out of her throat. Chewbacca whined louder, shifting his heavy front paws onto her boot, trying to bridge the gap.

"I am trying so hard," she wept into her hands, her voice muffled and small. "I am stretching myself as thin as I can go, and most days, I feel like I'm walking into a minefield just trying to bring you breakfast. I can handle the Navy and all its red tape, Sam. I can handle us figuring out a new life. But I cannot handle you treating me like I'm the enemy when I am the only one standing in your corner."

"Jo, look at me. Jo, please–" Sam’s voice cracked, the command completely replaced by a panicked edge. He reached for her, his hands awkwardly tracking up her forearms to pull her palms away from her face, but Jolene wouldn't let him. She couldn't. If she looked at him now, if she saw the devastating regret she knew was burning in his eyes, the anger that was keeping her upright would dissolve, leaving her with nothing but the exhaustion.

"No, Sam, just let me finish," she sobbed, her words coming out in a suffocating rush against her wet hands. "Let me just say it, because tomorrow the nerve pain is going to spike again, or the doctors are going to change the dosage, and you’re going to go back under enough meds to sedate a horse and I’ll have to lock this all back up."

"Jolene, please," he pleaded, his fingers tightening around her wrists, trying gently but firmly to pry her hands from her eyes. He was pulling himself up as far as the wheelchair allowed, his good leg straining against the footrest, the sheer panic of seeing her break entirely overriding his own boundaries. "I didn't realize–God, Jo, I'm sorry. I'm so damn sorry–"

"You told me to take my ring off last night," she cut him off, the memory ripping out of her. She finally let her hands drop, her face blotchy and soaked, her eyes flashing with agonizing hurt that made Sam physically recoil. "The pins in your leg were throbbing, and I was just trying to gently rub the tension out of your thigh because the muscle was spasming so bad. My hand brushed against your skin, and you grabbed my wrist so hard it left a mark. You looked me right in the eye and told me to take it off because the feeling was driving you crazy, and that you didn't need a reminder of what a mistake it was to tie me to a cripple."

Sam froze, his face draining of color. His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. The memory was clearly a blank spot in his narcotic-brained haze, but seeing the trauma of it written in the lines of her face made it undeniably real. "I went into the bathroom and I took it off," she whispered, her voice suddenly dropping from the high peak of hysteria into a dead, flat hollow that was infinitely worse. "I sat on the edge of the tub and stared at my bare finger for an hour, wondering if you actually meant it. Wondering if every time you look at me, you just see a prison sentence. You don't even remember saying it. You woke up three hours later and asked me to grab you some water like nothing happened. But I remember."

She took a step back, her boots dragging on the floorboards, pulling out of his reach. The space between them felt miles wide now, populated by the ghosts of a dozen different arguments she had quietly swallowed for the sake of his recovery.

"You're right. Randy is right. I am a saint until I ain't," she choked out, a bitter, self-deprecating laugh escaping her lips as a fresh wave of tears tracked down her chin. "But I'm at the end of it. I am completely empty, Sam. I don't have any more grace to give you when you're being a jackass. I don't have any more strength to pretend that it doesn't kill me a little bit every time you look through me like I'm just the nurse who handles the bedpans."

Sam’s gaze dropped instantly, his eyes frantic as they tracked the movement of her retreating hand. His calloused fingers blindly reached through the dim light until his palm caught her wrist. He didn't squeeze this time, likely terrified by her recounting of what happened previously to test his own strength, but his fingertips brushed over the back of her hand, tracing the base of her ring finger.

The skin was smooth. Bare.

The gold promise ring that he’d bought with his deployment bonus, was gone.

A devastating shockwave seemed to pass through Sam's entire frame. His hand began to shake violently against her wrist, his fingers curling inward as if he had just touched an open circuit. The unvarnished clarity that the missed medication had brought wasn’t just a window into his own mind anymore. It was a mirror reflecting a monster he didn't remember becoming.

"Jolene." The word was barely a breath. He stared at her bare hand, his chest heaving as the absolute horror of what he had done finally penetrated the neurons trying to fire in his brain. He hadn't just snapped at her, or been a bastard about a melted ice pack or a rearranged couch. He had fundamentally weaponized the one thing that was keeping them anchored in the storm. He had made her strip off his promise because he’d made it feel like a shackle.

The tough, unyielding Chief Petty Officer who had survived a blast in the dirt completely disintegrated in the wheelchair as Sam turned into an absolute wreck right before her eyes.

A sob ripped out of him, the sound so raw and guttural it made Chewbacca instantly stand up, the dog's ears pinning back in deep, anxious confusion. Sam’s head dropped into his hands, his broad shoulders shaking so violently that the ceramic coffee canister fell and crashed to the floor, shattering into pieces. 

"Oh God, Jo... no," he wept, his voice thick and ruined as he pressed his face into his hands. "No, no, no... God, please, Jolene..."

He reached out blindly again, his arms trembling as he tried to bridge the distance she had put between them, his fingers grasping at the fabric of her shirt, at her wrists, wanting to pull her back but terrifyingly aware that he might not have the right to touch her at all. The tears spilled over his thick fingers, tracking through the rough stubble of his jaw.

"I didn't mean it," he choked out, his head shaking back and forth in a desperate denial of his own subconscious words. "I swear to you, Jolene, I don't remember... I don't remember saying it, but I know you wouldn't lie to me. I know I said it. God, what did I do to you? What am I doing to you?"

He lifted his face, and the sheer, unmitigated terror in his eyes was almost too much for her to look at. The clarity was a curse now. It was forcing him to feel every ounce of the burning pain in his leg alongside the crushing weight of his own failure as a man. He looked down at her bare finger again, his breath hitching in a panicked, suffocating cycle.

"I look at you and I see everything I ever wanted," he whispered, his voice cracking wide open, completely ruined by the tears. "I see the only good thing I’ve got left. I’m just so scared... I'm so goddamn scared that I'm dragging you down with me, and instead of telling you that, I... I took it out on you."

He slumped back into the chair, looking smaller than he ever had, his hands dropping to his lap where they hovered over the cold ceramic jar before it fell to the floor.

"And it's not just the house, Sam. It's everything outside of it, too," Jolene continued, the momentum of her heartbreak carrying her forward, refusing to let the dam close back up now that it had finally broken. She swiped a furious hand across her wet cheek, her voice trembling but relentless. "I'm the one who sits on the phone with your mother every single Sunday. I'm the one who had to hold her hand in that sterile, white waiting room at Walter Reed while you were back in surgery for the third time, listening to her cry because she thought her boy was going to die on an operating table."

Sam didn't look up, but his shoulders hitched, another breath catching in his throat as he listened to the reality of the weight she had been carrying entirely on her own.

"And do you know what she tells me, Sam? Every single time I call her with an update on your physical therapy, or your meds, or what the doctors said about the nerve damage?" Jolene’s voice cracked. "She sighs into the receiver and says she just wishes we would get married already. She tells me that this whole situation – the lifting, the driving, the middle-of-the-night panic attacks, the bureaucratic nightmare of the Navy – is just a hell of a lot of weight for just a girlfriend to carry."

She let out a harsh, breathless laugh that sounded incredibly lonely in the shallow light of the kitchen.

"And god help me, Sam... I agree with her. I sit there on the phone, nodding in the dark, because she’s right. It is a lot. Title aside, the whole goddamn situation is so much. The sheer size of it is crushing me. It doesn't matter if I'm your girlfriend, or your wife, or a saint. There is too much pain in this house for one person to manage without any help, especially when the person I’m doing it for is treating me like I’m the one who put that fucking shrapnel in your leg." She looked down at her bare ring finger, before looking back at him. "I am drowning, Sam. And I can't keep pretending I'm swimming just so you don't have to look at the water."

Sam’s head remained bowed, his large forehead pressing against his steepled fingers as he listened to the brutal, unvarnished truth of what he had become. The silence that followed her words was suffocating, broken only by the ticking of the kitchen clock.

Slowly, reluctantly, he lowered his hands. His face was a map of devastating grief, the skin around his brown eyes raw and swollen from the tears he usually refused to shed. When he finally spoke, his voice was thin, fragile, and terrified. "Do you..." He swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the quiet. He couldn't even look her in the eye as the question ripped out of him. "Do you not want me anymore, Jo? Is that what this is? Do you want an out?"

Jolene didn't even hesitate. The exhaustion, the anger, the bitter memories. All of it instantly took a back seat to the sheer instinct of loving him. She crossed the small gap between them, mindful of the large chunks of shattered ceramic and spilled coffee grounds. Her boots scuffing the wood, and dropped heavily to her knees directly in front of his wheelchair. Chewbacca shifted back a few inches, giving them space as Jolene braced her hands on the cold metal armrests of his chair, forcing him to look down at her.

"Absolutely not," she said fiercely, her voice thick with fresh tears but utterly unyielding. "Don't you dare think that, Samuel Walsh. I am not looking for an exit sign. I am right here. I’ve been right here the whole damn time."

She reached up, her fingers digging into the fabric of his gym shorts just above his good knee, her forehead against his thigh for a brief, desperate second before she pulled back to look into his shattered eyes. "But I don't know what you want anymore, Sam," she whispered, her voice fracturing on the admission. "That’s what’s killing me. I don't know where I fit in your life right now. Every time I walk into a room, I feel like you don't see me anymore. I feel like you only see a nurse. Someone who brings the ice packs, someone who times the narcotics, someone who monitors the physical therapy charts. I feel like the man who used to look at me like I was the center of his universe now just looks at me and sees a chore he's forced to rely on."

A single tear tracked down her nose, dripping onto his hand from where it had caught her cheek.

"I don't want out, Sam," she choked out, her gaze locking onto his with a desperate plea for reassurance. "I just want my boyfriend back. I want the man who talks to me, even when the news is bad. I can't keep living with a drill instructor who only speaks to me to bark orders or snap because he's hurting."

"I don't deserve you," Sam whispered, the words falling flat and hollow into the space between them. He didn't pull away from her touch, but he went entirely rigid, his eyes fixing on the cabinet hardware behind her head because he couldn't bear the reflection of his own failure in her eyes anymore. "Maybe... maybe it is better if you just leave me, Jolene."

The cold detachment in his tone was worse than the shouting. It was the sound of a man executing a retreat because he thought the position was already lost.

"I can call my folks," he started rambling, his speech gathering momentum as his brain raced to build an exit strategy out of their heartbreak. "I’ll call my mom tonight. They can drive down from Connecticut this weekend, pack up my stuff, and we can transfer my physical therapy to the naval clinic up there. Or hell, I can just move back into the transient lodging on base at Little Creek. The Navy has rooms equipped for this. I can find a buddy to help me out, get a medical liaison to assign a real corpsman to handle the charts, and you can get your life back. You can go back to the garage full-time without having to–"

"Sam, stop. Just stop!"

Jolene grabbed his wrists, squeezing hard enough to physically interrupt the cadence of his voice. A sickening wave of regret washed through her mind as she stared up at him. God, I shouldn't have said anything, she thought, the panic rising hot in her throat. I shouldn't have opened my mouth.

She had wanted him to see her pain so they could carry it together, but his soldier’s brain had done exactly what it was trained to do: Identify the liability and eliminate it. He wasn't hearing a partner asking for a course correction. He was hearing a casualty report, and his immediate instinct was to remove himself from the field so he’d stop bleeding all over her. She had been so desperate to break through the narcotic fog and the anger that she hadn't realized how fragile the foundation beneath him actually was.

"I promised you," Sam choked out, as a fresh, heavy sob, pinning his shoulders back against the wheelchair. He didn't look down at her, but his fingers twitched against her wrists, his grip weak and trembling. "The last time we had a real fight, back before the deployment, when I got stupid and tore off when you were asking questions. I swore to God and I swore to you that I’d never shove you again. I promised you that if things got hard, if the shit hit the fan, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't push you away."

He finally dropped his chin, his face completely ruined by the tears as he forced himself to look down into her eyes, his breathing coming in shallow catches.

"But I’m drowning in it, Jo," he wept, the admission ripping out of him. The truth made Chewbacca nudge his wet nose against Sam's hand. "Every single morning I wake up and I hear your boots hitting the floor before the sun’s even up. I lie there in that bed, entirely useless, listening to you brew the coffee, listening to you feed the dog, hearing the front door click shut because you’re running out to the shop to log hours before you have to come back and drag me to therapy or scrub my skin. I sit by that window all day long and I just... I suffocate under the guilt of how hard you are working to keep a roof over a man who can’t even stand up to kiss you properly."

His fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt at her shoulders, holding onto her like a drowning sailor clenching a piece of driftwood.

"The guilt is turning into something ugly, Jolene," he whispered. "It's making me resent you. Not because of anything you’re doing wrong, but because you’re doing everything right. You’re being perfect. You’re being the saint Randy said you were, and every time you smile through the exhaustion or tell me it’s no trouble to change the ice packs, it just reminds me of what a pathetic, broken shadow of a man I am right now. I snap at you because if I can make you angry, if I can make you fight back, then at least you aren't just a nurse pitying a casualty. At least then I feel like I'm still something you have to reckon with, instead of just a chore on your checklist."

Hearing him speak those words – unearthing the toxic, twisted logic that his pride had built out of his own helplessness – shattered whatever distance she had tried to maintain. She didn’t pull away from his grip on her shoulders. Instead, she leaned into it, burying her face into his knee for a fraction of a second before pulling back up, her hands moving to cup the sides of his face, her fingers sinking into the thick, rough stubble of his jawline to force his eyes to lock onto hers.

"You fucking listen to me," she sobbed, the profanity ripping out of her, “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry that this whole goddamn situation sucks. I hate seeing you in this wheelchair. I hate the Navy liaison. I hate every single piece of metal they screwed into your bone. But don't you ever tell me you're a shadow of a man, and don't you dare think I look at you and see pity."

She squeezed his face, her fingers catching the hot tears tracking down his cheeks.

"You think I lie awake in that bed counting the chores? You think I’m resentful because I have to do the heavy lifting right now?" Jolene shook her head violently, a fresh wave of tears blurring her vision until the amber light of the kitchen turned into a fractured smear of gold. "Sam, I am so fucking grateful that you are in that bed. Every single morning when my alarm goes off and the room is still dark, the very first thing I do is hold my breath until I hear you snore. I listen for the heavy chest-rattle of you breathing next to me, because every time I hear it, it means you are not in the ground. It means you survived that horrible fucking day in Iraq. You survived the surgeries that would make it so I couldn’t eat for days. And you came back to this house. Having you here, broken, angry, narcotic-brained, whatever version of you comes through that door, is enough for me. It is always going to be enough."

The mention of the finality of death, brought the real edge of her grief screaming to the surface. The shadow that had been hanging over the house since November wasn't just the specter of Sam's involuntary retirement. It was the heavy, hollow ache of neither of them willing to admit how close he’d come from losing his life.

Her voice dropped, fracturing entirely into a small, ruined weep that sounded like a child lost in the woods.

"I couldn't have managed if you left me too, Sam," she choked out, as her shoulders hitched in violent sobs. The confession bled out of her, carrying the weight of the grief. "My dad... my dad is already gone. His boots aren't by the door anymore, his coats are still hanging in the hall, and I walk into the garage every single morning and I have to look at his empty workbench. I am still drowning in the middle of losing him. If you had died over there, or if you call your folks and pack up your gear and leave me in this empty house now... I won't survive it. I can't do it. So don't you run away to Connecticut, and don't you dare go back to base housing," she whispered into the dark fabric of his shorts, her voice trembling against the steady heat of his leg. "You stay right here in this shitty situation with me. We'll figure out your career, and we'll scream at each other every day if we have to. But you have to let me keep you."

Sam’s arms came down around her like a collapsing scaffold, his large, heavy frame bending forward out of the chair until his chest was pressed completely against her back and shoulders, burying his face into the crook of her neck. He held her with a terrifying, desperate strength, his hands fist-fucking the fabric of her flannel shirt as if he were trying to pull her straight into his skin, to anchor both of them to the floorboards so the house would stop spinning.

The distance he had tried to build to protect his pride was entirely gone. He was weeping openly now, the heavy, silent sobs of a soldier who had finally run out of trenches to hide in. The heat of his breath and the wetness of his face soaked into the collar of her shirt, his rough beard scratching against her skin as he shook.

"I’m sorry," his voice vibrating directly against her collarbone. "I’m not going anywhere, Jo. I’m right here. I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry."

He pulled back just enough to look at her, his hands coming up to clutch the sides of her face. His palms were trembling violently, his thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones to smear the tears that wouldn't stop falling from her eyes. The stark, unvarnished clarity in his brown gaze was absolute now, stripped of every ounce of the narcotic fog, leaving nothing but a fierce, burning focus that she hadn't seen since the day he deployed.

"Listen to me," he commanded softly, his forehead dropping down to press hard against hers, closing the universe down to just the space between their lips. "I am going to do better. I’m going to stop being so fucking grumpy. Do you hear me, Jolene? I am going to do the reps, I am going to do the therapy, and if I have to crawl across the floor of that clinic on my hands and knees every single day, I am going to get back on my feet for you."

He let out a shallow breath, his fingers sliding into her hair, gripping her tight enough to make her feel the solid, unyielding reality of him.

"And I am going to marry you," he whispered, the promise hanging in the kitchen like an iron vow, heavy and undeniable. "As soon as I can stand up on my own two feet to look you in the eye in front of a preacher, I am making you my wife. We aren't doing this 'just a girlfriend' shit anymore. My mom is right. You are my future, Jo. You're the only future I want."

He kissed her forehead, then her eyelids, his lips rough and salty with their shared tears, before he pulled back just an inch to look down into her blotchy, exhausted face.

"I am going to be better to you," he vowed, his voice cracking wide open with the weight of his regret. "No more snapping. No more barking. When the pain gets bad and the meds take the wheel, I will bite my own tongue until it bleeds before I let another cruel word slip out to hurt you. I’m going to let you see the dark stuff, and we’re going to face this together, but I am done treating you like garbage. I promise you, Jolene. I swear it on Mike and your dad's memory. I’m staying right here with you."

