#nowrots

there’s something to be said about the way Oliver’s mind works. he sees a dead animal, his initial thought isn’t to ignore it- it’s to take it into his arms and hold onto it until the stench becomes too much to bear. it’s definitely a bizarre sight to behold; he’s currently sat on the ground ( snow soaking through his clothes ) with a dead cat curled up in his arms. to be fair, the cat wasn’t dead when he picked her up. she was barely alive and there was no time to get her to the veterinarian because she passed away in Oliver’s arms only moments later, but dammit, he wasn’t going to let her die alone. at least in those last moments she knew she was loved.

he hadn’t expected anyone to find him here. he was quite content on just staying by himself with this poor dead cat for the remainder of time, but he’s interrupted as the question rings in his ears, his eyes opening as reality dawns on him. he slowly lifts his head to look at Jordan, refusing to let go of the cat in his arms. “i-i didn’t want her to b-be alone,” he says as his way of explaining his current predicament. this is what happens when he leaves his house on his own; he somehow stumbles across a dying cat in the middle of the road and stops to give it some love before it dies. he wasn’t going to just leave her there. it just didn’t seem fair to him, to just leave the poor cat alone in the snow, when its life was already so hard, why make death miserable, too ?? Oliver wasn’t about to do that to her. she was going to go home with him. maybe he’d find a taxidermist and have her stuffed- that way in death, she will be loved.

she's so tired. she's tired of running, tired of fighting for her life only to turn around and walk right into another killer. her plan for her life fell apart when she was nineteen, and she doesn't think she ever really got back on her feet—just stayed stagnant, surviving but never living. when she first moved here, when she first met jordan, she'd thought maybe she was finally getting somewhere.

it's laughable, really, how naive that seems now.

Loneliness was a strange bedfellow that made people do ill-advised things. Jin had only been in Virginia for a few weeks at his new job, yet the sting of isolation had already worked it’s way deep into his spirit. When the opportunity arose to jump into a torrid workplace affair with a colleague from another department he jumped at it, even if it was a bad idea.

As he had left the office that night, his car following Jordan’s as inconspicuously as possible, he thought about turning back. He knew it would be seen as strange if not wrong to lust after a man more than a decade his senior, to meet in his office for a quick hit of pleasure, and then willingly follow him home for more.

it's almost funny, the way trauma lives in the body. it's been years since anybody yelled at her, but the volume of jordan's voice spikes and his tone goes sharp and he's in her face and she—panics. her palm connects with his cheek in the breath after he finishes his sentence, and the sound echoes in the now-quiet room. she doesn't even register that she moved at all until she feels the sting in her fingers and sees the red mark on his cheek.