#deputy elliot honeysett

[honeysidesarchived]

iv. just like magic ✤ pre-cult au

john/elliot + “i can’t stop picturing you with him” + “you belong to me” + new year’s eve prompt “they were so distracted, they even missed the clock striking midnight” because i’m a GREMLIN and didn’t get your request for that done until NOW requested by @lilwritingraven

words: 2.5k

warnings: oh, u know. naughty words, john and elliot steamy make out in a cramped bathroom. i think that’s really all. oh, and elliot has an embarrassingly poor memory when it comes to men who aren’t john.

It’s fifteen to midnight on New Year’s Eve, and Elliot Honeysett has no one to kiss.

Well, that’s not entirely true; she has a date, who is almost certainly anticipating a clock-strikes-midnight kiss, and in a pinch she can convince Joey for a midnight smooch so that she’s not standing around like a big fucking idiot at party in the city where she’s floundering like a fish out of water.

I shouldn’t have come, she thinks idly, finger dragging at the rim of her glass where most of the alcohol remains untouched. She’s too stressed out to drink. There are two—two—instances in which she wants to drink herself to oblivion, and as she neither listening to her mother talk about the timeline for grandbabies nor has her abandonment-prone father cropped back up, so her stress only makes her crave sobriety more. Can’t be spinning out of control, can we, if we can help it?

In fact, her date is making eyes at her from across the room, and Joey is somewhere out of immediate reach, and the boy—Dakota? Maybe?—is very nice, he’s very nice, and—

(And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it, that Dalton (???) is nice, but in a way that feels cloying, and his eyes are two degrees the wrong shade of blue and he keeps his facial hair close-trimmed and he doesn’t have a single lick of ink on his body, and these are significant problems that immediately remind her of the person that she wants to be kissing, which makes him so, so, so unattractive.)

—and he’s making his way across the house right that second, and Elliot doesn’t want to explain to him in a categorized list why she actually can’t kiss him (“Do you want it alphabetical, or more like…chronological?”), so she turns on her heel like she didn’t just make eye contact with him and beelines it out of the living room.

It’s a house party. That’s all it is. It’s a house party in the city, because Elliot and Joey are spending the holidays in Georgia with her mother and Joey said that she’d fucking die if they had to spend New Year’s Eve listening to Scarlet lament the lack of “good help” available “these days”. As if she has ever had anything less than pristine house staff.

So they came out to a house party. And Joey found her a nice boy, so that she can have someone to kiss at midnight.

And she doesn’t want to kiss him at all.

She moves so fast from the living room that she runs headfirst into a firm, solid body, promptly spilling the entirety of her drink all over the poor soul that had the distinct misfortune of being in her path. For a second, Elliot opens her mouth to apologize—sorry, so sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, how much was that shirt, I can buy you a new one—but then her eyes land on that face and she promptly snaps her mouth shut.

“Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how much this—”

John is looking down at his shirt, drenched in vodka and something else, when his eyes finally meet hers. And then all irritation is wiped from his face—maybe not from his eyes, entirely—and a wicked grin splits across his expression. It immediately sends her heart fluttering, and she thinks maybe it’s just because she likes eyes exactly his shade of blue.

“Ell,” he greets her, his voice a slick purr, “you could have just texted if you wanted to get in touch.”

“I didn’t know it was you, John,” Elliot snaps, “and I wasn’t trying to spill my drink on your stupid shirt.” And then: “You look like a fuckboy in it, anyway.”

“It’s the Lacoste you picked out, last summer.”

“And you thought I didn’t pick it out to make fun of you?” she prompts, meticulously uninterested. It’s a careful facade which must be upheld at all times, of course—not caring about John Seed. “That’s very cute.”

The brunette fans the shirt away from his body, grinning at her, and the expression reaches straight to his eyes—blinks at her through those dark lashes, and for a second she forgets that she broke up with him two months ago because he’s insufferably full of himself, constantly impatient, and hates her job.

“Can’t believe you accosted me,” he tsks, undoing the top buttons of the polo.

Elliot says, “Don’t be a fucking baby. You wasted my whole drink.”

Pulling the shirt off over his head—because of course he fucking would, of course he doesn’t mind peeling it off right there, the narcissistic motherfucker—John slings the shirt across his shoulder and takes a step toward her. There’s already so little space between them, having been in close enough proximity to spill almost all of her drink on him instead of the floor, which means that he’s suddenly invading all of her personal space with that expensive cologne and the faint scent of vodka and—ah, yes. It had been a vodka soda she was drinking.

“Get you a new one,” John offers in a sleek rumble.

For a second, her brain short-circuits: John Seed, exceptionally handsome and insufferably egotistical, crowding up against her at a house party in an expensive neighborhood of Atlanta, fifteen (now ten) minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve, is her greatest weakness. Mostly, it’s that he’s shirtless, but the other things help too.

“With someone,” Elliot manages out, clearing her throat. “I mean—I’m here. With someone.”

John arches a brow loftily and opens his mouth, certainly about to reply that he doesn’t see anyone with her right now, when a hand glides onto the small of her back and she sees David smiling at her, bright and handsome and just. So sweet.

“You tryin’ to start your own party or something?” her date asks her amusedly, eyes glittering with warmth. He leans down and presses a kiss to her temple, closer to the top of her cheekbone. He’s been doing that all night. Inching closer and closer to her mouth with his shy little kisses.

“N-No,” Elliot says quickly. “John, this is—my…date.”

Dalton? David? Dominic.

A moment lays, suspended between the party of three, where someone is clearly waiting for Elliot to introduce her date whose name she cannot remember for the life of her—and then she doesn’t. So her date laughs and picks up the slack easily and holds his hand out to John.

“Daniel,” he says, and Elliot quickly makes a mental note of that. “It’s nice to meet you, John.”

“Likewise,” John replies, though he’s not nearly as enthused as before. “Daniel’s a biblical name, isn’t it?”

Elliot groans. “Don’t.” When her date looks at her inquisitively, she sighs. “All of John’s siblings are named after Biblical figures.”

“That’s fun,” Daniel says, even though it isn’t. “How do you two know each other?”

“Dated,” John offers up, and as he goes to say, “Long-term, too,” Elliot interjects, “just for a wink,” and they look at each other.

Daniel clears his throat. He stares at Elliot and John for a moment before he goes, “Your glass is empty. Can I get you another drink?”

“Please,” she eeks out, amidst the burning humiliation that comes with having absolutely no control over the situation, and passes him her glass. Fuck, where is Joey? She can dig her own grave, but she’ll need someone to dump the dirt over her once she climbs in. “Thank you, David.”

He gives her another long, searching look, one that she doesn’t quite understand the intention of, before he walks off with the glass in his hand. After two seconds of him being gone, John is very clearly trying to stifle his laughter.

“What?” Elliot grinds out. “If you’re about to say something narcissistic and cruel, John, he’s very handsome and I—”

“You called him the wrong name,” he says, gleefully.

“No I didn’t,” she replies instantly, but then the mortification washes over her, panic setting in. His name was Daniel. Not David. “No,” she says anyway, again, “I—said…Daan—”

“David,” the brunette clarifies. His eyes are bright. “You said David. His name is—and we can say it together, this time, with feeling—”

Elliot sucks in a sharp little breath. “Fuck you.”

“I’d love it,” John replies as quick as instinct, voice pitching low, “more than anything.”

And there it is—wretched, vicious man, sinking his claws right back into her just like that, like it’s nothing, like she’s completely incapable of holding her own against a man she broke up with.

Her face flushes scarlet. She doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk. Where the fuck is Joey?

“Elliot,” John starts, but she clears her throat.

“Should wash out your shirt,” she says abruptly, snatching it from his shoulders and gripping it in her now-empty fist, “otherwise it’s going to be sticky and you’re going to bitch about it and send me an invoice.”

And she turns on her heel and marches to the nearest bathroom. Anything to get some space between her and John, anything to get her a little fucking breathing room. This whole thing had been a mistake from the get-go; she shouldn’t have ever agreed to coming to this party. But Joey is making out with a pretty red-head, she sees on her way to the bathroom, and it’s her duty, as a best friend wingman, to not end the festivities early.

Of course, taking the shirt to the bathroom had been a bad idea, because while it provides her a temporary reprieve from John’s closeness, he’s soon sliding into the bathroom behind her and shutting the door.

“Anyway, I’ve been having a great time,” Elliot says, which isn’t true, turning the water on cold and running her fingers under it for a minute even though she doesn’t need to. “He’s very nice. And—”

“I’m glad you’re here,” John interrupts, and he’s crowding up behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror, and he’s shirtless, and it’s so fucking unfair. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“We—” She clears her throat, sticking the shirt under the water. “Broke up.”

“So you’re going to ignore me?”

“Well I work,” she snaps. Her fingers scrub the polo uselessly. “I have a fucking job. And, I’ll remind you, I’m here with someone, so if you want to give me a little more—”

“Ell,” he murmurs, his voice low, his mouth against her ear, “are you trying to make me jealous?”

Yes, everything in her says as his hands cage her in against the sink, just the way that he knows she likes. “I’m not that petty.”

“It’s working.” He makes a low, despondent sound, the timbre of it rumbling against her skin, and it’s so fucking ludicrous, how can someone be so attractive when they’re complaining?

Elliot slaps her hand down on the faucet to stop the water and turns around, steeling herself against him. “I’m not—”

“I can’t stop picturing you with him, and I hate it,” John says, their foreheads touching and their noses brushing—and it’s so unfair, so fucking unfair, he is so attractive and she misses the way that he kisses her. She’s fucking weak and she hates it. “Is that what you want, hellcat? A nice boy named Daniel to mix you a drink and kiss you at midnight?”

“Fuck,” Elliot says, about to say You, but he’s kissing her. His hands immediately go to her hips through the flimsy black silk of her dress and he hoists her onto the sink’s counter so that he can sidle between her legs, closer closer closer, always discontent with how much of her skin is within reach.

He kisses her like he’s hungry—a man, starving, for her, Elliot Nobody Honeysett, backwater hicktown Deputy with nary a designer anything to her name, but he’s hungry for her all the same. He kisses her, and from there on out it’s No Man’s Land: there’s no Joey, no crowd of people, no Nice Boy Dalton (Daniel) to make sure she’s behaving herself, and so she knots her fingers in his hair and kisses him back.

Stupid, she thinks, even when her lips part for him almost immediately, especially when she moans into his kiss because his teeth drag on her lip. Stupid, stupid fucking girl, you can’t, you can’t.

But she is. John’s breath fans hot and silky against her neck and she feels her lashes flutter, his hands sliding up under the hem of her dress, and it’s so fucking loud—loud, and hot, and the sink started running again because she bumped it, that neither she nor John pay any attention to the countdown starting outside.

“I don’t think you do,” John rumbles, voice thick and laden with desire. “Want a good boy. Do you, Ell?”

“Shut the fuck up,” she grinds out, “and kiss me, fuckface.”

He grins against her mouth and yanks her hips against his. It’s tight; the bathroom’s small, meant to be a quick stop, and certainly in a house like this there’s a bigger master bathroom that would be much more comfortable, if they could just—

Stop, she thinks furiously, stop mapping out a route to get fucked in.

A whimper pitches out of her when John slides his arm under her and hauls her closer still. Her fingers dig into his bare shoulders, and he says, “Love when you make that sound, Ell, so fucking good—no good boy for you, isn’t that right?”

“No,” she gasps obediently against his mouth. Later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment: she has a perfectly nice boy waiting to kiss her come midnight waiting outside, and she and John are making out like fucking teenagers in a tiny, cramped bathroom.

Yes, later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment, and feel a great deal of shame. For now, she thinks only of John, and the way he grips her hips with his hands until she moans and the way he says, “You belong to me,” and how if anyone else said that shit, they’d get clocked in the fucking face, but with John it’s—

Different.

It’s always different.

The whole thing is all very distracting. John, bunching her skirt up around her hips so that he can get her closecloseclose, ever craving her touch, and her ever craving to be touched; John, breathing her name against her mouth; John, John, John, doing anything, doing literally anything is so distracting and all-consuming that it’s like there’s no oxygen left in the room anymore for her to breathe.

“Fucking missed you,” he sighs, kissing her palm, the inside of her wrist. “You know I can’t get enough of you. So tell me you missed me, too—”

Went to wash out his shirt, she’ll tell David, and we got distracted.

That’s a good way to put it. We’re distracted, Elliot thinks, gliding her hands along his shoulders and kissing him again. That’s all. Just distracted.

They’re so distracted, they even miss the clock striking midnight.

But at least she got her kiss.

[adelaidedrubman]

“I’m faster than you, the mantra rambling in her head. Faster and stronger and I’ll fucking kill you.” (x)

happy birthday to everyone’s favorite harbinger 》 deputy elliot honeysett 》 ancient names / witching hour 》 owned by @honeysides

[stacispratt]

big god

okay so i posted this a while ago and then immediately deleted it because i hated it so much and NOW it’s about 4x longer but still just as incoherent i think BUT ANYWAYS!! big thanks to @consumedkings for letting me play with our ocs like action figures in her delightful universe!! this is essentially just. a character study of wes in the ancient names universe

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It's always when Ell's not around.

"You need someone who will love you as much as you love them," John says. "Someone like me."

Always then, that John tries to dig his fingers under the chinks in Wes's armor and pry him open. Like he's just desperate to get covered in the brilliant red of Wes's blood, smeared with gore— like all he wants is to reach inside and get a hold on Wes's heart. To get such a firm hold on it that Wes will never, never be able to forget him.

He's seen him the same, with Elliot. Wes has seen the spark in his eyes when he sees her get vulnerable, the twitch in his fingers. Desperate to pry her open, too. But he doesn't get to do that right now— Joseph is busy doing it, taking Elliot's confession. And John is jealous, something inside him roiling with it, so he's taking it out on Wes. Trying to prove to himself that at least one of them is all his.

When Ell said "Not to you. Joseph." Wes had seen it, watched the careful progression flit through John's body language— fear, jealousy, fury. Panic, when John returned to their little house and Wes had taunted him with a "Don't tell me you're jealous—" 

John had snapped his hand out to grip Wes's wrist, Wes had grabbed John's shirt, and. And.

Wes only stares up at John. His hands are planted into the mattress on either side of his head, caging him in. If Wes relinquishes even an inch, shows even the tiniest reaction, the smallest twitch in his expression, John will take it and run. He'll grab the thread and pull and pull and pull until Wes is nothing more than a pile of string, free for John to take and reform as he wishes. To make him into something new. Something that better suits John. Better suits Eden's Gate.

So Wes keeps his face blank. He doesn't grab for John and beg Oh, God, give me something warm and safe to stuff inside my chest. God, stuff me full of love until I can't take it anymore.

But John sees something, because he lurches forward, presses all of himself to Wes, and pushes their lips together. “You need me, Wes,” John breathes into his mouth. “You and Ell. You know why?" he asks, and doesn't wait for an answer. "Because you need someone who understands you." Their lips brush. "Someone who's never felt– never felt as loved in return for the love they've given."

It's the most honest John has ever been with him, Wes thinks. His stomach twists.

"I can give you that," John whispers. "Eden's Gate can give you that."

“Shut up,” Wes groans. “I don’t want your cult.”

“No, you’re right." John brings his hand up to cradle Wes's face in his palm, thumb just under his eye, pinky finger curled under his jaw. Wes always likes that, John holding his jaw. Firm or with feather-light touch. Either way, it makes Wes's eyelashes flutter. “You just want me.”

Wes squeezes his closed eyes shut even tighter and rolls on top of John. He pins him down, bites his lip, and repeats, "Shut up."

                                                            /

“He’s got his claws in me, Ell,” Wes whispers, the next morning, fearful even in the crook of her neck. No one else will hear them, alone in their cabin at Joseph's Compound (John's at one of those little Seed family meetings, where he and Ell are definitely the main topic of discussion), but it feels wrong to say at all, even when it's so hushed no one but she could hear it. “I’m afraid– I’m afraid even when we get out of here, I’ll never really leave. I’ll never be able to leave.”

She holds him, rubs his shoulderblades, and says resolutely, "We're going to get out. No matter what bullshit the Seeds feed us." She pauses, and insists, hard enough to convince both of them, "We're going to get out."

Oh, and that. John's and Joseph's insistence that they're not going to get out of this scot free— that the Feds will see everything they've done. See the violence coiled in Ell's muscles, the blood caked under Wes's fingernails. Whenever Wes tries to tell himself they're not right, tries to say It's self-defense, tries to say They'll understand, he feels anxiety crawling under his skin.

Paired with the sensation of John's hold on him, so powerful it's like physical touch, he's… he's got this terrible, sinking feeling that his mind—his identity— is never going to leave Hope County. That he'll be firmly rooted in his fear and terror and violence for the rest of his life.

Maybe he'll never even leave physically. Maybe he'll die here. Maybe he'll get stuffed full of flowers.

God, he hopes not. For Ell's sake.

They've already lost Joey.

WRATH, DO YOU STILL WANT TO BLOOM IN ME? 

He imagines it, written into his chest. They wouldn't even have to write the WRATH. John already did it for them.

Wes remembers to breathe and takes a shuddering inhale, his face still pressed under Ell's jaw. "Right," he says, fighting to keep his voice even. He shakes off the ghostly sensation of John's nails in his flesh, the imagined burn of a knife in his chest, and forces himself to really feel her arms around him. To appreciate how steady she is. "We're going to get out."

Ell turns her head and kisses his temple.

                                                            /

Faith takes Ell on a walk. He offers to come with, a little anxious at the idea of being apart from her, but Faith dismisses the idea with a giggle. "Deputy Honeysett can take care of us, I'm sure," she chirps. "We're even taking Boomer, too. We'll be perfectly safe, Wes."

He holds Ell's gaze for a moment, until she nods, just a little. He relents, "Okay," despite his prickling neck.

"Besides," Faith chimes, "I think Joseph wanted to have a word with you."

That gives Elliot pause, makes her open her mouth to protest. "Wes, you shouldn't—" she starts, because Elliot might have a soft spot for Faith, but Joseph is just about her least favorite. She confessed to him because she felt like she had to. She doesn't want Wes to have to do the same.

It's okay. He can deal with Joseph. He can choke out the confession he wants to hear.

"I know," Wes interrupts gently. "It can't hurt. It's okay."

Ell lingers, then steps forward and grabs the back of his neck, hauls him down for a chaste kiss. "Don't forget who you're dealing with," she murmurs against his mouth. He nods, takes a deep breath, and she pulls away.

He watches her, Faith, and Boomer walk for a few moments, then turns on his heel.

He finds Joseph at the alter. "Wesley," he says, without even turning to face him.

"Wes," Wes corrects, and seats himself in one of the pews in the first row. Joseph merely hums. "Faith said you wanted to, uh… talk."

Joseph stays silent for a second, just staring at the window of the church, casting light on the dust floating in the air around them. Wes blinks at the window, in the shape of the cross of Eden's Gate, and briefly recalls his first night here. 

Then cloud crosses the sky, the ray of sunlight disappears, and Joseph turns to face him.

"Yes," he says, as he looks Wes over. "I've been thinking. About the myriad of ways this situation could turn out."

Wes snorts and looks down at his hands, resting comfortably on his thighs. "How many different ways are there for the world to end in holy fire?" he asks, a smirk pulling the corner of his mouth up. "Or do you doubt your own visions?"

"No, I don't," Joseph says, almost immediately. It's not frazzled, though— he's just as unruffled as ever. Wes looks up. Joseph stands right in front of him, hands held casually behind his back. "John does." 

Wes closes his mouth.

Joseph smiles, just slightly, without his eyes, and sits beside Wes on the pew. "But," he says, "he did get me thinking. About… creating safety nets. In case God's plans are not exactly as I imagine."

Just as Wes starts to think what a safety net for Eden's Gate could possibly be—finally, actually eliminating him and Ell?—Joseph says, gentle as Wes has heard him be yet, "If the world does not end as soon as I imagine, you will have to be protected from the law," and Wes feels himself lock up.

"I'm not the one who needs to worry about the law," he says, voice tight, and resolutely does not look toward Joseph, even though he can feel Joseph's eyes on him. "I haven't done anything wrong."

"You must know that's not true."

Wes keeps staring, silent and frozen, gone stone-still with fright. Joseph's face stays placid. After a moment, Wes swallows and croaks, "It's self defense."

"Deputy Honeysett has already killed one man with nothing more than a blunt object, and the two of you went on a mass Cleansing of my followers before the Family even appeared. She's a hazard to herself." Wes opens his mouth to defend her, but Joseph barrels on, "And you're no better, Deputy Beltran. Operating as judge, jury, and executioner within Hope County. There is no excuse for the things you've done here."

"You're the one who started a fucking war in the—"

"Wes," Joseph interrupts. "My group of devoted followers have been targeted, attacked, and gutted by a foreign cult. We look… sympathetic." Wes's skin starts to itch, as he anticipates the punch coming on. "If you were to align yourself with us, we could protect you from suspicion. If the very group you slaughtered accepted you, it would look… better, for your case. You would not seem so dangerous. Not such a loose canon."

"I'm not a loose canon," Wes protests, and the effect is weakened by the uncertainty in his voice.

Joseph answers him calmly once more, like he's barely even listening to what Wes has to say. "You are. You and Ell operated by your own rules and executed your enemies as you saw fit." Joseph shifts, tips his head. "My people. The… redemption it would show, to align yourselves with us, would place you in the right. You and Ell. Both of you would seem sympathetic. Two people lost in the fray."

Wes's head feels fucking cloudy. "Align myself?"

Then he makes the mistake of actually looking at Joseph. The moment he does, he sees Joseph's warm eyes (somehow, despite it fucking all, despite the cruel calculation Wes knows he's capable of), sees the concern in the lines of his face. Sees Joseph reach for him, feels cool fingers on the back of his neck, as the Father draws him in, and gently, very gently, rests their foreheads together. "Yes," he murmurs, as his thumb runs up into Wes's hairline. "You understand what I'm saying, don't you? That this is the best way to protect yourself." He pauses, then elaborates, "To protect Elliot."

Wes's eyes close against his will, and his fingers twitch in his lap. 

Joseph's words creep into him and start to take root. Less of a loose canon if I'm sided with Eden's Gate. More of a victim, less of a killer, if the people on my side are the corpses stuffed with flowers. 

By extension, Ell would look less guilty, too.

"We can protect you," Joseph murmurs. "I can save you. If only you'd let me."

They're breathing the same air. Maybe if Wes could just catch a breath of the crisp air outside, something brisk and fresh, he'd be thinking clearer, but right now, he's thinking As a backup. Just in case things don't go to plan, and even louder, To protect Elliot, to protect Elliot, to protect Elliot, so he says, "How would I…"

Joseph inhales and curls his other hand around Wes's bicep. Anchors himself tighter into Wes. "Your last name," he says. Warming Wes up to the idea, giving him a moment to soak in each word. "If you were to change it."

