#o writes

Somewhere along the line, you picked up on that feeling for yourself. It was easier to tell yourself that Tommy had forgotten about you and the promise he made in his letter. It was easier to assume that he no longer loved you because the only alternative was that he was no longer living.

Not Joel, though.

That callus nature ticked off Tommy’s life like a box in his goddamn head. Compartmentalized it away as one less person that made him vulnerable—weak. It was the illusion of strength that drove you to him; to showing up at his apartment with some poorly constructed moonshine and an ache you hadn’t felt satisfied since the night before everything changed.

You told him how Tommy had fucked you like you were the only thing in the world that mattered, knowing it was the last time, and that motherfucker didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye.

“I never meant fuck all to him, did I?” You had asked.

Shattered glass wasn’t the response you were looking for but it’s certainly the one you got, expletives crawling out of his mouth as he knelt down to pick up the shards. 

Only that and the silence that followed as he disposed of the crystalized remnants and paced the small room.

“My brother loved you,” he finally said. “You were the best goddamn thing my brother had going for him—he said you were the best thing he had ever done. His love for you is how I know he’s fucking dead, sweetheart, so you need to stop sitting here convincing yourself that what you had was fake—some fucked up way to protect yourself—and start grieving like the goddamn widow you are.”

That grief stood to meet his and both of you fell into bed shortly after.

It made sense, he’d promised you. You weren’t doing anything wrong.

You got the next best thing to Tommy Miller.

He got to protect the most important thing to Tommy Miller. 

It’s what he would’ve wanted.

But now he looks like he’s going to throw up.

The sex got more frequent, the small laughter and the stolen touches.

For a while, you’d kept separate dwellings—him sleeping alone, you sleeping with a ghost.

Then the apartment was ransacked one day while you were out, you came home to Firefly spray paint on the doors and half the floor boards torn up.

Joel barely let you out of his fucking sight after that.

He also fucked you blind most nights, giving over small glimpses of the man he used to be—the man he still wishes he was.

There’s half a glimpse of that now followed by fear followed by a set jaw and a mask he wears when it’s not just you beside him.

“Are you sure?” He asks, hands worrying into the edge of a book over and over again.

You shrug, “who can really be sure of anything these days? Especially this early on but… I don’t know.” Looking down at your nails, you start to pick at the bloodied skin already ravaged by your anxieties. “I’m fairly certain though,” you tell him. “Don’t feel obligated to anything.” 

“Shut up,” he snaps. He is harsh when he wants to be but he’s never been so with you. “Don’t sit there and tell me you’ve got my baby inside of you and then tell me not to feel obligated. You are the only person I feel that for anymore.” 

The chair kicks back and falls behind him when he stands, clattering down in a way that shakes you. You’re used to the loudness of his voice, the attack dog style way he turns on anybody who looks at you sideways.

"I'm sorry,” he says after a few beats from the other side of the room. He’s staring down the window but you’re not sure his eyes are anywhere, really. Not sure he’s here either.

You know where he goes on the nights he doesn’t exhaust himself enough between your legs after a long day. Hell, he goes there even then. Because no amount of sex or drugs or alcohol is going to scrub that memory out.

Tommy told you about that night; the subsequent nights and the years that followed where Joel turned into somebody completely different. Joel, who used to be goofy and happy, even if he was stressed. 

But he’s not that man anymore and, even if you catch the glimpses of him in fleeting moments, he never will be again.

“I'm sorry,” you tell him. Because it’s all you can say. You’d been as careful as you could. You’d drank the tea. You did the best you could.

He doesn’t turn until you stand, following the noise of your body with his good ear to bore his brown gaze into you. “Where are you going?” 

You shrug, “I think you need some time and uh”—you rub at your eye—“I heard a rumor a while ago about somebody who can help take care of it so—“

“So just like that”—he snaps his fingers for emphasis—“you’re gonna take it all away? Never happened, huh?”

“You don’t want this,” you tell him. You say it plainly like a fact because it is.

His features twist up, eyes squinting as he pulls back like you've slapped him. “It's not that I don’t want this,” he says, accent coming out thick. “It's that I don’t want this for you”—he starts counting on his fingers, taking steps toward the fallen chair and the door you stand at now—“I don’t want this life for you; I don’t want this life for that baby; I don’t want me for that baby, sweetheart. Don’t you understand? That should be my brother’s, you should be my brother’s—“

“Yeah, well he fucking left me, Joel!” The way you heighten your voice shoots pain right up into your head, the headache you’ve been nursing from nerves all day growing worse as your fists clench and unclench. “He fucking left you, he left us! This should be his baby, but it’s not, Joel. It doesn’t have to be yours either.” 

“Sweetheart,” his voice is so soft now. Another glimpse. He walks towards you slowly, hands out as if trying to pacify a wild animal. “Can we talk about this before you just go off and—“ 

But you’re already halfway out the door before he can finish the thought, letting it slam shut behind you on the man you never should’ve told.

——————

It’s always bloody—this life we’re forced to live now.

Starts in blood, ends in blood.

In the moment you hemorrhaged from childbirth, all you could think of was Tommy and how you hoped his end was the fast kind of blood and not the kind you were experiencing. 

It was the first time you saw Joel cry, stood back and shaking with clenched fists. In the end, it was how stern his voice got that brought you back from the blackened edges of your vision. 

That’s how he spoke to you, to the baby. Soft voices, yes. But stern, too. Like every statement was a warning shot not to leave him like the rest. 

Life in the QZ wasn’t exactly a good one but it was enough; safe enough. Joel took the risks he needed to, to get you and the baby what you needed. 

That was her name for the longest time, just Baby.

Baby, who fit in the palm of her father’s hand.

Baby, who made him laugh like he hadn’t in years.

Baby, who made his smile reach his eyes again.

Baby, who was told stories of how much like her big sister Sarah she already was with all her sass and all her charisma.

He was obsessed with her tiny hands, her little toes and the way she cooed up at him with big, dark eyes. 

He was obsessed with her little face, the curve of her lips and the way she latched on to feed.

“You're gonna hate me for saying this,” he started when he walked in the room one day, her tiny body nestled in the crook of his arm like a football. “But I think she kind of looks like Tommy.” 

You did hate him for that but he wasn’t wrong. It was some sick cosmic joke; the baby that should be his; the baby made out of grief for him.

Three weeks later, her papers were officially filed with FEDRA under the name Thomasin Miller; never imagining that, one year later, you’d be walking down the street to see her namesake stepping out of your old building like a bad dream.

Or the best dream.

If that’s where he went first, finding that the entire thing is cleared out, then he’d be going to Joel’s next. 