The air in the kitchen remained thick, heavy with the dust of the foundation they had just violently cleared away. Neither of them knew how to end the conversation. There was no clean transition out of a collapse of that magnitude. The silence stretched, turning clumsy and fragile, the kind of quiet where the slightest sudden movement might shatter the truce. Jolene stayed on her knees, her hands still resting on the dark fabric of his shorts, her breathing slowly leveling out into shallow, trembling hitches. Sam kept his palms flattened against her cheeks, his thumbs tracing the dry, salt-crusted tracks on her skin, his brown eyes searching her face with an intensity that felt almost intrusive in its nakedness. They were stuck in the wreckage of the truth, entirely exposed, waiting for the ambient heat of the argument to cool into something they could actually live in.

Then Sam’s gaze flickered downward, his eyes tracking the movement of her shoulder as she shifted her weight against his good knee. His focus landed once more on her bare left hand. He swallowed hard, the rough line of his jaw tightening as he forced his hands down from her face, his fingers searching blindly for hers.

"Jo," he whispered, the quiet register of his voice cracking on the single syllable. "Where is it?"

Jolene blinked through the residual sting in her eyes, her head dropping slightly. "Sam, don't worry about it tonight. Let's just–"

"Where's the ring, Jolene?" he repeated, louder this time, though the command was entirely stripped of the old irritation. It was just a plea now, a desperate necessity from a man who needed a tether to the promises he’d just made in the dark.

She let out a small breath and pointed a trembling finger toward the bedroom. She stood without thinking, leaving him and the weight of the argument behind as her feet autopilot to collect it. When she made it into the lamp lit room, she saw it was sitting in a small glass dish on the top of the dresser. When she turned around, he was in the entry way to the bedroom.

Sam didn't look away from her face, his fingers awkward and heavy as they fumbled with hers until they finally hooked around the gold band. He brought it down into the space between them, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. The metal was cold from the draft by the window. He looked down at it, his lip trembling against the rough grain of his mustache, before he lifted his eyes back to hers. The absolute, unvarnished terror of losing her was still swimming in his pupils once more.

"Let me put it back on," he whispered, a plea that broke her heart all over again. He didn't wait for her to answer, his hand shaking violently as he took her left wrist and turned her palm toward the ceiling. "Please, Jo. Let me put it back."

Jolene looked at the band, then at the desperate, sweating line of his forehead. The weight of what they were doing with the sheer, terrifying scale of the recovery still waiting for them over the coming months, the board evaluations, the doses of the heavy medicine that would soon demand to be taken, all settled back into her bones. She knew this clarity was temporary. She knew that by midnight, the nerve pain would likely have him screaming or the narcotics would drag him back under to the point he wouldn't remember the color of her eyes. But right now she didn't move away. She opened her fingers, and let his trembling hands guide the gold back home.

Tag list? Just ask babes

What Eddie needs is tangible proof, and you’re going to give it to him.

When you storm into the lunch room ten minutes late, you’re not even sure that Eddie will give a damn what you have to say. Really, that’s all right because you don’t deserve for him to look at you another day in your life. He already forgave you once, but you couldn’t give him more than a halfway promise.

At this point, it doesn’t matter if Eddie forgives you or not. You need to prove to yourself that you can change, too. That you’re different than he thought you were, than everyone thought you were.

But getting Eddie back would be the cherry on top.

You climb onto one of the center lunch tables, stepping onto an empty seat and using somebody’s head as a handrail.

“All right, losers!”

The chatter bouncing throughout the cafeteria falls to a buzz of whispers.

“There have been some rumors going around lately,” you begin, walking up the length of the lunch table as heads turn to watch you. “I’m sure you’ve all had such a wonderful time calling me ‘Freak Slut’ and ‘Satan’s Whore’ in the hallways, leaving such affectionate little notes in my locker. Your creativity is actually baffling.”

“Well, news flash, fuckers!” you shout, pausing at the end of the table. Your eyes zero in on Ashley and Stephanie, who look absolutely appalled at your behavior. “It’s none of your business who I decide to sleep with. But since I’ve got a point to prove, you’re going to find out anyway.”

“So, yes!” you say, throwing your hands out. “I’ve been fucking Eddie Munson in secret. And not only that, but I ended up falling absolutely head over heels in love with him. And I don’t give a shit what any of you assholes have to say about it!”

You take in a deep breath, feeling the rumble of voices through the table at your feet. Finally, you shift your body to face the one group of students you’ve been too scared to look at this entire time.

“Eddie,” you say, looking directly in his untelling eyes. “I love you, and I’m so fucking sorry I was afraid to say it.” You release your breath, letting your eyes fall from his.

“All right. Show’s over,” you mutter, dropping down off the table. The whispers don’t stop just because you tell them to. You only allow yourself a brief glance at Eddie before you disappear through the doors leading to the football field. The empty look on his face lingers in your mind as you trail to the bleachers.

Your heart still races when you drop onto the metal. The sun’s rays have heated the seat to an uncomfortable warmth that doesn’t meld well with the chill in your chest.

Coming clean is an odd feeling. Burning bridges that were already weak on their supports has taken an unbelievable weight off your shoulders, but you’ve also never felt more alone. Bridges burned don’t amount to much when you’re the only one who’s left stranded.

You sigh, falling flat against the steel of the bleachers even though it burns your skin through the fabric of your shirt.

What the hell were you supposed to do now?

“I think you stole my gimmick.”

You jump up at the sound of Eddie’s voice. He grins back at you with his hands in his pockets, as casual as can be.

“Eddie,” you blurt. “I’m so sorry—”

“That was really metal, what you did,” he says. He turns back to the school building, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Screw you, Hawkins!”

Eddie turns back, tucking his hands away again.

You watch him with a gaped mouth.

He drops down beside you, knocking your foot with his. “You know, I thought that sort of thing only happens in romance movies. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

He laughs when you still don’t say anything. “You're just going to stare at me, sweetheart?”

“What are you doing out here, Eddie?”

“Offering the proverbial olive branch?” he says, shrugging.

“You—you’ll take me back?” you whisper, angling yourself just slightly toward him.

“As long as you promise there will be no more sneaking around,” he says, looking at you with his head tilted.

“I think I threw away any chances of that when I shouted out my love for you to the whole student body,” you scoff.

Eddie grins. “There’s that smart mouth.”

You laugh, shaking your head as you take his face into your hands. “But yeah, no sneaking. I’m all yours, all the time.”

“Then, we have a deal.”

Next Chapter

Surrender to Dreams Taglist: @vampire-kissi3s Stranger Things Taglist: @ggdawgg Eddie Munson Taglist: @itzpixiebabe, @loonylups, @sisteramycatherine, @clairecrive Fic Taglist: @brrrainst3w, @bonnieprincess

Which was laughable, considering who he was. Johnny Storm had never had “normal” a day in his life, even before the powers. 

Maybe that’s why he craved it so bad. Or…maybe it was just a quarter life crisis. 

He didn’t exactly know when it started, but suddenly he wanted to know what it felt like to walk through a lobby where no one greeted him like he was the president. To buy laundry detergent and groceries and whatever people who don’t have a Herbert to do it for them, well, have to do. To have a mailbox in a locker with a little key, and no need to go through a dozen levels of security clearance just for some fan mail.

Maybe that’s why he found himself going through rental listings at two in the morning in the darkness of his room. Half laying on his round bed, one arm raised up in flames to illuminate the newspaper in front of him. 

This is ridiculous, he thought. He told himself he was just looking. Killing time. He wasn’t going to do it, he was just thinking about it. Swear to God he was not actually going to do it. But an ad caught his eye. 

Roommate Wanted

Apartment in Brooklyn, Park Slope. Two bedrooms, one bathroom. Looking to split rent 50/50. 4th floor. Girls only, unless you’re famous, then we can talk. Call after 7pm if you’re interested. 

“Unless you’re famous,” Johnny chuckled, re-reading the ad, and the name attached to it. 

The ad was pretty vague, but Johnny recognized the location. Safe neighborhood, no rooftop pools in that area, and definitely no doorman. 

It was perfect. 

The next day he counted the hours until 7pm came. He wanted the full experience, so instead of using the fine piece of technology on his wrist to call the number he saw on the ad, he took some coins from Franklin’s piggy bank in exchange of a generous twenty dollar bill–you’re welcome buddy–and found himself a random telephone booth at Central Park, just in time. 

Big breath, here goes nothing. 

-

The landline phone hung on your kitchen wall rang exactly at 7:01pm. You cleaned your hands with a napkin, leaving a bowl of heated leftovers on the counter before picking up. 

“Hello?” You said, holding the phone between your ear and your shoulder. 

“Hey! I’m calling for the apartment ad, I’m very interested.” 

The voice on the other side of the line surprised you. So far only women have called you and unfortunately none of them had agreed with the rental fee. “Uh, sure…what’s your name?” 

“I’m Johnny Storm,” he said immediately.

Okay, pause. Is this guy being for real right now? 

“…Right,” you said after a moment, dragging your words and fiddling with the tangled cord. “And…you’re looking for an apartment?” 

The disbelief in your voice made Johnny sigh. Only when the words left his mouth he realized how ridiculous his name probably sounded. But what else was he supposed to say? He wasn’t planning on hiding who he was, even if it was just a call. That felt wrong.

“Yeah…listen I–uh…I know this may seem a little off, but I’m looking for a place for…personal reasons, and your ad caught my eye. I really like the area and I can definitely pay rent on time.”

He chose to leave out the fact that he could actually pay rent four years in advance. That seemed a little overkill. 

“I swear I don’t set couches on fire, not unless you ask,” he added with a nervous laugh, but his whole body relaxed when he heard the chuckle you left out. “And you said being famous was the exception so…can we talk about it?” 

You contemplated for a moment. To be honest? It seemed too good to be true. On the other hand, you had nothing to lose…and you wanted to go back to your dinner. So you just shrugged. 

“Alright,” you said, “I’ll tell you what, Johnny Storm. There’s a café a few blocks from the apartment, called “Geta’s”. Let's meet there, Saturday at noon. If you’re actually who you say you are, you’re paying for coffee. If you’re not, I’m calling the cops.”

“Geta’s” Johnny grinned. “Roger that. I’ll be there.”

You weren’t actually planning on calling the cops. Or well, you hoped you didn’t have to call them. 

Worst case scenario, some random guy was pretending to be Johnny Storm, and you’d have to ditch the clown and go back to answering calls. Best case? Well…you hadn’t really considered that one, because come on. Johnny Storm, Manhattan’s golden boy, Mr. Baxter Building himself, apartment hunting in Brooklyn?

Absolutely not. 

Still, you got to the café ten minutes early. Picked your favorite table by the window, with a good view of the street and a close exit in case things get weird. You ordered your usual drink, a side of mini croissants, and the wait began. 

You were mid sip when you heard the familiar ring of the bells above the cafe’s door. 

"Mr.Storm!" someone called from behind the counter, way too cheery to be greeting a conman. “Welcome to Geta’s!”

Your head snapped up, and…yup. There he was. 

Johnny Freaking Storm. Golden hair, golden everything. A pair of sunglasses perched on his head, paired with some designer jacket and perfectly fitted pants and that pearly white smile you’d only seen on billboards. 

He looked unfairly good in real life. 

He nodded to the barista, who was currently having a mini stroke behind the register, then turned his gaze toward the tables, looking for…you? 

Right, yeah. You. 

You raised your hand awkwardly, giving a tiny wave that said yep, that’s me, the girl who didn’t think you’d actually show up. He smiled wider at your stunned expression, and strutted straight to you, sliding onto the chair across from you.

“I didn’t actually think Johnny Storm was going to show up today,” you blurted out, making him chuckle. 

“I get that a lot,” he said, shrugging. 

“Do you…want a mini croissant?” 

“Only if they’re not poisoned,” he joked, narrowing his eyes playfully. 

“Right. You’re the Johnny Storm. You probably have someone test the croissants for you.”

“That would be Herbert, yes,” he nodded cockily, getting another chuckle out of you. 

This time you narrowed your eyes at him, trying to process the entire fever dream. He just tilted his head, matching your face expression in amusement. You shook your head and leaned back a little, crossing your arms. 

“Okay, I feel like I need to say this out loud so I know I’m not hallucinating. My apartment is not in Manhattan. It’s not a penthouse. I don’t live next to models or celebrities. Are you sure you replied to the right listing? Or is this just you…pulling a bit? Like a prank show? Because I really do need a roommate.”

Johnny chuckled, shaking his head. 

“No cameras, I promise,” he reassured. “I know where the listing said it was. Park Slope. Two bedrooms. 4th floor. You said girls only unless you’re famous, which, considering…”

He leaned back with a shrug, gesturing at himself.

“Yeah but that was a joke. I mean you could, I don’t know, live anywhere. Somewhere crazier like…the moon or space in general,” you gesture vaguely, because him living in another galaxy sounds more realistic than him sharing a couch with you. 

He seems to find it funny, at least, but something in his face softens before he lets out a sigh. 

“Listen, I know this is weird but…I’m not joking. I don’t want a penthouse. I’m not looking for anything “crazy” or fancy or with zero gravity. I just…want something a little quieter. A little more normal, you know?”

You raised your eyebrows, still skeptical. “Well, Johnny, life in an apartment building is not necessarily “quieter”,” you chuckle. “Normal? For sure. But you’re telling me the big Human Torch, who flies over the stadium to see the Mets, wants normal?”

He shrugged, but there’s no cockiness to it anymore. 

“I know. Shocking, right? But I do," he said. “I mean, the tower’s great and all, but it’s…a lot. And it’s all I’ve known for most of my life. Cameras, tech, Reed in general, it just…never stops. It always feels like everything needs to be perfect, you know? I kind of want a door I can lock and a couch I don’t have to share with a 500 pound rock man. Maybe just with…a normal roommate."

You stared at him in silence. If there was anything you learned from Johnny Storm in that short interaction, it was that he had the bluest of eyes, and the way they were looking at you, like he needed to be understood by some random girl he just met, made something in your heart clench. 

Still, you had questions. You weren’t going to be swooned into giving away half your apartment.

“A normal roommate…” you drawled, still waiting for the punchline of this whole situation. “So, you don’t mind the fact that I have a regular job and I don’t throw superhero parties?”

That makes him grin again. “Well, I was kind of hoping you threw superhero parties. But that’s okay, I can tell spidey to meet me somewhere else.”

You rolled your eyes, but you were smiling. Okay…maybe you’re getting a little swooned. You looked down at your drink, trying to play it cool. 

“And you know I probably won’t scream when you come out of the shower shirtless or whatever?” 

Johnny grinned wider. 

“I mean, you can. You’d have shirtless privileges as long as you don’t go around selling pictures of me.”

That makes your smile grow. Damn him. 

You really tried to stay skeptical. Tried to keep a cool head and ask more serious questions. But shit, they weren’t lying about the Storm charm. 

And the sad truth was…you liked it. The way he made you laugh. The way he was looking at you. Not just in a flirty, over the top Johnny Storm way. He seemed genuine, not necessarily trying to impress. You could tell he was truly interested…maybe even hopeful. 

And I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? You really needed a roommate like, yesterday. 

“Okay, Johnny Storm,” you shrugged. You had nothing to lose. “Wanna go see it?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to fly up the fire escape?” You tease, eyeing the four flights of stairs ahead of you as you walk into the building. 

“Please. I’m going for the full normal experience, remember?” He gives you a smug little smirk.

You snort, then pretend you don’t hear him panting by the third floor. But all the amusement goes away as you open your front door, totally not freaking out about the fact that Johnny Storm–your potential roommate–is about to come inside. 

Time for the house tour. 

The apartment is not that big, not like anything in New York is anyway, but the layout looks decent under the soft light coming through the windows. The ceilings are high, the wood floors shine when the sunlight hits them right and the open kitchen is small but cozy. 

Johnny walks in with an unreadable expression in his face. Still, you can’t help but look at it the way he must be seeing it now; the single couch in the living room with carefully picked mismatched throw pillows, the thrifted coffee table you sanded and painted yourself, the small black and white TV, the organized mess on every surface but…it’s home. It’s been home for a year now. 

He turns around in a slow circle, taking it all in, eyes landing on a small desk by the window with a typewriter on it and stacks of paper all around it. He wanders over there, leaning a hand on the window frame as he looks out over the rooftops. 

The view isn’t breathtaking, not at all like the one he’s used to back home, or the one he sees when he flies over the city, but it’s beautiful nevertheless. Lived in. Rows of shoulder to shoulder red brick facades, dozens of arched doors with molding and tall trees lining up the street. 

Standing here, he feels small. In a good way. 

“It’s actually very nice,” he says, turning to you with a smile. 

“Thanks…” you say. Relief washing your features. “Does it meet the great Johnny Storm’s expectations?”

He shrugs playfully, eyes darting across the floor like he’s looking for something. “I’m still expecting at least one cockroach cameo.”

You gasp in mock offense, but can’t fight the smile on your face. 

“Give it time.” 

You gesture for him to follow you into the mini hallway to access the rooms, separated by a bathroom in the middle. 

“This one’s my room,” you say, pointing to the one that faces the front street. “Yours would be the one on the left. It has good light in the morning.”

He hums, peeking inside the empty room. “I like that.”

“And then…there’s a smaller third one next to yours. I’m using it for storage, and I wasn’t planning to fill it but…I was actually going to talk with my new roommate about considering renting it too. But–” 

“How much more do you need to make it work?”

“What?”

“Well, if you’re gonna have to bring in a third roommate, then I assume the math doesn’t quite work yet. I can do more than 50/50,” he offers like it’s nothing. 

“Johnny…”

“60/40? 70/30? Just tell me what you need, I got it.”

