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JACI WIP WEDNESDAY

Working Title: Return

Rating: Currently... R??

TW: Suicidal ideation, trauma recovery...horror??, heavy petting, kissing your abuser, hypothermia cuddling trope, near death experience, smart mouthing, police corruption, very very rough WIP

Word Count: 4547

Summary:

Six years after the events of FC5. Joseph was wrong, Staci survives and recovers under the assumption he outlived his enemies, until a healing ritual goes wrong and he's back where he started.

This isn’t the first time he’s been back.

The first time he came back it was 1 year after he was discharged from psych, nearly 2 years after The Incident.

Rook brought him and Joey in his jeep, and none of them got out. They sat in the car for 45 minutes, silent.

Staci moved to Missoula. His therapist is out there.

Rook took a government job 2 years ago and Staci isn’t allowed to know where he is.

Joey got married and moved to her bride’s hometown in Kentucky, where she’s been for the past 8 months. The last time he was here, he had her by his side.

This is the first time he’s come back alone.

He looks at the abandoned camp, and thinks he’s healed.

He’s not the person he was 7 years ago, but who is?

Life comes at you fast. You give up on trying to “get back to normal” and roll with the punches. Here he is; still standing.

A branch snaps behind him and his blood runs cold.

His body knows.

He can’t ignore it. He doesn’t second guess that feeling anymore.

He pulls out his gun and whips around.

There’s no one.

He lowers his gun and checks for tracks.

He does find the broken twig, about 40 feet from where he’d been standing. He crouches down to inspect it.

Careless.

Who would be watching him out here?

He looks into the pines with bated breath, straining his ears to listen.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, frozen, not breathing. When he stands up his knees creak and the cold has seeped through his socks and gloves.

He returns to the clearing to discover enough time has passed that his windshield is iced over.

Not healed, then.

He climbs back into his truck and blasts the defroster, taking off his gloves and rubbing his numb hands together.

Then he sees it, and his stomach bottoms out.

Hanging from his rearview mirror, a red rabbit’s foot dangling on a chain.

Staci seizes it so hard he rips his mirror off the mount.

His heart is in his throat.

His frozen fingers feel the weight of the object, but not the texture of the fur. It’s like he’s holding air.

He clenches it into his fist until the metal bits bite into his palm and it feels real.

Real.

He moves to lock the door, but something overcomes him. He flings it open instead, and steps back into the cold.

He throws the rabbit's foot down hard, and it sinks slowly into the snow.

Wholly dissatisfied, Staci takes out his gun, steps back, and fires at it 3 times.

Snowbirds explode from the treeline.

“Come out and face me!” He shouts into the trees, flinging his arms out at his sides. “You know you owe me that much, you son of a bitch!”

He screams the last word, it shreds his throat and reverberates off the mountain, echoing through the trees.

He waits, like a dog.

One breath, two, three.

He gets to ten and he’s past this.

He’s worked past this.

He can’t pin his healing on receiving accountability from someone like Jacob.

Jacob can’t give it to him, dead or alive, and Staci doesn’t need it.

He gets back into his truck.

He turns on his wipers and they scrape over the ice. He jumps when water cascades down his windshield, melting it clear.

He stares, shell shocked, at Jacob, standing there looking the same as the last day Staci saw him… Holding a bucket.

For a moment, he considers running Jacob over. He wrings the steering wheel and decides against it.

Jacob approaches his window and gestures at him to roll it down.

Staci complies.

“You drive a truck now?”

Staci nods numbly. “It was my Dad’s.”

“I thought you didn’t talk to your Dad.”

Staci stares at Jacob.

Jacob gives a shrug. “You said you wanted me to come face you. I guess I do owe you that much.”

“You owe me… A lot more than that,” Staci says, carefully. “You should be in prison. If you really cared about what you owed me, you’d turn yourself in.”

He’s not hysterical. It's a reasonable request.

Maybe he is healed.

Jacob looks impressed.

It feels good and bad at the same time, and Staci can handle that now.

He raises his chin, and waits for Jacob to respond.

“Okay,” Jacob says, like it’s nothing. Staci frowns.

“Okay?”

Jacob shrugs again. “Wanna give me a ride?”

Staci shakes his head slowly.

Jacob nods. He stares Staci down, but Staci doesn’t squirm. He stares back.

“Guess you’ll have to send them here.” Jacob says finally, stepping away from the truck.

Staci scoffs. His mind races with probable outcomes… Jacob not being here and making Staci look crazy. Jacob harming more people during his arrest. Suicide by cop…

“More blood,” Staci mutters.