Unless he stuck with not ever wanting to see his brother’s goddamn face again.

You split left before he saw you, turned the corner and took the other way to Joel’s; to Thomi—home.

Fighting with your keys to get into the lock, the door pulled open and your muttering stopped as Joel stood easily at six feet with baby girl tucked up on his chest fast asleep. From the looks of it, he was too.

He barely came around to the pregnancy, trying hard to school his emotions through every milestone afraid that it was going to drop just like everything else. He carried that fear through the birth, told you that he was so afraid you were going, too. So afraid that you were leaving him with a baby to fend for so he could start this sick cycle of his life over again.

Except this time he wouldn’t even have Tommy and he knew the only outcome of that was him leaving the baby or her leaving him.

He said he wouldn’t have survived.

That’s the only way you know Joel Miller loved you—his version of it anyway.

Obligated.

“What's wrong?” He asks, worry covering every part of his face as his large hand covers yours. “What happened?”

“Tommy.” It’s all you can choke out.

He goes to hand you the baby, says she’s right here. Says she’s okay and asks again what happened. Asks if there was a baby on the trucks today.

“No,” you shake your head. “No, Joel, Tommy’s here.” 

He tells you you’re crazy, that it can’t be. Says the heat of the day and the smell of the infected dead must’ve gotten to you. That wasn’t even your job today; he stopped letting it be your job a long ass time ago. He didn’t want you seeing Thomi in every snuffed out life the way he saw Sarah.

“Listen to me, Joel!” Your yelling wakes the baby but only half a cry comes out before she realizes she’s in her daddy’s arms. “Tommy was coming out of our old building, he is here and I wasn’t there and you know where he’s gonna go next.” 

After two hours with no knock on the door, Joel starts to examine you; your eyes; your head; your neck. Any sign of trauma at all that can explain away the ghosts you saw in plain sight.

And then it comes. Just a couple of knocks at the door. Joel’s eyes rake down your face as all the color drains from it and crosses to the front door. “Who is it?”

“It's me,” a muffled voice on the other side comes through. “I-it’s Tommy.”

Joel opens the door enough to fit his broad body into it, one arm raised to lean against the deteriorating wood jamb. “Thought you were dead.”

“Why would you—“ 

“Maybe because you fucked off with a promise to come back and didn’t.”

“I—“ He stutters looking for the words. “I sent letters.”

From here, you can see Joel’s eyes squint and his face twist in near disgust. “We don’t exactly have a goddamn postal service, shitbird.” 

“Yeah, I fucking know that,” Tommy quips back and you can imagine just the face he’s making too. “I fucking radio’d, every fucking week, and I got nothing back. I just want to know she’s okay.”

You watch from the hallway, one arm hugged around your body for warmth. It’s not even cold.

“She’s—" He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to fucking answer that. I hope she’s fine now but I’m worried that knowing you're around might slide that progress back.”

“Progress?”

“Yeah, Tommy, she fucking grieved for you for a long ass time. That was after she waited for you until I told her to accept that you weren’t coming back.”

“But I radio’d…” 

“We didn’t get a goddamn radio from you, Tommy!” 

Thomasin screams at the sound of her father’s raised voice, howling out every thing she’s got in her tiny lungs as you move to pick her up.

Tommy’s asking what the fuck that is and you can see Joel’s fists clenching, tightening the grip he has on the door. He looks back at you, back at his daughter and his face betrays the parts of his heart that are breaking as Tommy asks whose goddamn baby is crying in his apartment.

“Mine,” Joel responds. 

Then he shuts down, jaw setting and unsetting as Tommy asks question after question. 

Where’d you get a baby?

What’s going on?

Why can’t I find her?

You know where she is, tell me where she is.

Joel can’t answer any of them, can’t make eye contact with his brother anymore but he doesn’t move from the door. He wants to, you can tell. He wants to shut it, go back to this morning when you and he and the baby were all still sound asleep in the early light of day.

“Can I just come in, Joel?” He finally asks. “Can we just talk about this? You can tell me where she is, I’ll set it right with her, I meant to come back for her a lot sooner.”

“Yeah,” Joel breathes out, “you really fucked up on that one.” 

He looks to you then, a silent question in his eyes.

Are you ready for this?

No. You aren’t. Three hours ago, you didn’t know this man was still breathing and the only solace you could hope for was that he was truly dead and not some fucking monster with a mushroom growing out of his gorgeous head.

Sitting, finally, with Thomasin in your aching arms to cover your aching heart, you nod and Joel lets the door open wider until Tommy's eyes are on you; your daughter.

“I’ll hold onto this hurt for the rest of my life, sweetheart,” he’d said.

Said he’d accepted that he’d caused it but that didn’t make the pain go away. Didn’t soothe that raw, bruised part of his heart—his soul.

There was no begging, Joel was on board from the beginning. Joel was on board before anybody else. Change her name, something more appropriate for who she is to you and Joel and this world. A gift.

A second chance.

Or third. Fourth. Fifth.

One hundredth and many more than you deserve after years and year over this life; this way of living. 

Especially for Joel, your strong, broad mountain of a man who believed himself irredeemable in the eyes of everybody but especially yours. He cradled her with such gentleness, even as she grew, that it was hard to believe he was capable of any kind of violence.

So, after a year of late night and early morning talks whispered across the pillows, decisions had been made. A lot of them, actually.

Joel admitted that he felt his humanity pouring back into him with every breath he took beside you; every moment he held your daughter in his arms. He bloomed as father, color darkening his cheeks with emotion every time he looked at her. He felt like before in some sense of the word, like he was being given the gift of fulfilling the only thing he ever felt he was good at. 

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know where that thought would often go. Silent promises to himself that he wouldn’t fail this time. Or, God help him, he hoped his failure was no longer being in this world to protect her when it came down to it.

In the registry office of town, where all the records of who was who and where they were were kept, you both signed as a new birth certificate was made. 

Clara Miriam Miller. No Thomasin, no Baby. No placeholder for who she was or name to carry as if she were some memorial, just Clara. 

It means bright. Clear. Joel joked that she was the only light in the darkness he’d ever seen or needed.

It was good, beautiful even. As you finished your signature on the page detailing everything you could remember about her birth—bloody, loud, an early morning surprise that still exhausted you to this day—Joel cleared his throat.

Trying his best to tuck an unruly piece of hair behind your ear and failing, he took a deep breath and finally said, “will you marry me while we’re here?”

That’s the last piece to his puzzle, always has been. The thing he always wanted before—-companionship. Love in such an intimate way. Not that your relationship lacks that as it is but there’s something about being official.

There’s possession to it and there’s this bit of submission as you vow to give all your life and love and hurt and pain and, even, your death to one person. 