“That’s not really the point,” you say softly, shaking your head. “Look–I just…I’ve loved this apartment for over a year now but rent went up and it’s been a bit tough finding someone who can help afford this place. The building is nice but people’ve been turning me down when hearing their part. So, I thought I might have to split it in three. But I’m not trying to take advantage of anyone, of you...it’s just a big deal for me, living here you know?” You shrug, suddenly feeling self conscious. 

“You’re not taking advantage of me if I want to help,” he says, just as softly. “Seriously. I like it here. This whole thing I’m trying is…kind of a big deal for me too.”

Your shoulders relax a bit, and a smile tugs at your lips. 

“So you really want to live here?”

Johnny looks at you like obviously, before that cocky grin sneaks into his face again. “I already committed to the stairs. I’m invested now.”

That gets a laugh out of you.

“Well,” you smile, stepping toward him, extending your hand, “then I guess we are roommates, Johnny Storm.”

“Roommates,” he nods, sliding his warm hand into yours. 

“Better than the moon, then?” You tease.

“Way better,” he smiles. And oh, that smile is trouble.

Four months later.

Living with a celebrity has been…surprisingly uneventful.

No paparazzi hiding behind the trees, no fans camping outside the lobby, no wild afterparties. In fact, it’s been almost too normal…if you ignore the fact that your roommate is technically flammable.

Johnny hasn't set anything on fire. Not on purpose, at least.

The kitchen had two close calls. Both were an attempted murder breakfast. He claimed the stove was not user friendly because “it has no lights like the one at home”, so you had no choice but to ban him from using it unsupervised. 

Still, he tries. On some nights when you come home dragging your feet from work, he’s already waiting by the TV with takeout bags in hand and his sweater sleeves pushed up as if he made the meal himself.

You’ve also noticed his little communicator/watch thingy beeps every Wednesday at 8 pm for family dinner back home. He flies off the fire escape, only to return a few hours later with something delicious like Ben’s lasagna or Herbert’s infamous cheesecake (you’ve learned he’s actually a droid and not a private chef.)

“Figured you could take some for lunch tomorrow,” he’d say casually, placing whatever he brought carefully in the fridge.

Oh, and the fridge! We have to talk about the refrigerator. A ridiculous piece of fine technology he barely managed to fit through the apartment door. It’s framed in shiny silver, with curved glass doors you didn’t even think was possible a fridge could have. He said he had a similar one at home, and figured your place could use something with the same aesthetic. 

His words. 

And you still remember the day he moved in like it was yesterday. He arrived with an obnoxiously big truck that had to return half full to the Baxter Building, because he overestimated the space he was moving into. 

The bed was the funniest, for sure. Or at least…the attempt to get it in. It took him forty whole minutes of directing two movers to realize his round, ridiculous, king sized bachelor bed would simply not fit through the apartment door, let alone his designated bedroom. Not by angle, not by disassembly, not even with your upstairs neighbor offering unsolicited advice from the stairwell.

Funny times. 

Your favorite part of that day, though? When Johnny took out a shiny, white sphere-shaped turntable out of a blue velvet lined case with more care than you've ever seen a man apply to anything in your life. 

He brought his entire record collection too. Countless boxes of them. He even had custom shelving made for the living room, right above the small tv stand. The wood midcentury curves contrasted perfectly against the brick wall, and were packed to the brim with all his colorful records. Johnny was very proud of it. Back then he’d even said they were for “shared enjoyment,” and you took that to heart. 

Johnny hadn’t noticed how many romantic records he owned until you started wearing them out. He doesn't mind at all, he’s caught himself smiling more than once when he hears you play one without asking for permission anymore. He even keeps your favorites on the shelf closest to the turntable. 

Cause that’s what roommates do. 

He admits it’s a little weird, sharing a space with someone who’s not family or you’re not romantically involved with, but he likes it so far. The simplicity. Sure there’s no cabinets that open with a clap of his hand or a rocketship parked in his backyard, but there’s walking out of his room for a midnight snack only to find you already there making some tea, humming in your pjs under the soft glow of the refrigerator light. That, until he lifts his hand and starts bragging about his flames heating your tea faster than a kettle. There’s watching you spend an entire Sunday hunched over your desk, giving the poor typewriter a run for its money while you play Sinatra in the background.

You also notice things about him. Cause that’s what roommates do. 

Johnny likes dancing. It’s not a rare occasion to find him swaying his hips to Marvin Gaye or Michael Jackson in the middle of the living room when you get home at night. He’s been trying to master the moonwalk, which you discovered one day you arrived early from work (he’s getting there.)

Johnny likes to be active. He gets very fiddly when he’s not saving the world, so he always has to be doing something. Whether it’s cleaning his custom golf clubs, doing push ups in the middle of the living room, or trying to figure out a rubik’s cube Franklin can solve in less than five minutes, but who’s counting?

(Not Johnny.) 

He has an unhealthy obsession with cereal, but we all have guilty pleasures, don’t we?

Johnny also pays the bills. All of them. You’ve tried to argue, even tried to pay some as soon as the receipt came, only to find out he’d already done it because it gets automatically drawn from his bank account. He even goes grocery shopping like you have a pantry the size of the entire apartment. 

“No Johnny, you can’t keep buying in bulk, we don’t have space for all that stuff!!”

And…he’s still The Human Torch. 

He disappears sometimes. You just hear the beep of his watch and he’s gone in a yellow blur. You’ve learned not to worry. Not because you’re not worried, but because he always comes back. 

It’s your new normal. It’s easy. Domestic in a way you didn’t expect after the last…person you lived with. You’re not sure how much longer you can keep deflecting the question that pounds your head every now and then. Is this–whatever this is–the best mistake you’ve ever made?

“What do you do for a living anyways?” Johnny asks, his attention going from the movie to your spot on the floor next to the couch.

It’s almost 9pm on a random Tuesday. You’re folding some laundry into baskets after Johnny convinced you into joining him watching “The Godfather.”

“You see me leave every day with a lanyard that says New York Times, Johnny,” you chuckle, still focused on the shirt you’re folding. 

“Yeah, but with the way you abuse that typewriter at night I’d think you’re running a secret gossip column about me or something.”

You finally look up, only to find him munching his popcorn in amusement. You reach for his bowl to steal some, he pretends to pull it away only for a second, only to extend it closer to you with a grin. 

“Sure Johnny, because I have nothing better to do than write fan fiction about you for the Flaming Heart’s club zines,” you snort, shaking your head, but his tilts in confusion.

“...What’s a fan fiction?” 

The question makes your wrist full of pop corn stop mid-air.

“Uhm…you’re better not knowing,” your voice comes out a little too high pitched, trying to brush it off.

“Right…” he says hesitantly, making a mental note to get the next Flaming heart’s club issue. 

“I write for the paper’s lifestyle section,” you say, trying to stir the conversation away from that topic. Fortunately, he seems to perk up at that. “But it wasn’t always like that, I actually started writing about sports.” 

“Sports?” He asks, lowering the tv’s volume and turning his body more towards you. “You never talk about that.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly passionate about it. They hired me for whatever they needed. And they needed someone to write about the Mets.”

“The Mets…so you’ve seen me there?” He wiggles his eyebrows, making you roll your eyes playfully. 

“I covered four seasons Johnny, four. I think I saw the human torch painting the game score on the sky a few times,” you chuckle, wiping your hands on your shorts to grab another piece to fold. “Don’t think I could watch another one, though.” 

“Do you hate them?”

“I don’t hate them specifically but…I can’t really stand being in a stadium anymore. My head hurts and it makes me feel sick. It’s so loud, and the games last so long. I had no idea they were that long.”

He tries to be serious, he really does because you’re opening up, but the words leave his mouth before he can stop them. 

“That’s what she said.”

You look at him stunned for a second, before you both burst into laughter. Of course. But you don’t get mad. If anything, it helps ease some tension off your shoulders.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” he apologizes after a moment, clearing his throat when your laugh subsides. “So, lifestyle then?”

“They moved me last year. Which is better…I guess.”

It’s not just your hesitant tone that makes Johnny soften, but the way you start to fold a pair of socks like your life depends on it. His gaze goes to your desk by the window, still stacked with mountains of papers and the cup of tea you forgot to take to the sink last night. 

“That still doesn’t explain the aggressive typing at midnight,” he adds, prying a little more. “Unless you’re too passionate about throw pillows or vitamins or whatever a lifestyle column is about, but by the way you told me about it…I’m guessing that's not the dream, right?” 

You chuckle at his analysis, but there’s more sadness in it than amusement.       

“I want to write novels,” you admit quietly. “Romance, actually.”

That makes his eyebrows go up.

“Oh, now that makes sense,” he says with a teasing grin.

You whip your head toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Oh come on,” he laughs, leaning back on the couch to look at the ceiling, gesturing dramatically in the air. “The girl who listens to love songs repeatedly, wants to write romance novels? Not very surprising.”

You gasp, nudging his knee so he looks at you. 

“May I remind you those are your records I’m playing?”

“Oh, please. You put them on more than I do.”

You try not to smile, but with Johnny…you’ve learned that’s impossible. 

“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault you’ve got a softie’s taste in music,” you tease, going back to your stupid pile of clothes when he finally looks at you, feigning offense.

“I will not tolerate slander in my own home.”You both fall into soft laughter again, before he decides to turn the volume back up, not really caring about what he might’ve missed. Romance novels, huh. He’s definitely using that against you later.

It’s supposed to be another random Tuesday night. 

You’ve called it a day, and intend to sit back and relax and enjoy your evening. You’re about to walk out of your room to make some tea for bed, when you hear the familiar rustle of Johnny’s keys on the front door, but it’s not just his footsteps you hear. 

No, there’s a giggle. A girl giggle. 

“Oh my god, you weren’t kidding about the stairs!” She says, followed by a breathless little laugh. “Wait…this is it?”

You’re still in your room where you can't see them, but by the sound of the girl’s voice, she’s not exactly impressed about the place Johnny Storm brought her into. But he doesn’t seem to mind, instead, you can hear his footsteps going toward the turntable, probably rummaging through his “setting the mood” shelf. 

“Yep. This is where I live.”

There’s a brief pause, where you assume the girl is looking around trying to find a camera that would explain this is just a bad prank.

“…Really? I thought you lived in a penthouse,” she says, laughing nervously again. “I don’t know, something with a view, at least?”

“Nope,” Johnny says, and you can hear the unbothered smile on his face. “This is home.”

She doesn’t say anything back, but you’re guessing she’s probably trying to smile politely like her life depends on it. After all, she’s not stupid enough to waste the opportunity of spending the night with the human torch.

You don’t know what makes you step out of your room, maybe curiosity killed the cat, but you regret it the moment you see the girl Johnny brought home. The brunette looks like her face belongs in a billboard as much as he does. She’s still standing by the door, shifting awkwardly, and her eyes widen when she sees you walk out in pj’s. 

“Oh hey!” Johnny says quickly, gesturing between you with a little laugh before she spirals. “This is my roommate. And this is, um…Paige.”

You smile, just enough to be polite, crossing your arms over your chest to try to keep at bay whatever you’re feeling.

“Hi, Paige.” That’s all you can manage to say. Johnny pretends going back to choosing a record, but he watches you from the corner of his eye. 

Paige straightens on her spot, smiling way too cheerfully for the expression of bewilderment she had just seconds ago. “Hi! I love the place. It’s so…cozy.”

You nod, ignoring the way she looks up and down at you, and decide it’s wiser to forget about that tea.

“Nice meeting you. I’ll uh…leave you both to it…” you mutter, before doing the only thing a sane person would do. 

Retreat to your room, shut the door, and pretend you don’t exist. 

You decide to go back to your plans of enjoying the evening, and curl up with a good book in bed–thinking a glass of wine wouldn't be the worst idea–when you hear music coming from the living room. And it’s not just any song. Of course it’s not.

The opening sultry sequence is unmistakable, so instantly recognizable that your eyes go wide as your head snaps toward the door. 

“I’ve been really tryyyyyyin’, baby…”

“No fucking way,” you whisper to yourself.

“Tryin’ to hold back this feeling for so looooong…”

You rush to the door, pressing your ear to the wood to confirm you’re not hallucinating. Johnny really is shooting his shot with Marvin Gaye in the background. 

Way to set the fucking mood. Literally.

“Oh my God,” you slap a hand over your mouth to stop the disbelieving laughter bubbling out of your chest. “That’s his move?”

You can’t help it. You have to see this. You crack the door open just enough to take a peek of the living room. The record spins on the turntable, as Johnny stands in front of the couch Paige is sitting on. 

“Let’s get it on…”

And girl, Johnny’s getting it on. He has his arms up in front of him, elbows bent, fists and eyes closed, completely surrendering to the groove. He rolls his shoulders seductively, and his hips are doing a slow sway that makes your jaw drop to the floor. 

He’s performing, right in the middle of your apartment, and you’re not sure if you should be horrified or turned on. 

The girl on the couch is surely eating it up. She giggles, covering her mouth like this is the most charming thing she’s ever seen. Johnny throws in a little hip circle, that feels unnecessarily dramatic in your humble opinion, but she squeals louder, clapping as she melts under his mating spell.

“Let’s get it on…let’s love, baby…”

You can’t believe him, you can not believe him…and yet, your lips twitch at the way he’s completely unaware of how stupid he looks because he’s too busy having fun doing his weird seduction ritual. 

Of course this is how he flirts. Of course he dances like that. And of course people fall for it.

You shake your head, smiling despite yourself. Paige laughs again, and Johnny grins wide, clearly proud of himself. He offers his arm to her with a wink, leaning forward, and she takes his hand with a delighted gasp that seems to seal the deal. 

That also means you’ve seen enough. 

You close the door softly, pressing your back against it as the music and the giggles muffle behind it. You tell yourself that you should be annoyed. You should be rolling your eyes. But god help you, there’s this weird tender feeling blooming on your chest, and you hate it. Because even when he’s being ridiculous, even when he’s dancing to Marvin Gaye for someone else…You still find him stupidly endearing.

-

Unfortunately, Johnny’s wasn’t the only performance of the night. 

Oh no, you wish you could go back to the stupid mating dance instead of…this. 

First you just heard the creak of a bed. His bed. Followed by a sound that could only be described as a high, breathy, and absolutely overdone…moan. A performative moan. The walls are thin, not paper thin, but still enough that every exaggerated sound from his guest bleeds through. 

“Oh my goood, Johnnyyy…”

You try covering your ears with your pillow, hoping it’ll help muffle the show Paige is putting on next to your room. But no, this girl is committed. She’s moaning as if she’s trying to convince someone. Anyone. Everyone. 

God, what if your neighbors think that’s you?

Your groan is muffled by the pillow. This is torture, absolute torture. You know Johnny must be good in bed. That’s not the problem. The problem is that she sounds like she’s aware she has an audience.

You lift yourself on your elbows to glance at the clock and sigh at the time. 1:07 a.m.

Who goes on a date on a Tuesday? 

Granted, if you were fucking Johnny you probably wouldn’t mind the day, or the hour–alright STOP right there. That’s not the point! 

You plop back down, exhausted, but sleep doesn’t come easily. You just stare at the ceiling, counting the cracks you’ve never bothered to notice before, in an attempt to ignore Johnny’s muffled groans. 

You tell yourself it’s fine. You tell yourself you’re a grown adult who can handle the fact that her roommate has a sex life. There was never a rule against Johnny bringing someone home. He lives here. He pays for almost everything for God’s sake. He’s allowed to bring anyone wants. 

It's just…you were naive enough to think he wouldn't.

Girl, whatever.

Wednesday’s morning sun hits you like a slap in the face. 

You couldn’t sleep well, not with the symphony next door. So you forced yourself up from bed and got ready for work by a miracle. Now, yawning and barely keeping your eyes open, you drag your feet toward the kitchen to find some salvation in the form of caffeine, but you don’t make it two steps outside your bedroom before you collide directly into something solid. 

And wet. And warm. Too warm. 

Johnny. 

Who was just stepping out of the bathroom with water dripping down his golden skin. A white towel hangs low on his hips. Like low low. His clenched fist barely keeps it in place. Blonde hair sticking in strands to his forehead. 

You freeze in place. 

“Morning,” he says, smirking, “You okay? You look like you just saw a very handsome man.”

You don’t really hear him. And you absolutely do not stare at his chest, his abs, or the water trickling down his happy trail. But you do notice the hickeys adorning his glistening pecs. Bright and fresh and mocking you.

“It’s okay if you want to scream.” His teasing voice makes you roll your eyes as you shove past him. 

“Put on some damn clothes, Storm.”

Johnny lets out a chuckle, leaning over the bathroom’s door frame with his arm. 

“Why? You looked like you were enjoying the view,” he adds, and just to show off more, he steams the water off his body in a matter of seconds. “You know, you can just say I’m hot. I’d be flattered, really.”

He expects you to say some witty remark, or give into him with a laugh like you always do, but you give him the cold shoulder treatment. Then you distract yourself by stabbing the buttons on the espresso machine he brought in just last week. Johnny notices not only that, but your sudden aggression toward the cereal box and the bowl you set a little too harshly onto the counter. He frowns, stepping slowly into the kitchen. 

“Hey…wait, are you–“

“I’m not mad,” you say, still not looking at him.

“I didn’t say you were,” he shrugs, lifting one hand innocently before smirking again. “…but are you not though?” 

“I’m just tired, okay? Some of us had to sleep last night instead of entertaining their very loud…guest.”

“Ohhh,” he clicks his tongue, grin only growing bigger. “So this is about last night. That’s what you’re mad about.”

“I said I’m not mad!” You snap.

There’s a few seconds of silence where Johnny debates turning around and hiding in his room before you throw a knife at him or something, but since he apparently has no survival instinct, he leans closer, tilting his head inquisitively at you. 

“…Are you sure?” 

You set your palms on the counter with a sigh. But instead of going for the knife in the drawer to your right (very tempting) you step away from him. 