Wes scrunches his eyebrows. "Change it?"

Very faintly, Joseph breathes, "If you were to become a Seed." He only gives Wes a second to absorb that, lest panic sets in, and he continues, "You would align yourselves clearly with us. Place yourself under our protection. Under John's protection, my protection." Joseph pauses, then reminds, "And in turn, you would help Deputy Honeysett."

Wes hesitates. Joseph lands the killing blow.

"Deputy Pratt, too, would be protected with this. As he is aligned with you." Wes flinches, opens his mouth to blurt out demands about where Staci is, and how Wes needs to get him, needs to keep him safe, and Joseph continues, "He is safe, in the Whitetails. You can keep him safe."

Wes doesn't give himself too much time to think about it, to talk himself out of it. He told himself he'd do whatever he needed to get out of Hope, with Ell and Joey and Staci, and he's already fucking lost one of them. He already lost Joey, he lost her, and if he lost Ell too, lost Staci— he wouldn't know what to do, and if– if they made it out of Hope, only for their actions here to be what does Ell and Staci in, he would never– never— 

"Okay," Wes blurts, and flutters his eyes open to look down at Joseph's bare chest, at the EDEN written over his ribs. "I– okay."

For a moment, Joseph squeezes his neck so tight it's painful.

Then he releases Wes entirely and leans back to look at him once more. "Good, Wes," he says. "Good."

Wes signs the document Joseph has. Under Your new name: he writes Wesley Abraham Seed with shaky, wobbly lettering, and feels his stomach turn uncomfortably. He tries to tell himself, for Ell and Staci, for Ell and Staci, for Ell and Staci, on repeat, again and again, until Joseph guides the paper from him and praises, "There. You've done well."

For Joey.

Wes flexes his hand around the pen in his hand. Seed, he thinks. 

Then he thinks, Fuck, and barely remembers to say anything to Joseph before he stumbles out of the church like a drunken man. He doesn't even know where he's going until he collapses onto his and Ell's bed in their cabin.

"I think I'm a fucking idiot," he says into the pillow, as his stomach turns and turns and turns.

It'll be a fucking miracle if he ever gets to go home.

[lilwritingraven]

Jealous

This little short is for @proudspires because she’s so amazing, and I love her baby Elliot so much. I imagine this set in the same world as her delicious piece’s where John and Elliot are in a long distance relationship. 

Ash thank you so much for being such a good friend, and throwing me delicious headcanon’s for our girls!!

Warnings: This is not beta read, because Ash is my beta reader and I wanted to surprise her. Sorry!

******************************************

Staci had never felt more miserable. Sitting at the bar of the spread eagle, hunching over his drink, watching Audry dance with Deputy Honeysett. The blonde had arrived a couple months back, when he and Audry were going through a rough time, and Audry had immediately latched on.

         Staci knew it was the girls fault they had broken up, had seen the text messages between the two. Anger swelled in his chest once again at the memory. He and Audry had fought before, but she always forgave him.

         At least she used to.

         Now, he watched as Audry pulled the girl close by her belt loops, noticing her secret, sexy smile she pulled before she did something sinful. Elliot molded into her easily, hands cupping the girl’s cheeks. Staci watched Audry’s soft lips meet Elliot’s, and the air in the room became too heavy.

         He didn’t even know Audry liked women.

         When they pulled apart, Elliot’s eyes flicked over Audry’s shoulder and she froze, lips parting ever so slightly. Audry looked back, eyes dark. Staci also looked back, trying to be nonchalant.

         There, standing by the door was a man with dark brown hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and dressed in a fine suit. His eyes were locked on the pair of girls, his face showing his annoyance.

         Staci looked back at the girls, watching Audry lean in and whisper something into Elliot’s ear. Elliot nodded, eyes never leaving the man. Audry laughed, looking back and waving him over.

         He immediately moved, a grace to his step that just screamed lawyer. Staci scoffed, having to wave off Mary May’s inquisitive look.

         The moment he stopped in front of them, Audry’s hand shot out and gripped his tie, pulling him close. Staci’s heart leapt into his throat, and he was about 3 seconds from jumping off the stool and marching over there. When she brought her mouth to his ear instead, his muscles relaxed.

         He needed to get a grip. Audry had told him they were done for good. Why couldn’t he just let that be that?

         Because you love her.

         Audry, leaned back, smoothing the man’s tie against his chest with a wicked grin. Elliot had reached out and gripped his hand, giving him a lustful smile. Staci didn’t want to think about what they were saying, but images of the three in bed raced through his mind.

         He downed his shot. He didn’t need that in his head for the rest of the night.

         When he looked back at the trio, Elliot and the man had disappeared, and Audry was walking towards him.

­__________________

         Elliot’s back hit the wall of the men’s bathroom, John’s lips on hers harsh and punishing. Her hands knotted in his hair, tugging, making him moan.

         “You naughty girl, kissing other women while I’m not here to enjoy it.” Elliot tugged harder, grinning widely.

         “You’re just jealous she didn’t ask you to join.” His hands gripped her thighs, wrapping them around his waist. She gasped at the tightness in his jeans; John slid his tongue into her mouth, hips grinding against hers.

         “You brat. I come all this way to surprise you, and this is how I’m treated?”

         “Maybe you shouldn’t have come.” The words held no venom, instead coming out breathless and needy.

         John’s fingers tighten around her thighs, mouth moving to nip at the sweet spot on her shoulder. “No, I think I couldn’t have chosen a better time to show up.” He released her suddenly, stepping back and releasing his tie. His eyes dark, pupils blown wide. “Be a good girl and get on your knees.”

_____________________

         Audry stopped at the bar, waving down Mary May and purposely ignoring Staci. She could feel his eyes on her, wanted to feel his mouth. She closed her eyes against the thought, irritation flooding her senses.

         She was a petty fool, trying to purposely make him jealous. After all, there was a reason they hadn’t gotten back together after the last time.

         Right?

         “So,” Staci cleared his throat, taking a drink from his glass before continuing. “Girls, huh?”

         Audry fought a laugh, biting her lip. She spared him a glance, regretting it immediately. The shirt he wore one of her favorites; black, tight and bulging under his muscles. His eyes, unreadable in the light of the bar, searched hers. She hoped he couldn’t hear the tremble of her voice as she said, “Yeah, I guess men just didn’t do it for me.”

         His hand tightened around his drink, eyes narrowing. “You and I both know I’m the only man you’ve been with.”

         Put your mouth on me. The thought came so suddenly Audry had to look away, focusing on the door Elliot and John disappeared behind. “Maybe that was the problem.”

         His arm gripped her shoulder, turning her around to face him. “Don’t act like this, Audry. It may work for Honeysett, but not for you.”

         Audry’s heart leapt into her throat, pounding restlessly. Her voice lowered seductively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pratt.”

         He shifted his body to face her. Without thinking, Audry reached out and smoothed the collar on his shirt, pausing with her hand flat against his chest. She met his eyes; dark, narrowed. Lips parted ever so slightly. He lightly gripped her hand, bringing her wrist to his mouth and planting a kiss. Audry’s breath caught in her chest. “Don’t you miss this, Audry? How well we fit together?”

         He pulled her in between his legs, his other hand molding to her waist. He placed a light kiss just under her ear, whispering, “Remember all the fun we used to have?” A shiver ran down her spine. His mouth moved, stopping on the corner of her lips. “Don’t you miss having someone who knows your body as well as you do?”

         “Staci-,” the word barely formed, a wisp of smoke in the night. Their lips met, melting into each other. Fire raced through her veins, igniting her insides.

         He was right, after. They always did fit perfectly together.

____________________

         Elliot awoke the next morning in her bed, on her stomach. “Good morning,” Audry spoke behind her, fingers trailing lightly over her shoulders. “The boys are downstairs making us breakfast.”

         “Hmm,” Elliot hummed, loving the feel of Audry’s hands on her. The other girl leaned forward, kissing the back of her neck, the top of her shoulder, her shoulder blade. While John touched her like he needed her, Audry touched Elliot like she worshipped her. “I could stay in this bed forever.” Elliot confessed.

         She felt Audry grin against her back. “I don’t doubt it.” Her hand skimmed lower, over the lowest part of Elliot’s back. “But I, for one, am excited to have something that isn’t takeout for once.”

         Elliot laughed. “We’re a poor sort, the two of us.”

         “We absolutely are.”

[honeysidesarchived]

John’s thumb swept along the one that stretched over her hip bone. He hummed, low and hungry, into her skin. He might have been coming down from his high, but it didn’t seem to be pushing him into sleep; he was enjoying it, the gentle careening to sobriety.

And maybe tomorrow she would regret telling him. Maybe tomorrow she would feel dirty for the way that she killed Kian, instead of intoxicated with her own magic. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but that was a thing to think about when the time came, and just like she had done everything else about herself that she hadn’t liked, she would strangle it and move on.

John turned her around so that he could pull her against him. He said, “I thought so,” like he had recognized it in her, and she thought about that dream. Just like me, holding her blood-covered hands in his. You’re just like me.

ancient names, chapter 17

tumblr wanted to fuck with my post of this piece of art on my old blog, so i decided to give this a fresh post on here. still one of my most favorite commissions to date that i've gotten from @minilev especially considering how incredible of an experience it was to write ancient names in its entirety AND have this particular scene happening!!!! ugh y'all i still am not OVER the scars, the steam, literally every detail in this is absolutely stunning and perfect. ♡♡♡ tumblr leave my naughty post alone

[honeysidesarchived]

🌈 A COLOR I ASSOCIATE WITH MY MUSE ▹ elliot + teal

too many war wounds and not enough wars / too few rounds in the ring and not enough settled scores / too many sharks and not enough blood in the waves / you know i give my lover a four-letter name

— requested by @lilwritingraven & @smithandrogers ♡

[honeysidesarchived]

“ let's play nice for one night, ey?” For Elliot and John?

HIIIIII LYDIA thank u sm for the prompt <3 trying to get less caught up on word count and just enjoy them so i can do the thing that sparks joy (writing) so i really appreciate it!!

john/elliot + "let's play nice for one night, ey?" from this prompt list! since this is the month of spooky scary skeletons, i decided to set this in my as yet unnnamed vampire au--or, tentatively titled, "elliot is a human deputy who is just out here trying her fucking best but this stupid sleazy vampire real estate lawyer won't leave her the fuck alone OR pay his fucking tickets". still workshopping it but i am feeling p good about the length of that title

rating: m for mature just because they're stupid ig

warnings: naughty language, mentions of a previous ~fling, vampires making puns. or just puns in general. i am sorry

words: 1.6k

"Deputy, I am begging you to exert a single ounce of emotional intelligence."

The clock's hand sits at precisely 6:28 pm--two minutes before her shift ends and the window for paying tickets closes until the morning again. The fluorescents of the Sheriff's office flicker once and then settle, buzzing absently in the back of her skull and reminding her that her Exedrin's about to wear off. If not for time passing, it would be because John Seed's presence at the doorstep of her workplace kicks her metabolism into high-fucking-gear.

"You should hit that open mic night at the Spread Eagle, John," Elliot drawls. "That's a real funny line. I bet Mary May'd get a kick out of it."

The brunette standing at the doorway lets out a single, sharp exhale through his nose. His eyes narrow. In most cases, Elliot thinks, she would be more worried about a pissed off vampire storming around outside of the office, but in this--as in most things--John Seed provides little but comedic relief.

"I'm trying to pay my tickets," he reiterates for what is about the fifth time in the last ten minutes, "which you so lovingly wrote for me."

"We've got a very different memory of how the writing up of your noise violations went."

He flashes a grin. The curve of pronounced canines catches fluorescents. "A love note, if you will. If you wanted my attention, Deputy, you needn't drive all the way out and write up these silly tickets. You got it just fine the other night, after all." His head cocks to the side. "I can taste your yearning from here."

The clock hand ticks to the :29 mark. Elliot sucks her teeth. She's not sure what's worse; the fact that once last week she'd crumbled on her stupid caveman desires and let John Seed fuck her, or that he's a vampire making jokes about tasting. She'd never met a vampire that could withhold from making one taste-engineered joke. It was always I can taste your yearnings and don't you just want to take a bites?

Briefly, she looks at the papers clutched loosely in John's fist. "Lots of love notes you've got there."

He waves them, ruefully. "And all from you. Now, if you'll..."

John gestures at the doorway. Elliot cocks a brow at him.

"Deputy," John says, once again gesturing. "Elliot. Miss Honeysett."

"John."

"Let's play nice for one night, ey?"

"Playing nice," she corrects him, "would be not getting multiple noise complaints because your blood-sucking-buddies keep the neighbors up at night. Seriously, you guys are supposed to have enhanced hearing, how can you not be aware of yourselves?"

"Oh, come on."

"Are you going to pay your tickets, Mr. Seed?" Elliot idles.

"Well," he bites out between his teeth, "if you would be so kind as to invite me in?"

Elliot blows hot air through her mouth. The clock hand ticks to the :30 mark. She shrugs.

"Sorry," she replies, "no can do. I'm off the clock."

"What?"

"Cashier's office is closed now, too," Elliot adds, pulling her jacket on and unclipping her name tag. She smiles prettily. "But you can come back tomorrow morning."

"Tomo--you know that I can't," John seethes. "The sun is staying out way longer than it should be this time of year! And these tickets are due--"

"I know when they're due, John," she replies serenely, pressing her thumb to the little clock-out button until it thanks her doing so in its cheerful robot voice. "I wrote them."

"Then--then let me just pay them!"

"Sorry," she repeats, pulling her keys out , "fresh out of emotional intelligence to be able to make that call."

She's about to close the door in his face--and leave out the back, promptly--when she hears someone clear their throat behind her. She turns to see Whitehorse standing there; his mouth is downturned in a frown, the handlebar mustache somehow making his disapproval more pronounced.

"Evening, Sheriff," John greets, chipper as ever. "Deputy Honeysett was just locking me out from paying my tickets."

Elliot shoots him a glare. Whitehorse sighs.

She says, "I'm off the clock." And then: "Sir."

"Just let the man pay his damn tickets, Honeysett," Whitehorse says. "I've been hearin' him whine and complain all night."

"I've only been here twenty minutes," John defends.

"Really? Could've swore it's been an eternity, Mr. Seed," Whitehorse sighs over his shoulder, sauntering up to the door. "You gonna lock up when you leave, Dep?"

Elliot grimaces. "Yes, sir."

"Great. Don't set the alarm. Pratt's already tripped it this month, and he about does it every time he works night."

She watches her boss make his way out to the parking lot, easing past John and fishing his keys out of his pocket. John smiles at her.

"Sooooo..."

Elliot heaves a sigh. "Come in."

He's practically buoyant as he slips in through the door, the fluorescents washing him in an immediate glow that screams undead. She'd only been working in Hope County for a year, but it had been the longest fucking year of her life, dealing with John Seed and his fucking wacko monster brothers.

Swinging around the counter, she fishes the cashier's box out and sets it on the counter.

"Cash or check, John?"

"I've got my card with me."

"Sorry, I know that must have been confusing because I phrased it as a question, but I meant it as a statement." She narrows her eyes. "Cash or check. John."

As he sets the tickets down on the counter and pulls out his wallet, John says, "I am so glad we get this time together."

He holds out a wad of bills. He has not counted them to make sure they're the correct amount.

Elliot rolls her eyes. "Move back home, they said, you'll have less supernatural to deal with, they said. Biggest fucking pain in my ass this side of the Rockies."

She reaches to retrieve the bills over the counter. Before her fingers can reach the thing standing between her, some Chinese take out, and a six-pack of canned wine, John's other hand snatches hers.

The movement is so fast it's barely perceptible; immediately, animal instinct kicks in. She feels her pulse leap and she goes to jerk her hand out of his grip, but it stays rock solid. It's cold--and familiar, unfortunately.

"Oh, there's a little jump," John purrs. "Not scared of me, are you? After the lovely night we shared?"

Elliot feels her face go hot. The brunette seems only pleased by this--drinking it in, as the case may be. Oh, God. I'm getting infected by the vampire puns.

"You just startled me, you fuckhead," she replies tartly. "Now let go."

"I love how mean you get when you're trying to act like you don't want me." He releases his grip on her, watching the retraction of her hand hungrily, fixed on the pulse point beneath the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. "What are you doing after this?"

Elliot rubs her wrist absently. It doesn't hurt; she just doesn't like the residual feel of his touch. "I'm about to be fucking staking you if you don't lay off."

"Oh, come on, it was all in good fun," he cajoles, leaning against the counter and pushing the pills into her hand. "Nothing but a little play between lovers?"

"Do not call me that," she hisses, fishing his tickets off of the counter. "Letting you fuck me one time because you somehow managed to appear slightly above average does not, by any means, make us lovers."

"But we could be." He grins. It's almost boyish.

"I think once was enough."

"Is this a test? I love tests. I'm very good at them. In fact--"

"You have to come back tomorrow," Elliot cuts in, putting the bills back in his hand. John blinks.

"What? But I--"

"I don't have change for all your big-man-bills," she deadpans, "and I can't run a credit card, before you ask. So do you have a checkbook?"

John narrows his eyes. "Do I look like I carry a checkbook around?"

"I don't know, do vampires have checking accounts?"

"Of course we--this is absurd! Just keep the change! I'll get fined again if--"

"No-can-do, Big Spender," she drawls, dropping the cash box below the counter again and locking the little cupboard door. "It'll throw the books off. Nancy'll have a fit. She's getting very tempestuous, in her old age."

Elliot walks around the counter. His tickets are still folded up in her hand. When she reaches where John is standing, indignant, she tucks them neatly into the v of his vest.

"Deputy," he grits out, "please take my money."

"John," Elliot sighs, "I am begging you to exert an ounce of emotional intelligence. I could never put Miss Nancy under such duress." She pats his shoulder and heads for the door, the bell clinging as she opens it. John is still standing there, at the counter, fisting the bills in his hand.

"You wanna lock up for me, baby?" she asks, voice honeyed, snapping his attention to her. "Gotta make sure you don't set the alarm. Pratt'll trip it."

"You're really going to make me come back again tomorrow?" He cocks his head to the side. "You must want me to fuck you that bad."

Elliot sighs, leaning up against the doorway. The night out is cold; at home, her take out is waiting to be eaten, her wine waiting to be drank, some stupid Halloween Hallmark moving waiting to get put on her television.

"Maybe," she replies after a minute. "Guess you'll have to come pay your fucking tickets to find out."

[consumedkings-archive]

party favors ✤ no-cult au

honeyseed + “this isn't what i meant when i yelled fuck you” requested by @blissfulalchemist and “i’ve dreamt about this” requested by @chyrstis! (i hope you don't mind my combining these!!) sequel that nobody asked for to this oneshot

word count: 5.4k

warnings: mentions of a daddy kink in passing (you'll get what i mean), painfully awkward family dinners, mentions of "putting a dog down" (because ambrose is NUTS), mentions of abusive/neglectful parenting, needy!john, posessive!john, also john thinks that he has to compete with elliot's absentee father all the time so he does dumb shit to "assert" his "dominance". all in all this has no explicit smut but bear these things all in mind pls

The time it takes them to “get vodka” from Scarlet’s house is longer than anticipated, but not as long as Elliot would prefer. She takes a little time to clean herself up in the bathroom while John tends to his car—not that there’s much of a mess, anyway, the house was barely a forty-second turn around the bend—and she brings out her mother’s preferred bottle of vodka (Ketel One) and finds John leaned against the hood of his car, waiting expectantly.

“I can’t believe you didn’t go inside,” Elliot teases, picking her way down the path between the rose bushes and stopping in front of him. John’s hands go to her waist, gripping where there’s still a dull, pleasant ache from their previous activities. “You know, get some more snooping in.”

“Considered it,” he relents, pulling her between his legs so that he can kiss her, “but since I’ve only been up here once before, I figured there’d be plenty more to come.”

Elliot hums, curling her fingers into his now-buttoned up shirt (disappointing). “Very presumptuous of you.”

“It seems I’m making mistakes left and right tonight,” John agrees, nose brushing hers and his hands sliding beneath the hem of her dress, up the backs of her thighs. He makes a low noise and digs his fingers into her skin, adding, “Surely your mother doesn’t need her vodka that quickly.”

“You’d be—surprised,” Elliot replies as she tries to keep her voice even. It’s fairly successful despite the brunette’s wandering hands making her want to squirm. “She’s a beast without it.”

“Ell,” John rumbles, “I think you and I both know that your mother is a beast of her own, period.”

“I’m going to tell her you said that.”

“Oh, please don’t.”

“I like the sound of that.” She says the words against his mouth. “You saying please.”

The brunette makes an intrigued sound, as though the prospect of saying please in other, more sordid ways has greatly interested him. She grins, kisses him once, and then a second time, longer, curling her fingers into his beard at his jawline for a moment as she indulges in the feeling of it all—sated and pleasantly achy, with the humid heat of the night sticking to her skin and the smell of John’s expensive cologne filling her up like a wineskin—before she reluctantly pulls away and makes her way to the passenger side of the car.

“Let’s go,” she says, “I’d like to get my parents out of my house as soon as possible.”

John grins, boyish and wolfish all at once. “Boy, you really did miss me.”

Elliot resists the urge to roll her eyes—but it’s hard not to return the smile, especially considering how earnest he’d been before. Wrong, and insecure, yes; but earnest about a lot of it, which is more than can be said for any boyfriend that she’s had before. Joey keeps reminding her that just because John is beating the bar, which is low set already thanks to said past boyfriends, doesn’t mean he’s actually good for her; but she thinks he is. In a lot of ways, he is. She’s never felt safe with someone like she has with John.

“We should probably talk about the fact that you believed I was cheating on you,” she says as he pulls down the drive. His mouth downturns into a grimace. Joey would be proud of her.

“We could,” he agrees. “Or, we could pull over and make out instead. Doesn’t that sound more fun? You’re already out of your underwear, half the work’s done.”

“John.”

“Look,” he says, lifting a hand to stop her—not that she was going to say anything than an admonishment in the form his name, anyway—and she lifts a brow expectantly. “I didn’t really date, before you. You know that. It was always just a passing, temporary bliss kind of thing.”

Elliot nods sagely, because she does know. That is another part of his allure, that he wants her enough to stay just with her, where he hasn’t before.

“So I’m just not used to it,” he finishes. “Having to worry about if you’re...cheating on me, or not. And maybe it’s really annoying that Jacob gets to see you all the time and I don’t. That’s all.”

“That’s all, huh?”

“That’s all.”

Elliot musters up a sound that she tries her best to make unimpressed and then settles back against the car seat. She’s happy he’s here, even if he came under malicious pretense; and there’s a part of her, too, that’s worried. That maybe it’s a failing on her part to assure him that she likes him, like really likes him, because she tries so hard to keep him and her family separate. Through no fault of his own—it’s all entirely because her mother is dreadful, and she doesn’t even know what kind of man her father is beyond ‘the type what readily abandons his wife and child, periodically over an extended stretch of time’. Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the way she’d like it to when making an introduction.