No. No doubts in your minds about this one either. He loved so fiercely, so deeply, and he’d whispered all his insecurities and broken parts in all the nights you’ve lived together. He didn’t have it before, not when it happened. Selfishly, you’re glad that he didn’t, that his wife had walked away from him years and years before that. If he’d lost her the way he’d lost the others, the way he fears losing you or losing Clara…

But if that had been the case, there would be no you. Not for him. There wouldn’t even be a Clara, there would be somebody else with somebody else.

Or maybe nobody at all. 

Your vows are even more selfish as you tell him how grateful you are that you found one another through all this and the more that life tried to throw at you; that you went to him the way Tommy had said to when there was trouble even though it scared you so much to knock on his door.

It scared you to tell him the things you told him, to make the decisions for yourself and decide you were tired of pretending it wasn’t love that you felt for him. 

In the end, with Clara’s small face tucked neatly into the crook of his neck, he took your hand, looked at his brother and apologized with gratitude tacked onto the end. 

Looking back at you, he smiles and you reach out to touch your thumb into the hidden dimple as it wells deep into his cheek.

“When I go, I hope it’s peaceful,” he says. “I hope it’s beside you, Mrs. Miller, and I hope it’s only after years. And, selfishly, I hope it’s not a pain or absence you have to feel for long because I am going to be mighty pissed off if you make me wait for as long as I did to have you in my bed in the first place.” 

He’s got plenty at this point, angry red and deathly white scars pockmarking his body like some kind of topographical map. 

That’s all it is, just another scar to add to his collection and reminisce about as you trace it in the darkness of whatever shared space you end up in.

Except, they’re saying this one might not scar.

It might not even heal.

All the things he’s done throughout these years, all the things he done to protect you—to provide for you.

That’s all he was doing this time, too, and it breaks you down all over again as you pull Baby closer to your aching, carved out chest.

Everybody you have ever loved has either left or been taken away.

Tommy’s hand lands gently on your shoulder but it might as well have been a goddamn hit with the way you pull away from him.

“What do you want?”

“I brought some food,” he whispers, setting down a small plate between where you’re sitting and where Joel’s body is laying. “And I came to check on you, see if there’s anything I could do for you.”

He pulls away when you look up at him, hands falling to his side like he’s been fucking burned. You know what you must look like—bloodshot eyes and hollow cheeks.

“Yeah, Tommy, you can fucking fix this.”

You watch as he swallows thickly, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as his eyes flicker from yours to his brother’s body and back. Not a day has gone by since he was brought back that you’ve left his side, doing your best to keep it together through every aching mile along the way to Jackson.

They look for medicine at every stop you make, coming up empty handed time and time again. If we don’t get to Jackson soon—to the doctor they have there—then he will die.

“I'm doing the best I can, sweetheart.”

“Don't you fucking dare call me that,” you tell him. Baby fusses in your arms like she can feel the hurt that’s heavy in your voice. “You were supposed to protect him, Tommy, you were supposed to bring him back to me alive.”

“He is alive,” he says, nostrils flaring as he points down at his brother. “He's right there, he’s breathing, and we are all doing the best that we can.”

Baby looks up at you, stung by the subtle anger that Tommy’s words hold. Her father may be trying to make nice with him, but you fucking won’t—you can’t. Not so long as he lays half clung to life next to you.

More words come at you—assurances and platitudes.

We’ll be in Jackson in two days.

They’re still looking.

He’s a stubborn piece of shit, he’ll make it through.

This is everything that he’s been afraid of this whole goddamn time. This is that fear come true that he’ll leave you or you’ll leave him or your daughter will leave you both and neither of you would survive that.

“Tommy,” you call his attention back on you as he turns. “I grieved for you,” you say. “God, I mourned and I wailed and I wept for days if not weeks or more.”

It’s like he’s understanding for the first time, truthfully understanding, as he stares down at your worn down body speaking all these fragile and broken words. Realization of just how much you hurt for him is dawning on him and he’s trying to give you more comfort, more words to say everybody will be okay.

But it won’t be true so long as your daughter is looking up at you with eyes that ask why your heart has stopped beating.

“I don't think you have heard me at any point that I have explained just what I feel for my family, Tommy,” you say. “I told you that I would’ve bled for you but that I would die for him so I really need for you to listen to me right now—if he goes, part of me will go with him.”

Jackson is like life before it stopped.

There is power here and children laughing.

There are babies and clothes and running water.

There are houses and furniture and trinkets and shops.

You haven’t been able to take any of this in, not really. Not when you’re walking around the halls of Tommy’s home like a ghost.

Tommy found penicillin after that night, came hauling ass into the room and injected his brother before you were even fully awake and registering what he was doing. Because, for a moment, you thought you were under attack. You though a runner had burst in and you couldn’t find the gun and this was the death you had feared beyond the walls—first Joel and then Thomi and then you. The last of those you love taken from you in the last moments that would make you welcome being ripped apart with open arms.

When you realized it was just Tommy, your heart half settled down and then you feared that maybe Joel had stopped breathing next to you. But that couldn’t have been the case because it was the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he fought against infection and the increasing cold that gave you any sort of hope or peace at all.

Joel woke up just as you made it through the gates of Jackson, one eye half cracked and already crying the moment he saw you next to him. Instead of going to the doctor, the doctor came to him. Modern medicine isn’t so modern anymore though, not the way it was when it all fell down. The penicillin likely wasn’t as potent as it once was but the doctor said it would do the trick and that the right thing was done by keeping his wound as clean as possible and bandaged tight.

Tommy said it was all you and the doctor was offering you a job before he’d even learned your name. You’ll get to that eventually, you told him so. Begged him to let you settle in and find a home, find a way to feel okay in this new space where you’re told fear doesn’t have to be your primary emotion any longer.

Now, though, Joel barely wants to sleep. He’s antsy, fidgeting and restless and begging to get out of bed and walk around.

He’s even bouncing Baby and talking with his brother on what jobs he can pull around town to earn his keep.

Fucking jobs.

You almost lost him to him pulling his own weight and he’s asking about fucking jobs with a half healed hole still gaping in his abdomen. 

Thomi’s been down for about an hour, she was your excuse away from the bathroom. With Joel up and about, the survival mode has turned off in your brain and now you want to crumble every time you look at the knotted over flesh.

But there’s only so much pacing that you can do until you’re sitting back in the room and staring down at Thomi with tears in your eyes. She came so close to being just another orphan in this fucked up world because you weren’t joking with Tommy when you said what you said. Part of you will go when Joel does, you will not be the same and you’ve prepared for it, you just hope she’s old enough to understand when that time comes.