“Johnny–listen I’m not mad that you brought someone over,” you start explaining, a little hesitant because wow, this is awkward. “You live here too and you can bring whoever you want. It’s not about that.”

“Okay…” he drags the word, waiting for the but.

“It’s just…it was a weeknight, alright? I have work today and I could barely sleep.”

You see the shift in Johnny’s face when he takes in your exhausted features, your slumped shoulders and the lame work outfit you didn’t seem to care much about. His brows furrow in something that looks like concern as a mild pink paints his cheeks. That’s when you straighten up, shaking your head in an attempt to take it back as sudden embarrassment takes over you.

“Sorry, that probably sounded dumb. Swear I’m not trying to police your sex life–you’re an adult! You can…you can do whatever you want, whenever you want–” you fumble through your words, but this time Johnny is the one shaking his head as he steps closer to you, so close that you can feel the warmth radiating off his bare chest.

“Shit. I didn’t even think–you’re right,” he says, scratching the back of his head as he turns redder. “I’m sorry…I should’ve thought about that. I really didn’t mean to…make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t, not in the way you think,” you reassure, lowering your eyes to the bowl on the counter with a little shrug. “Maybe I just didn’t need to hear…all of it. You know?”

He nods a little too quickly. “Yeah yeah, totally, I get it. This uh–this roommate thing’s still new to me, but I’ll be more careful next time. Promise.”

Next time. Promise. You’re not sure why that didn’t make you feel better. Next time. Next time you’ll–

“Thank you,” you mumble, feeling Johnny’s gaze fixed on you as you nod and turn away from him toward the coffee machine again. 

Johnny hums, and decides to retreat back to his room, bare feet dragging over the wood floor. The roommate thing is not necessarily new new to him, but living in a shared apartment with thin walls is. At least back at home no one complained about his night endeavours anymore after Reed installed a soundproofing system specifically for this purpose. 

He stops right outside his room, his hand resting on the doorknob when he turns to you with that charming smile he wears when he knows he’s done something wrong and he needs to fix it. 

“Lunch tomorrow?” He asks casually, almost laughing at the way your head snaps up toward him with wide eyes. “To make it up to you. It’s your day off.” 

The perplexed expression on your face doesn’t change. 

“You…know?” You tilt your head, narrowing your eyes at him. 

“You marked it on the calendar with a little face next to it.” He grins, shrugging cockily. 

“I didn’t–” Your eyes land on the calendar next to the landline phone on the wall, and sure there is a little smiley face next to your circle. “You drew that there!” you accuse with a small laugh he follows.

“Whatever. It’s still my treat, what do you say?”

“But…Paige won’t be mad?” you tease, and he bites back a chuckle as he shakes his head. 

“She was just a one time thing.” 

His expression doesn't falter, but something about the quickness of his reply makes your heart do something stupid again. 

“Then…yeah, guess I’d like that,” you say softly. 

“Good. I’m picking the place,” he nods with a smile.

You definitely don’t stare at his back as he disappears into his room.

“I got sunshineeee, on a cloudy day…”

The music coming from the jukebox is lively, and matches the bright diner Johnny brought you to. He’d tried hailing a cab to get there, but you dragged him toward the subway, where he insisted on getting his own card to cover your fare at least.

He adored the subway, though! That poor innocent soul. 

You weren’t really sure where he was taking you, but you liked the place he chose. 

“Can I get you anything else, honey?” The waitress asks Johnny after scribbling down your order. A kind middle aged woman with bright red lipstick, who has apparently known Johnny since he was a kid. 

“That’s everything for now. Thank you, Glinda,” he smiles, sending a wink her way. 

She laughs, shaking her head, used to him doing that every other day. Then her gaze travels between you two with a smile you can’t quite decipher. 

“You two are cute,” she says suddenly.

“We’re not–”

“Thanks!” Johnny cuts you off, and before you can protest, he nudges your foot under the table until Glinda leaves. He chuckles when he sees you narrowing your eyes at him. “Let her believe it. We’ll get better service.”

“Huh. Did that work with Paige too?” You tease with a tilt of your head, and Johnny raises his eyebrows in surprise. 

“Wow. So we’re doing that today?”

You shrug, a laugh escaping your lips. “I’m just saying, if I’m gonna be one of your girls of the week, I should know if you’re using the same techniques.”

“Oh don’t worry, you’ll meet the rest of my harem later and you can ask them yourself,” Johnny plays along, making your grin widen. “But if it makes you feel better, you’re the first one I’ve ever brought here.”

Something about the comment makes something flutter in your stomach. You look around, and this is definitely not the place you imagine the girls Johnny dates hanging out. No wonder he hasn’t brought them here, after all,  this is just a casual “I fucked too loud the other day and I need you to forgive me” spot. 

“How do you know this place?” You ask. 

“Sue used to bring me here when I was little,” he explains, smiling softly as he recalls the memory. “Best burgers in the city. I didn’t want to eat anywhere else." 

You smile, and shake the bad thoughts away, grateful to be the first one he decided to share this space with besides his sister. 

Your food arrives eventually, and the conversation flows easily between you, just as if you were sitting on the floor of your living room. He always shares stories about his missions that seem too good to be true, and when you share stories from your job, the craziest thing you can tell him is the absurd HR drama of the week. 

“...I guess you'd say

What can make me feel this way?...” 

The music fills the restaurant, and the food is so good, you can’t help the delight on your face.  

“Oh my god, you weren’t lying about these,” you say, a little muffled, after the last glorious bite of your burger. 

Johnny chuckles, nodding like ‘I told you so’. You’re too busy tasting heaven to notice when he leans forward on his booth, and before you know it, his hand is reaching toward your cheek, wiping some leftover sauce with a napkin. 

“There you go,” he says softly. 

The gesture is so sudden that you freeze on your spot and stop chewing, but Johnny looks unbothered as ever, leaning back again with both arms resting on the edge of the booth like that was nothing. You stare at his relaxed position, and finish swallowing what was in your mouth, trying to ignore the lingering feeling of his warm fingers grazing your skin. 

“Thank you,” you manage, clearing your throat. 

“Anytime,” he shrugs, flashing you another one of his pearly white smiles. 

“...My girl (my girl, my girl)

Talkin' 'bout my girl (my girl)...”

-

“Well, I think that should cover the noise,” Johnny says, following behind as you enter the apartment after getting back from the diner. 

“Fine. Apology accepted, Storm.” You roll your eyes, but can’t help a smile as you go straight to the living room. 

You plop down onto the couch, and Johnny throws himself beside you. There’s a comfortable silence for a few seconds, one he couldn’t wait to ruin by opening his mouth. 

“Don’t worry, next time I’ll keep it down,” he says nonchalantly. “I can be considerate.”

Maybe he meant it as a joke, you tell yourself. Next time. It really shouldn’t bother you, but it’s the second time he says it like the idea of having another woman on his bed is as casual as eating a burger. 

Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t–

“Well, hopefully the next one doesn’t fake it so loudly.” 

The words left your mouth before you could think about their impact. Johnny turns fully toward you, straightening up on the couch. 

“I’m sorry, what? Did you just say Paige was faking it?” 

You consider getting up and ignoring the conversation altogether, but that would make you look worse than you already do. 

“I didn’t say any names,” you try to brush it off. 

“You absolutely meant Paige,” he retorts. “And she wasn’t faking it.”

“…Okay,” is all you say, pursing your lips together. Johnny narrows his eyes. 

“You don’t believe me,” he says defensively, and it’s a little hard not to laugh at Johnny's genuine offense.

“Well, did you believe her?” You ask, raising your eyebrows.

He looks at you like you’ve gone mad. “Yes, of course I did! I’m very attentive with those things. I would know.”

“Okay then,” you shrug, leaning forward to take the tv remote from the coffee table, but he beats you to it, and hides it behind him. “Johnny!”

“No! Don’t patronize me,” he points at you with his finger, “I pay attention, okay? I’m not saying I’m Casanova–”

“You kind of are.”

“Well not the point,” he glares at you, but you just bite back a smile and wave your hand for him to continue. “What I mean is, women don’t fake it with me.”

He says it with such conviction, that all you can do is bite the inside of your cheek to not burst out laughing. I mean, of course certified hot stuff™ Johnny Storm would believe that. 

“Okay–”

“Stop saying okay!” He groans dramatically, running his hands through his hair like this is physically wearing him out, and then holds them in front of you. “You wanna hear the details? Fine. She said she came ten times.”

“Ten times?”

“Yeah.”

“Johnny.”

“What?”

“Ten??”

“Yes. Ten,” he says proudly, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Did you also come ten times?” 

He goes quiet for a moment, his mouth opening and closing in offense. You raise your eyebrows and nod with your head, prompting him to talk. 

“No that’s…that’s impossible,” he huffs. All you have to do is give him a look. See? “Okay–stop. It’s different for women.”

“Yeah, I know it is. That’s why you don’t understand,” you sigh, trying to sound nicer now because despite everything, you’re not trying to humiliate him. “Listen, I’m sure you’re good in bed, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen for us. And sometimes girls don’t want to stop everything and explain that in the middle of it, so they fake it to be…polite.” 

He looks flabbergasted to say the least. 

“Polite? So you’re saying faking orgasms is what, being generous with us?”

“I think she was very generous, making you believe it was twelve times.”

“I said ten,” he snaps.

“Right, ten. God forbid I say an unrealistic number.”

Johnny narrows his eyes at you, but your amused smile doesn’t falter. That’s the moment when the devil on his shoulder whispers something to him, and a glint appears in his eye. 

“Well, what about you, then?” He asks casually.

“What about me?” You narrow your eyes. 

“Do you have to fake it a lot with the guys you are with?”

“Johnny…” you laugh, rolling your eyes at how he turned it around.

“I’m just saying,” he smirks. “You seem to know a lot about it. Did you have to do it a lot?” He’s teasing, you know it, but there's a bit of genuine curiosity under all that. 

“Like I said, sometimes it just doesn’t happen for us,” you shrug, chuckling again but it doesn’t reach your eyes this time, “my last partner was…attentive. So I didn’t have to. At least…not at first.”

“Your last partner?"

You hesitate for a second, then nod.

“We were together for five years.” 

“Five years?” Johnny straightens up, unconsciously sliding himself closer to you on the couch. “You were with someone for five years?”

“Yeah. I actually thought I was gonna spend the rest of my life with him,” you smile sadly. “His name is James.”

Johnny hates James. 

He’s not sure what to say besides that. You’ve never told him this before, and God, that look on your face…makes him watch you more carefully now. No more teasing, no smirk. 

“Did it end badly?” He asks softly. You shake your head.

“It wasn’t ugly per se, just…sad. We didn’t want the same things anymore,” you sigh, he just listens. “We had dreams, you know? Big ones. Penthouse in Manhattan, fancy dinners, skiing holidays. He wanted to go into politics, make it to congress, I wanted to become a New York Times best seller. So, we’d agreed we didn’t want kids or the whole marriage thing. Just success,” you chuckle, because it sounds so foreign to you now. “But after so many years together I changed my mind. I wanted a family. I wanted…more. I wanted to live the love I was writing about.”

“And he didn’t,” Johnny adds quietly. 

“No. He didn't. Didn't think we could have both.” You meet his gaze, and you see true concern there, so you smile. “It’s been about a year since we called it off. I’ve healed a lot since then. Found this place and made it home.” you say, as if he’s the one who needs reassurance. 

Johnny’s heart burns under his chest. He’d never stopped to think about the life you had before him. There was a whole imagined future that someone destroyed, and he had no idea.

“I heard he made it to congress last month,” you add, toying with the hem of your shirt. “Guess that leaves me here, still writing in my pjs thinking I can make it big one day,” you chuckle, but Johnny doesn't find it so amusing. 

“Hey. Don’t say it like that,” he says softly, shaking his head. “You’re doing it. You’re writing, maybe not in some fancy tower office or bestselling list yet, but you’re on your way. I’ve seen you type for hours on that thing,” he points at the typewriter by the window. “And you’re going to find someone who wishes the same things as you. You deserve someone who wants to give you all that, and more.”

“Yeah…maybe,” you nod. He huffs, nudging your leg playfully with his support.

“Definitely.”

This time you let yourself smile genuinely. You’re not sure why you let yourself share all of that with Johnny. Surely, he’s never had to worry about success, and there’s a line of girls who would gladly marry him anyday. But the way he’d looked at you, so…earnest. You deserve someone who wants to give you all that, and more. His words echo in your head, but maybe you shouldn't dwell on it. He was just being nice–

“It’s a little quiet in here, isn’t it?” His voice snaps you out of your thoughts, and when you turn to look at him, he’s got his devilish smile back on.

You narrow your eyes, but he just raises from the couch and walks toward the turntable. 

“I say, we need some music to lighten up,” he half turns to you without stopping, winking. 

You snort, shifting on the couch to peek at what vinyl he wants to play, but he purposefully covers it with his body. You don’t have to guess for long, because a familiar groove fills the apartment when he drops the needle.

“Johnny, you can’t be serious right now,” you chuckle when you recognize the tune. 

He turns away from the turntable, and he already has that mischievous glint in his eye, making a “come here” motion with two fingers. His hips start moving to the rhythm as he walks toward you, and you have to bite back a smile. 

“Come on, I already heard your sad story. Let’s dance now.” 

“My sad story?” You gasp in exaggerated offense. “Oh you're dead, Storm.”

“Yeah?” He grins, stopping right in front of you but never halting his moves. “Why don’t you stand up and show me you can move, then?”

“I won’t–” 

“Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man no time to talk…” he cuts you off, singing and pointing at himself. His voice comes out so high it matches the record, and you cover your mouth to hide your smile. He keeps dancing to the groove, “And now it's all right, it's okay. And you may look the other way…” you do just that, but Johnny slides to stay in your line of sight. 

“…Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive…”

You cover your face, peeking through your fingers. He keeps moving so easily, so unashamed, and for a moment it feels too familiar. It’s just like the other night, except today, you are the girl he’s dancing to. 

“Ah ah ah ah, staying alive…” Johnny channels his inner Travolta, and busts out the signature disco move: left hand on his hip, the other moving up and down in the air as the chorus hits. You can’t hide the delight on your face anymore. A giggle escapes out, and he just smiles brighter, stopping his move only to offer his hand. “Come on, dance with me.”

You want to say no.

“Scared of a little fun?” He teases.

It’s a trap. It’s a trap. But he’s standing right there with his hand outstretched, hips swaying to the beat, and those impossible blue eyes daring you to stop thinking about fake orgasms and failed relationships and just join the moment. He looks so ridiculous, yet you’re rising up from the couch before you can really think about it. 

Johnny cheers approvingly, stepping back to give you space, and you let yourself go. Your own moves are looser, less practiced than his, but still good enough to raise to the challenge. You shake your hair playfully, spinning around so Johnny is standing behind you as you join the rhythm. You sway from side to side in opposite directions, catching brief glances of each other’s faces. He lets out a low whistle.

“Ohhhh she dances,” he praises, eyes shamelessly trailing your movements.

“Shut it,” you shoot back. 

And you both dance. 

“…Well now, I get low and I get high

And if I can't get either, I really try…”

The apartment fills with music and laughter, and you get lost in your own Saturday Night Fever extravaganza. At some point he reaches for your hand again and twirls you, making you stumble into him, and you collide chest to chest. The song keeps playing, but it fades out when his bright blue eyes set on you. 

You’re breathless, and you try to play it cool, but it’s impossible when he’s right there.

“You’re smiling,” he says teasingly, but you don’t try to hide this time. 

“Only because you’re ridiculous,” you manage. 

Johnny shrugs smugly, making you yelp when he steps back and spins you around faster than before, then prompting you to dance again. “Then be ridiculous with me.”

As you both laugh and surrender to the rhythm, you come to the realization that you could learn to love this.

The dancing. 

It’s Friday night, and you decide to give dating a chance again. It’s about time after all.

You smooth down your outfit, fix your hair one last time, and give yourself a final look in the mirror of your room. It’s been a while since you actually dressed up for something that wasn’t work, and god, it feels good to remember you still have it in you.

You step out of your room hoping to leave without making too much of a fuss, when you come across a shirtless Johnny leaning on the breakfast counter, wearing his human torch pj pants– way too low to be considered PG– and eating from the cereal box in his hand. Only the glow from the refrigerator bathes the kitchen in a pale golden hue. 

Not an unfamiliar sight at all, yet…you always find yourself staring longer than you should. For Johnny, however, watching you come out of your room looking like that as you leave a trail of expensive perfume he’s sure you’ve never worn before, is unfamiliar. 

“Wow,” he says, straightening up against the counter, a teasing smile on his face. “She actually cleans up nicely.”

You snort, looking around for your coat and pretending you don’t feel Johnny’s burning gaze on you when you put it on. 

“Date night?” he asks. His voice definitely didn’t come out higher than normal.

“...Yeah,” you mumble, fixing the collar of your coat. “Guy from work. He’s um…we’re going dancing.”

“Dancing? People still do that?” He teases. Hypocrite.

“Ha. Ha. Very funny Storm,” you retort, walking to the door to grab your keys on the little hook next to it. “Please don’t burn the place while I’m out.” 

“I can’t promise anything,” he shrugs unapologetically, rounding the counter as if to walk toward the couch in the living room, but he really just wants to get a better look at you before you leave. “You look very beautiful.” 

His words make your hand freeze over the doorknob. There’s something about the softness in his voice that knocks the breath out of your chest. You turn around to look at him with a small smile.

“Thank you, Johnny,” you say, but before you can reach the knob again he perks up.

“Wait–he’s not coming up to get you?”

“No…he said he’d be outside at 8,” you shrug, but Johnny doesn't seem to take it as lightly as you do. If anything, you’d say he looks scandalized to say the least. 

“Yeah–no. That’s not happening,” he shakes his head, dropping the cereal box on the counter as he walks towards you. 