She tries not to think at all about Ambrose, if she can help it. She calls him her daddy and her mother says things like well, give your father a hug, Elli, like she’s supposed to want to touch someone who left her alone all this time. It’s the most sacred language, she thinks, touch; the idea of her father shaking John’s hand—a hand which would inevitably be on her body—had been nauseating. What had Ambrose’s hands been doing, this whole time? Where did all of their scars come from? Did she want to know?

John’s fingers brushed the inside of her knee, hooking beneath to rest there comfortably. He was always touching, gripping and tracing and feeling her out, like he’s still not sure if she likes it or not. She tries to make it obvious when she does and when she doesn’t, but she knows he still wonders. Like he’s waiting for her to turn around and say, actually, I don’t like it when you touch me, it’s repulsive and we need to break up right now.

“Awful quiet over there,” he ventures.

Elliot rests her hand over his, dragging the pad of her thumb across one tattooed finger. “Tired out.”

“Yeah?” John hums, turning down the road and back into town. “Getting fucked against the side of a car will do that to you.”

“I hope you’re just getting all of that out of your system before we sit down to dinner with my mother,” Elliot says dryly. The words make a familiar heat crawl back up her throat.

“And your father,” he points out.

Elliot opens her mouth; there’s an instinct to say, well, who knows if he’ll even still be there? That’s all it takes, just a few minutes, or, I’d prefer if he wasn’t there anyway, or, you don’t get it, John, that he’s not really there, it’s a man wearing my father’s face but he’s not there at the dinner table at all, just a fleshbag that calls himself my father. I don’t know him.

But all of these things feel very un-sexy and like it might ruin the mood. So she closes her mouth.

John lifts a brow. He says, “Go on.”

“It’s not really pillow talk,” she replies uneasily. “What if we pulled over and made out instead? My underwear’s already off, half the work’s done.”

“Ell,” he says, parking the car in front of the house and looking at her. Looking, like he could see right into her. Right down into the marrow of her bones. “I want you to say what you’re thinking.”

It’s very annoying. She sighs and says, “Maybe he left.”

John watches her; he seems to be waiting for more. When she doesn’t give it, he prompts, “Sure.”

“And, I would prefer it if he did.” Elliot’s mouth twists. “That’s a stranger in there, if he is. In there. All he is to me is skin and bone that walks and talks like my dad but everything about it—about him—is wrong. Off. Like—”

She stops herself again, and the brunette’s fingers squeeze her knee again, prodding. Prompting. Greedy to know. She’s never been with someone who wants so badly to know precisely what is going on in her brain at all times, but John does.

“Like something put his face on and walked through the door,” Elliot finishes after a minute. She feels a little crazy saying it out loud, and more and more unsexy as the seconds pass, but John leans across the console and reaches up with his free hand to thread his fingers into her hair and kiss her. It’s a slow and unhurried kind of kiss, one that assures her that he doesn’t want to fuck her any less for saying what she’s said.

John says, against her mouth, “Should I take a swig of that bottle before I go in?” and she laughs and kisses him again because it feels like what she said is really fine and alright and not at all an indicator of turmoil.

“She’ll glass you if you do,” Elliot replies. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

John is unsurprised to find that Scarlet struggles to hide her disdain for him upon their arrival back in Elliot’s house.

“Oh,” she says when he opens the door and ushers Elliot in ahead of him. “You’re staying for dinner, John?”

“I invited him,” Elliot interrupts, before John can spend the next forty-five seconds figuring out how to politely tell Scarlet that he’d be staying a lot longer than dinner, given that Elliot’s intimates are still deposited in the back of his car. The desire to absolutely scandalize his girlfriend’s mother is almost too strong. “Be nice, mama.”

“Well,” Scarlet replies primly, “I suppose that’s fine.”

“I would hope so. It is my house.”

“It just would be nice, bunny, if we had some family time.”

Elliot’s expression tightens. John can see it there, sitting on just the tip of her tongue, following the vein of what she had confided in him before; that it won’t feel like family time even if he’s there, that it would never feel like family time because Ambrose is her father in name alone.

John says serenely, “Can I make you a drink, Scarlet?”

It’s the magic phrase. He’s a quick learner, and he knows this, and he knows that Scarlet can see exactly what he’s doing but cannot resist the urge to put John in a position of servitude, so she narrows her eyes and says in a saccharine voice, “Sure, honey, why don’t you?”

There are a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t, but he plants a kiss on Elliot’s cheek and squeezes her hip before he takes the bottle of vodka out of her hand and makes his way into the kitchen.

It’s been a minute since he’s been inside of her house—and admittedly, the times that he’s been inside of it before, his attention has been elsewhere; even now, everything in the house looks and smells and feels like her in such a way that it feels like his attention is constantly being pulled to wherever it is she’s standing—but the kitchen is also housing her father, and Ambrose sticks out like a sore thumb.

Everything in Elliot’s house is soft and meticulously manicured. She doesn’t strike as the kind of woman who’s driven by a ferociously attentive eye for detail, but there are plenty of things that he’s still discovering about her, and her penchant for placing things exactly where and how she wants them, making them just the color and shape she likes, is a strong one; each throw blanket, pillow, shade of paint on the wall, rug. Her home is designed to be a soft place to land.

So it’s no wonder that Ambrose Honeysett, whose sharp, angular face and wolfish smile with full, too-white teeth, does not blend in.

“Have a nice drive?” Ambrose idles. He’s smoking in the kitchen. John knows that Elliot hates smoking in her house.

“Oh, I suppose.” Briefly, spitefully, he thinks about Elliot, pinned up against the side of his car, and, Fuck, I love your hands. “Hope County’s not really my choice of backdrop.”

“Mm. City boy,” Ambrose drawls in response. He plucks the bottle of vodka from John’s hands and pours himself a double in to a glass—no ice cubes, no mixer. The man balances the cigarette between his pointer and middle finger as he screws the cap back on. “Elli told us about you. Not sure if I like my little girl bein’ with a city boy.”

John resists the urge to grimace. He instead busies his hands with making Scarlet’s preferred alcoholic beverage (it’s been seared into his brain, you see—“Vodka martini dry, John—that means a drizzle of vermouth, not equal parts, and I want three olives”—and he can no longer see such a drink being ordered by a random in a bar without instantly disliking them) and says, “I’m flattered. I haven’t heard much about you.”

He’s feeling a little emboldened. He keeps replaying the last forty-five minutes over in his head, keeps thinking about how Elliot is already more his that she has ever belonged to her father, and maybe that’s a little deep-set greed in his heard reminding him that he hates sharing. John can see that the words do not skip over Ambrose’s head—not in the least—and the redhead cocks his head to the side and takes a long drag of his cigarette.

“You’re funny, Slick,” he drawls, and flashes a grin, wide and pearly, as he claps John on the shoulder like they’re college buddies. “I think I do like you.”

Well, John thinks, sucking his teeth and feigning a polite smile, that goes for one of us.

Before he can try and figure out Ambrose’s game (and it is, in fact, a game—John knows it when he sees it), Elliot has come into the kitchen and made an exasperated sound.

“I told you, no smoking in the house,” she snips. She gestures with her hands for him to depart.

“Sorry, bunny. Forgive your daddy his bad habits.”

Annoying. John can barely stand sharing Elliot’s attention with her mother, let alone the man that has caused her so much grief for so long. It’s not like Ambrose deserves her attention.

“You’re not sorry,” Elliot replies wearily, “but you will be if you don’t get that out of my kitchen. Scoot.” And then, in an effort to be somewhat nicer: “Please.”

Ambrose laughs, and squeezes her into a one-armed side hug that Elliot grimaces through, and then walks through the kitchen into the dining room and out onto the front porch. John pauses his work fishing a martini glass out of Elliot’s cabinet to turn around and look at her, thinly veiling his amusement.

“What?” she asks, annoyance still bleeding in from her father’s blatant disregard of her house rules.

“Every time I hear him refer to himself as your daddy,” he says, fingers snagging the hem of her sundress, “I just can’t stop thinking about how pretty you’d sound saying—”

“If you’re about to ask me to call you daddy, John—”

“—it to me,” he finishes, grinning wolfishly into the curve of her throat, hands sneaking below the hem of her dress. It’s distracting. How’s he supposed to mind his manners, he wonders—make a good impression on the parents he doesn’t give a shit about (except for Scarlet)—when she’s looking like this?

Elliot makes a little noise. “Hands,” she warns, as John’s fingers dig into warm skin Scarlet’s voice drifting in from the front doorway where she’s talking with Ambrose.

“You don’t even like it a little bit?” He murmurs the words into the hollow of her jaw. “You know... yes daddy, no daddy, please—”

The blonde slaps a hand over his mouth, her eyes narrowed playfully. “I will cut you,” she says. “We’re not negotiating a kink in my kitchen with my parents one room over. Mind yourself.”

John thinks about his slightly-new information—I love your hands—and he thinks about Ambrose smoking in Elliot’s kitchen even though she doesn’t like it, and he thinks about Scarlet—It would just be nice if we had some family time—and he thinks, Maybe I am family now, Scarlet, did you think about that? He gives the back of her thigh a playful slap, delighting in her surprised little yelp, her hand slipping from his mouth.

“John!”

“Sorry,” he says, not feeling or sounding particularly sorry at all despite his words. He grins. My girl, the thought permeating idly through his mind. “Promise I’ll behave.”

Elliot takes his chin in her hands. “Or else.”

“You’re so sexy when you’re threatening me.”

“Shut. Up.”

He grins and pulls her close by the backs of her thighs, until she’s flush against him. There’s nothing he wants more than to lift her up on the counter and have his way with her—but he’ll do as she asks. He’ll play nice during dinner, just like she wants, and pretend like it doesn’t drive him fucking batty.

“Sure,” he murmurs, kissing her jaw, the corner of her lips, and then full-on to rumble against her mouth, “anything you want.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Dinner is just as excruciating as Elliot thought it would be. She spends the first half of it pretending to be very interested in what it is her mother has to say about Delia and the other women back in Weyfield are up to (spoiler: it’s almost nothing interesting—it’s all about this one’s son getting kicked out of uni and this one’s daughter wrecking her car and don’t you just think it’s vapid, Elliot, these women who won’t even parent their own children?) and then the last half is spent—not to sound dramatic, or anything—wanting to end her fucking life.

It’s all quite harmless to start off with; John is trying to be his usual charming self, which Scarlet is handily unimpressed by but which her father engages with frequently. It's fine, but it’s got a weird energy to it. Elliot knows that John likely does not enjoy her father (he’s a hard man to enjoy) and certainly has a choice opinion about him given what he knows of his clinical and methodical abandonment of Elliot and her mother. It’s painful enough that she’s told John about how her dad left her alone in a mall at eight years old so he could fuck off for another ten years.

Like he promised, though, John behaves. He talks about real estate with Ambrose (which her dad knows nothing about—he just regurgitates shit he reads in the papers, Elliot knows) and leaves one hand on her thigh while they eat, hidden beneath the table cloth. Occasionally, it drifts upward, skimming the inside of her thigh and dangerously close, and she clears her throat loudly (much to his amusement). All in all, she thinks maybe she’s going to get out of this dinner relatively unscathed, and she thinks, this isn’t so bad.

John is in the middle of listening to Scarlet’s opinion on the Prescott girl’s wedding colors (saffron yellow, yuck, Scarlet thinks) and Elliot says, “Daddy, can you pass me the pepper?”

It’s just a question. She will tell herself this later—it’s just a question, it’s just a stupid fucking question—but of course, it is just her luck that things are not ever just something in her life, because Elliot glances up from her plate to see her father and John reaching for the pepper at the same fucking time.

There’s a very strange, awkward moment where John and Ambrose’s fingers meet at the pepper shaker. Elliot wants to sink into the floor and disappear.

We’re not, she wants to say. We don’t, I mean, I don’t say that, John doesn’t ask me to, we’ve just been joking with it, we don’t actually and if you let me tell you, it’s a pretty funny story when you think about it—

“Well,” John says, and he sounds gleeful, “this is a bit awkward.”

Her father is watching him from across the table. Elliot drags her hand over her face. Of course. Of course John says he’s going to behave and then he does this, he pulls some stupid fucking move out of nowhere because he knows it’s going to push her fucking berserk button and she’ll fume through the rest of the dinner until her parents leave so she can rip his stupid fucking Dolce & Gabbana shirt off and—

Scarlet sighs. “My God.”

“Mama, it’s not—” Elliot sighs. “We don’t—”

“I thought she said Johnny,” John deflects easily, taking the pepper and setting it beside her plate. She has never once called him Johnny, except to be condescending. “Sorry, Mr. Honeysett.”

“No harm,” her father replies. His tone is light, but his expression is not. He leans back against his chair, draping an arm around the back of Scarlet’s chair. “Simple mistake, Lettie, don’t let it wind you up.”

“Untoward,” is what Scarlet says tightly. She has never liked John. She may never like John. And John’s proclivity for button-pushing is certainly not helping his case.

And amidst it all, Elliot’s face is ten degrees hotter, and she thinks, if this is some stupid way of John trying to assert himself I’m going to come un-fucking-glued, and she puts her face in her hands and exhales. Loudly.

“Excuse me,” she announces abruptly, the headache already beginning to pound behind her eyes.

“Bunny, sit down,” her father scolds. He’s been smoking in her kitchen after she explicitly told him not to, and he’s shown up after not being around for who knows the fuck how long, and he still has the audacity to tell her what to do. “It was a mistake. Wasn’t it, John?”

I’m going to kill, she thinks, I’m going to fucking kill the next person who tells me what to do.

“Sure,” John replies agreeably, “a mistake.”

Don’t you fucking push me.

“So sit down,” her father insists. “You get your dramatics from your mother, you know, it’s just a little—”

“Fuck you,” Elliot snaps, and Scarlet blinks rapidly. Immediately, she regrets saying it—not because she doesn’t feel immense relief when it finally comes out of her, but because she wishes she’d said it at a more appropriate time. Is there an appropriate time to tell your spawn-sponsor ‘fuck you’? she wonders. Oh, well. “Excuse me.”

Pushing the chair out of the way, she takes her glass into the kitchen and closes the sliding door that keeps it separate from the dining room. Most of the time, it’s open—but she wants it closed. A clear and unmistakable separation between herself and everyone else.

You get your dramatics from your mother, you know.

“Oh, you motherfucker,” she grinds out between her teeth, scrubbing her hands under the faucet. “Gonna fucking—kick your ass to the fucking curb, you stupid-fucking-dumb-shit—”

The door to the dining room slides open, and then shut. She doesn’t look behind her. She can tell from the waft of expensive cologne that it’s John, and not her mother or father, and she’s not quite sure yet how much she wants to gut him yet.

“Ell,” John says, barely capping his delight at what is, she is sure, his ideal dinner date. “Elli—”

“Stop talking.” She turns the faucet off, dries her hands, and turns around to find him very close. “Right now, John, if you want to keep those pretty teeth in.”

“I thought,” he murmurs as he blithely ignores her threat, “that it was just a funny little joke. You know, because we’ve been joking about it. I wanted you to lighten up a little. You’re so unhappy when your dad’s around, I hate seeing you like that.”

“You fucking—” Elliot sucks in a sharp breath. “You thought it would lighten me up for you to play Freddy Fuckaround out there? It’s one thing to have to tolerate the stupidity of listening to my dad talk to me like he’s got anything worthwhile to say, but for you—”

John kisses her. He takes her face in his hands and he kisses her, and it’s not a simple peck; it’s open-mouthed, his tongue sweeping the seam of her lips as he makes a low noise into the liplock. She reaches up and grips his wrists, but she can’t tell if she wants to push his hands off or keep them there.

“This isn’t what I had in mind when I yelled fuck you,” is what she says against his mouth, and he laughs, breathlessly. “You know that, right? You seem to be getting confused about when someone's talking to you.”

“You’re irresistible when you’re this riled.”

“You said you’d behave.”

“You’re right,” John admits, and nips her lower lip with his teeth just a smidge harder than normal, the sting of it earning him a slap to the side of his forearm. “Ow! Mean, cruel woman.” His eyes narrow. “I ought to bend you over this counter.”

The words flush her with wanton heat. “Stop being an insatiable fuckhead,” she threatens. “Play nice.”

“Hm. Boring.”

“John.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’ll play nice.”

“Mean it.”

“I will play nice,” he reiterates silkily, dragging his thumb over the slightly sore spot on her lower lip. “For you, my love. This time. I swear it.”

“Good,” she murmurs. Kissing the pad of his thumb, she adds, “If you fuck around again, I’m sending you back to Georgia.”

“I shan’t risk it,” he vows solemnly. There’s a moment where she thinks he might be genuine, and he brushes their noses together; his thumb sweeps her cheekbone now, and he kisses her temple. Those butterflies she feels any time John is unexpectedly gentle with her return, incited even further by the way he noses the hair away to kiss there again.

And then he says, “Your mother is scandalized,” and ruins it.

“Get out of here,” she scolds. “Go—do something. Be useful. I’ll deal with my mother after I’ve had a breather.”

One breather. Maybe two, or five, or ninety; she’s not sure how much of a breather she’ll need to get ready for whatever’s waiting for her back out there.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The evening is significantly cooler now than it was even during his and Elliot’s little foray out to the Honeysett house, but John can barely register anything; the temperature, the burn of cigarette smoke as he takes a drag of the thing he puts in his mouth so rarely nowadays and typically only recreationally, in some strange attempt to bond with the man who is technically the father of his girlfriend. None of it matters, not really, because the last thing he wants to be doing is this.

Playing nice with Ambrose Honeysett.

Still, the moment feels a bit absurd given their previous little misunderstanding, in that John has to keep stopping himself from laughing at it all, or else Ambrose might think he’s nuts.

“You ever have to put down a dog, John?” Ambrose asks after a minute, tapping ash off the end of his cigarette and glancing inside. The window is open to let in airflow, and in the warm lights of Elliot’s kitchen he can see her clearing plates from the table while her mother drags on about Delia said this and did you know Blair, the other day, was talking to me about that. Apparently, Scarlet has foregone discussion of what she thinks might be Elliot’s sexual inclinations.

John idles, “I don’t know that I have.”

“You know, like a sick dog. Sometimes when they’re mean, you’ve gotta put ‘em down.” Ambrose leans against the front pillar of the porch and takes a drag of his cigarette. “Say, if a dog bites your daughter. Can’t have a dog biting your kid, you know?”

He can feel Ambrose’s eyes on him. It’s a pointed statement. Willfully ignoring it, John replies, “I’ve never had pets, growing up.”

Ambrose makes a hm noise. “Dunno if I can like a man who never had a dog before.”

“My parents were strict.”

Another hm. He shrugs, takes another drag, lets it slip out through his nose rather than his mouth. He looks like a lazy dragon; like he’s going to wind his scaly body around and around the house until he’s strangling it. Elliot’s rubbing off on me, John thinks absently.

“I want my girl happy,” Ambrose says after a minute.

My girl, and maybe you should fuck off, then. “Of course.”

“And Scarlet worries about her,” the redhead continues. “You know, that she won’t find someone good for her. I told you, I like you. I just wanna make sure you’re—you know. Not a bad influence on her.”

John doesn’t say anything. Instead, he takes a long inhale of his own cigarette, in an effort to excuse his responsibility to respond.

“Ambrose, we’re leaving,” Scarlet announces from the doorway once she swings the door open. “Put that dreadful thing out.”

Ambrose flashes a crooked smile. He puts the cigarette out in the ashtray and elbows John like they’re friends. “Ball and chain summonin’ me.”

He can’t relate. He likes when Elliot gets bitey with him, literally and figuratively.

Elliot’s come out, too, having taken a few minutes by herself in the kitchen earlier and then changed into some pajamas—little shorts and an oversized t-shirt. She lets Ambrose hug her like she didn’t say fuck you viciously at a dinner table to him, and then kisses her mother’s cheek and says, “Drive safe.”

She turns back into the house before they’ve even left the driveway, and John follows dutifully. The house is finally quiet; he thinks, at last, at last, I have her all to myself, not because he doesn’t feel like the time they had pre-dinner wasn’t good (it was) but because it wasn’t enough. It’ll never be enough, he thinks.

“So glad he’s gone,” Ellliot murmurs, collapsing onto the bed, rubbing her face. John hums his agreement, working out of his jeans and button-up, planting a warm kiss on the inside of her thigh before he scoots her up onto the bed all the way and settles over her. The blonde looks worlds more relaxed, now—he knows how important it is for her safe home space to be just that—and when he brushes some loose hair from her eyes, her lashes flutter prettily.

He buries his face against the warmth of her neck; kisses there, feels the jump of her heartbeat when he drags his teeth against her pulse-point.

“I’ve dreamt about this,” she says breathlessly. John lifts his head from where he had been busying his mouth and narrows his eyes playfully.

“Dreamt about me driving you batshit during a family dinner?” he asks. “Or was it the part where I told you I was going to bend you over the counter?”

“No, you idiot,” she groans, blushing. “Just having you here.” True to form: “Dumbass.”

“You are so mean to me.”

“Am not,” she replies petulantly. “I am the nicest. The nicest, most flexible—”

“Hm.”

“I was saying, having you here with me. Instead of having to—you know. Run back and forth all the time. It’s hard with work and everything.” She plays her fingers against his chest, tracing ink that she’s memorized with her mouth several times already. “I’m not used to it. Wanting someone around all the time.”

John ducks his head to kiss her. There’s less urgency in this one, this time; but she parts her lips just the same, and sighs against him, and arches up a little when he digs his hand beneath the hem of her shorts, and he says, “I’ll be here whenever you want me to, Ell.”

“Yeah?” She’s breathless, and her eyes are bright, and she rolls her lower lip between her teeth for a second. “Do you mean that?”

“Of course,” he rumbles. He leans in and grins against her skin. “Especially if we’re still gonna negotiate about that—”

“John, shut up and kiss me.”

“Only if you call me Freddy Fuckaround again.”

She laughs, this time, and the sound is so warm and genuine in an evening that has been filled with force pleasantries that John thinks he might like to hear it all over again. Elliot squirms up against him and kisses his cheek and then his jaw, and combs her fingers through his beard.

“Anything,” she promises, “except for daddy.”