There’s also the hope that everybody understands that it’s Joel who has to go first. Between you and him, he has to go first because he cannot watch another person he loves die; he cannot add another name to another gravestone in the cemetery of his heart.

That’s where he finds you, saying something about how he can’t believe there’s an actual crib that she actually gets to sleep in.

That fact and the exhaustion of his voice hits you, drags the tears out of you finally after all these days of having to be strong. She has a crib and she’s sleeping peacefully inside of it with a soft toy somebody in town sent over. Joel has a voice and he’s using it as if just a week ago you hadn’t convinced yourself that you’d never hear it again.

“How can I fix this?” He asks, gentle hand resting on your shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

“You're breathing,” you say, pushing the tears from your face. “That's enough, it’s all I’ve been hoping for.” Because while you want him to be the first to go, you can’t lose him yet. Not yet.

He smells good. Like himself but different, the sweet scent of the mint soap Tommy gave you mixing in with the natural musk and heat of him. You don’t even realize you’re crawling into his lap until you are.

Tears fall down on his face as your fingers thread through the slicked back hair until you’re cradling his head in your hand; holding him to you with open mouths breathing heavily into one another. 

He’s hard already and laying back with ease, thick hands gripping into the meat of your hips. It’s fucking embarrassing how close you are already but there was no privacy for sneaky touches on the journey here. 

“Off,” he commands, tugging at the hem of your shirt. 

Trailing his hand along the skin exposed as you comply easily to his demand, he fights against the pain you know he feels to pull himself forward enough to reach you and pull you back down. 

Days asleep fighting, literally, for his life and, yet, he’s still got all this strength radiating out of his body. You know that’s why he was able to hold on for so long but it doesn't mean it doesn’t wow you and bring another wave of sadness all at the same time.

Because if such a strong man can fall so easily, what’s stopping this world from taking you, too?

Like he can read your mind, his hands settle on your hips and he pulls back just enough to look up at you with the same big brown eyes your daughter shares. “Are you gonna get off of me if I tell you this moment was the focal point of all my fever dreams?”

Head cradled in both of your hands, you take his lips again. “I might never get off of you again, Joel Miller.”

Fighting against the pain he feels, he pushes his hips against your core as he pulls you down against him, whispered words of gratitude and love falling pushed right into your mouth from his.

“I heard every word you said,” he breathes out. “The entire time you were by my side, sweetheart, I heard it all.” 

Tongues flattened against each other, you reach down and pull off the new underwear—another offering in a gift basket to welcome your family to the town. You never thought you’d see these kinds of things again. 

Clothes in good condition; sturdy houses; friendly people; fresh vegetables.

It’s something else that drips tears from your eyes and down his cheeks.

As if he knows how overwhelmed you are by all the newness going on all around you, he takes charge to push up against your lips harder and with more hunger.

Joel’s goal in every moment between your bodies is to be the only overwhelming force you feel and he does just that with the gentle push of his solid length through your soaked channel. 

He takes the gasp you feed him, pulling back with a smile to trail the tip of his nose down the length of yours and studies you as he waits for your fully seated comfort to kick in.

“Mmm,” his head falls back and he relaxes down into the soft blankets. “I’m sorry if I bust too quick,” he breathes out. “It’s been a while and I missed you.” 

Laughter. Because that’s a feeling coiling deeper in the pit of your being than he’s pushing into and he catches your moan as brings the long awaited friction you’ve ached for. 

“I think I’m right there with you,” you whisper against him. This shared laughter and the feeling of his chapped lips on yours are the unburdening you’ve needed for so long. Even in the so called safety of the QZ, your shoulders were heavy with the weight of grief and fear both for those that were and those that will be taken away.

This is light and restful and full of peace and happiness because he turned it all around—he came back.

He heard every word you said at his side.

“None of these,” he says against your lips, swiping at the heavy salt water tears that streak down your cheeks. “Not anymore, sweetheart, not right now. You don’t need them right now.” 

Your bodies are already tightening up against each other; working in time with each other all slow and steady movements made with intention and pulling back when necessary.

Because the intention isn’t to get off, it’s to be together and share this peace and relief together.

“I love you,” falls from his lips like a prayer, something sacred and quiet that he keeps close to his chest.

Even still, he may have said no more tears but they rush from you in body racking sobs. Because you know, of course you know, but he’s never said it. Not out loud, not like this. This isn't just a mere glimpse of a long gone, past life Joel Miller and who he used to be. This is him. That sweet and romantic boy he’s only told you about in the cover of night.

He doesn’t ask if he’s hurt you, he knows that he hasn’t. All he can do is cage you in closer; kiss you harder; hold you tighter until the broken sobs are turning back into shared moans as your involuntary movements of sadness and happiness combine to push you both over that edge.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” he exhales. “My strong, beautiful woman.” Those rough hands frame your face, thumbs swiping over the swell of your cheeks in mirrored movements. “You can relax now, baby, I’m right here.”

Every press of his lips against your face is so soft and full of everything else he’s struggling to say.

That you’re safe.

That you’re healthy.

That your daughter is both and can sleep peacefully not yet knowing what nightmares truly are.

The season is giving over from late summer to early fall, every day changing hour by hour with the walking and the driving. It was easy in the QZ, year by year. You knew what to expect, how to rest your body—you could seek rest for your body when you needed. 

You need it so much more every day with the way the weather and the travel is going after your body followed by the stress of it all; the complex emotions this entire ordeal is brought on.

This was never a hope in your mind; leaving, going. Your eyes rolled every time Tommy talked about leaving the QZ, it was the subject of so many fights. He believed there was better and you only believed there was death beyond the walls of FEDRA protection. The longer time stretched on after he left, the more steadfast that belief came to the point that you shook with sobs and fear every time Joel made his trips across to trade.

“I'm fine, really.” 

The bed beneath you isn’t what you’d call comfortable, not in the before times at least and definitely not in comparison to the worn in lump you were used to back in Boston. You’ve been laying together since the moment you settled into the safe house, everybody else going out to clear paths for the trucks to get through.

Baby babbles through sleep in her father’s arms beside you, not once have you called her by the name you ended up giving her. Not since he showed up. And the belief that beyond the walls means death is so hardwired into your body and brain that you can’t find it in you to sleep. That’s why he’s talking about your strength, sneaks you bits of his own rations. 

You’re still breastfeeding, as well. When you can, anyway. It’s been harder on the road and the lack of any real privacy isn’t helping. No matter how he tries to shield your body, the awareness that there’s not just eyes but Tommy’s eyes is enough to run every part of you dry and cold even if it’s getting hotter and more humid with every day you pass into the south.

“You look like shit, sweetheart,” he whispers across the small space between your bodies. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re afraid to sleep.” 