“Johnny–”

“No way I’m letting you wait outside alone in the cold while some guy honks his car like he’s doing you a favor,” he says, walking ahead to open the door. “I’ll wait with you.”

“...You’re only wearing pants.”

“Yeah, and they’re my favorite pair,” he deadpans. “Let’s go.”

“Okay…” you shrug, but can’t fight the smile tugging at your lips as he guides you outside the apartment. “Thank you,” you whisper, when he offers his arm to help you down the multiple flights of stairs. 

Date night hasn’t even started and you’re already flustering. 

Once you’re in the lobby, Johnny doesn’t seem to mind the fact that he’s standing shirtless and barefoot next to the glass doors. If anything, he’s more interested in seeing who this mystery man is, if he even has the decency of at least walking inside to get you. For a moment he just stares at you from the corner of his eye, resisting the urge to send another compliment your way. 

The clock ticks, minutes go by, and you’re still smiling but the slight waver of your stance doesn’t go unnoticed by Johnny. 

He glances at you, then at his watch. 8:15. Shit.

"Are you sure he said eight?" Johnny asks carefully. 

“Yeah. Eight. Michael called me yesterday to confirm it,” you nod, eyes still glued to the street outside. 

Johnny hates Michael. He hates him so much and he doesn’t even know him. But he forces a reassuring smile for you.

“Maybe traffic?”

“Yeah,” you agree too quickly. “You know how it is on a Friday.”

He just nods, and turns back to the street. He doesn’t feel the bite of the cold, but he notices the way you wrap your arms around you. He silently steps closer to you, increasing his body temperature so can share some with you. You don’t say anything, or even move, but time does. 

8:25.

You shift your weight from side to side, trying to come up with something to at least make the silence a little less awkward, but nothing comes out. 

8:30.

Johnny’s gaze turns to you again, and you fear he sees the moment of cruel acceptance in your face. Why did he have to wait with you? This would be less embarrassing if he’d just stayed upstairs so you had time to come up with an excuse less pathetic than “I was stood up.” 

At 8:40 you decide it’s been enough of this humiliation, so you exhale, turning back to the stairs while avoiding Johnny’s eyes. 

“Well, he probably got caught up in something,” you shrug, trying to sound casual. A shaky laugh escapes your lips. “Maybe an emergency. Or maybe he just didn’t want to come...”

“I don’t think–”

“I’m gonna go back,” you cut him off, clearing your throat. “I’ll just change and order something. It’s no big deal.”

Johnny doesn't have time to offer his arm this time, because you’re already halfway up the stairs ahead of him. So he follows behind, no questions asked.

The hurt is not even about the guy who didn’t show up, because you haven’t known him long enough for this to be a proper “heartbreak”, but you hate that you got all dressed up and hopeful. How you let yourself believe someone might want to see you that badly. Oh he’s gonna hear it from you on Monday. 

And now you’re walking back upstairs with your roommate in the front row of the whole shitshow.

Your roommate who held the door open and helped you down the stairs.The one who hasn't made a single joke about the situation even when you’re sure he’s never had to worry about being stood up in his entire life. The one who said you looked beautiful with such softness in his voice that your stomach still flips thinking about it. 

Your roommate who also happens to be Johnny Storm. 

And the worst part? 

Part of you wishes he was the one who stood you up. Because at least then, it would’ve meant he wanted to take you out in the first place.

God, you’re being ridiculous. 

You don’t really want to talk when you approach the apartment. Johnny closes the door behind you with a soft click, and you don’t even bother turning the lights back on since the idea of ordering something doesn’t seem that appealing anymore, instead, you bend down to take your shoes off. Your night ended before it could even begin anyways. 

“Goodnight, Johnny.” 

You don’t wait for a reply as you straighten up and make a beeline for your bedroom, but you stop when you feel his warm fingers wrap gently around your wrist, the same one holding your shoes.

“Wait,” he says softly. “Just…wait.”

He lets go almost as quickly, his brief touch a mere ghost feeling on your wrist as you watch him walk with determination toward the turntable in the living room, flipping through the basket of records on rotation you keep next to it. You’re about to open your mouth to tell him you’re really not in the mood for this, but he beats you to it. 

“Ah ha!” He celebrates when he finds the one he was looking for, but from your spot it’s hard to recognize the cover in the darkness. He places the record on the player, and turns to you a little bit shyer. “This isn’t, you know…a fancy dance floor. But I figured you deserved your dance anyway.” 

His dashing smile is soft and lopsided and even a little sheepish as he waits for your response. Your heart thumps so loud and quickly you struggle to process everything you feel in that moment, and the sting in your eyes doesn't help either. 

You stay speechless, but Johnny doesn't mind, he only turns again to drop the needle on the vinyl before walking to your spot.

You expect the melody to come out of the turntable to be lively, something ridiculously sexy or extravagant like the other day, but when you recognize the soft chords of a guitar, you have to stop yourself from gasping. 

“I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me…”

Frank Sinatra's voice dances across the apartment, just as Johnny stops in front of you and extends his hand with a soft smile. 

“What do you say? Wanna dance under the glow of our ridiculous fridge?”

A chuckle escapes your lips. To think that you would’ve expected him to mock you for what happened, but no, he’s offering you a dance instead. Again. Words are foreign to you still, but you drop your shoes to the floor and take his hand.

“And if we go some place to dance I know that there's a chance you won't be leaving with me…”

His hand finds your waist, and yours land over his bare shoulders almost instinctively. You start to sway to the melody, glassy eyes meeting his piercing blue ones. His face is washed by the faint glow coming from the kitchen, enough to look ethereal as he guides your hips from side to side. His body is hot beneath your touch, and you find it hard to coordinate your moves with the unsteadiness of your breathing. 

“And afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two…”

The record choice doesn’t help your state either. That song. That damn song. The one you’ve been playing every Sunday morning. The one you sing along to in the middle of typing as you try to recreate that love with your words. The one you reach for when the apartment’s too quiet and you don’t want to be alone with your thoughts. 

This is not like the other day. This…this is everything. 

“And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’...”

Johnny breaks eye contact to spin you around softly, almost letting out a tiny huff when your chests collide back together. That’s familiar. His grip on your waist tightens ever so slightly, and your fingers find their way to play with his hair. 

You don’t want the moment to end. And neither does he. So you keep going, careful not to let your face bury into his bare chest, as you sway barefoot under the refrigerator light. 

“The time is right, your perfume fills my head

The stars get red and, oh, the night's so blue…”

Maybe getting stood up wasn't so bad.

“And then I go and spoil it all, by saying something stupid like ‘I love you’...”

Maybe this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.

The next time you decide to try dating, it’s with a better man. A totally normal, grounded, emotionally available man who shows up at your doorstep when he says he will.

Joseph has brown eyes and brown hair. A warm voice with an accent that had you internally giggling and kicking your feet when you were introduced at a work event. He’s sweet and listens and laughs at your jokes and doesn't have a superhero suit in his closet. 

Nope, he just works in finance. 

That’s good. That’s smart. Joseph’s normal. He doesn’t light on fire at will. And he's oh, so handsome. Which is why, after many successful dates, you knew you wanted more with him. 

Johnny hasn't been home on a Saturday night since he moved in. You don’t know exactly where he goes; missions, friends, clubs, space? Who cares, Saturday is his disappearing act, so you were counting on having the apartment to yourself.

So when Joseph said I’d love to come inside after kissing you against the front door, you said sure with a little grin and the warmth of two glasses of wine running through your veins. You fumbled with your keys a little, giggling when Joseph’s hands roamed down your waist when you opened the door…only to find him on the couch. 

Johnny.

Wearing sweatpants and a white t-shirt with a 4 logo. Bowl of popcorn in his lap and a movie glowing on the screen. His head whips in your direction when he hears your little messy entrance, and smiles a little too wide for someone who just ruined your plans entirely.

“Heeey,” he beams, leaning back on the couch as his eyes narrow at the man standing behind you.

“Hi,” you say, clearly taken aback. “...You’re home.” 

“Yep.”

Ugh. Can’t a girl get laid in peace? 

“Everything alright?” Joseph asks hesitantly, clearly not expecting to find Johnny Storm on your couch.

“Yeah–yeah, sorry. Come in,” you step aside, gesturing awkwardly between them. “This is uh–Johnny. My roommate.”

“That’d be me,” Johnny throws a salute in his direction. “And you are?”

“Joseph,” he flashes a confident grin, tightening his grip around your waist. “Nice to meet you, torch.”

Johnny nods at him, eyes traveling to his hand placement, and you swear you catch his posture faltering for a second, the thousand alarms going off behind that perfect smile. So she doesn’t like blonds…

“Don’t you uh…have somewhere to be?” You ask, gesturing with your eyes toward the door in a silent plea, but he just shakes his head, smiling wider and leaning back onto the couch. He even has the audacity to laugh when you glare at him.

“Oh please, don’t mind me here! I’ll just finish my movie.”

Your eye twitches. So he wants to stay? Fine. You’re not leaving either. 

“Well!” you say a little too enthusiastically, one hand reaching for Joseph’s to pull him toward your bedroom.  “Don’t mind us either, then.”

He shrugs, pretending to turn to the TV again but you feel him watching as you walk away. 

“Don’t forget the walls are thin!”

You don’t turn around or answer to him, just tug Joseph inside your room and shut the door. You twist the lock and try the knob a few times, just in case. 

It doesn’t take long before Joseph is all over you. You’d already been worked up on the way there and the drinks fogging your mind helped you ease the nerves. This is what you wanted after all, a normal night with a normal man. A very sexy one at that. 

His roaming hands are warm and his mouth finds places that have you leaning on the wall behind you so you don’t fall apart completely. 

You really try to be quiet. Respectful. Because unlike him, you’re not trying to put on a show. Seriously, what was he thinking? He’s gone every single Saturday and today he chooses to “watch a movie”. I swear to God, he can be a pain in the ass when he wants to–

Okay, maybe let’s not think about Johnny Storm when another man is on top of you. 

But your bed creaks, just like his that night. You tell yourself to relax, to let go, yet you bite your lip and keep your sounds low. Careful little breaths barely muffled by Joseph’s neck. That is, until it starts to feel too good, and the moans slipping out stop being something you can control. 

Outside, the movie is still playing. Johnny, however, doesn’t even know what’s going on in that screen anymore. He turns the volume up and tells himself that whatever is happening inside your room is none of his business. 

You brought a guy home, big deal. 

It explains why you’ve been giggling on the phone late at night and disappearing every now and then all dolled up. Not that he has noticed, really. You have every right to do whatever you want, with whoever you want. Really. He’s even glad this guy didn’t stand you up like the last one. You deserve to be happy.

Even if he’s not happy right now. Because he really shouldn’t be listening to you like that. 

She’s faking, he thinks immediately, when the sounds start to slip past the walls of your room. You have to. There’s no way that guy is that good. 

Something in his stomach twists when the sounds you’re letting out just prove your theory from the other day: he’s an idiot who can’t tell. 

But he would know with you, he would–no. 

He stands up so abruptly the plastic bowl of popcorn goes flying from his lap, making a mess all over the woodfloors. Whatever, he’ll deal with that later. Right now, he has to leave, or he’s gonna die in this house. And in a whoosh of raging fire, he’s gone.

Weeks went by, and Johnny never brought up that night. Just like you never brought up finding the TV still on and the popcorn all over the floor next morning. 

You both went back to normal. You kept seeing Joseph and Johnny went back to disappearing on Saturdays. You even had a feeling Johnny was seeing someone too, and confirmed it the day you found a pink bra peeking out of his laundry pile. 

So you were both dating…other people. Big deal. 

Despite that, things didn’t really change between you. Because at night? You still came home to each other. You still ate takeout together on the floor, still watched movies, still bickered over who jammed the garbage disposal. 

Normal, normal, normal. Just like tonight.

“So, when are you moving in with your boyfriend?” Johnny asks playfully, setting down an empty noodles box on the coffee table. 

For a second you choke on your last bite of noodles, and cover it up with a cough that has him looking at you amusingly. 

“It’s a little early for that,” you shrug casually, fiddling with your chopsticks on the empty box.

He nods, serious for only a second before he sighs dramatically, putting one hand over his heart and the other over his eyes. “And here I was, thinking it was because you liked living with me too much.”

This time you snort, shaking your head. The worst part is that he might not be wrong about that, but don’t tell him that I said that!

“Don’t flatter yourself, Storm,” you scoff instead. 

“Oh, come on,” he whines, pushing your thigh with his foot. “I’m great to live with. I know you’d miss me if I left.”

I might wither and die.

“I would not,” you say firmly. “What is there to miss, the burnt toast and the bra’s in the laundry?” You tease. 

“Those aren’t mine,” he says seriously. 

“Well thank you for clarifying that, Johnny. I was really having doubts if you were a C cup or not,” you shake your head, and this time you can’t fight the laughter that flows so easily between you. “And for the record, if there’s anything I’d miss, it's the refrigerator, or your vinyls.”

He snorts and rolls his eyes, standing up to take the empty box from you and walk toward the kitchen to throw it away. You can’t help but glance in his direction, and heat warms your cheeks when he turns around and catches you staring. But the teasing never comes, no, only a sweet smile, softly illuminated by the fridge in question. 

You look away before you say something you're not supposed to. 

Wow, look at that! Another Saturday Johnny didn’t disappear. Why? Because this morning Johnny decided to casually announce that the Fantastic Fucking Four were dying to see your shared apartment and finally meet you, the roommate, tonight.  

So yeah, he had you running like a headless chicken all day from store to store–dragging him along, of course–to have everything decent for them. He even bought a dining table with express delivery and ever faster assembly service, since your thrifted coffee table wasn’t gonna fit his fantastic family. 

Perfectly normal Saturday. 

“Johnny, does your sister have a preference for napkins?” You ask, holding up as many brands as you can, the fancy ones, but when you turn to him, he’s in deep conversation with that watch thingy he has.

“No, it’s a family thing…” he says to the person on the call. “...I know, baby. But I’ll make it up to you tomorrow, alright?...Come on, don’t be like that…” 

You move farther away when you realize who he’s talking to, but when you watch him from the corner of your eye, he looks like he’s trying to bargain something with a toddler. A few minutes later, he sighs and hangs up, and you pretend to read the back of two napkin brands like your life depends on it. A casual whistle was the only thing missing.

“So…” he says nonchalantly when he reaches you, or at least that’s how he thinks he’s coming off like, “…Vicky is coming tonight too.” 

He smiles, even if he’s ready for you to snap at him since it was just supposed to be his family. But you just purse your lips together. 

Of course she’s gonna come. The bra girl. 

“Great!” you say, maybe a little too fast, then clear your throat because you have bigger things to focus on. “Now help me with the napkins, I don’t want your family to silently judge us for having the wrong ones.”

Johnny’s shoulders sag in relief and amusement. “My family doesn't have a preference, it’s just napkins,” he says, but then he eyes the multiple brands on your hands and feels as lost as you are. “You know what, let me ask Herbert to be sure.”

You should get extra points for not passing out when he introduced you to his family. Especially when Sue Storm hugged you like you’d known each other your whole lives. Johnny had then decided to give them a full tour of the small place, and you’d made yourself scarce with the excuse of putting away the dessert Ben brought. The truth is, you just needed a moment to process the fact that four superheroes were in your apartment right now. 

You tried not to think about how crammed it looked right now, since the sitting area had been reduced due to the space the new table took. If they noticed, it never showed in their kind faces. 

Just as expected, his family was as golden as him. 

You’re sliding the dessert tray into the fridge when you hear the soft click of heels behind you. Turning around, you find Sue standing there with crossed arms and a curious smile. She’s dressed in cashmere and a pair of boots that probably cost more than your rent. You look over where Johnny is, proudly showing them the view, completely unaware that his sister had left the audience. 

“So, this is the girl my brother hasn’t stopped talking about,” she says, drawing your attention back from Johnny. 

“Oh…me?” You ask a little confused, closing the fridge and wiping your hands on your legs. 

“Unless there’s another roommate with a fondness for love songs and typewriters, I think I’ve got the right one,” she says teasingly, and you notice she has the same spark in her eye Johnny does. 

Wait, she…she knows those things? 

You resist the urge to glance at Johnny again, and nod. “Oh yeah, I just..thought maybe you meant Vicky,” you chuckle nervously.

“Vicky…?” She tilts her head with a frown, trying to place the name, but then she shakes her head. “No, he’s only ever mentioned one girl. His roommate…and that’s you. He says he likes the–” she cuts herself off, finding the right word. “...Balance, this place gives him.”

“He said that?” This time you can’t keep from looking at him, demonstrating to Reed how comfy our worn couch is. Our. Sue nods. 

“He didn’t really have that growing up, you know. The world’s always been loud for Johnny, and it felt like he was always chasing something. But now…” she looks around the apartment with a big sister smile, “he’s still chasing things, but he has somewhere stable to come back to. And I’m glad it’s here.”

You let the words sink it for a moment, as you swallow the lump in your throat. Sue’s eyes soften, and she reaches to squeeze your hand reassuringly. The brief moment breaks when the bell rings, making you both jump and then laugh at each other’s reactions. You clear your throat, and walk toward the little intercom by the wall. 

“Yes?” you ask.

“Hi! It’s Vicky!” a bright voice rings louder than the bell itself.

“Come on up,” is all you say, pushing the button to open the lobby door. 

A good glass of wine doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now. 

Sue lifts a brow curiously from her spot when she sees you pour yourself a cup and then one for her, but you just flash a smile and excuse yourself, smoothing your clothes and fixing your hair before opening the door. 

And there she is…Vicky. Golden hair, golden everything. Just like Johnny. Just like…his world. 

“Hi! Oh my god, the stairs always get me,” she exhales with a little giggle, and yet not a single bead of sweat on her forehead or a piece of hair out of place. “I brought appetizers!” she beams, holding up a tray.