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic.

chapter fourteen: tin roof rusted

word count: ~10.7k

rating: m

warnings: references to ~sexual activities~, canon typical forced drug use, mentions of cannibalism, canon-typical violence, everybody playing fucking mental chess all the time meanwhile elliot is just trying to have some fun playing fucking CHECKERS. the usual!

notes: hi hello! this chapter was a bit hard for me to work through, because the two things that are the hardest for me to write are 1.) more than two characters in one scene and 2.) combat or action, and this has both of them. but: i digress! i hope you enjoy this as much as i enjoyed, despite all things, writing it (because it WAS fun). and i mean it when i say: WE'RE FINALLY KICKING IT OFF, BABY. EDIT: I CANNOT BELIEVE I DIDNT THANK @vasiktomis thank u for being an angel and always talking through plot problems with me, i LOVE LOVE LOVE you !!!!

special thank you as always to my loves @starcrier & @shallow-gravy for letting me borrow their eyeballs on this, as well as @faithchel and @lilwritingraven lending me help in my first time writing faith's voice. in case you're wondering what it's like to read any of these chapters in their rough draft form, it's a lot of correcting grammar and misspellings and half-finished sentences because i literally jump around like a maniac when i'm writing if an idea occurs to me, so everyone say "thank you star and gravy for making this a readable piece of content"!

and thank you as always to everyone who reads this. this really is a passion project of mine and it means so much to me to know that even on person out on the World Wide Web(TM) is enjoying it. <3

Faith could tell that something had changed.

In fact, a lot of things had changed. All of them, every single one of them, was different—compressed, under duress, skeletons unjustly fit into their skin. No room in the bone arena of their skulls for all of the light they’d had before.

And she was the only one who saw.

Well, she’d always been the only one who saw. Except for Joseph, of course, but his eyes were always set forward, never back to them; never making sure that they were close enough behind to make it through the proverbial door, always assured by the fact that if they were meant to make it to Eden with him, they would. And so here she was, seeing.

Seeing the way Joseph would lean into the dark-haired woman, Isolde; the way his lips curved, the way his eyes darted to her mouth. Longing. Joseph didn’t long for things. But he did, now, in a strange and inexorable way, always close to the brunette and finding occasions to touch her. It was the thing that he did: foster affection, even in the bleakest of places, and this was no exception. Nearly every moment of theirs was spent together, but when they were apart, the smell of expensive perfume trailed after him, clinging faintly from enduring proximity alone.

And she saw the way, too, that he looked at the vet, Arden—Jacob’s “friend”. Muted disdain. Mistrust. Things that Joseph certainly thought that he could disguise himself, things he thought he manicured carefully with a polite exchange every time they were in the same proximity (never initiated by Arden herself, only always by Joseph). Testing the waters.

Yes, Faith thought, things have changed. Are changing, present-tense and not past. Things have changed and are in the act of changing now, right under our feet. And I don’t like it.

It was inevitable, in a lot of ways, but there were some things that she could control.

Like Staci Pratt.

“Hello, deputy,” she greeted once he’d come around the corner of the chapel. She’d been standing outside of it, pleased to enjoy a brief respite from the snowfall.

Her words made him flinch, his movements grinding to a halt. Jacob really had done a number on him, hadn’t he? “Have a nice walk?”

Pratt’s expression soured. He was a sulky kind of fellow, his face gaunt from malnourishment and his dark eyes haunted, darting. He never met hers for long. There had been a flicker of attitude when he’d mouthed off about the sermon, which seemed to have caught Jacob off-guard.

He said, “I guess.”

“You guess,” Faith repeated. “You’re given the freedom to wander around, and you guess that you like it?”

The brunette paused. He wet his lips nervously, shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. Jacob was too busy to worry about whether or not Pratt was behaving himself—too busy focusing on the Hunter, slaughtering her Angels, making them disappear left and right—to keep an eye on him. To make sure that the conditioning stuck. But Faith wasn’t too busy. She was seeing.

Pratt said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sure you do,” Faith demurred. She swept a hand over the lapel of his jacket, brushing the snow off of it. It was late afternoon, milky light filtering in through the clouds, and unflattering color palette on Pratt; it washed him out, shadowed the hollows of his face and highlighted their skeletal angles. “When has Jacob ever let you wander around without a chaperone?”

“I’m not—a toddler,” he managed out, having swallowed back what she was sure was a flinch when she reached up. Faith’s eyes narrowed a little. He continued to not meet her gaze; instead, he slid his eyes to the side, like maybe he was worried about someone sneaking up on him.

“Where did you go?” Faith asked sweetly.

His eyes darted back to hers briefly. “Huh?”

“For your walk,” she clarified patiently. “Where did you go?”

“I-I—” He took a step back, in what appeared to be an effort to put some distance between them. “I don’t, uh—”

“It’s just a question, Deputy Pratt,” she murmured. “Where did you walk? Behind the chapel? Over by the bunkhouses? Down by the water? Surely you went somewhere.”

“I wasn’t really paying attention,” he replied defensively, “I was just—y’know, just—”

“I don’t,” Faith cut in over him, dripping the words in honey on their way out of her mouth, “know, Staci Pratt. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“By the water,” he snapped out uneasily. “Just wanted to get—get some f-fresh air.”

“Mm.”

She waited. She waited, and watched Staci Pratt squirm for a minute, unsure if he was able to excuse himself from the conversation or not—and doubly unsure what else there was to be said on the subject of his late-afternoon-walk, she was sure. Still, Faith remained quiet, scanning the courtyard leisurely as she let the silence stretch out between them.

It wasn’t until Pratt opened his mouth to say something that Faith turned her eyes back to him and said, “Are you relieved Jacob’s going to be gone?”

His mouth snapped shut, and then opened again to say something, and then closed again; he looked like a fish, glassy-eyed and panicked. Faith smiled serenely.

“You can be honest with me, Staci.” She tilted her head, watching him. “If you are.”

“If I’m—what?”

“Relieved,” she reiterated, feeling the annoyance sparking in her voice, “that Jacob isn’t going to be around for a little while.”

His expression twisted, crumpled on itself. It was clear that Jacob had pushed him—and pushed him, and pushed him, until now he was a kicked dog, waiting for someone’s outstretched hand to mean pain and not kindness. It was good. It meant that he would be afraid of incurring their wrath, should he have gotten any funny ideas about going against them.

Before Faith could prompt him more, the door to the chapel behind her opened and Staci’s eyes flickered to whoever it was over her shoulder.

“Oh,” came Isolde’s voice. “What’re you doing out and about?”

Faith turned to look at her. A little smile ticked the corners of the brunette’s mouth when their eyes met. She had clearly been speaking to Pratt.

“Deputy Pratt was just going for a walk,” Faith informed Isolde. “Down by the water, he says.”

“Is that so?”

“No,” Pratt replied quickly. “I wasn’t—”

Faith lifted her brows. She said, coyly, “But you told me you were.”

“I’m done,” he insisted, “with the walk. I-I’m not still—I’m not going on the walk, I’ve just—”

“This is all very interesting, Mr. Pratt,” Isolde interjected briskly, “but I don’t have a particular care whether you were walking or if you are now going on a walk.” She cinched her coat snugly around her waist, waving a gloved hand. “Cease being.”

Faith watched, amusedly, as Pratt’s face flushed red from the dismissal; he looked terribly like he wanted to say something in response, but after their last little spat after Joseph’s sermon, she imagined he wasn’t keen on it.

Pratt looked at Faith. She smiled.

“That means be somewhere else,” Isolde drawled, stepping down from the chapel’s doorway to stop beside Faith, tugging a glove more securely onto her hand. “In case you didn’t pick that up from your time indulging in Mario Savio.”

The man’s jaw clenched, the fabric of the jacket pockets shifting from what Faith could only assume were his fists tightening. Oh, he did want so badly to say something, didn’t he? Go on, she thought, meeting his gaze, I’d like to see it.

He did not. He ducked his head and turned to trudge through the snow. As Pratt departed to slink back to the bunkhouse, Isolde let out a little sigh.

“Can’t put my finger on that one just yet,” she muttered. Her eyes returned to Faith, her expression smoothing out. “I didn’t interrupt your fun, did I?”

“No,” Faith replied sweetly, “I was actually waiting for you.”

Their handy-dandy expert had been all but inaccessible on her own since her arrival. Joseph was always beckoning for her; the crook of his fingers, the tilt of his head, meaningful gazes thrown across the room. If it wasn’t him, it was time for sleep, or she was having Jacob take her out far enough to get cell service again—which Faith thought must mean that she had family, perhaps, or friends out there in the world.

Isolde blinked at her for a moment. She glanced back at the door to the chapel—where, undoubtedly, Joseph waited; to comb through his next sermon, to discuss the logistics of what was going to be happening next, to figure out how best to placate the masses and raise morale—and then said, “Well, you’ve got me.”

“Let’s go for a walk,” Faith suggested. “You know, present-tense. Not past.” And then: “I want to check something.”

Isolde smiled wryly. The expression only changed a little when Faith took one gloved hand of hers and set off, following the paths that had been shoveled and worn down by other members of Eden’s Gate. The brunette seemed uncomfortable with the familiarity of the touch, much in the same way she seemed to be gritting her teeth through the moments of closeness with Joseph.

Squeezing her hand, Faith said, “I’m excited for Elliot and John to come back.”

“That makes one of us.”

“You’re not?” Curiouser and curiouser.

The woman stifled a sigh, clearing her throat as they headed down a slope that would take them closer to the water. “John is not one of my favorite people in the world, at this moment.”

“And you don’t know Elliot,” she prompted.

“And I don’t know Elliot,” Isolde agreed.

“Well, I’m excited.” She beamed, puffing out warm air as they came down to the water’s edge. “I’ve always wanted a sister. Do you have siblings?”

“Me?” The brunette looked uneasy at the prompting. Faith wondered, briefly, if anyone had asked her anything about herself since she’d arrived—or if it had just been Isolde, come here, Isolde, do this. It felt familiar. She’d once been the come here, do this girl; with the arrival of the Family, and their subsequent terroristic acts against her family, Faith supposed a different set of skills were needed at the moment.

Not that she minded, not really. This allowed her to take a step back. And See.

“Yes, you,” she replied playfully, glancing out at the water for a moment. Dark clouds were rolling in on the horizon. “I want to know everything about you.”

“Oh,” Sol said absently, her eyes drifting. “I’m not all that interesting. I’d much rather hear about...”

Her voice trailed off. Faith followed her gaze. There, in the snow, a set of footprints meeting another set somewhere close to shore—and then away. Away, around the bend of the island, going and going and going, much farther than she thought someone who was part of Eden’s Gate ought to be going.

“Where did Pratt say he was taking a walk?” Isolde asked, her voice a little tart.

Faith smiled. “Down here, by the water.”

“I see.”

Do you? Faith wondered, watching the way the brunette’s eyes flickered, silently working something over in her mind. Do you see?

“I thought it was odd, that he was going for a walk,” Faith ventured after a moment. “He’s supposed to be staying with Dr. Hale.”

The brunette made a soft noise; her eyes slid back to Faith for a moment, narrowing thoughtfully, as though she were considering something else outside of what appeared to have been a mystery guest.

“Let’s head back in,” Isolde announced after a quiet moment had lapsed. “It’s freezing out. You can ask me whatever you’d like. And, you’re right—”

She paused, and dark brows furrowed, all discomfort at Faith’s closeness and their linked hands apparently forgotten.

“It is odd.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

John could not stop thinking about it.

He tried, often; for the hours that he spent driving, he tried to push the scene fresh out of a horror movie from his mind and think about something else. Anything else. Not even replaying the moments they’d spent together before that, the way she tasted and smelled and felt—not even that could wash it from his mind, like a bad aftertaste.

The drag of nails against the door. The whispering.

Bloom. Eat. Grin.

The sound of feet hitting the pavement. The whispering.

Bloom. Eat. Grin.

Who had been on the other side of that door? Who had been talking to his wife? Who had been asking her, in hushed voices, to let them in?

Wrath, do you want to bloom in me?

Beside him, Elliot slept fitfully. Uneasily. She shifted and changed positions every few minutes, until she finally gave up and pulled her seat back into the sitting position to watch the landscape go by. John’s eyes burned with exhaustion. They’d left the motel hours ago, but even that wasn’t a comfort. Especially with the memory sitting heavy in his mind of Elliot’s head tilting, the click of her molars grind, the way she said I see you. I see your color.

He’d heard that before, he thought. Hadn’t he? Somewhere? Seeing color, seeing someone’s color. See? Don’t you see?

Ase’s fingers, linking with Elliot’s. Blood spilling out of her, insides painting the grass of the Sacred Skies camp. Her mouth moving listlessly. But it wasn’t listlessly. She was saying something, to Elliot, that night. Back then.

Do you see?

“John.”

Ase, do you see? And Elliot, agonized, moaning in pain like a trapped animal.

“John,” Elliot said again, her voice sharper. He blinked a few times. “The light’s green.”

So it was.

He carefully turned down the street that was going to take them out of this town—another nothing-name, nobody-lives-here town hours out past where their motel had been located—and onto the highway. This was not at all what he had wanted. The plan had always been to get Elliot, bring her home, hunker down for the end. Then she’d see, wouldn’t she? She’d see he was right all along, and that everything he’d done had been for her—for them—and that the little twinge of want he’d seen on her face and in her eyes when he opened her skin with her sin wasn’t bad. It was cleansing. Purifying. He’d always known how good it was going to look on her, and he was right. It looked perfect.

What he wouldn’t give to be back in that room, feeling her breath stutter and watching her lashes flicker between pain and desire.

“Maybe I should drive for a while,” she suggested after a moment, drawing his attention back to the present. John cleared his throat.

“I’m fine.” Out of the corner of his eye, he gauged her—watched for any sign of that strange, sly cruelty that had been dredged up out of her. Thinking back on it now, the way she’d smiled in her dreaming state, it had been like she knew he didn’t want her to open the door—and she was going to do it anyway. “You got less sleep than I did.”

“You don’t know that,” Elliot defended, slinking down against the seat a little more.

“I do,” John replied. “Because I know you.”

“Well,” she said, and did not elaborate. There, again, was that little thrill blooming hot and humid in his chest—knowing that she was coming to understand.

They drove for a few moments in silence, only the sound of the car rumbling and the snow getting wiped from the windshield; Boomer snored once or twice in the back seat, and John was certain that Elliot had dozed off when she said, “I’ve been thinking about names.”

He had just clicked the cruise control on the highway when she said it, his eyes flickering over to her inquisitively. “For?”

“The baby,” Elliot replied a little dryly, like he should have guessed that—and he supposed that he should have, but he had wanted to hear her say it. She wasn’t saying our baby, but she was saying the baby, and it included him. It was saying, you know, the baby, which kept him under the umbrella of who the baby belonged to.

“Ah, yes.” He felt the corner of his mouth ticking upward. “The baby.”

He hesitated. There was something sticking uneasily to his ribs. He tried to soothe his frayed nerves by thinking, we’ll be back home and Joseph will see how good I’ve done, how tamed she is for me. He’ll see and he’ll be pleased.

The uneasiness squirmed viciously in his stomach.

“I like the name Nolan,” Elliot said after a minute. He saw her hand smooth absently over the very subtle slope of her tummy. She had not struck him as particularly maternal, in the time that they’d been together, but seeing little gestures like this—seeing her hand rest there, protectively, like their baby comforted her—made his throat feel a little tight. “It was my grandfather’s name.”

“Paternal?” he idled, watching her eyes flash to him.

“No, John,” she replied dryly. “My maternal grandfather. If my dad was barely around, what makes you think I knew my paternal grandparents at all?”

“It’s not crazy to think. Grandparents step up, sometimes.” He shrugged, and then reached over the console of the Jeep. His hand found hers and interlaced their fingers together absently. He felt her stiffen a little, like she was thinking of pulling it away, and then relaxed and let him stay there. “I can’t believe you didn’t suggest John Junior.”

Her expression scrunched up. “Don’t be foul.”

John flashed her a smile. They still had a full day’s travel ahead of them, at least, but if they didn’t stop for anything except gas—and that’s what he intended—they’d be rolling into Hope County sooner rather than later. They’d be home. Joseph would be pleased—

That doesn’t feel as comforting as it used to.

—and Elliot would see that everything he had done had been for them.

“I like Nolan,” he clarified, after a moment. Elliot made a little noise, like it pleased her.

“I—” She paused. Her thumb absently swept over one of his knuckles, and she closed her mouth, pressing her lips together.

John’s gaze flickered over her before he refocused on the road. “What is it, Ell?”

The almost-blonde (that copper was still hanging on strong) grimaced a little and then cleared her throat. “I’m not happy about going back.”

He fixed his gaze on the road, but left his hand where it was. He didn’t say anything. He wanted to—so badly, he wanted to say, well, it’s better, don’t you think? Better for us, for the baby, to not have to worry about your mother or Pritchard or the memories that house dredges up, or the woman in the street or the sleepwalking?—but he didn’t. He waited.

“I’m not going to bite my tongue,” she told him, “and play nice with Joseph.”

“You can’t,” he replied quickly. “You cannot fight him the entire time, Ell. You just can’t.”

“Like fuck I can’t,” she snapped.

“You cannot,” he reiterated sharply. “It’s not just about you anymore. It’s not good for the baby—”

“I know it’s not just about me, Scarlet.” Elliot’s voice was cutting, and she disentangled their fingers, shifting in the passenger seat to put more distance between them. John’s molars ground together.

Petulant, he thought. Ungrateful. Impudent. Even now, she’s willfully obtuse—it would be so easy for her to just—to just—

But she had never just. And he didn’t like her just, only liked her exactly as she was, even when her venom and her Wrath was turned on him, liked that she had retained those sharp edges and that she let him in past them. It had been, he thought as he rested his hand back on the console, truly a labor of love to shove himself past all of those sharp edges and get in to all the grit and gore of his girl. He had been more than happy to do it. There was nothing quite so purifying as pain.

Still, the Scarlet moniker stung.

Willing the tightness out of his voice, John replied, “Well, I wish I was like your mother. Maybe then she wouldn’t have spent the entire time talking about how my tattoos mean I’ll burst into flame the second I walk into a church.”

“I won’t fucking do it,” Elliot answered, her voice tight, apparently not assuaged by his attempt at humor. “I won’t fucking do it, John. I’m not coming back just to watch you go nuclear the second he tells you that he’s proud of you, okay? And you’re right, it’s not just about me anymore, and it sure as fuck isn’t just about you, either.”

He swallowed back the venom. He liked her Wrath, but this was a little too close to how things had been before—you should see yourself, she’d spat at him, practically falling over just to—

“You should get some sleep,” is what he finally settled on.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“I mean it,” he reiterated irritably. “You can’t be sleepwalking off to God knows where with our baby, Ell.”

That shut her up. That had her mouth clamping shut, shifting in her seat so that more of her back was facing him, the physical cold shoulder. It shut her up, and John regretted saying it out loud, because he immediately thought of the way she’d been crying in her car that day when she’d said, Would you have even come for me if I didn’t have the baby?, or the frantic, panicked way she’d said, I’m not crazy.

John sighed. “Elliot.”

There was no response. She stayed put exactly where she was, breathing tiredly through her nose once.

“I’m—”

He stopped short. He was waiting for her to cut him off. She said nothing. He said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Nothing.

“Ell?” Still she did not answer him, instead opting to shrug the throw blanket she’d pulled up from the floor beneath her seat further up to her chin, remaining dutifully silent. She was doing it on purpose. She was doing it because she knew that he wanted the back-and-forth, because she knew that he couldn’t stand it when she was withholding from him, and it was working.

And he couldn’t even comfort himself with the knowledge that they would be back in Hope County.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Elliot woke next, it was to John’s voice.

Ugh, she thought. I’m so over it.

Still, it persisted, the timbre of his voice rousing her from her uneasy sleep, plagued by more uneasy dreams—blurs of color and light and anxiety, wadding up tight in her throat.

“Come on,” John said, gently jostling her until she sat up a little more. “I’ve put the back seats down. Let’s sleep a little.”

“Where are we?” she asked groggily, displacing her irritation with him in favor of resting her hand in the crook of his neck. The steady thrum of his pulse under her fingers, the smell of his faded cologne washing over her. In her half-asleep state, it provided some comfort, even as she shivered her way out of the passenger seat and crept around to the back of the Jeep.

“A campground,” John replied, his voice welling with disdain, even now. Even when they had no reason to be picky. “In Iowa. Close to the South Dakota border.”

“Oh,” she said. She was so tired; it was as though getting some sleep had made her even more tired, had reminded her body of what she had been lacking. Exhaustedly, she crawled into the nest-like space John had laid out in the back with the seats laid flat, Boomer tucked up into the corner close to the door and buried into one of the sweaters she’d shed during the drive.

John climbed in beside her, closing the back of the Jeep and then pulling several more blankets up. He scrolled through a timer on his phone for a moment before he set it and then tucked it to the side, rolling to look at her.

“You done ignoring me?” he murmured.

“Mm.” She shifted, wadding the blankets up. “You done bein’ a fuckhead?”

“Your accent comes out when you’re tired.”

“No it doesn’t.”

In the dark, she could see the vague outline of him grinning. He was quiet for a moment before he reached up, hesitating and then brushing some of the hair from her face.

“We’re on the same team, Elliot,” John said.

“Are we?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. She was tired, and emotional; fuck, she was so over being this emotional. “Feels all the time like it’s just me, hoping you’re gonna come around and never getting what I need.”

Not what I want. It was what I need.

“We are,” John insisted.

“Then start acting like it,” Elliot snapped, the sleepy slur of her words clearing up a little in the wake of her irritation. “I told you, John. I told you—you can’t be sitting around with one foot over there and one foot over here. You were right, it’s not just about me now. There’s the baby, too. I won’t—” She bit the word out, crushing it with the emotional duress that tried to seep into her voice. “—have you one foot in and one foot out when the baby’s here. You’re either in it or you’re not. Don’t make me choose for you.”

John’s expression flattened. He sighed, passing a hand over his face, digging the pads of his fingers into his eyes for a moment. She tried not to think about the way he’d said I love you back at the motel, moaning it into her neck and sparking that little tiny part of her that wanted it so badly. He’d said it that day, too, when she’d been crying in the car. Of course I would have come. I love you. Had her mother said she loved her a single time since she’d been back?

I just want you to mean it, she thought exhaustedly, closing her eyes and rolling onto her other side, back to him. I just want you to mean it when you say you love me. I just want someone to fucking mean it, even just once.

“Elliot,” he murmured, shifting closer to her and nosing past the hair at the nape of her neck. She felt the hesitant slide of his hand against her hip; closing her eyes more tightly, she scooted closer to Boomer, brushing John’s hand off of her. He couldn’t just crowd up in her space with sweet touches every time she was mad. He’d have to learn how to do better, or drop the act.

“Ell.” He didn’t try and touch her again. She was glad for it, even if the fanning of his breath across the back of her neck had been comforting. “We’ll be home soon.”

“Sure, John,” she replied tiredly.

Whatever that means.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Alright, I’m going.”

Jacob’s announcement came in the early afternoon. Isolde glanced up from where she had been meticulously combing over inventory. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t even remotely close to great. And she still didn’t know, quite, what to fucking do; Jacob’s earlier question of whether she was going to leave or not still hung over her. Mocked her for her indecision. For the worm of doubt in her head that maybe, there was some truth to what Joseph was saying.

If she left, she’d have to take the first flight to Turkey to be with her family. Nineteen hours in the air. A fucking nightmare. There was—from what her father had told her on their phone call—no going back to Georgia, not right now, not when things in the U.N. were so fucking tense, and not when someone kept throwing around a nuclear threat like confetti. Straight from dad’s mouth, too, not her own words.