“Yeah,” you tell him, eyes darting down to your daughter between you. “I am.” 

“I’m right here,” he says, hand smoothing down the hair at the crown of your head. “It’s okay, please rest.” 

They’re gone when you wake.

It's just you in a cold and empty bed, a threadbare excuse for a blanket draped over your sleeping body along with his jacket. Alarm bells go off in your brain and then you hear the voices in the next room.

Joel’s.

Baby’s.

Tommy’s. 

Nobody else, just them.

“She has your dimples.” Tommy.

There’s a small laugh and then Joel says he’s glad she got them on both sides, not just the one. 

Tommy’s voice is tired, weather worn and rough from strain. Not how he sounded this morning when he left.

There’s a hunger in your stomach, growing and aching loud but it stops with every word spoken between the men you love that filters through the thin walls and half cracked door.

“How is she really?” Tommy asks. “Joel, I still love her—“

“How? How can you still love her when you left her alone for so long?” 

“How could I ask either of you to come with me if I didn’t?”

There’s an annoyed kind of grumble that could only belong to Joel and then silence that stretches on just long enough to make you think there’s space to move forward into the conversation but then it breaks. 

“I wouldn’t say that she’s good, Tommy.” You can hear the way his leg bounces to entertain the baby. “None of us are good anymore but, my God, she’s fucking amazing.”

“Yeah?”

Joel clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“Do you love her?” The younger man asks. 

A beat.

Another. 

Two more.

“I feel a whole lot more for that woman than just love, Tommy,” he finally says. “I know you’re hurting but you have to understand that I—we thought that you were dead. She hurt for a long time and I watched her do that and I did my best to be there for her but—“ Baby babbles to interrupt him and you can practically see the smile in the laughter that follows. 

Those feelings, the existence of them, aren’t new to you. Still, every time he insinuates their existence your head gets light—fuzzy and warm.

“But what, Joel?” Tommy prompts him. “I’m trying to understand this, because I want to not hurt and I want to look at this little girl and not want to cry.”

“Yeah.” A chair creaks and you assume somebody sat forward or back. “I want to look at her and not want to cry, too, but I felt that with Sarah—I feel that with you, Tommy, you might as well have been my first kid sometimes. It wasn’t just me that was there for her through all that hurt over those years, she was there for me and refused to let me pull away. Being with her is the closest I feel to who I was before, I need you to understand that.” 

“That's how she made me feel, too,” Tommy responds. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever really understand.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Joel concedes. “Hell, that’s more than fair, you’re probably really sick of us asking you to understand. Can I have Baby back now?”

Confusion floods through you, you were certain the calm, happy babbles were because she was tucked into her daddy’s arm; bouncing on her daddy’s leg.

“Does she have a name?” Tommy asks. “Or have you just been calling her Baby this whole time? I know you’re afraid to get attached, Joel, but—“

“We named her Thomasin,” Joel says, that stern, warning shot in his tone again. Begging his brother to understand this, that this was the honor you could give his memory—that you named what was born out of grief and love for him after him. “We call her Thomi for short but we’ve been thinking about changing it. We figured it would make you uncomfortable.” 

“No,” Tommy answers. “No, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all.” 

Hunger grows loud again but so, too, does the blood rush of his words up your neck, into your cheeks and between your ears. For all the tears and all the yelling and the hurt of fresh cuts on closed wounds his arrival brought back into your life, those are the words of the man you once loved. It has been weeks and he is holding her, speaking about her—about you—so gently. Despite saying he doesn’t understand, it’s there in his voice and lacing through every one of his words and it grows stronger each day closer to Jackson.

He’s got a smile like a little kid, secretive and boyish like he’s never known true hurt because he’s always had somebody else standing in front of him to take the bulk of the blow. Or maybe he just hides it really well.

“I’ve been sober for a minute, actually,” he declares. “Just been spending all this time looking at you and how you keeping looking away from me when you see that I’ve caught you.”

“You’re new here,” you shrug. “It's my job to keep an eye on the newbies, never know who’s gonna start swinging.”

“And what would you do?” His head cocks to the side, eyes looking you up and down to the best of their ability with a bar in between you both. “If some dumb, drunk asshole were to start swinging, what would you do?” 

“If this is a threat, handsome, I should probably remind you that you’re in Texas—my daddy put a gun in my hand long before I ever knew how babies were made and said to use it if some dumb, drunk asshole got handsy.”

“You think I’m handsome?”

He is. Long face and a slightly rounded nose, black curls and half full lips on sun kissed olive skin.

“‘Cause, see,” he leans forward, and drops his thickly accented voice, “I'm talking about fighting and you’re talking about fucking.”

“To most men, that’s the same thing.” 

He considers that. “Well, I may be a dumb asshole but I’m not drunk and I certainly mind my manners.” He winks. “I'm Tommy and I would certainly like to get handsy with you.”

Fifteen minutes later, you’re crashing into bed with his hand down your pants, long fingers fighting against the tightness of your done up jeans to touch you in that spot that makes your skin burn.

“If your soft little pussy is as tight as these jeans,” he drawls out, “you may never get rid of me.”

It’s not just the stimulation of his callused fingers against your clit that makes you burn, it's the words and it’s him. Has been since he sat down in the same seat last night and ordered his first drink.

He’s over you now, knees pressed into the mattress as he sits bowed towards your center with full concentration on the buttons between you. 

“You can touch me too, you know,” he says, grin splitting his face again as he looks up. With the button free, he undoes the zipper and starts to peel back the denim gently, like it’s painted on something delicate and only concentrated precision can clean it off without hurting what’s underneath it. “Oh, I hope you do. You can pull my fucking hair right out, sweetheart, it’d be an honor.” 

Shoes and pants tossed to the side, he focuses on his own as he pulls the large buckle free of his belt followed by the button of his fly and a deep sigh of relief.

“Well, you get right to the point,” you tell him, poking a pointed toe into his hip. You’ve never been more thankful for a pedicure than you are right now. “Don’t you?”

Starting with the contact of your foot poked into his side, he drags his gaze up the length of your open leg—takes in your body beneath him—and laughs.

“I really don’t,” he tells you, starting to undo the buttons of his shirt with the same deft fingers you were bucking against not even five minutes ago. “My cock's just real fucking hard and needed some breathing room.”

His voice is raspy, raw with the burn of alcohol and lust heavy on his tongue. He pulls the button up open and shrugs it off, revealing a sleeveless, white, ribbed undershirt over a barrel chest and thick, defined arms.

Lifting yourself up on your elbows, you look down at the straining material below his belt. “I really think you should give it some more.”