“That’s so nice of you,” you smile politely, but narrow your eyes when you realize they look a little suspicious. “Are those–”

“Oh, shrimp bites! They’re to die for.”

You barely manage to keep your polite expression in place, ready to explain that Johnny hates shrimp and would rather die than be in the presence of it, but the king of Rome itself materializes next to you before you can. 

“V!” His voice comes out way more affectionate than it did at the store earlier, as he approaches her. “You made it, baby.”

You step aside just in time to witness him plant a loud smooch to Vicky’s cheek, and that’s the perfect moment to take a big sip of your drink. Or maybe not, because the second you get distracted, Johnny reaches for the tray.

“Well, don’t mind me,” Johnny says, popping one of the little shrimp abominations into his mouth before you even bring your glass down. But you look just in time to see the exact moment his eyes go wide when he chews, and his entire soul leaves his body. 

Vicky, absolutely oblivious to the horrors Johnny is going through, has already set her gaze on something behind you. 

“Oh J, this must be your sister!” she squeals. She barely gives you time to balance your glass as you catch the tray she tosses to you, shouldering past you to wrap Sue in a big hug.

Johnny has never been more grateful to throw his sister under the bus, using the distraction to discreetly spit the whole bite into a napkin, wiping his tongue dramatically and trying very hard not to gag. You bite back your amusement as you walk up to him, placing the tray gently on his hands. He immediately scowls at it, looking up at you in betrayal.

“Here you go,” you grin, taking a sip of your wine as you walk away toward the couch where the rest of his family is.

Sue looks past Vicky, who keeps yapping away about how much she’s heard about Johnny’s big sister and can’t believe they haven’t met yet so she had to come tonight, and finds Johnny looking in the direction you took off. 

Interesting.

–

After brushing his teeth twice, Johnny had survived the shrimp fiasco, and everything was going well so far. Vicky had sat on his lap as you all got to know each other, chatting away in the living room. Honestly, he’d actually planned this to be just his family and…you. But then things happened, and well, seems like he wasn’t the only one with surprise guests. 

His gaze followed you as you excused yourself from the conversation, to open the door to Joseph (🙄) with a bright smile on your face. Of course. It’s only fair you invited him too. Not that Johnny cares anyways. 

Joseph walks in wearing a loose black suit, with his stupid wavy brown curls tousled by the stairs trials, and holding a stupid bouquet of flowers in his hand. 

“Hi, darling,” he says with a warm smile, meant only for you. “You look beautiful.”

Your soft laugh dances through the room as he steals a kiss from you. Johnny turns back to the conversation. He doesn't notice how he sits up straighter on the couch or how he sets his drink down a little too hard on the coffee table. He doesn't even notice when Vicky leaves his lap to go to the bathroom. But what he definitely notices is the moment your smile turns from genuine to polite, when you get handed flowers he knows you don’t like.

He knows that, because you scowl at them every time you pass them by the supermarket, so why doesn’t your boyfriend know?

Joseph leans in to kiss your cheek now as he steps inside, and you lead him toward the kitchen. Johnny notices how you set the flowers down on the breakfast counter instead of looking for a vase to display them. 

“So…” Ben, who’s sitting to his right, nudges his arm. “Are we not gonna talk about it?” He mumbles.

“About what?” Johnny whispers back, still looking at you.

“About how her boyfriend looks exactly like you.”

“What?” Johnny’s head jerks toward him, looking baffled as Ben just shrugs with a knowing smile.

“Just saying, man. It’s like seeing you with brown hair…and lawyer shoes.”

“No it’s not. We do not look alike.” Johnny scoffs.

“You do.”

“We don’t.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

Ben leans back with a grin. He enjoys rage baiting Johnny whenever he can, but there’s truth in his words. Johnny looks back to his alleged doppelgänger and shakes his head. 

“Seriously?” He says. Ben chuckles, and shrugs. Johnny rolls his eyes, and leans toward the armchair his sister is sitting at, “Hey Sue, psst.”

Sue looks away from her conversation with Reed, and lifts her eyebrow at Johnny. 

“C’mere,” Johnny says, patting the spot on his left side. Luckily, she excuses herself from her husband and takes the spot. Ben and Johnny turn to her expectantly, whispering, “Okay, do not say yes just to annoy me, but…do you think I look like him?”

“Who?” 

“Joseph,” Johnny deadpans. “Do I look like Joseph?”

Sue tilts her head, pretending to be analyzing the British man making you laugh in the kitchen, but there’s a knowing smile creeping on her face. 

“Oh…a little,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. 

“A little??”

“Well, yeah. He’s like you, if you had brown eyes…and less of a tan…or a cute accent…” she says, watching her brother grow more scandalized by the second. 

“A cute accent?” Johnny mocks. “Please. He sounds like a knockoff Beatle.”

Sue and Ben share an amused look. 

“I don’t think he’d be a singer. He has more…actor vibes,” Sue taunts, adding fuel to the fire inside Johnny’s veins. 

He almost choked in offense. 

“Okay, so he’s an actor now? He doesn’t even have that kind of face,” Johnny huffs, reaching for his drink again because what kind of fuckery is this. 

“So you’re saying you don’t have that kind of face either,” Ben adds, this time Sue snorts, shaking her head. 

“I do have that kind of face. The face. He doesn't because we don't look alike.” 

“Sure, Johnny.”

Sue stands up before he can protest like a toddler again. “I’m gonna help her with the food,” she announces, winking mischievously at them and walking away. 

“Oh I love these napkins!” 

He hears her say when she reaches the new shiny table setup. 

That makes you perk up from the kitchen. Right in that moment, your gaze moves from Joseph to Johnny, and you smile proudly at him like “told you so.” Johnny smiles back, but before he can get up and say anything about how much influence he actually had on the napkin choice, a pair of long legs trap him on his seat. 

“What did I miss, babyboy?” Vicky asks as she plops down on his lap again, wrapping her arms around his neck to play with his hair. 

Reed and Ben pretend to look everywhere else. Johnny just smiles, taking another sip from his drink. 

–

Vicky had left earlier than anticipated, claiming a friend called her to get her out of a shitty date, or something like that. Johnny didn’t really ask. 

He has to admit he was a little nervous about this whole get together. Afraid that they would be too much. But he wanted nothing more but to brag about his apartment and his roommate, and the little life he’d managed to build for himself. Even if their world had always been filled with big things. This could’ve gone wrong in many ways, but all things considered, he finds himself smiling when his eyes land on you. 

He's standing close to the front door, and seeing you confidently showing Sue, whose kitchen had been designed by Reed–the king of gadgets himself–the tiny spice rack you installed last week, made something inside him flutter. 

“Hey, man. Have you been to a lot of Mets games?” A familiar British accent startles him. 

The fluttering dies immediately. 

Joseph has stepped beside him, glass in hand and that stupid smile plastered on his face. He forces himself to look away from you. You’re close to them, but not enough to hear the conversation. 

“I mean, yeah. It’s kind of hard not to, I can fly,” Johnny replies drily, but Joseph just laughs easily. 

“Right, right, of course,” he says, glancing toward the kitchen, mirroring the way Johnny was just looking at you seconds ago. “Sometimes I forget she lives with a superhero...” 

Johnny chuckles, shrugging nonchalantly (he’s actually trying very hard not to puff his chest right now.) “Why do you ask?” 

“Ehh…just wanted to know if you got any recommendations for seats? I’m still new to the city, but I’ve been told not to miss the games,” he shrugs. “I’d like somewhere not too close to the cameras, if possible. I’m not…really into all that.”

“The cameras?” Johnny frowns. 

“Yeah, the whole crowd cams, people watching you all the time, that whole thing.”

Johnny listens and tries not to judge. But see? This guy could never be an actor. Or a Beatle. Johnny could, shame there’s not a blonde Beatle. Ohhh, but there’s always wigs though! He’s sure he could rock one, with his bone structure and all–

“Mate?” 

Johnny snaps back to reality, and just flashes a golden smile. 

“There’s cameras everywhere, mate,” Johnny replies, “but I can hook you up with the good tickets, if you’d like. How many do you need?”

“Oh wow that–that’d be perfect, yeah, thank you,” he says, not really expecting that. “Just two, man.”

“…Are you going with a friend?” Johnny narrows his eyes, but Joseph chuckles, shaking his head. 

“I’m taking her,” he says, gesturing at you with his glass. 

Fuck. 

“You…are taking her to a game?” 

“Yeah. It’ll be fun on her day off.”

Johnny knows when your next day off is. He painted another happy face next to your mark on the calendar just to make you smile. He also knows that you like to spend those free days curled up at home, certainly not at a freaking stadium. 

He knows because it mattered to you when you told him. He remembers because you matter to him. 

“Did you…ask her if she likes baseball?” Johnny pries carefully. 

“Not really. I mean, I figured she’d be fine,” he says, a little defensively. 

There’s a few seconds of silence where Johnny debates to keep quiet, but that has never been one of his strengths, so he ends up blurting, “She doesn’t like going to the stadium.”

“Really?” Joseph frowns, eyeing him. 

“She told me once that all the noise makes her sick. And I get it…it’s not the most comfortable place to be,” Johnny chuckles, trying his best to sound casual about it. 

“Oh,” Joseph says. For a moment it looks like he’s contemplating, but after thinking about it for exactly three seconds, he shrugs. “Well… she can bring earplugs or something. It’s just one game.”

Johnny’s not sure if his eye twitching was only a product of his imagination, but given the lack of acknowledgement on Joseph’s face, he figures he managed to keep his emotions at bay. This is not what you deserve. This is not what he wants for you.

Don’t flame on right now. Do not flame on right now. Do not–

“You know what? I can get you access to the VIP suite, so you two can be more comfortable,” he offers instead, plastering on his best plastic Ken smile. 

He’ll get you the best suite, with shade, AC and all the unlimited appetizers you could ever need. If that makes the experience a little more bearable for you. 

“Yeah I guess that would work, thanks, mate!” Joseph says, patting Johnny’s shoulder, but regretting it immediately. He retracts his hand with a hiss, switching the glass to that one to help cool it as he laughs nervously. “Jeez. You’re burning up, man.”

He’s boiling up, actually. But he manages to tone down his temperature, patting Joseph’s cold shoulder firmly before walking toward the kitchen where you’re laughing at something Sue just said.

 Just the sight of you manages his temperature to calm down. 

“Everything alright?” You ask curiously when he steps beside you with a suspicious smile, noticing the way Joseph kept opening and closing his hand as he headed toward the bathroom. 

“Peachy,” Johnny smiles innocently.

“Mhm,” you hum, narrowing your eyes at him. Even his sister eyes him suspiciously, but Johnny ignores her. 

“Is there anything I can help you here with?” He asks casually, gesturing to the pots simmering on the stove. 

“Nope! But maybe you can pour some more wine for our guests," you say quickly, stirring him away from the stove for everyone’s safety. Sue bites her lip. 

“Roger that,” he says, diligently opening a new bottle on the breakfast counter.

Johnny notices Sue leans in to whisper something in your ear that makes you throw your head back and laugh, before whispering something back to her. 

He can’t fight the smile on his face when he realizes you’re talking about him, but it dies down when his eyes land on the flowers Joseph brought you on the counter. The conversation with him is still making fire run through his veins, and this just added more to it. 

Safe to say, Johnny now hates Joseph too. 

To be continued…

Thank you so much for reading! Feedback is always appreciated 💗

When you don’t respond soon enough, she continues. “Cause I called your place, trying to do the bigger person thing and apologize, you know? But your folks picked up instead, and your mom said you were staying with Steph.”

She pauses, watching you with a gaped mouth like you were some sort of puzzle she was on the edge of solving. 

Ashley grins with an amused huff. “But you know what’s funny? Steph was staying with me.”

“So, what? I lied to my parents. Big whoop,” you say, rolling your eyes that this is the big threat she’s holding over you. “I do that every weekend when I say I’m studying at yours instead of going to parties.”

“Yeah, true. True. But usually we get a heads-up when we’re used as a cover. So, I’m just wondering, where were you? What could be so bad that you wouldn’t even tell your best friends?” she says with a faux look of innocence, the kind she uses to win over teachers and parents.

“You’re not entitled to my business, Ash. And we’re hardly friends.” Friends are people you can actually stand to be around. Turns out you don’t have a lot of those.

“That’s all right. You don’t have to tell me,” she says, shrugging away the dismissal. “The thing is I already know what you were doing. Or should I say who you were doing. I just wanted to see if you would own up to it.”

You glance at her so quickly that she responds with a satisfied grin. She has the power, and she knows it.

“The Freak, really?” she tuts, sealing your fate. “I knew your standards were low, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you mutter, trying to bluff even though your heart pounds with dread.

“Right,” Ashley hums. You wish she would keep her mouth shut, but she just keeps going. “See, I dropped by on Sunday. That’s right. I saw you, so don’t play dumb.”

“Ashley,” you grit. “I would keep my mouth shut if I were you.”

“Oh, I bet you’d like that, huh? Don’t want everybody knowing that you’re such a fucking, depraved piece of shit that you went to The Freak King to get yourself off. Must be really fucking desperate to let that cock anywhere near you. Is the fucking Antichrist cooking inside you, right now?”

The bell rings before you can wring her throat between your hands. You push back from your desk. The metal studs screech against the floor, earning an admonishment from your teacher that falls on deaf ears as you storm through the door into the hallway.

How many people has she told? Ashley’s got a fucking mouth on her. By now, the whole upper echelon of Hawkins High is probably saying all sorts of things about you. A hot rage simmers beneath your skin as you march through the halls to your next class, glaring at people as you pass, wondering if they know something, too. If they do, they only shift their gazes, pretending they didn’t see you.

You hear a screeching laughter as you turn a corner and spin around to see Carol Perkins and Tommy H snickering against a locker like a pair of hyenas.

“I didn’t think you’d show your face today, Freak Slut,” Carol sneers.

“Oh, I’m the slut? Maybe you should be looking at who your boyfriend is before you throw those kinds of words around, Carol. Tommy sure didn’t seem to mind that I was a slut when we fucked in his car last December.”

Gasps sound from the quickly forming crowd. You glance at them, body steeling at the way their eyes don’t shy away from you. They stare at you like a puppet in a show.

“What the fuck?” Carol says, glancing at Tommy in disgust.

“We were on a break,” he says, throwing his hands up in defense. “Doesn’t make you any less pathetic for letting the Freak make you his bitch.”

“I am no one’s bitch, Tommy.” 

“Bet you weren’t saying that when you let him hit it from the back,” Tommy laughs.

“Oh, God! Give me your babies, Freak!” Carol moans in a pitched jeer.

“Why the hell is everyone so concerned with who I’m fucking? Yes, we had sex! It’s not like I’m in love with the Freak!”

The words feel toxic on your tongue. You are in love with Eddie, but they don’t know that. They don’t need to know anything. 

What they need to do is get off your fucking back.

“Aw,” Carol pouts, looking over your shoulder. “Guess he didn’t know that.”

Over your shoulder, Eddie is walking away, slamming his body through the double doors leading outside. You flip off Carol, who’s cackling her witch laugh again, and follow after Eddie.

He’s almost made it to his van when you catch up to him, tugging his sleeve to stop his momentum. “Eddie, you have to realize I just said all that so they would back off.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” he scoffs, sliding his hand down his arm to dislodge your grip. “You’re ashamed of me. At the end of the day, I’m still just a freak to you.”

You clench the hand that’s been discarded, furrowing your brow at his dismissal. “That is not true. You know how I feel about you.”

“Do I? You sneak me around like contraband. You’re all sweet on me in private, but as soon as people find out you’re shacking up with the Freak, I’m worse than nothing to you. I’m the gum in your fucking shoe.”

“Eddie, you’re not gum!” you almost spit at the concept, fighting an eye roll that will do nothing in your favor. “You’re everything to me.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. I love you. I’d do anything for you. But you can’t even say my name in public. And you know what? I don’t deserve that.”

He takes a step back, looking at you like a speck of dust on his clothes.

“This whole time I’ve let you walk all over me because I felt lucky that you even looked at me. Who cares if you want to hide me like some guilty pleasure? Some perverted fetish? Who could blame you? No one in their right mind would want to be seen with Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson.”

You barge into his rambling, an anger starting to bubble in your veins at the way he’s putting words in your mouth. “It’s not that I don’t want to be seen with you! Do you understand what it felt like? To have all those people saying things about me, getting in my face when what we are is none of their fucking business?”

“Of course I fucking do!” Eddie screams, throwing his hands in the air. “That’s every minute of my fucking life! And the fact that you couldn’t take even a second of it proves that this would’ve never worked.”

Your anger is extinguished by the looming implication of his words.

“No. Eddie, don’t say that,” you plead, but the path has already been paved.

“I deserve better than to be loved behind closed doors. I deserve better than someone who will go back to calling me Freak when times get tough.

“I deserve better than you.”

It’s true, what he’s saying, but that doesn’t make it hurt less. You deserve it, the punishment he’s set aside for you, but you’re far from ready to be sentenced.

“Eddie, please. Don’t do this.”

“You did this to yourself.”

Surrender to Dreams Taglist: @vampire-kissi3s Stranger Things Taglist: @ggdawgg Eddie Munson Taglist: @itzpixiebabe, @loonylups, @sisteramycatherine, @clairecrive Fic Taglist: @brrrainst3w, @bonnieprincess

You had become so focused that you failed to notice Johnny enter the lab.

A mistake.

A terrible mistake.

Because Johnny Storm had the uncanny ability to detect when he was being ignored.

You became aware of him only when a shadow fell across your desk.

Then came the smell of smoke.

Not actual smoke.

Just warmth.

Like standing too close to a fireplace.

You didn't bother looking up.

"Hello, Johnny."

There was a pause.

A surprised one.

"You knew it was me?"

You continued typing.

"Nobody else announces their arrival like a burnt marshmallow."

From somewhere across the room, Ben barked out a laugh.