“Going?” she prompted, setting her pen down and crossing her arms over her chest. The heater in the corner of the bunkhouse sputtered weakly. Arden hadn’t even bothered to look up from her book when Jacob came in. One of the hairy beasts she called Castor or Pollux—Isolde had not yet determined which was which—had curled up on her feet on the bed as she read, the other stretched out on the floor. They both looked at her as soon as Jacob had stepped inside, as though to wait for some kind of signal from her.

“To the Vet’s Center,” he clarified. His gaze flickered from her to Arden. “Ade?”

The blonde scribbled something in the margins of her book. “Jake.”

“Where’s Pratt?”

“I told him to go eat something,” she idled. “He looks about ninety pounds soaking wet, as they say. Though if I had to actually estimate, I’d say maybe one-twenty more like. How much did he weigh before? One-fifty? Little more?”

“He’s supposed to be staying with you, here,” Jacob replied dryly. He sighed, glancing out the door and then back in. “You’re giving him too much leash.”

“You pushed him too far.” Arden’s voice was flat, non-committal; she still had not disengaged from her book, despite the words coming out of her mouth, which were clearly a criticism. Isolde shifted in her seat, coming to a stand.

“Well,” she began, searching absently for her coat, “I think I was supposed to go help—”

“I pushed him exactly where he’s supposed to be.” Jacob had stepped into the bunkhouse entirely, now, the frown deep-set on his features. “If you’re going to levy a criticism, Arden, do me the favor of making eye contact.”

“I don’t have to look you in your eyes to tell you you’re wrong,” Arden murmured. “You pushed him too far. You left a beat dog with no structure and no faculties to survive with alone, in inclement weather conditions—”

“It’s snow.”

“—for almost two months,” she finished, completely glossing over his interjection. “No resources. No way to contact you. You made him absolutely reliant on you to do literally everything, and then you left him—alone. So now, I have to give him more leash.” She clicked her pen, snapped the book shut, and looked at the dogs. “Go on then, boys.”

They hopped to their feet and darted over to Jacob, big tails whooshing noisily. Isolde watched them nosing Jacob’s hand for attention and pets, and then looked at Jacob. His expression was tight.

“Isolde,” he said. The tone of his voice said, give us a minute.

“On my way out,” she replied briskly, sliding her coat on and gathering up her papers. “Pardon me, hounds.”

Jacob herded them to the side as she made her way out, closing the door behind her and letting out a breath. She could hear a moment of silence stretching in the bunkhouse behind her before the redhead’s voice came through the door: “Say what you want to say, Arden, I can tell when you’re biting your tongue.”

And then, barely a moment’s hesitation: “I just can’t help but wonder about the legitimacy of Joseph’s guidance,” Arden was saying. “You’re your own man, Jacob. You know when someone is making poor decisions.”

“Pratt isn’t, and wasn’t, a ‘poor’—”

“I’m not talking about Pratt anymore. Jacob, I’m giving you the eye contact you wanted to tell you that I think you need to reassess what...”

Isolde let out a long, warm exhale of breath before she began trekking across the compound, the argument trailing out to nothing behind her. She did not hear it; she did not think about the implications of what appeared to be the only rational person in this fucking place having an opinion on leadership. It had dumped another seven inches in the night, and now bedraggled members of Eden’s Gate—as if they hadn’t looked bedraggled from the minute she’d gotten there—were struggling to re-shovel walkways. This couldn’t be typical Montana weather, could it? No, she didn’t think so. Even now, those thick, heavy clouds from before had begun to move in, swollen and black-dark with unshed snow.

She saw Pratt sitting on the chapel steps, bundled up in a coat and scarf, hands tucked cross-ways over his chest.

“Speak of the devil,” she said, drawing his eyes to her. His mouth twisted in a grimace and he looked away.

“I’m just minding my own business.”

“Sure,” she replied. She thought about the walk she’d taken with Faith down to the water, and the extra pair of footprints. “You do a lot of that? Say, with a friend?”

Pratt’s eyes darted to hers. “Of...”

“Minding your own business,” she clarified tartly. “Do you mind your own business, sometimes with a friend?”

The deputy’s expression was blank. Isolde rolled her eyes—he was either incredibly stupid, or he was playing stupid, and she didn’t think it was the latter.

“I don’t, uh,” he began, “know what—”

“Why don’t you show me where you went for a walk,” she suggested coolly. “I’ve got time. Could use the company. Where did you say you went, again? I’d like to know the best places to go mind my business.”

Pratt swallowed thickly, coming to a stand with an abrupt awkwardness that implied panic. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and said, “I’m not r-really—”

He stammered for a second more, clearly struggling to come up with a reason not to, but was cut off by the sound of an alarm blaring at the end of the compound. Doors all across the compound opened, heads peeking out, guns gripped in dirty, calloused hands. Isolde had never seen so many fucking guns in one place.

“Sol!” Jacob’s voice broke through the sound of the alarm rattling around.

“What’s that alarm?” Pratt asked, his voice having gone a little high. “What’s going on? Do you—”

Isolde slapped her hand over his mouth. “Shut up,” she snapped. A dark vehicle had started pulling in through the front gates of the compound. And then she heard the look-out from the gate shout:

“The Baptist is home!”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Really had to throw up an alarm for you, huh?”

John sighed. In the time since their argument, Elliot had said almost nothing to him—just a no, yes, no thanks, I’m fine whenever he suggested eating or taking a break. Now, as they pulled into the compound, she radiated only absolute tension, the softness of even the way she had sought him out in her sleep that night they’d slept in the back of the Jeep having departed completely.

“Better safe than sorry,” he muttered, pulling the Jeep up further under the compound’s archways. “Elliot, before we get out, I want—”

“That’s him,” she interrupted, her voice spiking a little, fingers quickly undoing her buckle. “They didn’t kill him, Jesus Christ—”

And before he could stop her, she was climbing out of the passenger side of the car, forcing John to throw the Jeep into park halfway under the trellis; he turned the car off and opened his door, swallowing thickly as he watched Elliot trudge her way through the snow just to be met halfway by Staci Pratt.

“Holy shit,” Pratt was saying, squeezing her shoulders and then putting his hands on her face and neck and then his hands in her hair, John’s stomach somersaulting viciously. “Fuck fuck fuck, I thought you weren’t going to come back, Elli—”

Elliot’s voice was thick, emotional. “Of course I was coming back,” John heard her say as he approached, having opted to leave the vicious attack dog in the back of the car. “Of course I’d come back for you, Pratt, I’m so sorry, I thought you—I thought you left with everyone else.”

“John.”

His attention was dragged away from the sight—Pratt, touching her, touching my Elliot, touching her like he knows her, like he knows her the way I do, not my Elliot—to the sight of his eldest brother and his business partner making their way over. Jacob had a big grin on his face, almost relieved, but Isolde looked as displeased as ever.

“I was hoping for a bigger reception,” John admitted tightly, his eyes cutting to his wife again. She was wrapped up in a bear hug. Sickening. “Balloons. Maybe a champagne bottle.”

“I ought to fucking bottle you!” Isolde snapped. Her eyes darted over his face for a second, like she was taking inventory of his state of being, before she said, “Took you long enough, anyway. Fucker.”

Jacob added, “There’s a lot to catch up on, and not a lot of time to waste. I’m just on my way out, myself.”

“It’s going to be a minute.” John hated the jealousy blooming in his voice, but there was no stopping it, not when Elliot’s hands were fluttering over Pratt’s face like a besotted maiden, not when she kept saying things like are you okay? Are you alright? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, like she owed him anything. “Where are you going?”

“Well,” Jacob said, “let’s wrap that up, shall we?”

He’d barely the time to register that Jacob hadn’t answered his question before his eldest brother was moving. One second, John felt himself stewing over the way Elliot’s hands went to Pratt’s face, moving endlessly like they didn’t know where they wanted to land—and the way she let Pratt touch her, brushing the hair from her face and choking out some indiscernible nonsense.

And then Jacob clapped a hand on Pratt’s shoulder and said, “Alright, Peaches, I think that’s enough,” and maybe—in hindsight—John would have considered the possibility of Jacob doing it because he saw the way it bothered him. But in truth, the real reason was probably a bit less honorable and likely had to do more with his eldest brother’s innate desire to push Elliot’s buttons.

Unfortunately, there was no button to be pushed this time. Only a hairpin trigger to be tripped.

Jacob’s hand landed; the words came out of his mouth; John started to say, “Now, wait,”; and Elliot’s hand lunged out to grab the offending hand at the wrist, wrenching it viciously off of Pratt’s shoulder.

There was only a beat of silence before the eldest Seed said calmly, “Hellcat.”

John saw Elliot’s grip tighten. Red welled slowly where she’d latched on with her hand, breaking skin in the half-moon shape of the nail bite. Jacob could have pulled away; he had almost a foot on Elliot and two times the brute strength, but instead his eyes narrowed and he stayed exactly put where she’d kept him.

“Something you’d like to say?” he needled.

“Don’t,” she bit out, “push my fucking buttons, Seed.”

“Pratt is a reward for good behavior,” the Soldier rumbled, voice pitched low with warning, “that means—”

John’s hand brushed Elliot’s shoulder as he cautioned, “Jacob—”

“The reward for good behavior is you get to keep your hand after putting it this close to me," she seethed. Her free hand had curled possessively into the front of Pratt’s shirt. That’s my person, it said, I have so few, I have so few of them left. "So are you going to say thank you, Jacob?"

A tense, uncomfortable moment stretched, until Pratt said, “It’s—it’s fine, Elli.”

“It’s not fine,” Elliot bit out, not once looking away from Jacob.

“It’s really okay—”

John gave Elliot’s shoulder a squeeze. Her lashes fluttered. He could feel Pratt’s eyes boring into him when he nosed past the hair at her ear to murmur, “Come on, Ell.”

It was a strange kind of satisfaction to watch her drop Jacob’s wrist like it repulsed her, blood under her fingernails and her expression hard.

“I’m not fucking done with you,” she told the redhead.

“Counting on it,” Jacob replied evenly. And then, gesturing at her hair: “I like the dye job. You’re looking more like a Seed.”

Elliot made a disgusted noise, her other hand still gripping Pratt’s shoulder and the weaponized one hanging at her side. John smoothed his thumb over her shoulder again, shooting Jacob a cautioning look before he said, “Let’s get our things unloaded, don’t you think?”

“You’re finally home!”

It was Faith, now, the sweet timbre of her voice breaking through the background chatter between Isolde and Jacob and the members of Eden’s Gate that had flocked to the front of the chapel. The blonde beamed at him, but her eyes immediately went to Elliot. Trailing behind her at a leisurely pace was Joseph.

While his sister crowded up to Elliot like a moth to flame, Joseph’s attention was fixed on him.

I won’t bite my tongue and play nice with Joseph.

John went to meet his brother halfway, a strange kind of anxiety encouraging him to keep distance between Joseph and his wife. For now. Just for now, he reasoned, just while Elliot was still so stressed out about Pratt and the car ride. Once they got settled in, it would be different; Joseph wanted her here. Her and the baby, both.

His brother reached up; the calluses of Joseph’s fingers brushed the juncture where his shoulder and neck met, squeezing there for a moment.

“We’re happy you’re home,” Joseph said, and he sounded like he meant it—his voice bloomed with warmth, and he pressed their foreheads together, just like he had done before. “It’s not the same without you here.” And then, pulling back and looking at Elliot: “All three of you.”

He watched Pratt’s expression crumple and twist at the words. Faith was saying something excitedly to Elliot, something about how much she’d missed having her around, and his wife only looked to be half-listening; it was like Joseph’s acknowledgment of her existence in their space had put her on edge, immediately.

“Jacob said he was leaving?” John asked, trying to pull the attention elsewhere. Joseph’s mouth thinned.

“Yes. There’s a lot to go over, since you’ve been gone. You should come in to the chapel.”

“Of course,” he agreed quickly. The strange, giddy nervousness fluttered up in his throat. “I’m sure I can—”

“John,” Elliot interjected, “help me unpack the car.”

“Pratt can help,” Joseph replied mildly. “Can’t you, Pratt?”

The deputy shifted on his feet, nodding numbly. Automatically, robotically, he said, “Yeah. Yeah, Elli, I can—”

She wasn’t looking at Pratt. She wasn’t even looking at Joseph. She was looking at him, and as Pratt rambled about how he’d be happy to help, of course he’d be happy to help, she said, “I want John to help me unpack the car.” Her eyes flickered to Joseph. She did that little thing where she tilted her chin up in defiance before she added, “The three-day car ride really took it out of me.”

His brother’s hand dropped from his shoulder. John shifted on his feet. He looked at Joseph and said, “I can—”

“Go, of course,” Joseph cut in over him. “Your wife is with child. The best thing right now would be making sure she gets settled in.”

“Then I’ll head out now,” Jacob announced, fishing car keys out of his pocket. “And be back before dinner.”

“If you’re sure.”

Jacob nodded at the question. Joseph gave John’s shoulder a final squeeze before he moved back toward the chapel steps; he made a single beckoning of his fingers, which did the miraculous act of drawing Isolde over to him. His brother’s head ducked to say something in a low voice into her ear, something he couldn’t quite make out.

“Peaches,” Jacob barked. “Get in the bunkhouse.”

The brunette grimaced and took Elliot’s hand—infuriating, impertinent fucking deputy—and squeezed. “I’ll find you,” he whispered, and she nodded and gave him another tight around-the-neck hug before she turned and met John halfway to the car. Her fingers brushed his as they trudged back to the Jeep.

“Happy?” he asked. He was trying not to sound petulant.

“Not hardly,” Elliot replied. She paused, and then grabbed his hand, interlacing their fingers. “John?”

He made a low noise, stopping as they reached the front of the Jeep. He kept replaying it in his mind: Pratt grimy fingers in Elliot’s hair, on her cheeks and her neck, their foreheads pressed together as Elliot said I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. The idea that maybe they had been romantically entangled, once, refused to leave his mind. Had they been interested in each other? Had they kissed? More?

“If you do one thing for me,” she began, drawing him out of his thoughts, “promise me you won’t leave me alone with Joseph.”

John’s throat felt tight. “Ell—”

“I mean it,” she insisted. Her voice was a little tight. “I’m—trusting you.” And then she squeezed his hand and reiterated, “Please, John.”

After roughly twenty-four hours of the silent treatment, this felt nice—but he also knew Joseph would want to talk to Elliot. Alone. Even if John thought there was no reason, and even if John thought that maybe he didn’t want Joseph getting alone time with Elliot. For no reason, really. No reason in particular.

“Okay,” he murmured. “I promise.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Jacob knew, instantly, that something was wrong.

The drive to the Veteran’s Center was a brisk one. Quick and easy, nothing out of the ordinary. It was so unremarkable that it passed in next to no time, it felt like. Arriving at the Veteran’s Center, however, proved to be much more unsettling, because he thought, something’s not fucking right.

The problem was figuring out what. There were plenty of indicators, of course—the speakers on their tall posts toppled over, some breaking the glass into the windows; the lack of life, anywhere. He knew that most animals had fled closer to town for resources now that the snow had been falling almost nonstop, but when he opened the door into the Veteran’s Center, he got the distinct sense that the area had been devoid of critters and other lifeforms for quite awhile.

Sans Pratt, of course.

He wondered, briefly, what it was that had driven Pratt out into the snow. He said it was because he’d seen the Hunter, slaughtering his Chosen, but he didn’t know that he believed it; Staci Pratt was weak, capable of having his ear bent to almost any show of dominance, and with the Family afoot he couldn’t completely rule out the idea that he was operating under different pretenses than he had before. Arden's accusation that he'd pushed the deputy too far still sat in the back of his head, squirming and writhing, reminding him that he'd likes how well Arden could read people—until it turned a critical eye on him.

If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

He thought he had done enough to ensure that Staci Pratt feared retribution more than he wanted revenge. He thought, but there were little pinpricks of things that made him suspicious—Pratt, mouthing off about the sermon right in front of him. Pratt, skulking around like a scavenger. His eyes were more hungry than they were afraid, even if they shied away from him whenever he barked out an order for Pratt’s attention.

Jacob pushed open the door to the Veteran’s Center, letting it swing shut behind him. The inside smelled strong and earthy, and the heaters had been cranked up, rattling in the walls and the ceilings, turning it into a sauna. Each time he passed a vent, he was blasted with that smell again; humid, fetid wet earth and greens. Jacob picked his way carefully past one of the toppled speaker-poles, protruding through the window, broken glass crunching underfoot and the air so viciously hot that felt like it was sucking the breath right out of his lungs.

It occurred to Jacob that either Pratt had been here to witness this trashing, or someone had done this in the very short time between when he’d been here and when he’d left. Neither option was one that Jacob enjoyed entertaining for very long—though he was inclined, more and more, to think that it was something he had either witnessed or been party to. Time apart had brought Pratt some kind of willfulness that needed to be stamped out—and quickly.

As soon as he opened the door to his office, two things happened: Jacob was hit with a single overwhelming, earthy smell, and the sound of a drum roll echoed, tinny and noisy, before music started blaring in through the speakers. It took a second in the vicious, rattling din of pure sound echoing off of the walls and every metal surface in the office for him to realize what song it was.

If you see a faded sign at the side of the road that says 15 miles to the Looooooooooooove Shack!

“What the fuck,” he muttered, fingers curling tight around the grip of his gun. Trap, the alarm bells in his head were screaming. It’s a trap, we knew it was going to be a trap and we fucking came here anyway. Music vibrated through the floors and the walls, the poles of the speakers shaking in the windows where they had been busted through. It was impossible to hear himself, let alone his thoughts, but that didn’t matter—

The Love Shack is a little old place where we can get-to-gether!

—because every neuron was firing rapidly, pumping blood straight to all of his vital organs as the speakers vibrated so loudly against the linoleum floors that he could feel it up in his molars. The door into the surveillance room rattled once, the handle jerking wildly. He didn’t remember putting anyone in there, nor anything.

Something thumped against the door. He glanced at his desk, and then at the door again; pale, ghostly-white fingers snaked beneath the bottom gripping and then shaking the door in its frame. He was sure if the music had been down, he would have heard the breathing hissing through the gap where the floor and the door didn’t quite meet.

This was not good.

Love Shack, that’s where it’s at!

This was very bad.

Love Shack, that’s where it’s at!

Someone had been here since Pratt had left, and

The whole shack shimmies!

someone had put something

The whole shack shimmies!

in that room for him to find.

Or to find him.

The door rattled again, this time more forcefully, shaking in the entire door frame like someone was throwing their entire body weight into it.

The whole shack shimmies when everybody’s moving around and around and arou—

Something hard and metal connected with the back of his knees, sending pain radiating straight up his spine and him staggering a few steps forward. Jacob’s hand shot out to steady himself against the edge of his desk—papers scattered loosely, with disregard, across the top of it, fluttering to the ground as the metal feet screamed against the linoleum.

Jacob ground his molars together and pushed himself into full standing again, turning quickly to see an—unfortunately—familiar face. There was barely a second to take in the crooked smile around a burning cigarette before she swung what he recognized as an aluminum bat into the side of his knees.

Hard.

It blistered pain; even above the music, the sound of the impact was painful on its own, let alone the actual physical connection of metal to his knees—too old, he thought faintly, I’m too fucking old for this bullshit—and he bit down through it and lifted the rifle in his hands. It was a sluggish, too-slow movement, and he knew that, his limbs feeling like lead; but above all else, he didn’t want to think about the knowledge that he was only upright because he had the desk behind him, or about the waves of agony echoing through his skeleton like a death knell. All he wanted to think about was getting his shot in.

Everybody’s movin’, everybody’s groovin’, baby!

She grabbed the muzzle of the rifle and wrenched it to the side, away from where it was aimed at her. It was surprising, the iron force she held the gun with. All that wasted potential, he thought through the muggy haze.

Jacob could see the grip of her other hand tightening on the baseball bat a split second before she swung it. It was just enough time for him to drop his hold on the gun and brute force the blow into his forearm rather than taking it straight to the ribs, gripping the fattest part of the bat with his hand and using the opening to lurch forward.

It was not a pleasant experience, headbutting the Hunter. Instantly he felt the skin on his forehead split from the impact, the wet, hot flood of blood down from his hairline tickling the edge of his nose; the smell of nicotine filled up his senses, for a second providing a brief reprieve from the humid smell of wet earth that had filled the Veteran’s Center. But it was a pleasant experience to watch her reel back, to see the anger flickering across her otherwise smug expression.

Folks lining up outside just to get doooooown!

The Hunter spit blood out of her mouth, tossing the rifle she’d departed their grip-lock with down the stairs and out of reach. No matter, he thought; she was a few inches shorter than him, and probably a hundred pounds lighter. He wouldn’t need a rifle to put her down.

The door behind him rattled. He would need a gun to put whatever the fuck that was down.

The Hunter shrugged out of her heavy coat, discarding it on the floor. Jacob held the aluminum bat—his prize, now—comfortably in his hand, rolling his wrist and testing the weight absently. Everything in his body was screaming; the air felt thick and humid, the clarity the smoke had given him gone as the floral scent from the vents overwhelmed everything except for the pain shooting through his knees, which was now a constant, fiery burn. He thought he recognized that smell; in passing through the burnt embers of Fall’s End, and from the night they’d fished Elliot out of the woods, when John’s eyes had been blown black and his gestures over-exaggerated like he had to work all the harder to get his body to move.

Pain shot up his spine in a sharp, red-hot needle, almost staggering. He narrowed his eyes. No weakness. There’s no room for the weak in Eden. Sacrifice the—

“You made me drop my cigarette,” the Hunter said, wiping the blood from her mouth and interrupting his mantra.

“Says on the sign,” he replied, his voice coming out hoarse from the blood he’d swallowed as he indicated the No Smoking sign hanging on the door. Fuck, it was hot; the room felt like it was swimming, the ground stretching out beneath him until it felt like there were miles between him and the Hunter. “That shit’ll kill you.”

Love Shack, baby, Love Shack! Love Shack, baby, Love Shack!

The Hunter rolled her shoulders. “Did that sign go up before or after the forced cannibalization?”

“Before,” Jacob gritted out between his teeth, “and I abided by the rule. I’m...” He took in a breath. It felt like breathing in hot bathwater. “...not an animal.”

The Hunter flashed her teeth at him. They were cherry-red stained. “How ya feelin’?”

“Fine,” he spat. He did not feel fine.

“Yeah?” She looked pleased. “Lookin’ a little flush, soldier.”

She had wandered closer. Closer than he’d anticipated, nor realized; the walls kept fucking stretching, making everything around him seem wobbly and farther away until it was right there, up in his face. The closeness of the Hunter kick-started him, swinging the bat in his grip with every intention of colliding it with the side of her face—but she stepped leisurely out of the way, like it was nothing, and the bat hit air. Whooshed comedically over the sound of The B-52’s chanting in his head, over and over again.

