Sandra Cisneros, from My Wicked Wicked Ways: Poems; “Rodrigo de Barro,”

wyn squinted at the harsh edge of her and avery’s shadows against the torn-up floorboards, the angle of the sun sliding between window panes that had just had the boards taken off of them for the first time in decades. glowing motes of dust drifted past avery’s profile when she looked up at him, his own gaze focused on the sagging beams of the loft overhead. she followed his sight, noting where time and struggle had torn down entire chunks of the architecture, rubble and dirt filling in the gaps.

it hadn’t been easy to haggle for this place, but social capital and a bit of elbowing had gotten the king to agree - he didn’t own it, really, but it wasn’t like just anyone could move in. but avery had skills and wyn had connections and after forty-five minutes and a gifted bottle of still-pristine gin that wyn had been saving for a rainy day, he’d shrugged at the pair and given his blessing.

so here they stood.

“well,” avery started, dusting his hands off and half-crossing them before they settled uncertainly at his hips instead. “this place is a mess.”

wyn looked again to their shadows, long, distorted shapes thrown on the ground by afternoon mojave sun. from this angle, their limbs disappeared into one another, two beings at their feet and some amalgam by waist-level. finally, she looked back up at him, her momentary silence garnering his attention.

“it’s a fixer upper,” she replied, not entirely sure if she was still discussing the building. “but it’s ours.”

a timeline where wyn actually does need to go to california on a followers assignment post-breakup but before their minds have resolved to love and finds herself in the hub and within a mile radius of avery and they just - do Not work it out. not right away. instead there's avoidance and frustrated, angry, desperate eye contact and indirect commentary and eventually the tide breaks, because they're too close to pretend to not care. a simultaneously voiced overlap of accusations mixed with desperate confession that leaves them both (for once) blessedly silent.

and then they work it out.

you find her under your fingertips as if the dust of her laughter has settled on top of everything that you own. you find her in your food as if the absence of her taste is a flavor of its own. you find her in the empty nights which stretch out, too quiet and dark and cold. you are a crime scene, closed off, shouts locked into your floorboards. you are an abandoned home. your sister tells you, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” you haven’t slept in a week. you don’t know how to say, “she haunts me, she haunts me, she haunts me.”

houses. // r.i.d  (via usurpers)

has this been done or

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

Anna Akhmatova, excerpt of You Will Hear Thunder (via saintjoan)

a smek… thsi looks nothing like how iw anted it to look but photoshop effects are unknown territory and I Want To Lay Down

The first night living together, we piled our suitcases in the corner; warmed up a frozen pizza, and sat crisscross applesauce under a broken coffee table, drank water in paper cups, and tried to imagine how our lives would grow within these walls. We were two lovers living on the floor, bare rooms and battered blinds. All we had to boast for is a padded air mattress, a set of silverware, and a cactus that somehow survived the winter. We had everything.

Schuyler Peck, Newlyweds (via thelovejournals)

to be Fair: wyn touches people with little warning, but despite the fact that she initially laid hands on avery without much prompting, she wouldn't have continued without his consent - and hooboy was avery giving off some mixed signals like, she wanted to get a reaction from him, and she /did/ (and was expecting him to turn her away because he's Cantankerous, but was also vastly underestimating avery's touch starvation and internal struggle with willpower), but never in her life has wyn forced sex / sexual contact from someone - for obvious fucking reasons and the mixed signals is why she was walking away towards the end of their first sexual Encounter - he was like? leaning into it but also still verbally attempting to tell her to fuck off? so she was like... alright i'm gonna try to leave and that will force a decision one way or another, or none at all and we'll resolve this another day. she wasn't necessarily expecting him to say yes, but also wasn't too concerned about it - troopers are a dime a dozen, avery is the flavor of the week because his weird bristly exterior is pretty amusing and she was just tryna get acquainted with the new customs trooper. (he had also caught her scavenging through some of the outpost's junk with the intent to pocket it and IMMEDIATELY launched into 'she's STEALING' mode, so he'd kind of forced a 'i roll to seduce the guard' thing - the prior meetings had seen her pleased enough with his reaction when she got within 1.5 feet of him or borrowed a pen)