A beat passes, and something tightens around Jacob’s eyes, an uncertainty. He looks away, pursing his lips like he's choosing his words carefully.

“I didn’t think you’d ever be able to live a normal life after what I did to you,” Jacob says, very plainly.

“I’m not living a normal life,” Staci says, mirroring the same lifeless tone. “I’m sitting here talking to a murderer. I’m chumming it up with the guy who held me captive and tried to break my humanity.”

Jacob nods. “You’re holding it together.”

Staci nods. He is aware of that, and very proud of himself. “Your brothers are dead?”

“Joe died 6 months ago. I stayed around for him. Now that he’s gone… Don’t have much else going on. Might as well face judicial justice.”

“Okay,” Staci nods. That sounded promising. “I’m gonna go now.”

“You’re in shock,” Jacob says. “You should get yourself together before you drive down.”

“Alright,” Jacob says, “I’ll be here. I’ve got a cabin through there.”

A beat passes, and Staci just sits there, nodding his head.

He turns around and Staci tracks him through the snow, until he disappears into the trees.

...

I thought you didn’t talk to your Dad.

Staci ends up at the Hope County Sheriff’s Department. He parks in the visitors section and sits there, bits of the conversation replaying in his head.

You’re in shock.

Normal life. Cabin in the woods. I’ll be here. After what I did to you.

Another voice, muffled but very much in reality, shouts his name. “Staci Pratt?”

Staci rolls down the window, and Mason Chadwick stands there looking bewildered in the frosty parking lot. “What the hell are you doing here? And what the hell happened to you?”

Mason Chadwick and Staci went to school together. It appears Mason has traded his letterman jacket for a deputy’s uniform. Staci is slightly floored.

“I just got back from the Whitetail mountains,” Staci says, blinking, “We drive up there every year, you know, to… to…”

“What are you doing driving up there by yourself?”

Mason looks over his shoulder before he ducks into Staci’s window.

“You know there are people who still think those brothers are out there living in some bunker?”

“I saw Jacob,” Staci blurts out, “He said Joseph died 6 months ago.”

Mason gapes at him.

He composes himself, and gives Staci a suspicious once over. “Dude. Are you fucking with me?”

“Jacob held me prisoner for 3 months, and I just talked to him and he agreed to turn himself in. No, I am not fucking with you.”

This is surreal.

Staci can tell it’s surreal for both of them.

Mason takes off his hat and shakes his head. His sandy hair sticks up at all angles and he smoothes his cowlick down and holds it flat against his head as he grapples with the news.

“Dude… You did not just say that.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?” Staci asks, his voice taking on a pitch. “I need you to go down there and arrest him.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes, I’m serious!”

“I don’t believe you.” Mason says, flat out. “I’m sorry, man. You can’t come up here talking like that. They’re gonna lock you up again.”

Staci scoffs, and kills the engine.

Mason bugs his eyes out. “What are you doing?”

“I want to go talk to the idiot who gave you a badge.” Staci tries to open his door but Mason body blocks him.

“Pratt, I’m saying this as a friend. You definitely don’t want to talk to the Chief about this. Go home.”

They share a look, and suddenly Staci understands: what he contributed to stupidity was in fact obstruction.

“You’ve been covering for them,” Staci says, the realization dawning. He laughs at his own naivete.

Mason throws his hands up and speaks in defensive whisper-shouts. “It was like this when I got here. I don’t have anything to do with it. It’s the powers that be, man.”

Staci nods, and starts his engine. “Thanks for nothing, Chadwick. My bad for thinking we were cool.”

“We are cool!”

Mason looks over his shoulder one last time before leaning in close, so close Staci can count his pores. “Call the fucking feds if you want something to get done, man. I can’t help you.”

Staci stares at him and Mason gives a jerky shrug before slapping the hood of Staci's truck.

“Good seeing you, Stace.”

With that, his former classmate is gone and Staci is left staring numbly at his dashboard. He continues to laugh and shake his head.

They won.

And Staci thought they were dead.

He experienced a strange and intense mourning period for Jacob, a survivor's guilt that he did not anticipate, that drastically derailed his own recovery for absolutely no reason.

It's not anger he feels, just deep bitterness he hoped to be free of six years later.

He pulls out of the parking lot and goes home.

…

This is what it's like to survive.

You get to hear people say they don't believe you, and watch people protect the person who hurt you.

You don't get a t-shirt.

You don’t get shit.

If you want something done, its on you, and you have to fight even when the fight is gone.

Staci stares at the ceiling fan above his bed.