Johnny ignored him.

You could practically hear the grin stretching across his face.

"That was funny."

"It wasn't a joke."

"It was a little funny."

"No."

"See, that's your problem."

"My problem?"

"You're denying yourself joy."

Finally, you looked up.

Johnny was leaning against the edge of your workstation, arms crossed over his chest.

And unfortunately—

Very unfortunately—

He looked good.

Everybody knew Johnny looked good.

It wasn't exactly breaking news.

The problem was that he knew it too.

The confidence practically radiated off him.

The easy smile.

The bright eyes.

The infuriating certainty that the world belonged to him.

You had met men like him before.

Men who thought charm could unlock any door.

Men who believed persistence was romantic.

Men who expected eventual success.

Johnny Storm simply happened to be the most attractive version of that problem.

You looked back down at your screen.

The conversation was over as far as you were concerned.

Unfortunately, Johnny disagreed.

"So."

You sighed.

"So?"

"So."

His grin widened.

"Wanna get dinner with me?"

The laboratory fell silent.

Not immediately.

Not dramatically.

But one by one, the conversations died.

You noticed Sue stop walking.

Ben stopped pretending to work altogether.

Even Reed glanced away from the monitor in front of him.

Waiting.

For what?

You had no idea.

The answer was obvious.

You looked up at Johnny.

At the confidence in his expression.

At the certainty.

The expectation.

Then you smiled politely.

"No."

Silence.

Johnny blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Like his brain needed an extra moment to process the information.

"...No?"

"No."

"Just no?"

You nodded.

"That's usually how no works."

Ben immediately doubled over laughing.

The sound echoed through the entire laboratory.

Johnny pointed at him without taking his eyes off you.

"Stay out of this."

"I literally can't," Ben wheezed. "This is the funniest thing I've seen all week."

Johnny looked genuinely offended.

Which somehow made the situation even funnier.

You gathered a few files from your desk and stood.

The conversation had reached its natural conclusion.

At least for you.

Johnny, however, looked like a man experiencing a minor existential crisis.

"You didn't even think about it."

"I did."

"For how long?"

You considered it.

"A second."

"A second?"

"A generous estimate."

This time Sue laughed.

Actually laughed.

Johnny turned toward her.

"Sue."

She raised both hands immediately.

"I'm not helping you."

"You could've helped me."

"You asked her out before learning her middle name."

"I know her middle name."

"No, you don't."

Johnny opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

You smiled.

Sweetly.

Professionally.

The exact smile that had terrified investors, government officials, and one NASA director.

Then you walked away.

Leaving Johnny standing in the middle of the laboratory.

Staring after you.

For the first time in a very long time—

Completely speechless.

The second time Johnny Storm asked you out, he had a plan.

Now, in Johnny's defense, this was already more effort than he usually put into anything.

Johnny Storm was many things.

Confident.

Impulsive.

Charming.

Occasionally heroic.

Frequently annoying.

Planning ahead, however, was not one of his stronger qualities.

Which was precisely why Sue became suspicious the moment she saw him ironing a shirt.

Not wearing one.

Ironing one.

Actually ironing one.

With concentration.

Like a man preparing for war.

"Johnny."

He looked up.

"What?"

Sue stared.

Then pointed at the iron.

"What is that?"

Johnny frowned.

"...An iron?"

"No. I know what it is."

"Then why'd you ask?"

Sue narrowed her eyes.

Something was wrong.

She could feel it.

"Why are you using it?"

The answer came immediately.

Too immediately.

"No reason."

"Oh, God."

Johnny groaned.

"Can you stop acting like I'm planning a crime?"

"You only iron shirts when you're planning a crime."

"I do not."

"Johnny."

"I don't."

"Last time you ironed a shirt you tried to race a fighter jet."

"That was one time."

"Johnny."

"Two times."

Sue sighed.

Deeply.

The kind of sigh that only came from being related to Johnny Storm.

Then she noticed the shirt.

Black.

The nice black one.

The one he only wore when he was trying to impress somebody.

And suddenly everything made sense.

"Oh."

Johnny immediately knew.

"Don't."

"Oh, my God."

"Don't."

"You're asking her out again."

"I wasn't hiding it."

"You ironed a shirt."

"That's not hiding it."

"That's announcing it."

Johnny pointed accusingly.

"You're supposed to support me."

Sue laughed so hard she had to sit down.

The annual Future Foundation charity gala occupied three entire floors of a Manhattan hotel.

Scientists.

Investors.

Politicians.

Reporters.

The usual crowd.

The sort of event Reed attended because he had to.

The sort of event Sue attended because she was good at it.

The sort of event Ben attended because there was free food.

And the sort of event Johnny attended because cameras existed.

By the time the evening officially began, the ballroom glittered with crystal chandeliers and designer gowns.

Music drifted through the room.

Champagne flowed freely.

People laughed.

Networked.

Discussed science and funding and the future of humanity.

Johnny spent exactly thirty-seven minutes pretending to listen before his attention wandered.

Not intentionally.

It just happened.

Because then he saw you.

And every coherent thought immediately left his body.

Across the room, you stood beside a group of researchers from MIT.

One hand wrapped around a champagne glass.

The other gesturing as you spoke.

The soft gold lighting caught the side of your face.

Your dress wasn't even particularly flashy.

It wasn't the most expensive gown in the room.

Or the most dramatic.

Or the most attention-grabbing.

Yet somehow—

Johnny couldn't look away.

It annoyed him.

Deeply.

Because this kept happening.

Every time.

He'd see you.

And suddenly nothing else felt nearly as interesting.

"Uh oh."

Johnny didn't even have to turn around.

Ben.

Obviously.

"What?"

"The look."

Johnny frowned.

"What look?"

"The one where you forget how blinking works."

Johnny finally turned.

Ben was eating shrimp.

A concerning amount of shrimp.

"You sound obsessed."

Ben nearly choked.

"ME?"

"You."

"Brother."

Ben pointed his shrimp at him.

"You've been staring at that poor girl for five straight minutes."

Johnny rolled his eyes.

Then looked back across the room.

You were laughing now.

Something one of the researchers had said.

The sound didn't reach him through the crowd.

But he could see it.

The smile.

The way your shoulders relaxed.

The way your head tilted back slightly.

And suddenly—

The ballroom seemed a little brighter.

A little warmer.

A little easier to breathe in.

Johnny froze.

"...oh."

Ben saw the realization happen in real time.

"Oh, no."

"What?"

"You got it bad."

Johnny immediately scoffed.

"I do not."

"Johnny."

"I don't."

"You ironed a shirt."

"STOP BRINGING UP THE SHIRT."

The problem with you was that you never made anything easy.

If you had disliked him, this would've been simple.

If you'd been rude, dismissive, cruel—

Simple.

Easy.

Understandable.

Instead, you were always nice.

Warm.

Funny.

Patient.

You smiled when he talked.

You laughed at some of his jokes.

You remembered things he told you.

You cared when he got hurt on missions.

You checked in after long nights.

You brought him coffee when he forgot to sleep.

And somehow—

Somehow—

You still wouldn't go out with him.

It was maddening.

Completely maddening.

Because Johnny knew when someone disliked him.

You didn't.

Which meant the issue wasn't him.

At least...

Probably not.

Hopefully not.

Maybe.

Actually he wasn't sure anymore.

Which was somehow worse.

He found you nearly an hour later standing near one of the balconies overlooking Manhattan.

The city stretched endlessly beyond the glass.

Thousands of lights scattered across the darkness.

The skyline glowing against the night.

For a moment he just watched you.

Not in a creepy way.

Probably.

Okay.

Maybe slightly.

But in his defense, you looked beautiful.

The kind of beautiful that made people stop mid-sentence.

The kind of beautiful that made entire rooms feel quieter.

The kind of beautiful Johnny was rapidly discovering could be extremely dangerous to his health.

You sensed him before he spoke.

Without turning around, you lifted your champagne glass.

"Hello, Storm."

Johnny grinned.

There it was.

Storm.

Always Storm.

Never Johnny.

Never anything softer.

Just Storm.

Like he was some persistent weather condition.

"You knew it'd be me."

"I heard the ego approaching."

Johnny pressed a hand over his heart.

"Wounded."

"You'll survive."

"I might not."

You finally looked at him.

Amusement flickering behind your eyes.

And there it was again.

That feeling.

That awful, wonderful feeling.

The one that had become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Johnny leaned against the railing.

Trying very hard to appear casual.

Trying very hard to ignore the fact that his pulse had suddenly sped up.

"Dinner."

Your eyes narrowed immediately.

"No."

"I haven't even finished the sentence."

"You don't need to."

"Come on."

"No."

"One date."

"No."

"One drink."

"No."

"Coffee."

"No."

Johnny stared.

The smile on your face grew.

Tiny.

Barely visible.

But definitely there.

And suddenly he realized something.

You were enjoying this.

Not the asking.

The teasing.

The back and forth.

The challenge.

The fact that Johnny Storm kept trying.

The realization made him grin.

"You think this is funny."

"A little."

"A little?"

"A moderate amount."

Johnny laughed.

Actually laughed.

Because somehow that answer felt exactly like you.

Then he looked at you.

Really looked.

The city lights reflecting in your eyes.

The breeze catching your hair.

The amused expression you'd never show reporters.

And before he could stop himself—

Before his brain could catch up—

He asked quietly,

"Why not?"

For the first time that evening, you paused.

Not because you were considering it.

He could tell you weren't.

But because the question surprised you.

Johnny wasn't usually serious.

Not with this.

Not with you.

For a second, neither of you spoke.

Then your smile softened.

Just slightly.

Enough that he almost missed it.

"Because you're asking."

Johnny groaned immediately.

"Oh, that's evil."

A laugh escaped you.

Warm.

Genuine.

The kind he rarely got to hear.

And somehow—

Somehow—

It felt worth the rejection.

Which was probably the most concerning part of all.

Because as you turned and started walking back toward the ballroom, Johnny found himself watching you leave.

Again.

Not upset.

Not discouraged.

Not frustrated.

Just...

Wanting to follow.

And that realization hit him like a freight train.

Because somewhere between the first rejection and the second—

This had stopped being a game.

And Johnny Storm, much to his horror, was starting to think he might actually like you. REALLY like you. Which was a disaster.

An absolute, five-alarm, Baxter-Building-level disaster.

iii.

The third time Johnny Storm asked you out, he made the mistake of believing he was making progress.

In his defense, there was evidence.

Actual evidence.

Not much.

But enough.

You laughed at his jokes more often now.

Not all of them.

That would have been ridiculous.

But enough that Johnny started keeping track.

You no longer immediately walked away whenever he approached.

You voluntarily sat next to him during meetings.

Once, you had even fallen asleep in the common room with your head resting against his shoulder after a thirty-hour work session.

Granted, you'd been unconscious.

And yes, Ben still brought it up every chance he got.

But still.

The point stood.

Progress.

Tiny.

Microscopic.

Embarrassingly insignificant progress.

But progress nonetheless.

Which was how Johnny found himself wandering into the lab at two in the morning feeling oddly optimistic.

The Baxter Building was quiet.

For once.

Most of Manhattan slept beyond the massive windows.

The city lights glittered against the darkness while the lab itself remained illuminated by computer screens and floating holograms.

Reed had finally been forced to go home by Sue.

Ben had disappeared hours ago.

Even H.E.R.B.I.E. seemed quieter than usual.

The only person still awake besides Johnny was you.

Of course.

Because apparently sleep was optional for scientists.

You sat alone at one of the workstations, knees tucked beneath you in your chair while several files floated across a holographic display.

A half-finished cup of coffee sat forgotten beside your laptop.

You looked exhausted.

Your hair wasn't done.

Your glasses had slipped down your nose.

One sleeve of your sweater covered most of your hand.

And somehow—

Somehow—

Johnny thought you looked prettier than every supermodel he'd ever met.

It was honestly becoming a problem.

A serious one.

A medical condition, probably.

"You know."

Your voice broke through the silence before he'd even spoken.

Johnny smiled immediately.

"You know what?"

Without looking up from your screen, you replied,

"If you're standing there staring at me, you could at least say hello."

Busted.

Johnny walked further into the room.

"I wasn't staring."

You finally glanced up.

The look on your face said liar.

"No?"

"No."

"You've been standing there for at least thirty seconds."

Johnny dropped into the chair across from you.

"Okay, maybe a little."

"A little."

"A moderate amount."

That earned him a laugh.

A real one.

Not polite.

Not professional.

A genuine laugh.

And suddenly Johnny felt absurdly pleased with himself.

Which was dangerous.

Because whenever Johnny Storm felt confident, terrible things usually happened.

Like now.

You returned your attention to the files in front of you.

The room settled into comfortable silence.

Comfortable.

The word itself surprised Johnny.

A year ago, silence would've driven him insane.

Now?

Now he didn't mind it.

Not with you.

He watched the glow of holograms reflect against your face.

The way you absentmindedly tapped your fingers against the desk while reading.

The little crease between your eyebrows whenever something annoyed you.

The tiny details he'd somehow memorized without realizing.

The realization should have terrified him.

Instead—

"Hey."

You didn't look up.

"Mhm?"

Johnny grinned.

"Wanna go out with me?"

The answer came instantly.

"No."

Johnny groaned.

"You didn't even think about it."

"I did."

"For how long?"

"Long enough."

"You're impossible."

This time you looked up.

The corners of your mouth twitching.

Amusement dancing in your eyes.

And suddenly Johnny had a horrible feeling.

The kind that only appeared right before disaster.

You were planning something.

He could tell.

You leaned back slightly in your chair.

Studying him.

Far too innocent.

Far too calm.

Dangerous.

Extremely dangerous.

Johnny narrowed his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What?"

You smiled.

Slowly.

"Oh, nothing."

That smile.

That smile had never meant anything good.

Johnny pointed at you.

"See? That's exactly the smile."

"What smile?"

"The one that means you're about to emotionally damage me."

Your laugh echoed through the quiet laboratory.

And for one brief, beautiful moment, Johnny forgot he was supposed to be suspicious.

A fatal mistake.

Because then you spoke.

Casually.

Like you weren't about to commit a crime.

"I don't date blondes."

The silence that followed was immediate.

Complete.

Johnny blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

"...what?"

You looked completely serious.

Terrifyingly serious.

"I don't date blondes."

Johnny stared.

Then stared harder.

Then looked around the room as if waiting for somebody to jump out and explain the joke.

Nobody appeared.

Because there was nobody else there.

Just you.

Trying very hard not to laugh.

And him.

Experiencing psychological warfare.

"I'm sorry."

Johnny held up a hand.

"No."

He pointed at his hair.

"My hair?"

You nodded.

"Your hair."

"My hair is the problem."

"Unfortunately."

Johnny sat there.

Speechless.

Actually speechless.

Which almost never happened.

Then he leaned forward.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Like he was handling unstable explosives.

"Your reason."

"Mhm."

"For rejecting me."

"Mhm."

"Is because I'm blond."

"Correct."

Johnny stared.

You stared back.

Neither of you moving.

Neither of you blinking.

And then—

The tiniest smile appeared.

Right at the corner of your mouth.

Johnny immediately pointed.

"THERE."

You burst out laughing.

Immediately.

Completely.

The sound filled the laboratory.

And suddenly Johnny understood.

"Oh, you're evil."

Your shoulders shook.

"You should hear yourself."

"You rejected me because of my hair."

"It was funny."

"It wasn't funny."

"It was a little funny."

"It was deeply hurtful."

That only made you laugh harder.

Johnny slumped back in his chair.

Hand over his heart.

Absolutely devastated.

Or pretending to be.

Mostly pretending.

Maybe.

The problem was—

The problem was that he couldn't even be upset.

Because you were laughing.

Really laughing.

The kind that made your eyes crinkle.

The kind that made your entire face light up.

And God help him—

Johnny would probably let you reject him a hundred more times if it meant seeing that look again.

The realization hit hard.

Hard enough that for a moment he forgot to joke.

Forgot to flirt.

Forgot to play the part everyone expected from Johnny Storm.

Instead, he just watched you.

Quietly.

And something shifted.

Small.

Almost imperceptible.

But real.

Because suddenly it wasn't about winning anymore.

It wasn't about proving he could get a date.

It wasn't about the challenge.

The chase.

The game.

It was you.

Just you.

Sitting across from him at two in the morning.

Laughing at your own terrible joke.

Looking happier than you'd looked all week.

And for the first time, Johnny realized he would be perfectly happy sitting here forever.

Not because he thought you'd eventually say yes.

Not because he expected anything in return.

But because he liked being around you.

Way more than he probably should.

Way more than was safe.

Way more than a man was supposed to like someone who had just rejected him because he was blond.

A beat passed.

Then another.

Eventually, your laughter faded.

The room settling once more.

And before either of you could say anything—

The lab doors slid open.

Ben walked in carrying three sandwiches.

Took one look at Johnny.

One look at you.

And immediately knew.

"Oh, she rejected you again."

Johnny sighed.

Deeply.

Painfully.

"Because I'm blond."

Ben stopped walking.

"...what?"

"Because I'm blond."

The silence lasted exactly two seconds.

Then Ben doubled over.

The sandwiches hit the floor.

And his laughter echoed through the entire Baxter Building.

Johnny seriously considered setting something on fire. Probably Ben.

You rolled your eyes, still smiling as you reached for your laptop.

"You're both ridiculous."

"She says after rejecting me because of my hair."

"Which was funny."

"It wasn't."

"It absolutely was."

Ben nearly dropped another sandwich laughing.

You ignored both of them.

With the ease of someone who had spent far too much time around the Fantastic Four, you began shutting down the holograms floating above your workstation. One by one, the glowing screens disappeared until the laboratory finally returned to its usual dim lighting.

The clock in the corner of the room read 3:07 a.m.

A fact that suddenly made your entire body feel exhausted.

You closed your laptop.

Gathered your notes.