“Oh no,” he bends and hooks his fingers into the waistband of your panties. “I'm a real selfish son of a bitch”—he starts to pull the material down—“sometimes I can’t control myself and my pent up little dick can’t last longer than a few minutes so I try not to leave a lady too dissatisfied.”

His confidence is sexy—a magnetic charisma you’ve been drawn to the last two nights he’s ordered whiskey and laughed at all your jokes. You’ve never heard a man willingly, or with such enthusiasm, refer to his dick as little. But here he is, setting a precedent of what to expect that you feel is the direct opposite to the one you’re usually fed.

Finally, his eyes trail away from yours back down your body, pushing your legs open as he tosses the soaked fabric over his shoulder and he whistles. Not the cartoonish kind of wolf whistling reserved for Jessica Rabbit but the kind of silent disbelief and awe.

“It's cute how wet you are already,” he says, pressing two fingers flat against your mound. “The way the streetlight reflects off this slick little thing makes you look like fucking magic.” 

Still on your elbows, he crashes a kiss down on you but unlike the hungry, hard kind of desperation in his lips at the door, this is soft; this is gentle. 

There’s whiskey on his breath and a little more; tobacco; coffee; mint and cinnamon—probably gum to cover it all up.

“May I please eat your pretty little cunt?” He breathes out against your lips.

Dazed, you nod your head. He may look it but this is not the frat boy hook up you’re used to. Hell, this isn’t the kind of hook up you’re used to with any kind of boy you’ve been with up until now. Using the word cunt as a positive, associating it with prettiness and, even, filling the word pretty with so much awe and wonder like he’s lucky to be here.

He kisses you again before sliding back, laying down flat on his stomach as he lifts your shirt to place a kiss to both of your hips and the soft skin of your lower stomach. 

Tommy does not get right to the point, he drags it out.

Shoulders settling between your thighs; soft lips against the inside of your knee, your thighs, and repeated patterns on the opposite side.

Anticipation builds within you, his hot breath ghosting across the sensitive skin he’s already set ablaze while yours comes out in short, heavy puffs.

He looks up at you again with that cheeky grin, like he has a secret that he’s just dying to tell. “Go ahead and lay back,” comes his low voice, breath fanning right over where you want him. “Let me take care of the rest and feel free to pull my hair.” 

Talking back isn’t even an option, not when he hooks his arm over your thigh to place one heavy, rough palm down on your mound. Still, you can’t sit back, too mesmerized by the crooked smile and lonesome dimple as he spreads you beneath that grip.

Then he kisses you. Open mouthed, free hand gripping around your thigh, he closes his mouth around you like he has never seen food, never known the satisfaction of a good meal or a good fuck. 

You do crash then, one hand sinking into your own hair as the other threads through the curls reminiscent of the darkest night you’ve ever seen. 

He hums and the vibration makes you jolt against his face which only makes him laugh. The laughter, continuous and contagious, mixes in with his moans until your own are dancing up to meet his.

You’ve been loud before, but never like this. This aren't the cries of a dorm room pornstar persona keeping herself in the good graces of drunk boys with mean streaks. This is heavy breaths and his name like a prayer before God who you are also calling to in desperation. Not to ask His spite for the man between your legs, but to ask His mercy and protection over him for the rest of his life.

This is tender and gentle.

This is warm and all encompassing.

This is pressure on the dam building up in a hard rain.

“Tommy,” you say his name in a panic, the familiar feeling of a full bladder hitting you. “Tommy, I’m gonna—“ It’s too late.

Pressure releases and warmth slides down to meet his tongue—his fingers—different in feeling from the slick you’ve dripped with after every fleeting moment of eye contact. Different, further, from the feeling of relief you get when you finally find the toilet after a four hour lecture hall.

Lifting himself, he runs a hand across his bottom lip and then his tongue along that too. “Been a while since I made somebody come for me that fast,” he says, surprise lacing his voice. “Tell me who’s not treating you right, I’ll beat the fuck out of them.” 

Covering your face—your embarrassment—with your hands makes him laugh and he lifts his weight off of the bed.

“Hold this for me, sweetheart,” he says as a small object no heavier than a quarter lands on your stomach followed by the sound of a zipper.

Tommy’s toeing his boots off when you sit up to look at him, undershirt already tossed to the side somewhere near his button up from earlier. His pants go next but he leaves his briefs, the soft cotton material leaving nothing much to the imagination as it stretches with his growing cock.

“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” He asks, calling my attention up to his eyes. I can see him slipping his underwear down in my periphery before he joins me back on the bed, but I don’t look—too taken by the liquid coal color of blown out pupils against dark brown irises.

“I don't think I’ve ever come before,” you tell him, lower stomach still clenching and unclenching. There’s a wet spot just beneath where you’re sitting, subtle and cooling against your ass in a way so different than the room temperature spillage of an uncovered cock you’re used to.

He smiles. “That’s why I asked you who hasn’t been treating you right,” he responds. “Somebody as pretty and smart as you should be coming as often as she goddamn pleases.”

“How do you know I’m smart?”

Eyes darting around the room, he lands on you again. “Framed bachelor degree, textbooks on the nightstand and on the desk with big words I don’t understand, figured you were a smart girl.”

“I'm trying.” There’s something so fucking intimate about how close he is, certainly the most intimacy you’ve ever felt.

“Help me with this condom, baby,” he says after several beats. “Been dying to get your soft little hands around my dick since the moment I set eyes on you.”

“Not my mouth?” You ask. “Usually, it’s my mouth that’s wanted.”

Gripping your chin between his thumb and forefinger, he encourages you to open up to him, something you find yourself doing so easily, as he leans over to press his tongue flat against against yours.

Kissing after a man has been down on you is something you’re accustomed to, even if men won’t give the same courtesy of kissing you after you’ve reciprocated, but you’ve never tasted this. Tangy and sweet and mixed with his bad habits, there’s a throbbing building down within you again.

“I don’t have time for this sweet little mouth around me tonight,” he whispers when he pulls away. “I’m gonna three pump chump you and I’d like to do that deep inside of your pussy and not your throat.”

Stunning, charismatic. This man could tell you to rob a bank for him and you’d probably do so.

Taking your hand, all eyes focus on the weeping length of him between you. Even if he’s gonna three pump chump you as he says, part of you wants to ignore him and take him in your mouth anyway. He got to taste; why shouldn’t you?

Controlling yourself is hard, wanting to willingly give over everything you so closely protect in other encounters—the vulnerability, the tears, the communication of what feels good and what hurts. It’s usually always just what hurts and no amount of communication can solve a lecture fatigued college boy’s mind. 

With trembling hands, you help him push the condom down his shaft; careful beneath his guidance not to squeeze too hard.