He closes his eyes, and the blades of the fan are replaced with the blades of his old chopper.

The sound of his blood rushing through his ears turns into the sound of fire roaring and metal warping around him.

His friends start screaming.

He opens his eyes to dizzying silence.

He gets out of bed and stumbles, fully clothed, into the shower. A half empty bottle of Jack dangles from his hand.

He blindly turns on the faucet and drinks from the bottle as the cold water rushes over him.

Call the feds.

Thanks for that, Mason.

He laughs about that to himself.

Then he stops.

Rook.

Rook is a fed.

Rook is such a fed that Staci doesn’t even know what kind of fed he is, classified on classified.

The last time he heard from him was an inbound phone call several months ago from a restricted number. Staci remembers he has Rook’s old email. It’s a long shot, but maybe he could reach him that way.

Something in his gut resists the idea.

He clutches his stomach, and tips his face into the spray.

A twisted yearning.

A cabin in the woods. A normal life.

Has Jacob even been in hiding?

Has everyone been looking the other way while the Seed brothers go about their new-normal lives?

It makes him sick.

He stumbles out of the shower and collapses in front of the toilet.

It’s never really over.

He’s losing himself again.

Losing time. Losing the little routines that hold him together.

His plants are dying.

His sink is full of dishes and he hasn’t opened his front door in three days.

It’s been two weeks since he saw Jacob and found out his old department is fully corrupt, and he’s not standing- he’s on his knees.

He's uncertain if he wants to keep living.

He should go to the cabin and let Jacob kill him.

It was the same old game, all along. Jacob knew the department wouldn’t arrest him. He just wanted Staci to give in to him one last time. Staci allows himself to lay in bed and wail about that.

He knew Jacob was playing him, but didn’t necessarily anticipate the psychic pain of allowing himself to be played. The wounds that would open.

The next morning he wakes up with a pounding heart rate and the grim reality that it's settled.

He's going back.

…

The black truck inches up the mountain.

Jacob watches it from his vantage point above. He waits for more vehicles to follow, but the beat up Ford has come alone.

Jacob peers through his binoculars and confirms the unexpected: Pratt is alone.

Jacob sits back, slightly dumbfounded. Maybe Pratt’s come to kill him? Jacob reaches for the tattered rabbit's foot around his neck. There's barely anything left, bits of smoky fur clinging to a silver tassel cap.

He makes the hike down to where Stacis parked his truck but Staci meets him in the woods. He doesn’t appear to be armed.

“Where's this cabin?” is the first thing he says when he sees Jacob.

Staci doesn't look much different than 6 years ago, physically.

His hair is longer, unstyled, curling dark over his collar. He keeps it out of his eyes with a baseball cap.

He conceals the scar on his cheek with a light scruff of a beard.

The scar across his nose is impossible to hide.

The one above his eye, he had before Jacob got to him.

“Why are you here, Pratt? Where’s the brigade?”

Pratt’s face is an expressionless mask, impossible to read. “When I thought you were dead… I had to… Let myself grieve you. I didn’t expect to have to do that. But I had to… to move on with my life.”

Something deep inside of Jacob writhes like a hit dog. He takes a step towards Staci, holding up a hand to hush words he wasn’t prepared to hear. “Pratt.”

Defiance flashes in Staci’s eyes, and he continues, louder than before. “I could finally love you, because you were dead and you couldn’t hurt me anymore. I wasn’t angry at you anymore. You didn’t have to be sorry, you didn’t have the option to be sorry or not sorry. I could forgive you, completely.”

Staci closes the distance between them, and he seizes Jacob by the arms, his fingers biting into his biceps.

“But you’re not dead, you’re alive! What do I do with all that now?”

Staci’s muddy green eyes pull Jacob in until he loses himself. Jacob stumbles back. Staci doesn’t let him get away, he grabs the front of his jacket.

“What do I do with it, Jacob?”

Something in Jacob snaps, and he grabs Staci by the shoulders and shoves him back at arm’s length.

“What do you want me to say, Pratt? I’m sorry. Do you need to hear it?”

Staci stares at him with his muddy eyes filling with tears and Jacob says it again, softer. “I’m sorry, Staci. I am. I am sorry for hurting you. But I don’t think hearing me say it is going to make a difference. It’s done. You made it.”

Staci’s eyes brim over. He buckles, and Jacob holds him up right.

Staci collapses into him, wrapping his arms around Jacob’s back and pressing his face into his chest.

It dawns on Jacob that this is an embrace, and he hesitantly returns it.