The Hunter used the moment to push down on his shoulder, far enough that he was nearly unbalanced, before her foot came down on his knee—pushing, and pushing, splitting pain straight to his skull until it bloomed violent starbursts behind his eyes.

“Ouchie,” she crooned. “Tender?”

“F—” He swallowed thickly. Even that felt like sandpaper, like his muscles were grinding against each other. “Fucking bitch.”

It felt good to get that one out.

He dropped the bat in favor of gripping her calf, trying to shove her foot off of the spot she had battered twice in a row with a metal bat. This only seemed to encourage her to push down harder, until the front of his knees hit the floor, the bat skittering out of his reach again, clattering against the floor.

The music had died down into the quieter part of the song. The Hunter fished something out of her back pocket; the sound of the metal clinking dragged bright yellow streaks in front of his eyes, and the linoleum stretched out like a conveyor belt beneath him, and his breath felt laborious even through the heavy, painful pounding of blood through his eyes, and yes—he knew, now. This had been a trap, she had been counting on his return, and she had planned for it.

Fucker.

“You nutties have some interesting ideas,” she said, slapping the handcuff onto his wrist where he still gripped the dark jean-clad leg before clipping the empty one to the handle of the desk drawer. “Took me a little while to haul all of those fuckin’ lobotomized creeps all the way over here, too. But I was doing some light reading on your stuff, using drugs and music and all that good-good fun—by the way, your writing?” She cocked an eyebrow at him, nose scrunching. “Little dry, buddy. You ever taken a class? I bet not. You don’t look the type. Anyway, spent hours just getting them fuckin’ blitzed. Starved the little bastards. Been running this big ass heater into that room for hours. They’re real fuckin’ hungry, you know.” She flashed a smile. “Yeah, you do know about that.”

Bang bang bang on the door baby!

The Hunter crouched down to his eye-level as he breathed through his nose and tried to keep his heart-rate down; he guessed that she’d stuffed the vents with whatever it was they had been using to drug John, and just thinking that made his heart jump unsteadily in his chest, crawling up his throat. Every single sound bled color in front of his eyes, making his vision swim. He was vaguely aware of the rattling of the door just a few feet away.

She hadn’t been killing Faith’s Angels. She had been taking them.

“Always hear about how animals will chew their own foot off to get out of a trap,” she continued lazily. “And despite what you said, I’ve been dying to see how much of a fuckin’ animal you are, old man.”

She was close, now, though. Close enough that he could grab her—bash her face into the desk, fish the key out of wherever she was keeping it; Jacob’s eyes narrowed through blistering heat and pain, sweat or blood or maybe both dripping down into the corner of his mouth.

“What’s the saying?” The Hunter cocked her head, dark eyes glittering. She was enjoying this. “‘He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man’.”

“I don’t think,” Jacob ground out between his teeth, “this is what Samuel Johnson fucking meant when he said that.”

He swung his free hand, not cuffed, at her head. He thought, shame the hair’s so short, with only skin available to snatch at. There was a second where he got the sickening sense of satisfaction of colliding his closed fist to the side of her face, clumsy and sluggish though the movement was; his fingers reached, grabbing for anything that he could get a hold on—even a fucking earring would have sufficed—but she snatched his wrist and slapped his hand back to the ground.

It was only a split second of him trying to get mobility back before she produced a hunting knife from her back and drove it into the top of his thigh without blinking; but her eyes were almost all pupil now, like this little song and dance they’d been doing was more effective than the drug. It probably was; he didn’t know how long they’d been dosing themselves on their own shit to build up an immunity.

Jacob bit down through the agonized, infuriated sound that tried to crawl out of his throat. Blood flooded his mouth.

“You men and your hands,” the Hunter tsked, but there was a bit of venom in her voice now. “Always grabbing at things you oughtn’t be.” She pulled the knife out with a salacious, wet noise, waggling the crimson-wetted blade of it as though to scold him. “Bad doggy.”

“Fuck you,” Jacob spat. Blood spittle sprayed her face. Her mouth downturned, and she used one gloved hand to wipe it from her eye as though to brush snow from her face and not his spit.

“Better get that checked out,” she replied, coming to a stand again and gesturing to the knife wound on his leg. “Looks nasty.”

Knock a little louder, baby.

Coming to a stand, she moved to the door and cocked her head, listening to the heavy thump of what Jacob knew now to be one of Faith’s Angels against the door. The Hunter looked at him.

Bang bang bang on the door baby!

“You think they like the song?” she asked. Jacob pulled at the handcuff. Absently, dragging himself into a full sitting position now. The bat was too far. She was out of reach.

I! Can’t! Hear! You!

“Probably not your taste,” she continued. “But we love it.”

She slammed her fist against the door in time with the Bang baaaaang! On the door, baby! in the song, and now the door rattled viciously, agitation incited by the overwhelming stimulation of sound and movement. She did it again; smashed her fist against the door, rattled the doorknob until over the sound of the song he heard a furious, inhuman wail on the other side of the door. He struggled to try and stand; she’d clipped him to the lowest drawer, and it had him hunching, eye-level with the desk.

“Don’t,” Jacob managed out hoarsely, “stop fucking—”

“No, wait!” she cut in over him. “This is my favorite part!”

The music cut out. He heard, shrilly and splitting through his head, another half-snarled scream coming out through the door. The Hunter grinned at him. She stepped away from the door once the wood at the bottom started to splinter, bloodied fingers clawing rabidly to pull the door apart.

“Tiiiiiiiiiin roof!” Her grin split wider. “Rusted.” The drum hit from the music break came on, and she winked, and then picked her jacket up from the floor as she made her way to the door.

Love Shack, baby, Love Shack!

“Don’t worry,” the Hunter called over the music and the heavy breathing as the Angels started pulling the plywood door apart, spitting more blood from her mouth. “The weak have their purpose. You’ll understand that soon enough.”

As soon as he heard the sound of her feet hitting the stairs on the way down, Jacob yanked viciously on the drawer. He didn’t need her coming back up, not yet—not until he had two hands ready to grab and rip and tear—and it took three more clumsy, muggy jerks of his arm to rip the drawer’s shell out of the slot with a noisy clatter.

“Okay,” he breathed to himself, over the sound of Love Shack kicking into repeat again. The Angels, frenzied and gaunt and baring yellowed teeth at him like feral dogs, started shoving at each other to get through the hole they’d broken through the door enough; bloodied, splintered fingers spread crimson against the linoleum and their sickly skin. Through the window, he heard what he thought had to be the roar of flames.

My truck, he thought venomously as he tore the end of his shirt, wrapping it frantically over the stab wound in his leg to try and slow the bleeding. Fuck fuck fuck fucking bitch fucking—

The first Angel shoved its way through the hole in the door, the fabric of its shirt and then its skin tearing on the splintered wood. Jacob gripped the handle of the drawer tightly and gritted his teeth through the radiating pain.

The weak have their purpose, she’d said, like she knew anything about that, spitting his own words back in his face to mock him.

Jacob bit down through the pain, the vision fogging and fizzing. Don’t be fucking weak, that voice inside of him said. I have purpose. I have my purpose. I know my purpose. Cull the herd. Cull the herd.

The Angel hissed viciously at him. They had been trained to recognize Heralds, but whatever the Hunter had done to them had fried their brains beyond even that rote memorization. Jacob rolled his shoulder and sucked his teeth.

Cull the fucking herd.

[consumedkings-archive]

v. equitable exchange ✤ pre-cult au

john/elliot + “ew, that is so sappy i might vomit” taken from this prompt list!

word count: 2k

warnings: john being himself. elliot’s mother is terror. otherwise, they’re just being cute and enjoying each other. also naughty language, of course!

“It’s incredible how relaxed you get,” John remarked, sitting across from her, “as soon as you get out of Hope County.”

Elliot blinked at him. They’d only been dating for six months, but in that short time, John had proven he was more perceptive than she might have given him credit for. Sure, he was a little dense (read: selfish), but he was exceptionally good at reading her, which was rapidly becoming a problem.

That was to say—Elliot did not like being so easily read. Especially not at a dinner table in a fancy restaurant, after not having seen John for two weeks because work had gotten so busy she’d thought about pretending to be dead to get a few days of rest, and then resurrect herself Christ-like to get back on payroll.

“It’s not Hope County,” she explained after a moment. She opened her mouth to say, it’s my mom, she’s fucking bananas and will not stop harassing me about dating some nice boy that one of her ex-debutante frenemies mentions on the phone every day, but that felt like a lot to say all in one go, and a lot to say to John Seed, so she didn’t. “It’s just—stuff.”

“Ah, the ever-enigmatic and elusive stuff,” John reiterated, snagging her hand and bringing her fingers up to his mouth to kiss. “Turn that brain of yours off for a few minutes, won’t you? If you’re not going to elaborate on what it is that’s bothering you.”

“Sure,” Elliot replied dryly, “let me just find the switch here and…”

As she was busying herself mock-searching for the non-existent flip that would shut her brain down—and wouldn’t that be nice, to be fucking brain dead for a moment?—her eyes traveled the length of the room and stopped short on a tall, lean blonde laughing with a few other women as they walked into the restaurant.

Their eyes locked. The woman said, “Elli?” and in an act of self-preservation, Elliot scooted her chair out from the table abruptly and came to a stand, as though to sprint away.

“Ell?” John asked as she ripped her hand away from him.

“Uh,” she said. She then failed to elaborate.

“Elli, is that you?” her mother called, more fervently now, that sugar-sweet Southern drawl ringing around in her head as the alarm systems went off. Oh no, she thought frantically, trying to think of quick ways out—bust a glass open and just end it, maybe, pretend like she had amnesia, or literally anything—oh no, oh fuck no, oh God, fuck, I can’t do this, not right now, I’m not prepared.

“We have to go,” she blurted out. “John? Earth to John? Code red, we’re leaving.”

“But I just opened the wine—”

“Elli, that is you!”

Bless his heart, John continued curiously, “Who is that?” when he noticed the woman, and Elliot stifled a moan of agony.

“That’s stuff,” she hissed, grabbing his hand, “please, can we go—”

All of her fight-or-flight had kicked in, which was ridiculous if someone were to look at the situation objectively—that she was having this kind of a reaction, but if anyone knew anything about Scarlet Honeysett it was that—

“Go where?” her mother asked, now standing directly in the nearly-perfect geographical center between Elliot and John, on the other side, and it was painful to experience. Scarlet looked, per usual, absolutely polished; meticulously-maintained golden hair perfectly curled, her blouse and skirt pressed and prim.

“Nowhere,” Elliot managed out. “I’m—nowhere, mama. Just—” She scrambled. “Just thought I saw a… Spider on the table.”

“Ah,” Scarlet replied, and she didn’t sound convinced. A long moment stretched where she was aware of her mother waiting for her to introduce John and John waiting for her to introduce him, when finally her mother said, “Well, who’s your little friend, honey?”

Little friend. Like they hadn’t been dating for six months (not that she knew), like she didn’t let John fuck her filthy every time they visited each other. Elliot felt a dizzying surge of anxiety shoot through her body and tried to push it down.

“He’s m-my—John,” she said, and immediately kicked herself. Dropping his hand unceremoniously, she added, “My… boyf-uuh… boyf-f-”

“… boyfriend,” John finished for her, like she hadn’t just gone fucking stupid in the last five minutes for some reason. He gave her a funny, questioning look before he turned his full charm on and reached his hand out to Scarlet. “John Seed. It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Honeysett, I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.”

Scarlet shook his hand. Her gaze flickered down, and before John could retreat, she turned their gripped hands so that the top of his was facing up, inspecting it critically. Her eyes turned back to Elliot.

“He has tattoos,” she said and did not ask, in the kind of forced friendliness she used when she was talking to one of the aforementioned ex-debutante frenemies that liked to gossip about her.

“Yes,” said John, which was really all he could say.

“It wasn’t a question, darlin’,” Scarlet murmured idly.

“Mama,” Elliot began, “we should—um, can we—it’s just—”

“Elliot Savannah!” came an additional voice, and oh, she just wanted to shrink up and disappear when the flowery rose-perfume scent washed over her. The shock of bright auburn hair immediately came into her vision and warm arms were thrown around her neck. “I was wonderin’ if we were ever gonna see you again. Aw, honey, look at your red little cheeks.”

“Delia,” Elliot greeted, feeling faint. She returned the hug but could not ignore the way that John stood to the side. She was sure that he wasn’t accustomed to not immediately charming the pants off of anyone, and certainly, it was partially her fault they were now in this situation—after all, she hadn’t prepared him at all for what her mother was like. “It’s—so nice to see you again.”

“So nice to see you, my sweet girl,” Delia replied warmly. It was not lost on her that her mother’s one true friend was the first to reach and hug her, not her own mother. “And your very handsome man-friend, too.”

Delia swept away from Elliot to rescue John, who looked almost relieved to be admired and chatted to rather than glanced over with the sort of critical eye that Scarlet afforded to just about everything and everyone that came across her path. Delia’s apparent rescue of John left Elliot to shift under her mother’s gaze.

“Bunny,” Scarlet said, keeping her voice very mild, “have you been cutting your hair short?”

“Mama,” she sighed.

“I just think you look so pretty when it’s long. You know, your daddy never knew what to do with all that hair, but he learned to braid it just for—”

“We’re in the middle of dinner,” Elliot interrupted before her mother could wax poetic about the things that her father did well prior to his clinical and methodical abandonment of them. “And I haven’t seen John for a few weeks, so.”

So. The word hung between them, the sound of Delia fawning over John and feeding him all of the admiration and older-woman-flirtation he could probably want, and Scarlet waited. She didn’t speak; she was exceptionally good at this kind of little game, which they had always played, where Elliot would say something like so with the implication that Scarlet should be able to infer what she meant and her mother would refuse to.

“… just love our Elliot,” Delia gushed warmly. “You’re taking good care of her, aren’t you?”

“Oh, the very best,” John assured her. “It’s been—”

“Six months,” Elliot supplied.

Scarlet arched a brow upward. “That’s a long time to be seeing someone.” She glanced at John. “And so alternative, too.”

“Mother.”

“I only mean,” Scarlet continued, “that I wish you would have said something. I’ve been chatting with Blaire and her son is very interested in meeting you. It just feels rude to take it back, is all, and if you answered my phone calls—”

“I’m busy with work,” Elliot protested.

“But not busy enough to date someone secretly for a few months,” her mother shot back with all of the practiced politeness of a woman who made a living out of it.

John cleared his throat. “Six months.”

Elliot passed a hand over her face, exhaling sharply through her nose as she muddled through the anxiety and fury that her mother tended to inspire in her. A moment of silence stretched, too long and far too uncomfortable, before Delia clapped her hands together and made a soft sound.

“Well, I am just starvin’!” she exclaimed. “Scarlet, honey, you ready to eat?”

“I haven’t any kind of appetite,” Scarlet responded spitefully, and Elliot groaned and said, “You are so petty,” just as her mother plunged on, “but I suppose I’m ready to go.”

“Great,” Delia said, feigning cheerfulness. “Elliot, you’ll come and find us before you leave, won’t you? We’ll let you get back to dinner with your honey, and we’ll be waitin’ for you.”

As Delia steered her mother away and back to where the gaggle of ladies were standing around and watching the interaction from a safe distance, John sat himself back down at the table and poured his glass full of wine—far beyond what was normally considered a regular pour—and then did the same for her glass.

Elliot sat too and brought the glass to her mouth. Even though her mother’s presence inspired in her the most homicidal tendencies, so much so that she tried to avoid drinking at all around her, it felt necessary at this moment.

“That can’t be your mom,” John said conversationally. “She’s so tall.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Bunny?”

Elliot moaned, burying her face into her hands. It was the worst possible series of events that could happen: there was nothing in her that had prepared in the least to have to explain herself to her mother, and so of course the thing that she had done was not explain anything, because Scarlet Honeysett could not resist taking a dig at her daughter at any point in time.

“Hey,” John said lowly, scooting his chair over so that they were no longer on opposite ends of the table but rather perpendicular from one another, “drink your wine, we’ll lock the door on their insanely pretentious bathroom-with-a-couch, I’ll get you nice and relaxed, and then you’ll be ready to deal with your mom again.”

“You don’t get it,” Elliot protested, even when John’s words made heat crawl up into her cheeks

“I don’t really need to,” John replied flippantly. “Who gives a fuck if your mom doesn’t like me?”

“I do!” she insisted, distressed. “I care, and I had a very specific way that I wanted you to meet her, and she’s—God, she’s so—she always ruins fucking everything, John, you don’t get it.”

John leaned in, tilting her chin up, and kissed her. When he did, he tasted like red wine; his fingers slid to the back of her neck and cradled her there so that he could say against her mouth, “I’m not worried about it, hellcat.”

“I am.”

“Well, stop,” he replied amusedly. “You’re my girl, and regardless of your—very tall and honestly, statuesque—mother’s opinion of me right now—”

She sighed. “John.”

“—I will make sure that she likes me,” he finished. “I will charm her so fucking hard she’ll be begging you to marry me.”

Elliot made a low, tired sound. After a second, she said, “You’ll have to go to galas. And gatherings. Weddings. There are always so many weddings. Not to mention the charity functions, and—”

John hummed. “I will. Every single event that she invites me to. Maybe even a few she doesn’t, you know, just for fun.” He paused, and kissed her again. “All for you, baby. Anything for you. Even suffering through debutante events.” And then, playfully: “Bunny.”

“Ew,” the blonde groaned, suffering through the saccharine. “That is so sappy, I might vomit.”

“Please don’t,” he said, “I’m really enjoying kissing you.”

Elliot smiled against his mouth. “Okay,” she murmured, “but only if you don’t ever fucking call me bunny again.”

“Fair trade.”

[consumedkings-archive]

DEATH KEEP OFF; I AM YOUR ENEMY • john seed x elliot honeysett

in both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.

thank you so much @desertvvitch for making this beautiful moodboard for these two!! i am just so in love; you know i come unglued every time i see ell covered in blood but boy the TWO of them? TOGETHER? grrrrrrr it just looks so good, thank you thank you thank you!!!

[consumedkings-archive]

WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic. chapter twelve: the desire to devour

word count: ~10.3k rating: m warnings: naughty language, .000002 seconds of spiciness (but not really), john goes "we were vibing, right? we had the vibes? right?" for like the entire last half. also mentions of self-harm and elliot's previous trauma. notes: hi friends! i hope you enjoy this chapter! this is going to be the last sort of in-between chapter before we really get into it, and from here it's going to go faaaaast. i had a lot of fun writing it and feeling out these different dynamics. not to mention john being a gigantic fuckhead (but like what is new, lmao). special thank you as always to my wifey and beta reader @starcrier for your impeccable eyeballs, and also to @vasiktomis and @shallow-gravy for lending their eyes as well because i did fuss a bit with this chap. i would be lost without y'all. thank you everyone for your love and support, esp with comments! it really fills my heart so so much to hear back from you, and i am always in the market for friends so do not be afraid to reach out to me <3

She is twenty-five.

She’s twenty-five, and it's her first full day of work. Or, it was; now, she's sitting in the Spread Eagle listening to Pratt talk about everything that's happened while she's been gone, because he'd said, c'mon, let me take you out tonight. He grins a boyish, toothy grin at her—the same kind that's mimicked in the multiple school dance photos her mother covets—and tries to sound nonchalant when he asks how she liked being in the city.

It's hard not to think about how this is the first place she had ever met John Seed, then-Duncan, and how it feels like it's spoiled the whole place for her.

Elliot redirects her attention as best as she can to what it is Pratt is saying. He's fishing for information. They've always been each other's safety net, the person they can fall back on when all else fails. School dances. Picking partners in class. Graduation walking buddies. He'd driven her to the airport when she left for the Academy, even. But even though she knows he's trying to figure out if she's still a safety net, Elliot can't disguise the way thinking about Mason makes her feel—disgusting—so she brings the beer bottle to her mouth and takes a swallow.

The result is her face scrunching up. Pratt laughs.

“Geez, Elli, slow down,” he says, his smile crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “Bet money you're still a lightweight. When'd you start drinking beer, anyway?”

“I didn't,” she manages out around the taste, swallowing thickly. “I just won't let your money go to waste.”

He shrugs, as if to say, could, if you wanted, and swivels on the stool a little. He wants to press again—she can tell—but seems to have the good sense not to, instead busying his mouth with his own beer.

“Mama said Whitehorse let you right on,” Elliot says casually, trying to ignore the twinge of envy in her voice.

Pratt shrugs again. “He's known my dad a long time.”

“Known my mom too,” Elliot replies, dry.

“Yeah, well.” Pratt pauses, and sounds a little smug when he says, “Just because your mama likes me doesn’t mean I don’t know how she is to everyone else.”

“Likes you, does she?”

“Obviously,” the brunette replies confidently. “She still keeps all those photos of us. Remember senior year, she had all of her gal pals over when we were getting ready for prom—”

“Ugh.”

“—took us about 45 minutes before we were exactly where she wanted to take pictures—"

She rolls her eyes. Pratt grins, and then bumps his shoulder against hers. He says, “Aw, c’mon. Not so bad, is it? Having your mom like me?"

Elliot can feel the flush spreading under her cheeks. Not because she's embarrassed, or flustered, but because the beer sitting in her stomach feels rotten, and because Pratt's looking at her with the same kind of eyes he did before—always, always there's the before—and she doesn't know how to say I'm not her anymore, I'm not that girl, I'm different and changed and I don't know how to go back.

It doesn't matter. If Pratt can see it on her face, he doesn't let it show; just pats her shoulder and pretends he doesn't see the way she flinches from his hand swinging into her peripheral, pretends he doesn't notice the way she covers it up by swallowing another mouthful of beer she doesn't want to drink.

“Hudson’s really glad to have you back,” he says after a minute, when she doesn’t confirm nor deny that it’s not so bad knowing her mom thinks he’s a fine enough person. “Been talking about it nonstop.”

A smile creeps its way onto her face. “I’m glad to be back. With her, especially.”

“Yeah, you two always been thick, huh?”

She nods, swallows more beer, and Pratt rolls his eyes and snags the bottle out of her hand.

“Don’t keep drinking if you don’t like it,” he tells her, and then finishes it off himself, setting the empty bottle on the countertop with a grimace. “Can’t have people telling Whitehorse I bullied the probie into drinking.”

“‘Probie’,” she scoffs. “I could kick your ass.”

“Bullshit!”

“Could’ve done it before, Pratt.”

“Now that is lies and slander.”

Elliot only grins at him, the only time since coming back sans Joey getting her from the airport that it’s been a genuine thing; lopsided and a little sloppy but a grin nonetheless. Pratt finishes his own beer now, coughing a little into his fist before he blurts out, “I’m glad, too.”

She blinks. “Huh?”

“That you’re back,” Pratt clarifies. “Y’know—nice to have my friend back. Didn’t like sendin’ you off to the big city, anyway.”