You let him lift your shirt off, his eyes kept on yours as he peels yet another layer of fabric away. The amount of respect within this unforeseen encounter is the kind of shit you’ve only seen in movies.

“Magic,” he whispers again, finally looking down your body when the bra comes off as well. “You look like fucking magic.”

He leans himself into you, open mouth to open mouth as he takes your body back down to the mattress. All of his weight is braced against one arm and you’re gripping half-moons into his ribcage as he breathes heavy and slow, so close to you. It’s like he knows there’s a limit to air between you and he’s saving most of it for you.

Guiding himself to your entrance, he goes slack jawed with a small groan as he pushes slowly inside.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “Goddamn, you’re never getting rid of me.”

He lays you down fully, body weight pressing against you like a hard wind, and he laughs when you start counting.

“One…” Your arms curved around his hips. “Two…” His hands smoothing across your hair. “Three…” The heels of your palms pressing into his ass to encourage him.

“There were your three pumps, chump,” you whisper. “Shouldn't you be done?”

Chest to chest, his hips stutter into a slow grind. “Oh, I’m taking my time with you, sweetheart.”

Continuing that same languid pace between your legs, it’s all soft touches and heavy breaths and moans traded back and forth in the space between until that pressure is building in you again.

Before, you thought it was an accident waiting to happen—part of you still does—but you only encourage him to continue fucking up into you at this pace as you chase down the high that fueled your embarrassment not too long ago.

It’s better this time, the same but different. Different in the way that he’s inside of you; the way his cock stretches you makes it all build that much slower and come down in a similar pace around him. His reaction, too, is different with his choked sound of pleasure and the changes in pace with which he continues pumping into you. 

“Never getting rid of me,” he whispers against your lips as another wave rushes through you. “I could live inside this cunt, pretty thing, nothing else has ever gripped me so-oh fuck—so fucking well.”

He doesn’t make a spectacle of his release, doesn’t grunt like a man through the fake tan fumes of a body building competition. This man you wouldn’t have necessarily pegged for gentle not even two hours ago releases soft sounds beneath his grasp for air and stills with closed eyes.

“Believe it or not,” he says a few moments later when he’s rolled onto his back, “I've never fucked like that.” 

“You're right,” you tell him. “I don’t believe it.” 

He’s not in a rush to leave and you’re not in a rush to push him out either. So different, still, from other encounters you’ve had. It helps that he smells good; tastes good; treats you with respect and kindness.

You watch as he stands up and moves across the room towards the ensuite. He’s got a cute little butt, not much going on there but enough to grab onto as you already know. He smiles when he looks up and catches your reflection in the mirror.

“Don't make fun of my booty,” he says over the sound of running water. “I’m very insecure about it.”

You watch again as he walks back and slips naked out the bedroom door. Small moments like this and you’re glad you have the apartment to yourself more often than not.

Returning, he hands you the glass of water he filled up and joins you back beneath the covers.

“So… I’m gonna guess from all the books and the fancy paper framed up on the wall that you’re not just a bartender. Are you still studying?”

“I am,” you stutter; half caught off guard by the interest he’s taken, half caught off guard by the fondness you already feel for him. Like this is normal. “I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Texas A&M.”

“Go Aggies,” he says.

“More like Go Longhorns now,” you continue. “I’m getting my masters here in Austin and then the dream is a doctorate from Johns Hopkins, all public health.”

He looks confused but interested. “I said I was a dumbass so excuse me, I promise I’m not trying to sound like a dickhead, but what does that enable you to do?” He shakes his head. “I never went to college, I’m actually really curious.”

“I'd like to be an epidemiologist,” you answer. “They study infectious diseases, aid in the prevention of them for the good of global health. Prevent pandemics and shit.” 

He nods, crooked smile returning. “That's like superhero level of shit, you know that? What are you doing having sex with a random hick in some bar?”

You laugh in return. “What's a random hick in a bar doing knowing how to eat pussy that well?”

“Oh, I was stationed in France for a bit,” he tells you. “French girls do not let you get away without eating them into a goddamn stupor, best skill I picked up in the army.”

“And you used a condom without me having to beg you, that’s so sexy.”

“Yeah?” He asks, leaning in with that same crooked, cocksure smile of his.

“Yeah,” you answer. “Don’t think I wanna get rid of you, in all honesty.”

Gently, he takes the water glass and sets it over on the nightstand before pushing back up against you. “I got another condom in my wallet, how about another round?”

“I have a whole box,” you counter, “how about several?”

Then, again, it was just you and Joel and the baby.

Baby, that’s all Joel called her in the aftermath of it.

Baby, he’d say followed by the suggestion that you should really discuss changing the name.

Everything was silent after that.

No gunshots outside, no knocks at the door.

No bullshit for days.

Joel pressed hasty kisses into you in the early morning light, two fingers pushed deep inside of you and encouraging, praising little words falling from his mouth into yours. 

It’s been days of his quiet observance to your routine. How you behave; how you react; how you nurture his little girl. 

He’d held you that night, long after you cleaned him up, and just let you cry against his thick, broad chest. Not once did he ask to know who your tears were for or what they represented. 

Now, though, he’s pressing himself against you and fortifying all his lost strength and the hastily put together pieces of his heart with the soft cries you give back out to him. 

The knock comes just as you’re about to; hard knuckles hitting the door while Joel’s buried up to his between your legs.

“Ignore it,” he whispers. “They’ll fuck off, you’re so close.”

Nodding your head, you cover his hand with yours and push further as he encourages you more and more.

“Come on, sweetheart, come on”—another knock—“FUCK!” 

Joel pulls himself from you and stands, sucking his thumb and then each thick digit into his mouth afterwards as he walks towards the door.

“Who is it?”

“Tommy.” 

Joel looks back, a question in his eyes but you’re already pulling pants on as you come around to the table. Something tells you that Tommy expected you to follow him out the door, explain yourself and beg him to come back to just talk.

As much as you love him—loved him—your family now needed you in that moment. You owed him nothing.

Still, as the door swung open, he looked at you like you did.

“Am I interrupting something?” He asks, eyes going from Joel’s shirtless figure to your half dressed one.

“And if you were?” Joel asks. 

“Baby.”

“Baby?” Tommy pulls back like he’s been slapped, like he has a right. “So I go to find us a better chance at life and you jump in bed with my fucking brother first thing?” 

“First of all, you’re gonna keep your fucking voice down,” Joel says, pulling his brother into the room. “Our daughter is still asleep and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Your daughter,” he says, like he still can’t believe it, looking from Joel to you and back. “The daughter that should be mine.”