Finished the last sip of your coffee.

Then stood.

Johnny immediately frowned.

"Where are you going?"

You blinked.

"...Home?"

"It's three in the morning."

"Exactly."

"You can't just leave at three in the morning."

You stared at him.

Johnny stared right back.

As if this was a completely reasonable concern.

As if he hadn't personally watched you leave the building at worse hours.

"Johnny."

"What?"

"I have to be back here at nine."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

Johnny stood up.

Looking genuinely offended.

Like the answer should've been obvious.

"I can't let a lady go outside by herself at three in the morning."

The silence that followed lasted exactly two seconds.

Then your expression changed.

Not amused.

Not teasing.

Just...

Confused.

"Outside?"

"Yeah."

"Johnny."

"What?"

You adjusted the strap of your bag.

Still staring at him.

"I'm not leaving the building."

He blinked.

"What?"

"Sue gave me one of the guest rooms."

Another blink.

"...What?"

You pointed vaguely toward the elevators.

"Two floors down."

The realization hit him all at once.

The room.

The guest room.

The one Sue had offered months ago after one too many late nights.

The one literally inside the Baxter Building.

The one Johnny somehow forgot existed.

"Oh."

You smiled.

Sweetly.

Far too sweetly.

"Goodnight, Storm."

Then you turned.

Walked toward the door.

And left.

Just like that.

The laboratory doors slid shut behind you.

Silence.

Johnny stood there.

Motionless.

Staring at the empty doorway.

Ben watched him for a moment.

Then another.

Then—

"...You forgot she lives here."

Johnny pointed aggressively toward the elevator.

"She doesn't live here."

"Close enough."

"Not helping."

Ben snorted.

Johnny dragged a hand down his face.

Then sighed.

Long.

Deep.

Dramatic.

The sigh of a man experiencing true suffering.

Finally, he muttered,

"I'll dye it."

Ben frowned.

"What?"

Johnny looked completely serious.

"If that's the problem, I'll dye it."

For a second, Ben simply stared at him.

Trying to determine whether this was a joke.

Unfortunately—

It wasn't.

Johnny was genuinely considering it.

"You cannot be serious."

"I am."

"Johnny."

"I am."

"Johnny."

"I'll go brunette."

Ben folded in half.

Actually folded.

The laughter that erupted from him was so violent he had to grab the nearest desk for support.

Tears immediately sprang to his eyes.

"Oh my God."

Johnny looked offended.

"What?"

"You've got it BAD."

"I do not."

"YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT CHANGING YOUR HAIR."

"It's called commitment."

"It's called being down catastrophic."

Johnny opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

And unfortunately for him, he couldn't come up with a single argument.

Because somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice was already wondering whether he'd look good as a brunette.

i. By the time Johnny Storm asked you out for what would eventually be the successful attempt, he had completely given up on succeeding.

Not in a depressing way.

Not in a woe is me, nobody loves me way.

Just...

Realistically.

The same way a man stops expecting to win the lottery.

Or stops expecting Reed to remember where he left his keys.

Or stops expecting Ben to stop bringing up the blonde incident.

Some things simply weren't going to happen.

And apparently one of those things was you agreeing to go on a date with him.

So Johnny adjusted.

Mostly.

Kind of.

Not really.

The flirting never stopped.

That was impossible.

Breathing was less natural to Johnny Storm than flirting with you.

But somewhere along the way, the asking had changed.

It wasn't a challenge anymore.

Wasn't a game.

Wasn't even hope, really.

It had become routine.

Comfortable.

A running joke that belonged solely to the two of you.

A question.

A rejection.

A laugh.

Then life continued.

Simple.

Predictable.

Safe.

Which was exactly why it hit him like a truck.

The afternoon itself had been unremarkable.

The Baxter Building buzzed with its usual energy.

Researchers moving through the halls.

H.E.R.B.I.E. rolling around somewhere in the distance.

Reed locked inside a laboratory with three whiteboards and no awareness of time.

Normal.

Completely normal.

Johnny found you exactly where he expected.

At your desk.

Surrounded by files.

Halfway through organizing an absurd amount of research data because apparently nobody else in the building knew how to label things correctly.

Sunlight poured through the enormous windows.

Golden and warm.

Painting the laboratory in shades of amber.

You sat with your sleeves pushed up and your hair pulled back, entirely focused on your work.

Johnny smiled before he even realized he was doing it.

The sight had become familiar.

Comforting.

Like coming home.

Which was—

Nope.

Not thinking about that.

Absolutely not.

He dropped into the chair beside your desk.

You didn't look up immediately.

Just hummed in acknowledgment.

The sound alone somehow made him grin wider.

"Hey."

"Mhm."

"Wanna go out with me Friday?"

There it was.

The usual question.

The routine.

The joke.

Johnny reached for a pen on your desk while waiting for the inevitable rejection.

Maybe you'd say no because he was blonde again.

Maybe you'd tell him he talked too much.

Maybe you'd invent another ridiculous excuse.

Honestly, he was looking forward to hearing it.

Then—

"Okay."

Johnny grabbed the pen.

Then froze.

The room suddenly felt very quiet.

Very.

Very quiet.

Slowly, he blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Surely he had imagined that.

Because there was no way—

No possible way—

He looked up.

You were still sorting files.

Calm.

Composed.

Entirely unbothered.

Like you hadn't just detonated a bomb inside his ribcage.

"...What?"

You slid another folder into place.

"Friday works."

Johnny stared.

The pen slipped from his fingers.

Hit the floor.

Neither of you moved.

For one horrifying second, Johnny became convinced he was hallucinating.

Maybe Reed had accidentally released toxic fumes.

Maybe he'd finally lost his mind.

Maybe Ben had hit him with a truck.

Any explanation seemed more likely than what had just happened.

"You..."

His voice cracked.

Actually cracked.

Mortifying.

"You said yes."

You finally looked up.

And there it was.

A smile.

Not the polite one.

Not the professional one.

Not the one you gave reporters or investors or strangers.

A real smile.

Warm.

Soft.

Entirely yours.

And somehow that was even worse.

Because suddenly this wasn't a joke anymore.

"Oh my God."

You laughed.

Immediately.

Of course you did.

"Oh my God."

"Johnny—"

"OH MY GOD."

The laboratory doors slid open.

Sue walked in carrying a tablet.

She stopped immediately.

Looked at you.

Looked at Johnny.

Then frowned.

"Why are you yelling?"

Johnny pointed.

Couldn't form words.

Physically incapable.

Sue turned toward you.

You smiled.

Entirely too innocent.

"I said yes."

The tablet slipped from Sue's hands.

Clattered onto the floor.

Silence.

Then—

Eddie throws his hands up, which means he drags yours with the one he’s not holding his ice cream cone with. “Um, hello? Candy canes? Peppermint bark?” He lets his hands fall back down. Your two joined hands swing between you.

“It’s not Christmas, Eddie. Santa can’t save you from that criminal taste in ice cream.”

“Well, you chose salted caramel,” he says, pointing at your cone with his own. “If my taste is plain criminal, yours is criminally boring.”

“Caramel is a classic, and you know it.”

“Hmm, maybe.” He mimics tapping his chin in thought with the ice cream cone. You laugh when the wind catches his hair and blows it onto his scoop, but you grimace when he uses both your hands to clean the mess and licks the sugar off your skin. “You’ll have to give me a taste to convince me.”

“Oh, hell no,” you say, pulling your cone away from him. “Maybe if you chose an actually tolerable flavor, I’d share, but you’ve got nothing to barter with.”

“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll have to figure out another way.”

You’re shocked when his lips meet yours. Admittedly, the chocolatey, minty taste isn’t half bad coming from his mouth. When you open your eyes, he has both cones in one hand. He licks a broad strip of cream off yours.

“Eddie!”

“You’re right. This is good.” He actually takes a fucking bite out of it before you manage to snatch it back.

“I ought to throw you off this pier,” you grumble, staring at the big chomp mark in your ice cream with disdain.

“Oh, but you’d miss me too much,” Eddie coos, leaning into your space so much you almost lose balance.

“You don’t understand how serious I am about ice cream,” you threaten.

“Oh, I can’t only begin to imagine the evils the sorceress might unleash,” Eddie teases.

“Horrors beyond your mortal comprehension.”

Eddie sighs wistfully, throwing his head back. “God, we really need to get you back into D&D. There’s a nerd buried under that tough outer shell, I just know it.”

“I’ve actually been thinking . . .”

Eddie looks at you over his ice cream cone.

“I was wondering if you might want to DM for me and my brother sometime?” you suggest, tucking your shoulders up your neck.

Eddie smiles, showing off his dimples. “I would be honored,” he says, tucking his hand, cone and all, to his chest.

“Stop playing around with that thing. You’ll make a mess,” you laugh, shoving his fist away from his shirt before he can manage to leave behind a green stain.

In response, Eddie chomps down the rest of the cone until there’s not a trace left behind except for the roundness of his cheeks before he manages to swallow it down. “Problem solved.”

“You’re such a boy,” you laugh, wiping a bit of cream from the corner of his mouth and licking it off your finger.

Eddie grins. “I knew you liked it.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Or do you just like me?” he teases. You can’t even begin to comment before he’s pulled you both to a stop to kiss you, taking advantage of his now free hand to hold your cheek. His lips are cold from scarfing down ice cream, but you couldn’t care if you tried.

“You got me, officer,” you whisper when he finally pulls away.

You shiver when a particularly harsh wind blows straight through you. “Ice cream was a horrible idea. How is it still this fucking cold out? It’s spring.”

“It’s also Chicago,” Eddie laughs, running his hands up and down your arms. “Want to head back to the hotel?”

“Yeah. I’m freezing my ass off.”

“Oh, my word! We simply can’t let that happen,” Eddie blanches, yanking the cone from your hand and shoving it into his mouth. “We must make haste,” he says through crumbled sugar and melting cream.

“You’re lucky I like you because that was the most unattractive thing I’ve ever witnessed,” you say as he tugs you back up the path.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make it all up when I show you how I look fresh out the shower. Literal Adonis.”

“You can’t call yourself an Adonis, Eddie, unless you’re Narcissus.”

“Nerd,” he scoffs.

“Dork,” you reply. The hotel appears around the corner.

Booking a hotel was easy enough since both you and Eddie are adults. You don’t know what the hell you would’ve done otherwise. Stealing one of your dad’s credit cards was the cherry on top. It’s bought you gas, breakfast, lunch, dinner with a live band that Eddie loved, a trip to the arcade, and, of course, ice cream.

“Thank you,” you say, shaking Eddie’s hand to steal his attention away from the door he’s propped open for you. “For agreeing to this.”

Eddie flashes through expressions, trying to find what to say. “Well, you know.”

You walk in silence to your room door, where Eddie unlocks it and lets you in first like the gentleman he is.

“I have a hard time letting people in,” you continue after dropping onto the bed like a bunch of stones.

“No kidding,” he gasps, sitting next to you. You punch him in the shoulder.

“When you let people in, they, sort of, gain power over you. They can hurt you. I think I prefer to be the one that does the hurting.”

You bump your knee against Eddie’s. “But I couldn’t keep you out, not without losing you. I thought I could play it halfway, but I just ended up hurting us both.”

“We can’t all be devilishly handsome, super well-adjusted individuals,” Eddie jokes.

“Right,” you say, rolling your eyes.

Eddie takes your hand in his.

“You know, for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why the hell I stuck with you when you treated me like absolute shit.”

You bite your lip, holding onto Eddie’s hand like he might vanish.

“That first night, I thought there was no way in hell a girl like you would ever look at me,” he continues. “I figured it must’ve been some joke, until you kept coming around, until it seemed like you actually cared about what I had to say. And I guess, even though I wasn’t sure if you wanted me for me, I really wanted to keep trying. I thought if I stuck it out, one day you might really see me . . . like I saw you.”

“I do see you,” you say, taking Eddie’s face in your hand. “I meant it when I said you were different from what I thought you were. You were sweet and respectful even when I was a bitch to you, and incredibly smart and funny, if a little weird. You’re the first person that made me feel like I was worth giving a damn about.”

“You might be the only person worth giving a damn about,” you finish.

Eddie smiles and kisses you on the forehead. Every time Eddie’s lips meet your skin it’s like the world falls away. All the background noise fades like shutting off a radio. The dust clears to reveal a clear, blue sky.

You pull him down to meet your lips, wondering if you can share that feeling with him if you try hard enough. You want to give him everything he deserves, everything you kept from him. His warm, brown eyes shine when you pull away. His hands hold you like you’re the most precious thing in the world.

“Eddie, I—I know I said no sex, but I really want to have sex with you right now,” you babble. “Only if that’s okay! I mean, if you want to. Because I want you to know that you aren’t just sex for me. You’re more than that, but I also, you know, I really—”

“Hey, it’s all right,” Eddie laughs. “I am not offended that you think I’m so totally irresistible that you can’t even wait a full week without sinking your teeth into me.”

“Well, I didn’t say all that,” you mumble out of the corner of your mouth.

Eddie grabs your chin, pulling you up from your pout. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I also really want to have sex with you.”

“Right. Cool,” you say.

“‘Cool,’” Eddie snorts.

You slap your hand over your eyes. “Oh my god. When did I get so lame?”

Eddie slides your hand back down. “That’s all right. I like lame.”

“You would—”

Eddie interrupts your comeback with his kiss. You fumble for each other’s clothes, letting pieces fall as they may. 

When he pulls back, it takes a moment before you realize why Eddie is smiling at you. A deep rush of heat bubbles up to your face when you’re confronted with your underwear choice.

“Hey. I was serious about the no sex thing,” you say, slapping him on the arm. Your bra is a nude color, and your underwear is worn cotton. Hardly sexy.

“You’re beautiful,” Eddie says against your cheek.

“Hard to trust you when you’re grinning like that,” you mumble.

He sits back. “You are beautiful. I can’t believe how fucking lucky I am,” he says, making sure you meet his gaze as he does.

“Considering I broke your heart, I would say I’m the lucky one.”

He laughs, kisses you once on the lips, and moves on to slide off the last bits of coverage you have left. You’re not surprised when he shifts down your body without a word, reintroducing his tongue to your body after a week of separation. It caresses and sucks at your breast until finding home between your legs.

He doesn’t abuse you like the last time, when he riddled your body numb with pleasure. Eddie’s tongue is gentle and savoring as he sucks at your clit and dips into your cunt. You soothe his hair, which he’s forgotten to tie back in his eagerness to undo you.

Eddie squeezes two orgasms out of you before he lets you tug him back up to meet your lips. The intimate taste of you lingers on his tongue, but you’ve started to get used to the flavor. Cleaning him up isn’t worth the wasted seconds you could spend kissing him.

“Need you inside me,” you whisper into his glistening mouth.

“I didn’t bring a condom,” he says with a hint of panic in his voice that makes you smile.

“You should know by now you don’t need one,” you remind him.

“Right. Right,” he mumbles between kisses.

You used to hate being on the bottom for the lack of control it gave you. On top, it’s you who picks the moment things start and end, the speed at which it happens. You’re the one who makes someone fall apart.

Eddie has never made you feel out of control, even when he’s the one setting the pace. So, you don’t say a word when he lines himself up. You don’t flip him over like you used to.

“Are you ready?” he asks, and it’s so sweet you could cry. You smile and press a kiss to his cheek. There’s no fear this time as you tell him to continue.

He slides in with ease. You’d like to think that Eddie belongs inside you because of the way your body never fights him, even though you know it’s thanks to his diligence in having you warmed up before he even gets near you.

“Always feel so good,” he whispers into your ear when he bottoms out. You whine as he takes up deep, grinding thrusts that provide a delicious pressure to your clit. He grunts when you respond by digging your fingers deep into his hair and tugging.

“Eddie,” you whine, circling your hips in time with his movements.

“Yes,” he moans. “Yes, baby. Say my name.” His hand slides down between you to massage your clit as he switches to fuller, faster thrusts.

“Eddie,” you repeat, ignoring the flush that builds at the intimacy of the word. He groans again, his deep voice rumbling throughout your whole body. It sends a shock through your cunt, something primal.

“That’s my girl. My sweet girl. So good for me,” he praises.

You keep moaning his name, body delighting in the rewarding groans and thrusts it coaxes out of him. You scream for him until your words melt into whines. Eddie smiles and coos as you reach another orgasm, slowing his thrusts to ease you through the wave of pleasure that leaves you spasming.

Clarity returns to you. Your chest feels full as you drag Eddie down into a kiss, rolling your hips against his and drinking in his moans. You crave him. You’ll never stop craving him.

“Eddie,” you murmur. “Come for me, baby.”

He whimpers through his panting breaths, meeting your hips sloppily as his own climax edges closer. You gasp as his come spills into you, some deep part of you thrilled at the idea of him leaving his mark on you. You kiss him through his broken moans, fighting the smile that breaks through on your lips.

“Eddie. Oh, Eddie.” You whisper his name until the syllables start to lose meaning. His hand drifts up to clench onto one of your arms, thumb running up and down your skin.

“Are you okay?” he asks, a bit of wonder in his voice and his eyes still closed from his orgasm.

You flip him over, smothering his face in kisses until the giggles racking through your body muddy your affections. Eddie laughs, hands latching onto your hips as you pummel him with kisses. He hums when you finally settle on his lips for a slow, tender kiss.

“Eddie,” you say when you finally pull away to sit on his stomach. “I think—” You freeze, smile faltering as that fear returns. “I think I love you, Eddie.”

You watch with a tender heart as Eddie’s face shifts from awe to pure bliss. He grins so deep his dimples catch the light. His knuckles brush against your cheek.

“I think I love you, too.”

Surrender to Dreams Taglist: @vampire-kissi3s Stranger Things Taglist: @ggdawgg Eddie Munson Taglist: @itzpixiebabe, @loonylups, @sisteramycatherine Fic Taglist: @brrrainst3w, @bonnieprincess