He doesn’t know. He can’t know, because her mother won’t talk about it and Joey would never divulge what it was that had brought about her speedy return—but even though he doesn’t know about the way she has to swallow back a flinch every time he waves his hand in her peripheral, or the way the smell of beer on a man’s breath makes her stomach clench with anxiety, or how her hands are so fucking cold all the time because her heart hammers in her chest, the way he says that (Didn’t like sendin’ you off to the big city, anyway) feels a little like vindication.

“S’okay,” she murmurs, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Came back in one piece, didn’t I?”

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The scent of roses wafted over her in waves. The sound of bathwater murmuring against the sides of the porcelain tub rippled each time she moved, each time she used the grip of her hands against the lip of the sides to sink herself under; her knuckles went cold with the ferocious grip, but when she went under she was submerged in quiet once more. Blissful, serene, quiet; just what she wanted.

Elliot pulled herself out of the water. Downstairs, she could hear her mother’s voice, spiking frantic even through the floors and the two closed doors that kept her separated.

“...years, Mr. Seed, I have lost years of my life agonizing over what she did to herself...”

She dipped below the water, closing her eyes. No sound; no shrill noise; just the heavy, bloated static that existed underneath the surface of the bath. Only her and the baby.

It occurred to her, absently, that she needed to start picking out names for the baby. Now that they had a guess at what the gender was, they’d have to decide about a name; not only a first, but a middle, too—the last name—

“...find it quite intriguing, actually, that the second she comes back to me after being involved with your kind that she’s got all this—this—”

Oh, don’t say it, Elliot thought tiredly, closing her eyes.

“—tear, just wretched wear and tear, Mr. Seed, don’t you? Don’t you find that intriguing?”

John was sitting down there, enduring a thorough verbal lashing, and she hadn’t even asked him to. She’d said, I don’t care if she thinks it was me, and he’d guided her upstairs and cupped her face and kissed her, long and open-mouthed, and swept his thumb over her cheek. Now, Elliot could hear the sound of his voice—calmer, empathetic, like just knowing that her mother was hysterical was giving him some kind of control over himself—but that he was speaking in a normal tone meant that his words didn’t come through quite so clearly.

She heard the sound of her mother saying, “I suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re not bothered in the least?” just before she dipped under the water again.

What was she going to name the baby? Did she even have an idea of what kinds of names she liked? Exhaustion pulled at the edges of her attention; she thought, I’m too tired to come up with a baby name, and gripped the edges of the bathtub harder. More fierce, more firm; grip and pull, maybe spill the entire bathtub over, tilt the clawed feet until it hit the tiled floor and the porcelain broke and the rose-scent water flooded the bathroom, her room, the hallway.

Then they’d have to leave. Then they couldn’t stay, surely, in a house flooded with rose water.

Fingers brushed over hers where they’d gone white at the edges of the tub. She pulled herself out of the water to find John sitting there, knelt at the side of the tub—not unlike the way he’d sat back at her mother’s house in Hope County, when she’d drank too much in the bathtub and said that he could mark her.

Because that’s what it had been. As much as she had wanted it, as much as she had enjoyed it, no matter what John said—he had been marking her as his. Like that Oscar Wilde poem.

The same sin binds us.

Elliot brushed the water from her eyes and settled her head back against the tub, regarding him. He looked less bothered than she thought he would, having sat through her mother’s grilling and interrogation—though he did look like he wanted to say something, like maybe it was sitting, burning into ash in his mouth, the way she could see the flex of his jaw and the way his free hand clenched and loosened.

Ignoring the nagging feeling that he wanted to ask her what she’d been doing under the water, and the even more bothersome knowledge that she had, at some point, become painfully aware of his body language, Elliot said, “We have to think of a name.”

John blinked at her. Less than an hour ago, he’d been saying Of course I’d come for you, I love you, with or without the baby I love you, and she’d been sobbing into his arms and clinging to him.

He said, “And a middle name.”

“I’m trying not to think about it.”

A smile finally ticked the corner of his mouth, his fingers uncurling hers from the edge of the tub. Reluctantly, she let him.

“Your mother’s upset.” He paused. “She still wants you to play nice for her Christmas party, but she’s upset.”

“I know,” she replied sullenly. The despair of her shame, which had at once both overwhelmed her and hollowed her out, had dissipated in the wake of her indignation. What would she know, that vicious thing inside of her said, replaying the way her mother’s expression had crumpled. What would she know of our suffering? What would she know of our pain? ‘Wretched wear and tear’, like we haven’t been torn up for ages, like she didn’t throw us to the wolves and scoff in disgust when we came back bloodied and battered.

She wanted to be angry, really angry, but like most things that had to do with her mother, Elliot found herself more exhausted than anything. Scarlet had always found it impossible to comprehend the scars she’d given herself, had always claimed to feel disconnected to the ways Elliot had searched out meaning and comfort.

Absently, Elliot wet her lips and let her gaze flicker up to where John had perched himself beside the tub. He looked mighty pleased with himself, having finally gotten his words out. I love you, he’d said, palm flat against her window, I love you, with or without the baby.

And John, I want a home with you.

And John, Marriage is hard work, but I know you’re just the woman for the job.

And John, No way baby, I’m fucking it for you.

Blood rushed through her head, thunderous. John was saying something to her, but the words felt distant, and far away, and everything felt like it was underwater when she moved—not just the parts of her submerged in the bath, but all of it, the air too-thick and dragging on her skin and pulling her down slow as molasses. She blinked a few times as she disentangled their hands and reached for the towel, but John pulled it off of the hook first.

She watched him. She watched his mouth move, and his brows pull and furrow together at the center of his forehead, and the way his breath rose and fell in his chest, pushing and pulling the Sloth scar scratched across his sternum. Just like me, dream John had said, gripping her blood-covered hands, you’re just like me.

His voice, muffled and bogged down by the blood rushing through her ears, quirked up at the end. Elliot’s eyes darted back to his, and she asked, “Sorry, what?”

“The water’s cold,” he replied, waving the towel a bit. “Aren’t you getting out?”

“Yeah,” Elliot murmured. She felt hollow. Her fingers itched. She wanted—

John caught her hand as she stepped out of the bathtub, steadying her while her free hand gathered the towel up against her front. Goosebumps prickled across her skin, the lukewarm temperature of the bath still lingering; his fingers interlaced with hers, and she used it to steady herself.

He was close. They were close. A part of her resented it—that she let him be so close to her, that she let him kiss her and fuck her but mostly that she let him hold her when she cried, miserably, that she wanted to go home. Because after everything, after all of it, Hope County still felt—

She closed her eyes. Of course it still felt like home. Joey was there; now she knew Pratt was, too.

And among all of that, if she waded through the weeds spreading in her mind, if she hacked and cut them away, there was John.

“What are you thinking about?” John murmured, his cologne washing over her, their noses brushing. Her eyes fluttered open and she let out a little breath, that wanton little creature in her head chanting it over and over. There’s John, there’s always been John, nobody will love us with this much red in our ledger. No one but him.

“You,” she managed. Her head felt swimmy, the words coming out of her mouth sounding like a stranger’s—thick with want. John’s eyes flickered up to hers, having fixed on her mouth.

“If you want something, Ell,” he rumbled, the pressure of his fingertips against the back of her neck guiding her forward just a little but not all the way, “you only—”

Elliot leaned forward and kissed him, her hand lifting so that she could curl her fingers into his hair, the towel slipping to the floor. His body had tensed, like he wasn’t expecting it—like he was waiting for something else—and she thought about the way he’d kissed her with Kian’s blood in her mouth, the way he’d been just rampant with desire, the way the way the way—

Her teeth caught his lower lip, a little sharper than she’d intended, and his hand gripping her wrist tightened and he moaned, and she felt that same little thrill as before surge through her. It’s my magic, too, the itch in her fingers subsiding when she dug her nails in and pulled his hair a little, parting her lips against his; John leaned into her, crowding her up against the counter in front of the mirror, the hand at the nape of her neck threading into damp hair.

“Ell,” he said against her mouth, his voice rougher than before and hands planted on the counter on either side of her, “what are you doing?”

She murmured, “Stop talking,” and kissed him again, fingers clumsily working through the buttons on his shirt—her voice came out even but everything else about her felt wobbly, unsteady, craving craving craving the way it felt to have him begging her. Anything, to feel in control. Anything, to feel whole. Dig, and dig, and when you hit the bottom you keep digging some more, right?

What do we do with grief, right?

Burn and erase the image of her mother’s disgust and horror at seeing a part of her she might actually like, scrape it from her mind, dig her trenches deep deep deep and hunker down where she could feel safe, where she could feel strong; soon she would be home and—

And John’s teeth snagged her lower lip in retribution, sparking violent and red-hot behind her eyes with pleasure lighting her neurons on fire.

“Off,” she ground out against his mouth, pushing helplessly at the shirt she’d only halfway unbuttoned. The brunette grinned; his hands resumed her work, and she instead devoted her attention to the belt at his waist, yanking at it as John’s face dropped to her neck, hot breath fanning across her skin teeth dragging against her pulse point to pull a moan out of her.

There was a split second between John discarding his shirt on the floor and gripping her hips to lift her onto the countertop, his mouth seeking hers out again as she wound her arms around his neck. She had never been completely naked and felt not vulnerable at all, felt more in control—but she did, now, when she grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled and he moaned her name, a little frantic, Ell, Ell, hellcat, he said into their kiss, let me let me, greedy and wanting as he glided fingers up along the inside of her thigh.

He tensed, like he was going to drop to his knees, and she kept her hand in his hair and said, “Don’t.”

“Hm,” is what he replied, “pulling on my hair, ordering me to take my clothes off—”

“I’m about to tell you to shut up again.”

“—but won’t let me eat you out?�� John grinned against her mouth, the scent of his cologne—expensive, stupid shit, but it never failed to feel like it was overwhelming her senses—washing over her. “What is it, baby? Want me to say please?”

Yes, something wicked inside of her said, John’s eyes lifting from her mouth to hers, narrowing playfully. Yes, I’d like that, I’d like to hear you say it like that.

“I know you,” he purred. He dug his nails into her hips, a sound—the wanting kind—trying to crawl its way up her throat. “Know exactly what you want from me. Yeah? So, Ell, won’t you please—”

There was a sharp knock at the door, a pause, and then: “Elliot?”

A near-silent laugh billowed out of John, stifled into her neck when her mother’s voice came through the door. Elliot’s eyes fluttered; her fingers, knotted in John’s hair, loosened and smoothed down the back of his neck, the intoxicating tension relaxing just a little. Heat had coiled in the hollow of her chest, spreading warm fingers at the same leisurely pace that John’s hand drifted up to her hip, his mouth finding the hollow of her jaw.

“I can’t believe her,” she muttered. “Yes?”

“Miss West is here, with her brother.” Scarlet’s voice was tight. “Returning your vehicle.”

Fuck. Elliot sighed, her eyes closing for a second while she tried to gather her thoughts. It was difficult to focus with John’s breath on her neck and his hands on her skin and that fucking cologne—and boy, did she not want to dwell on the fact that he’d shown up with barely anything but somehow also remembered to pack his stupid fucking cologne. But there was a different, special kind of warmth that spread through her when she realized that Sylvia was coming to check on her.

“Hair’s wet,” she called after a moment, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Fine.” There was another pause, and then her mother’s voice, scathing even through the door: “Ensure you are put together, Elliot.”

John murmured against her neck, “So no hickeys, then?” and she swatted his shoulder, rolling her eyes and sliding off of the counter. He seemed reluctant to let her disembark, thumb sweeping the slope of her hip before he dropped down—just far enough to plant a kiss on the gentle slope of her tummy. It was—sentimental, unseating her with incredible ease.

And then he ruined it by saying, “Your mommy won’t let me fuck her filthy, but I hear the second trimester throws a woman’s hormones through the roof, so we’ll see how long that lasts,” to her bump as he grabbed the towel from the floor to offer to her.

She snatched it from his hands, wrapping it around herself. “Don’t say that shit to the baby. You think I won’t end your life?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he offered, head cocked to the side. “Leaving the hickeys, anyway, I mean. Well, and the second part too. About sex. Not the murderous part. Actually, you know I find it—”

Choosing to ignore the latter statement, Elliot narrowed her eyes. “You’d risk Via’s opinion of you dropping so severely?”

“You know what they say.” John spread his hands, almost in a gesture of helplessness; though she knew he was far from it. “Old habits die hard.”

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“She’s killing all of my angels!”

Faith’s voice was sharp, piercing; Isolde’s fingers fluttered over the bridge of her nose to fend off an impending headache, pen held poised above the notepad where she’d been writing down her thoughts but had paused in time for the girl’s interjection. She couldn’t stand a messy page—ink smears, jarred letters. Unacceptable.

Two hours ago, she’d had Jacob drive her out to where the service was strongest. A flood of emails and texts from her family had been waiting to overload her phone. Her dad, things are looking poorly, where are you?, her sister, I’ve been trying to reach you for days.

“Jacob,” the blonde plunged on, interrupting her train of thought, “you have to do something. They’re being—gutted like fish!”

“You should have locked them down,” Jacob told her. “And you’re not the only one losing things.”

“I put—” Faith cut herself off, clearly taking a moment to compose herself before she pitched her voice low and said, “I put just as much work into them as you do into yours.”

The red head’s voice bloomed with annoyance when he said, “Oh, did you?”

“No fighting, please,” Joseph called from where he sat next to her. His voice was even, elbows rested on his legs and fingers interlaced in thought. “I know this is stressful. But you must keep your faith in God.”

“Santi told me that—whoever she is has been leaving their corpses all around!” Faith’s voice pitched high with distress, now, sweeping around Jacob to come to where they had sat, big doe eyes wide. “We have to do something. Please, Father—I don’t want our people to wonder if they’re going to be next.”

Joseph paused, looking pensive for a moment; Isolde thought he might have been trying to figure out how he wanted to phrase something, but before he could speak, Isolde looked at Jacob and said, “You were going to hunt her down anyway, weren’t you?”

The eldest Seed’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you start with me too, Sol.”

“Get some fresh air,” she replied curtly, “go for a drive, clear your head. Eliminate a problem. You’ve been wearing a hole in the floors anyway; put that energy into being productive.”

“P—” Jacob’s voice spiked, incredulous. “Excuse me?”

He was agitated. She could tell—Pratt, and the phone call with the deputy in Georgia, and the Hunter on some kind of one-man rampage. But more importantly, Isolde thought, Jacob was agitated because there had not been a single conversation between him and Joseph since their argument.

Well, not even an argument. Just a lashing. A public one.

Isolde scooted her chair back from the table that had been set up at the front of the chapel, setting her pen down and stepping away. Her hand landed on the crook of Jacob’s elbow as she passed, and though he made a noise that implied disdain, he followed—not without shrugging her hand off by the time they got to the front doors of the chapel, leaving the other two to talk in low, murmured voices.

“You have got to stop letting this get to you,” she hissed.

“Nothing is ‘getting’—”

“Listen to me,” Isolde interjected. “I’ve been keeping as close an eye on the news as I have been on you. Things are—” She paused, mouth twisting around the words. “There is no room for you lot to be bloody fighting with each other. Do you understand me? This has moved far past needing to prepare PR and build a legal defense.”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed. He looked suspicious. “So why are you still here then, Sol?” he asked.

The words burned insult in her chest. Why are you still here, stinging fresh and hot, because it was a fair question. It was the most fair question. Unlike any of these people, she had a family outside that she still loved. Her sister, and her parents. She should have told John and all of the Seeds to go fuck themselves, to enjoy the end of the world, while she went to be with her family.

But she wasn’t. She was here. Doing—this. Finding fresh new ways for Joseph to connect with his people to keep their morale high, keeping the infighting at bay to make sure they looked like a united front to everyone, second doomsday cult included.

“My parents will take care of Avery. You know they’re close with—government,” she replied after a minute, shaking off the unease. “And I told John that I would.”

He snorted. “John says jump, you ask how high?”

“No,” she bit out, “I say jump and you kiss the fucking ground I’m standing on because I cobbled together what the fuck is left of your congregation.” Before Jacob could say anything, Isolde added, “My hands are full, Jake. Do not add to my pile.”

Dark brows furrowed, his mouth thinning in disdain. He clearly wanted to say something. But true to his nature, Jacob straightened back and settled himself before he said, “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine,” he reiterated with his eyes narrowed. “I’m going to the Veteran’s Center.”

“That doesn’t sound like where we heard about the killings happening last,” Isolde protested, eyes narrowing.

“But she was there,” he replied. “Or someone was. Someone was there enough to steal my files.”

“Your—” Isolde snapped her mouth shut, sucking her teeth as she glanced back at Joseph and Faith; haloed in the dim lighting of the chapel, she could see them looking back at Jacob and herself expectantly. She wondered how much they could hear, from there.

Turning her attention back to Jacob and pitching her voice down in volume, Isolde hissed, “I don’t think prioritizing files is the best move right now.”

“Thank you,” Jacob idled, “for your input.”

“Fuck you.”

“Have fun,” he added, opening the door and letting in a waft of biting, cold air, before gesturing to the Book of Joseph on the table that she’d had her nose stuck in. All the better to make Joseph’s sermons hit home harder, after all. “You know—with your light reading.”

Isolde narrowed her eyes, watching him trudge down the steps for just a second before she said, “Jacob—”

“Yes, Isolde?”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Don’t get shot.”

For a moment, he looked almost surprised at her words—but it was only a moment before he said, “Don’t worry, I’m taking Vidal. He makes a suitable meatshield.”

“God, he’s a talker.”

A tiny ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Jacob’s lips, before he said, “John and the deputy should be making their way here any day now.”

Isolde grimaced. “I was there for the phone call.”

“Are you going to leave?” Jacob pressed, expression stiffening again. “When he does?”

She paused, clearing her throat and shifting on her feet. I should, were the words that wanted to come out of her mouth. I should go. I only came down here because John wasn’t here. I should go, and get back to my life, and maybe get to my family and try to stay out of the crossfire and—

After a heartbeat, she said, “I don’t know.”

Jacob shrugged, as if to say, see? Told you, though to what he could be referring to, she had no idea; she only knew that she didn’t like the way he swung around and sauntered out of the chapel, leaving her alone in the tepid warmth with Joseph and Faith’s eyes on her in favor of the blistering cold outside. Snow had continued to dump throughout the day and night, and had only just let up recently; the members of Eden’s Gate—those who had survived the Family’s relentless assaults, and those that had been pulled from the bunkers—had been tirelessly shoving pathways, only to have their work tidily undone each night.

Fingers brushed the palm of her hand. Isolde startled; she glanced back just as fingers interlaced with hers to be met with sweet, bright eyes and Faith’s adoring attention planted on her.

“It means so much to me,” Faith murmured, “that you would help. Not just me, but all of us.”

Soli watched the blonde for a moment, trying to gauge. The physical closeness was not something she was accustomed to; carefully, she disentangled their fingers, skin prickling with unease. When she glanced up, Joseph’s eyes were on them, on Faith’s fingers falling from her hand but skimming the inside of her palm in a lingering touch of affection.

He was always doing that. Watching. Watching, and waiting, and pinning each movement and gesture and thought and word out perfectly like the wings of a butterfly, just the color he liked and just the shape.

“Don’t thank me,” Isolde replied, mustering a smile and brushing the hair from her face.

“It’s my job.”

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“Hey, Miss Honey, John!”

Wyatt’s cheerful voice broke through the late-afternoon chill; the sun setting early, people’s breath coming out in puffs of smoke. It all felt oddly normal, given the circumstances of the morning and the way she’d forgotten to call Sylvia once she got home, and that her friend had fished up a reason to come by the house and make sure she hadn’t—

Well.

Still, if there was any remnant of the morning in Sylvia’s heart, it didn’t show in her face, and it certainly didn’t show in Wyatt’s. Instead, both blondes beamed at her, radiant, the second she came out with fuzzy, fresh-from-the-blow-dryer hair and swaddled up to her chin in thick fabrics to fend off the cold.

And, truthfully, to hide the bump. John had reminded her of it, and even though the moment had been a...good one, it had also reminded her she hadn’t expressed this truth to Sylvia or Wyatt. As John closed the door behind her and jogged down the steps,

“Howdy,” Ell greeted, albeit a bit awkwardly thanks to her stuck-somewhere-nowhere-sort-of-accent. “You didn’t have to drive it back all the way out here, you know.”

“Sure we did.” Wyatt chirped. “Wouldn’t be very neighborly of us if we let it sit and the battery died out, now would it?”

“No,” John demurred after a moment even as Elliot’s cheeks went warm, “I suppose not.”

“You all recovered from this morning?” Via asked cheerfully, purposefully avoiding the actual question. Elliot shifted on her feet. John’s hand skimmed the small of her back, and even through the layers of fabric, it felt warm; she wondered if this was what it would have been like for them, had their life been normal. Had John been truthful with her from the get-go. Now, with everything laid out between them—the lies unearthed and only the brutal, unapologetic knowledge that they wanted each other, in one way or another—it felt like they might have been normal. Sometime, somewhere, someplace else.

It was still hard to swallow, all of it. The lies and the now-truths and the knowledge that she did, in fact, want.

“Oh, yeah,” Ell replied faintly. “Took a bath and...” She tried for a smile. “Decompressed.”

“That what smells so good?”

“Y’all get that tired from dress shoppin’?” Wyatt tsked, having pulled his coat out of the jeep and started to pull it on. He grinned at her and skillfully dodged a side-swipe from Sylvia; he had a good foot of height on her—and Elliot—so it wasn’t difficult. The siblings fussed for only a moment before Sylvia managed to fetch the Jeep’s keys from Wyatt’s coat pocket and held them out to Elliot, puffing.

She was in the middle of saying, “Your keys, madame,” when John’s head tilted and he muttered, “Now what is this?”, drawing her attention to the end of the drive. A police cruiser made its way slowly down the drive, carefully pulling up behind the Jeep.

Not beside it. Not further up toward the garage, not on the other side of the four of them chatting. Behind it. Blocked in.

Sheriff Pritchard stepped out, shuffling a little as he adjusted the black, fur-trimmed jacket on his shoulders and closed the driver side door. He’d come alone, which made Elliot certain he wasn’t here to arrest her—and what a ludicrous thought, that he might have considered it a possibility, because the mere mental image of Pritchard grabbing her arm and keeping his eyes in his head made a hysterical kind of laugh want to bubble out of her.

Not me, not me and not my baby, that thing inside of her said, lifting its hackles and baring its teeth when Pritchard began to saunter over. Not my baby.

“Afternoon, you two. And Wests,” Pritchard greeted as he drew closer. He’d earned himself a curious murmur from Sylvia. “Havin’ a little shindig out here, Miss Honeysett?” Elliot opened her mouth to respond, but he lifted his hands quickly in defense. “‘M sorry, forgot myself. Mrs. Seed.”