“Should be,” you agree. “Could’ve been, would’ve been.” Your arms are crossed over your chest. There’s an aching deep in you that you’ve been trying to keep in since the moment you saw him.

“You left,” you remind him. “I waited for you, Tommy, there was no first thing.”

The baby cries and Joel moves instinctively towards her along with Tommy’s gaze. 

Tears roll easily down his cheeks, caught in the gray hairs of his overgrown facial hair. “I fucking radio’d,” he says on a step forward. “Marlene was supposed to tell you, she was supposed to keep you informed.”

“The only thing that bitch and the Fireflies did was take you away from me followed by any sense of fucking safety I held onto—or did you not see the fucking spray paint and the lack of a goddamn floor?” 

Another step forward, closer now and he looks the same but so different. Cold paled golden skin with freckles joined by sunspots blossoming in random, beautiful patterns. 

There is gray streaked through his curls—his thick mustache. 

His face is longer than Joel’s, chest somehow thicker with a rounded out barrel shape and you remember sleeping on it. Pressing your ear to the flat plain beneath his pecs and hearing his heart beat steady. There was comfort in those moments, safety and stability in an unsafe and unstable world. Now you lay your head on Joel and he gives you the same. Sometimes, you even think he gives you more.

Your grief is churning again, painful and ruinous. Because this man in front of you was supposed to be dead. After years with nothing, he comes back now. After years of grieving for him, keening for him in those confines of those walls and these ones. He looks at you like he has all the rights to the hurt that he caused; like he can come in here and take from you the very thing he put into your hands.

Crimson blushes up to the tips of his ears beneath all these things you say to him, held back by Joel’s strong arms.

“Don't you dare stand there and feel sorry for yourself, Tommy; don’t you stand there and blame your brother or me or my fucking daughter for the shit that you did.” 

“Do you love him?” He asks, eyes squinting like he’s studying you—picking you apart like all those nights just so he can see how it all fits back together again. He doesn’t know, he never will again—not the way he did.

You shrug. “What the fuck is love anymore, Tommy?”

Covering his face, he pushes the tears away and runs his hand down the length of his beard. “When you look at that little girl”—he points to Baby in Joel’s arms—“what do you feel?”

He is looking for love but that’s not the answer. When you look at your daughter, there is so much more than that within you. There is love, yes, but there is also fear; pride; strength; weakness. All in beautiful, bruised violet tones that live just beneath your surface.

This feeling does not paint with the same brush as love because there is no brush for this; no clear picture to be made because all it does is grow and bleed and seep far beyond whatever edges you thought existed. It cannot be contained, there is no neat little box for it to fit inside of.

Joel, too.

It is the same for him but more. More than a need to protect and care for and nurture but there is a warmth within it all for this man who puts on such a cold mask. Do you love him? No.

There is so much more than that inside of you for your family.

Obligation. Bloody—blood bound—and waiting to be broken. Ready to do whatever it takes.

“I thought you were dead,” you tell him. “I waited so long for you and I never heard a goddamn thing.” Saltwater cuts into your words and and Joel’s broad body cuts into the frame of your vision. “I loved you, Tommy,” you continue. “I loved you and then I hated you and then I mourned for you and then I loved you again. 

You walked away and took my whole life with you, you took that love and you took your laughter and your guitar and your singing and all the things that made me feel like a person. You know? I had something and somebody to come home to, I had a reason to keep going through the motions of every single fucking day in this shit hole that we call a world now, Tommy. I had you and I loved you and that love—that connection—made me feel like a fucking human being again.” 

“Are you done?” He asks. “Are you done blaming me?”

The hold has on your hip tightens, those fingers curled into your skin at the edge of your jeans. Joel’s looking down his nose at you, this man with all his height and all his strength, with terror half in his eyes. Because he knows by now, he realizes, the last few years have made you stronger than he is—tougher. Diligent and resilient and half feral with anger bottled up close to your chest just waiting to be uncapped.

“I’m not blaming you, Tommy,” you tell him. “I’m thanking you. The love that I had for you was so pure and unbridled and the closest to the before that I have ever known. I would have gone with you, I would have bled for you. But you took the coward’s way out—“ 

“That's not what I did—“ 

“Shut the fuck up, Tommy, that is exactly what you did and you know it. You left with some excuse about wanting better for me.”

The tears in my voice are nothing compared to the ones on his face, sitting there and taking this—so different from the man he once was to you. The man that ached to argue and debate. He never could do that with you, though. He never had a reason to until now. “I did want better for you, I do still.”

Your hands rise in gesture of the walls around you. “This is it, Tommy,” you say. “You leaving me took all the breath out of my lungs, I thought I was fucking dying and my only hope was that your death was a lot quicker than the one I was experiencing.”

“Neither of us are dead, though,” Tommy says.

“No,” you agree. “Neither of us are dead but I wasn’t living for a long time, I didn’t want to. I would’ve bled for you, Tommy. I would’ve followed you anywhere but for them”—you look from Tommy to Joel and your daughter in his arms—“I would die for these two and that’s why I’m still alive so do what you’re good at and get the fuck out of my house.”

Joel’s hands are wrapped around your one, pulled to his lips over and over again. “I talked to Tommy.”

“Cool.”

His jaw clenches and the grip he has on your hand tightens slightly. “I know you’re hurting, sweetheart, but I think he kind of gets it. He’s not mad at you—me. He told me about where he went, where he wants to take you.”

“Oh? So, what? You made some fucking trade for me? Giving over the baby and the life that he could’ve had? Starting everything for your brother only to come in in the middle and leave when it gets too hard for him again?” 

Joel’s head shakes, pain in those big, brown eyes. “He helped set up a city out in Wyoming, they’ve got electricity, water—food, baby. A life, a real one. Clean and safe.”

“What do you want from me?” You ask. “How do you want me to react? How fantastic for him that he has a real life, baby.”

He swipes a thumb across the swell of your cheek and makes those same soothing sounds he gives over so easily to Baby at the first sign of any kind of distress. “He wants us to go back with him, sweetheart.” 

Huffing a laugh, you ask him why the fuck he’d want to do that. “Some unburdening of his fucking soul for what he thinks he left me to the last time? He took my life and gave me two more.”

“He still loves you, sweetheart, and he wants the best for you whatever you may decide that means. He told me he figured you’d moved on when he got nothing back, that’s what he had to hold onto to not think the worst because Marlene just kept saying she couldn’t find you.”

Couldn’t find me, sure.

Hopefully she found what she was looking for when she destroyed your apartment. She’s just as responsible for this new life, these new loves and hurts, of yours as he is—maybe more so.

“So what do you think we should do, huh?” You ask. “It's a long fucking way to Wyoming from Boston, Joel.”