It caught her off-guard, sucked the air right out of her lungs. It was one thing to hear her mother say John is Elliot’s husband, to hear her say John is my son-in-law, but it was another entirely to hear herself referred to as Mrs. Seed. It had never, ever been that she was John’s wife, except out of his own mouth, but now—

John seemed eager to engage with Pritchard, because he said, “Something that you needed, sheriff?”

“Yes, actually. Believe it or not, I ain’t in the business of drivin’ out to the rich part of town just for shits and giggles,” Pritchard replied coolly. “Your mama home, Elli?”

“Probably resting,” Sylvia offered, smiling politely. “We just finished dress shoppin’ for her Christmas Party not but an hour ago.”

“Yeah,” Pritchard rumbled, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “Heard about your little trip to the boutique today.”

John asked irritably, “Do you need to smoke that right now?”

Elliot swallowed thickly. Her lashes fluttered, eyes desperate to close; the warmth that had flooded her face now felt like it verged on feverish, threatening to make her head swim again. This was bad. This was bad-bad, chop her hair off and run run run again bad, the kind of bad that made a girl change her name and burn her birth certificate and make sure that nobody would ever be able to find her again.

“I don’t,” she began, “think mama’s feeling up to visitors right now.”

Pritchard eyed her, taking a puff of his cigarette while completely glazing over John’s pointed question. “Imagine not. You know, you been a hot topic of conversation lately, Mrs. Seed. Gotten loads of questions about you. Lady from out of town, Federal Marshals. I don’t like folks sniffin’ around my town, you know, especially not the fuckin’ Feds, but it’s gotta make me wonder.” The smoke curled out from his nose, the smoke of a lazy, self-righteous dragon wafting around her.

“Sheriff,” John continued tightly, clearing his throat, “you’re going to need to put that out.”

“We’re outside, Mr. Seed. You ain’t ever seen someone smoke a cigarette outside?”

“Do you make a habit of smoking around pregnant women?” John snapped viciously, and oh, she thought, oh, I didn’t even think of that, because her brain was too busy kicking into overdrive and parse out the absolute confirmation that Federal Marshals were asking after her and strange women, too. Oh, I didn’t even think about the baby.

And then Sylvia said, eyes wide as saucers as she laughed, flustered, “Oh, John, that’s very kind of you, but I’m not—” and her eyes landed on Elliot, and she blinked rapidly.

Wyatt was looking at her, too. Big, big eyes, surely having not only learned that she and John were married but that she was also pregnant in the span of only a few minutes. At least, Elliot didn’t think Sylvia would have divulged that information, and if the shock he was clearly trying to cover up in his expression was any indication, that gut feeling was right.

No, she thought, no, this is not what I wanted. This is not what I wanted at all. It wasn’t his to tell, it wasn’t his to tell, it was mine, my choice, mine alone.

Her gaze snapped to Pritchard. She said, “It’s time for you to leave.”

Pritchard lifted his eyebrows. “That so? Well, good for me I ain’t here to talk to you, missy.”

“Get. Off. My. Property,” she bit out through her teeth. “Scarlet isn’t taking visitors, and I’ll cut the decay out of my own teeth before she makes anything close to the time of day for you.”

Now, his eyes narrowed and the cigarette sat between his fingers, still burning amber at the end. “Excuse me?”

“And tell the fucking Feds whatever you want,” she snapped, fingers curled tightly around the keys until the metal edges dug into the nooks and crannies of her hand. “But whatever you do, get the fuck out of my driveway, sheriff.”

Something flickered in the corner of her vision. John started, “Ell,” and his hand went to her shoulder, but she jerked back from him before he could make much more than a brush of contact.

“Don’t,” Elliot snapped at him, her voice wobbling and the tears—shameful tears—welling up and burning, “touch me.”

“Alright, okay,” Sylvia murmured, “Elliot and I are gonna go inside, and John can—”

“Ain’t here to talk to Mr. Seed,” Pritchard drawled venomously.

“If you’re asking questions about Elliot,” Sylvia replied calmly, taking Elliot’s hand with a firm squeeze, “I can imagine there is no better person to ask than her husband, don’t you think so, Sheriff?”

Pritchard’s eyes were squinted into poisonous little slits, and he took a long drag of his cigarette.

“Mrs. Honeysett won’t be any type of cooperative if you get her up now,” Wyatt chimed in, eyes flickering nervously to Elliot—perhaps both because of the news and because of her outburst. But she didn’t have time to think much about it, because Sylvia was tugging her out of the cluster of folks, ginger and reassuring even as her brother plunged on, “I mean, sheriff, come on—you know how women can be when they’re gotten up too early, let alone they’ve been shoppin’ all day—”

And Pritchard said, “You want I should put my cigarette out now, Mr. Seed?” as Sylvia opened the door,

and John replied with a slick, charismatic kind of venom, “No reason to anymore, smoke to your heart’s content,”

and the door clicked shut behind her and Boomer scampered out from where he’d been snoozing under the dining table.

She had to leave.

She had to go.

She had to get out.

Federal Marshals and strange women asking after her, and now her only two friends in the whole fucking world—

(well, not entirely true, since we still have Pratt, isn’t that right? Isn’t that right, Elli?)

—had just seen her almost go fucking bananas on an officer of the law, had watched her demand he get the fuck out of her driveway for wanting to ask her mother about her, had seen her.

“Hey,” Sylvia said, “you’re alright.”

I’m not, she thought, dropping the keys into the crystal bowl by the door, smearing red against the glass. Her hand stung. She reached with the good, unmarked hand for Boomer absently. His cold, wet nose brushed against it, and he whined, feet tapping against the wood as he bumped her for her attention. I won’t go. I won’t fucking go. I won’t pay the price for what they did to me, what they made me into.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out abruptly, her voice coming out tight. “Sorry that I didn’t—um, tell you. About the—”

“It’s okay,” Sylvia told her quickly, “it’s alright, Elli, it’s not a big deal. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Elli, she said, without knowing what the nickname meant. Elli, Sylvia said, it’s alright, and Joey, right now we need to leave, Elli, and Pratt, geez, Elli, slow down, an affectionate nickname saved only for folks who considered her their friend. Sans Pritchard. Fuck Pritchard.

“Lots of people wait to tell,” Via continued, one hand coming to rest on her shoulder and jarring her out of her thoughts, which were quickly and rapidly devolving back into the urge to march outside and ensure Pritchard was obeying her command. Out out out, something vicious inside of her demanded, we want him out we want him gone.

Elliot said, “Yeah, you’re right,” but she felt far away—not lost, not gone from herself, but thinking. She could pack fast. She could pack fast, and John had brought barely anything, and they could leave right now, her mother none the wiser. They could leave now and be gone and Cameron Burke would have to—

But are we sure it’s Burke? Are we sure it’s Burke and not someone else, come to haul your ass to a fucking psych ward, for what you did in Hope County?

For what you did?

No. She wasn’t sure. She could only hope it was one singular Federal Marshall on her tail, and not an actual piece of the government body. That was all.

But whoever it was that was asking after her—strangers, government officials—it didn’t matter. That old mantra had kicked in again; something has to be done, the same kind of calm before the storm that she’d felt when Joey had been killed, something has to be done.

Something has to be done and I’m going to have to be the one to fucking do it.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pritchard dropped the cigarette into the snow and stamped it out with his bootheel, his eyes fixed on John. Sylvia had rushed Elliot inside, but he didn’t think that had been purely necessary—only in the instance they had wanted to keep Pritchard out of a blood bath. Elliot hadn’t been checking out, trying to keep herself together; she had been angry, and he’d had half a mind to let her say and do exactly as she pleased to the man now standing in front of him in the cold.

“She always been that volatile, Mr. Seed?” the sheriff asked.

“Not undeservingly,” John replied tartly, his eyes narrowed. “Did you have specific questions, sheriff, or did you just come by to terrorize my pregnant wife with your theoretical judgment of her soul?”

“More your speed?” Pritchard replied, lifting a brow.

“Pardon?”

“Heard about you Seed boys,” he continued coolly, “and your...” He gestured with a calloused hand vaguely, looking for the right word.

John smiled, with teeth. “Before I grow old, if you don’t mind, sheriff.”

“Proclivities,” Pritchard elaborated, “for religion.”

Fucking Burke, he thought, with no absence of venom; fucking Burke can’t resist the urge to try and fuck up my life when he’d be better off trying to find a place to hunker down for the end of the world.

“We’re red-blooded Americans,” John idled coolly, “freedom of religion goes hand in hand with that.”

“Mr. Pritchard, you wanna get that car started?” Wyatt cut in abruptly, glancing around like he thought maybe the rest of the patrol might be rolling in any minute. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve got any questions for Mr. Seed.”

“That’s sheriff to you, boy,” he snapped. And then, after a heartbeat, he fished his keys out of his pocket and said, “I s’pose I got all the information I needed, after all.”

“Mmhm.”

John had turned back to the house, spotting Elliot and Sylvia through the front window, when Pritchard announced, “You make sure Scarlet gives me a call when she’s recovered from your wife’s antics, Mr. Seed.”

His gaze returned to the sheriff, narrowed. “Certainly, Sheriff Pritchard.”

“But if I don’t hear from you, no worries,” the man continued, opening his car door, “I’ll make another special trip out here.”

“Goody.”

John flashed another grin when Pritchard’s eyes flickered over him. Wyatt said, “Have a safe drive,” and Pritchard slammed his door shut, his cruiser’s engine roaring to life before he began to slowly back out and make a u-turn to head down the long driveway again. There was a moment of silence, stretching between himself and Wyatt that he didn’t feel particularly inclined to break—after all, Wyatt had been taking liberties with Elliot that he shouldn’t have been—before the blonde finally broke the silence.

“Congrats,” Wyatt said after a minute. “About—uh, the baby, I mean. I didn’t know!”

Ah, he thought, feeling a strange little surge of pride at the way the man across from him shifted on his feet with discomfort, and that’s why Elliot’s mad I brought it up. Her friends didn’t know.

Well, it was better this way, after all. He wouldn’t have taken it back even if he’d gotten the chance, knowing what he did now.

“Thank you,” he replied amiably. “It’s certainly a blessing.”

Wyatt’s mouth twisted for a moment, looking like there was something he wanted to say specifically and didn’t know how to say it without foregoing social niceties, but the sound of the front door opening caught both of their attentions.

“Wyatt, you gonna stand out here like a lemming all afternoon or what?” Via called. “Get the car warmed up, you caveman.” She took a few steps down the front stairs and looked at John. “You’re wanted inside, Mr. Seed.”

A very polite way of telling him that Elliot, perhaps, was in the mood to throttle him with her bare hands. Though he didn’t really see the harm in spilling the news—perhaps with Via, sure, but Wyatt? The cowboy? Like that was ever going to be anything.

“Thanks for your help,” John said, clapping Wyatt on the shoulder before he made his way to the front steps. Via hadn’t moved. In fact, her normally polite expression was eerily cool—whatever amicable, feigned interest she had manicured for him in the past seemed to have evaporated in the wake of Elliot’s own fury.

As he neared, he said, “Something else you needed, Miss West?”

Via’s eyes narrowed. She looked at Wyatt, now inside the car, and then back to John. “You must think I’m mighty dumb, don’t you?”

John lifted an eyebrow inquisitively. “If you think I instigated that little outburst on purpose—”

“What I think,” Via replied, “is that you know exactly what she’s capable of handling. Just because you didn’t do it on purpose doesn’t mean you weren’t thinking of letting her physically assault a police officer.”

His easy-going expression flattened. Sylvia, and her seeing, the same kind of uncanny people-reading skills that Joseph had, too. Seeing his delight at knowing that Elliot would have taken on a man a foot taller than her, pregnant, if it meant keeping him away from the baby, if it meant keeping herself out of the grip of a greater power that wanted her in a psychiatric evaluation.

“I want to like you,” Via continued, taking the steps until she reached the bottom, “and I thought maybe you were here to make a real effort. But it seems like you’re the same person you were before, John Duncan.”

The name sent a jolt of red-hot anger flushing down his spine, filling him up suddenly with a sort of molten rage that only the reminder of his adoptive parents could have inspired in him. When Via went to move past him, he snatched her elbow, holding her in place.

“And where,” he ground out, “did you hear that name, Miss West?”

“It’s called a web browser, John,” Via replied coolly. “You ever heard of Google? Imagine how many John Seeds there are in Hope County, Montana. I don’t need to tell you that the articles regarding you and your brothers, though a bit old, are unflattering. And all I want you to know—” She paused, arm still in his grip. “—is that we’re aware of each other, and that I don’t want anything happening to Elliot.”

“Neither do I,” John replied tightly, “and I especially don’t want someone digging trenches where there’s not a war zone.”

Via regarded him with an even gaze for a moment, glancing back at the car where her brother sat, before she murmured idly, “Kindly take your hand off of my arm, John.”

“Ellliot’s already aware of the any of the information in those articles,” he continued lowly, “just so you know.”

“My point, John,” Via replied casually, “is that I know, and I can—and will—deal with it as I see fit. Now, you gonna take your fuckin’ hand off of my arm, or are we going to have a problem?”

He watched her for a moment—just long enough to consider the dopamine rush of killing her, grabbing a fistful of her hair and slamming her face into the top of the porch, doing something, anything to ensure that Sylvia West was not capable of messing up anything that he was doing—and then he planted a big smile on his face and dropped his hand from her arm.

“Careful,” he said, louder now so that Wyatt would hear, “it’s icy.”

The blonde didn’t respond. Instead, she brushed her hand absently where his had been, as though to brush herself free of his touch, and picked her way across the driveway and to the truck idling just on the other side of the jeep.

Well, that would be one less problem to deal with, in the end.

John made his way inside, closing the front door quietly behind himself and taking a moment to gauge. Just to see what was going on. The house itself was quiet, and Boomer’s little footfalls were nowhere to be heard, and Scarlet wasn’t sipping her vodka in the living room—so.

So.

So.

Taking a breath, he started up the stairs, turning into the hall to find Elliot’s bedroom door halfway ajar. He paused in the doorway; she was rifling through drawers, pulling sweaters and long-sleeved shirts and jeans and sweats out and dropping them into a duffel bag, furious little exhales occasionally coming out of her.

“I was told I was being summoned,” John said, Elliot’s attention razor-sharp and snapping to him immediately.

“Pack your shit,” she said briskly, “we’re leaving.”

He blinked. Taking a step inside, he glanced at Boomer—perched protectively between himself and Elliot—and said, “I thought we were waiting until after the Christmas party?”

“You’re not fucking deaf, John, you heard Pritchard,” she snapped. “The Feds have been asking about me. The only reason they don’t know exactly where to look—whoever it is—is because Pritchard’s a fucking asshole and likes to be as obstinate as possible.”

“And if we sprint out of here,” he replied, “you’re just going to draw their attention.”

“It’s what Pritchard wants.” Elliot zipped the duffel bag shut and then brushed past him into the bathroom, gathering up her toothbrush and toothpaste and the sleeping pills. “For me to be gone. He’ll piss off if I go. And there’s no way he’s going to put up a big fight to cozy up to the government.”

“Elliot.” John watched her furiously gathering things up, and then when she came by again he caught her with his hands. “Ell, just slow down—”

“Stop,” she bit out, “stop telling me what to fucking do, John, and—I told you not to touch me.”

He lifted his hands from her, but not far enough that she could duck past. “Are you that mad about Sylvia and Wyatt knowing you’re pregnant?” When she didn’t answer, and instead hauled the bag over from the other side of the bed to be close to her so that she could dump the collections from the bathroom into it, he sighed. “I didn’t know you hadn’t told them, but I don’t understand what all of the secrecy is about. The baby isn’t—”

“I felt normal!” Elliot replied sharply, her voice pitching a little higher now, and John heard the wet wobble in it too—the way the timbre of her voice thickened and rounded out with the threat of oncoming tears, her cheeks flushed with anger and maybe shame and pain, too. “Okay? I felt—I f-fucking felt normal, for once, and it was enough that Sylvia knew you and I had been—that we’re married, which I don’t even want to dig into right now, but it was another to be like—yes, the father of my fucking child, who I’m actually married to even though I didn’t want it, is here and oh, by the way? He’s part of a cult. Yeah, a fucking doomsday cult. I’m carrying the child of a doomsday cultist.”

“How was I supposed to know?” he demanded. “How was I supposed to know that you didn’t want Sylvia and her brother knowing you were pregnant? You never said. And what does it matter?” And then, feeling the petulance well up inside of him: “I know it probably felt nice, to have Wyatt giving you attention—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked, incredulous. “You’re really pulling that now? So, what—you dumped the news because you wanted to make sure my friend found me as off-limited as possible?”

John crossed his arms over his chest. “I know this may come as a shock to you,” he said, feeling the tension peeling apart behind his eyelids, “I really didn’t want Pritchard smoking near my baby.”

“My baby.” Elliot jammed her finger into his chest, just above his heart, her words vicious. “It’s our baby, or it’s my baby, but there isn’t a single fucking universe where the only person this baby is beholden to is you.”

“He’s,” John corrected, tartly. “He’s our baby. And at the end of the day, whether you like it or not—”

“Have you ever,” she cut in over him, biting the words out between her teeth, “done anything for me that wasn’t for you too?”

Watching her, the words sat sticky in his chest. His instinct was to say, of course I have, but that wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t. And he wasn’t going to pretend like it was, either—because he wasn’t ashamed that everything he had done had been for them, that if Elliot wasn’t his then there would be no point in it, that it was a zero sum game where he either had her or he had nothing.

He said, evenly, “No.”

Elliot looked unseated by his honesty. She swept her fingers across her forehead tiredly and turned back to her bag. “Then do me a favor and pack your shit so we can go.”

John sighed. “Don’t you think—”

“John,” she bit out, “I am making an executive decision.”

“Alright, Ell.”

“And—”

John had turned to the door to go gather what few of his belongings he’d had when Elliot cut herself off, drawing his eyes over his shoulder to her again. She looked unwell—stressed, feverish, her hands buried into the duffel bag maybe to hide the shaking and her face flushed and her brows furrowed together.

“Thank you,” she managed out after a minute, “for being honest. For once.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Pratt brushed the snow from his hair, teeth chattering as he waded through knee-deep snow out towards the water. It had been three days, and Helmi had told him to meet her out there—how she was going to get past the compound’s security, Pratt didn’t know, but he also thought it probably was best not to dwell on the things that Helmi would do (and could do) to get where she needed to be.

Which is why he found himself less and less surprised to find her standing at the edge of the water, in the middle of the night, swathed up to her jaw in dark, heavy fabrics. The only part of her that wasn’t covered were her hands; the closer he got, he could see she was turning a smooth, dark rock over and over in her hands, passing it between them as she watched him come nearer.

“You remembered,” was how she greeted him, most of her face cast in shadow thanks to the high position of the moon behind her. Pratt shivered and jammed his hands into his coat pockets.

“Yeah, well, kinda hard to forget,” he replied. “Considering it’s been looming over me for the last few days.”

“Poor thing,” Helmi agreed, not sounding sympathetic at all. “Did you call her?”

Pratt paused, clearing his throat. There was something that didn’t quite sit right with him, knowing that he had called Elliot not out of a cry for her help—not really, anyway—but because this other cult wanted her. This cult, which had tore its way through Hope County splitting and gutting its residents, wanted her. And Helmi didn’t seem keen on telling him why.

“I did. They just got word that she and John are on the road now,” he said after a moment. “What, uh—do you want her for, anyway?”

Helmi quirked a brow at him, the corner of her mouth tilting upwards. “Shouldn’t you have asked that before making the phone call, if it was going to bother you?”

A little lick of shame and embarrassment crawled red-hot into his cheeks, and he scoffed, turning his face away. “Well, you said you wanted her alive. Can’t say the same for the Seeds.”

“She’s carrying John’s child,” Helmi pointed out. “You think they’d kill her still?”

Pratt grimaced. It was still hard to stomach—the idea that Elliot was with John. Or had been, at one point. It didn’t sound like things were going great, and he could only imagine why. Still—

Still, he thought there was a lesser of the two evils, and Helmi sounded like it. Maybe not the others, but Helmi.

“They don’t have a problem killing babies,” Pratt replied after a minute. “What are you going to do, once she gets here? They won’t let her leave, and they definitely won’t let you in.”

Now, the blonde grinned—pearly teeth in the dark of the night, surprisingly satisfied with herself. “Big one’s pissed at me, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. Well, you know, Faith too. You've been killing her angels.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got a plan. You know exactly as much as you need to know right now. Are you eating?”

The question came so quickly that Pratt didn’t have time to register the oddness of it, replying on automatic the same way he had been with Arden’s consistent, gentle pestering: “Yeah, I mean—don’t have much of an appetite, but...”

His voice trailed off and he glanced back at the woman. Her head was cocked and her eyes were fixed on him expectantly. “What?”

“Eat,” she told him. “Take advantage of as much as you can. And most of all, listen. Any information you can get will be helpful.”

Pratt’s throat felt a little tight. He kept thinking about the way Jacob had grabbed his shoulder, laughing when he’d insulted the woman doing the heavy lifting for Joseph—grinning like a fucking wolf, like he was going to be dinner, next.

He managed out, “He’ll kill me. If he suspects. He’ll take—everything, from me.”

Helmi planted a hand on his shoulder. The gesture made him want to flinch, but he bit back the urge, and he thought maybe she’d seen but didn’t say.

“He already took everything from you,” she replied lightly, “and do you know what that means?”

The dark of her gaze was intense, piercing even in the late night; it made it hard to look away. Voices echoed back in the compound, and briefly, he thought maybe they’d noticed his absence—but he only shook his head.

“It means you have nothing to lose,” Helmi murmured, “and everything to take back from him.” Her hand moved from his shoulder to the back of his neck, the pad of her thumb sweeping up to his pulsepoint pensively. “See? Your heart is beating, and hard. Your blood knows it’s what you want, even if you don’t yet.”

Swallowing thickly, he nodded his head once. Nothing to lose, and everything to take back. Could he? Could he get things back? Is that what Helmi had done? What Elliot had done?

“And don’t fuck it up,” she added, dropping her hand from his neck and zipping her coat up. Leaving so soon. She grinned. “Or I’ll gut you myself. And I guarantee, it won’t be an Återfödelse.”

A nervous, almost hysterical little laugh bubbled up out of him. Helmi shot him a look and then brushed past him, heading back into where the brush became the thickest, calling over her shoulder, “See you in a few days, Staci Pratt.”

A few days. A few days, Elliot would be back, and John Seed would be back, and Helmi would be seeing him. Seeing them. Maybe it would be better to make a break with Elliot, once she got in—but what if she didn’t want to? What if she was one of them?

Pratt let out a puff of hot breath, digging the heel of his palm into his eyesocket while the pain bloomed just there, turning and beginning to trudge back to the compound before anyone noticed his absence. Each scrape and puff of snow fell in line with his heartbeat, the mantra on and off again.

Nothing to lose.

Everything to take back.