“Get yourself together, Pratt.” Jacob whispers, “And take me to the station.”

He hears a blubbery scoff. “I went there. They told me to fuck off.”

“You didn’t have me,” Jacob says, “Come on, Pratt. I’ll drive.”

“No.” Staci gives a strong resistance, clinging to Jacob like a child.

Jacob manhandles him, grabbing his wrists and twisting him around.

Jacob grunts as Staci’s elbow makes contact with his ribs.

“Pratt, stop.”

The slap echoes through the clearing.

Jacob’s cheek stings.

That pisses him off. He catches Staci's wrist and yanks his weight against him.

“Get ahold of yourself.”

Staci's eyes blaze, face tear streaked and twisted in anger. “Or what?”

Jacob misses a beat. He realizes he doesn't have an answer. A slap in the face is the least he deserves from Staci.

“I never hit you,” Jacob grits out, his face red with shame. “I don't like being hit. If you want to kill me, just shoot me.”

The fire in Staci's eyes flashes bright before extinguishing. Jacob lets go of his wrist. When Staci looks at him again, it's too late to react.

He's being kissed.

The kiss is feverish and uncertain. Jacob is stunned into opening his mouth to Staci's tongue, and the taste of him dominates all his other senses.

He doesnt think before he acts… he grabs Staci's jaw and invades his mouth, arcing over him and earning a startled moan that cuts Jacob to his core.

Staci grabs at Jacob's jacket, licking deep into his mouth and pulling Jacob's weight against him.

They carry on like that until Staci is grinding against him and all of Jacobs senses are urging him to fuck Staci in the snow like an animal.

Panting, Jacob finally tears away.

The way Staci drunkenly seeks his mouth pumps blood straight to his dick.

“Staci,” Jacob says.

Staci cuts him off. “Take me to your cabin.”

“Go home,”

Staci moves towards him, and Jacob steps back.

He raises his voice. “Get out of here.”

It has the desired effect.

Staci flinches.

He doesn't like being yelled at in the same way Jacob doesn't like being hit.

“If you don’t want to kiss me that’s fine, but you don’t have to-”

“Dont ever come back.”

Staci staggers back, looking more surprised than anything.

“You kissed me back. I was right. The way you used to look at me… and talk to me… But you never did anything. So I just thought I was crazy. But I wasn't.” Staci sounds amazed, like he’s looking at Jacob, and himself, with new eyes.

“You’re more screwed up than I thought.” Jacob says, to hurt him. It works, but not as well as he hoped because Staci continues to move to him.

Jacob continues to beat him back. “I guess you want me to be your new Daddy?”

“That’s good,” Staci says, putting on a brave face despite shrinking away. “Okay, you win. I’m a faggot and you’re not. You don’t want to fuck me.”

“Yeah, exactly.” Jacob rolls his eyes. Just ignore his dick still hard in his pants. “Now get in your truck and leave.”

Snow is coming down fast. It's probably blanketed the truck by now. It's best Staci leave now, or else become stranded up here. Jacob shouldn't make him cry. He needs his wits about him to make it down the mountain in a storm.

“I came here because I thought you'd kill me,” Staci says matter of factly. “But I guess only good dogs get put down.”

Jacob wouldn't know what to say if he chose to respond.

He lets Staci have the last word.

…

His truck is covered in five inches of snow and the battery is dead.

Staci sits in his truck and silently considers different ways to die.

He curls up in the seat and thinks freezing to death is a pretty shitty way to go.

He left his gun at home, but he has a buck knife in the glove box.

He remembers standing in this clearing thinking it was all behind him.

He closes his eyes and wishes he were back to that day. He wishes he never got out of his truck.

He nurses his near empty bottle of Jack until only his hands and feet are cold and the liquor fuels the furnace in his belly that spreads through his chest and into his face.

He is, unfortunately, a fighter.

He yearns to give up, to give in.

It would have been so simple if Joseph had been right. In the end, Staci wanted him to be.

Then Jacob really would have been saving him.

Jacob made him into a new animal to survive a doom that never existed, and now Staci has to figure out how to live in a soft world with all his teeth and barbs.

Is this how Jacob felt when he came home from war?

Staci takes a deep breath and climbs out of his truck.

His boot slides through the snow and he grabs the panic bar to keep from busting his ass.

The snow is coming down in thick chunks and he can barely see through it to the treeline.

He shuffles into the general direction Jacob gestured to when he mentioned the cabin.

He has no shame about showing up at Jacob’s door half drunk and completely frozen.

He can’t necessarily find the desire to live, but the new animal in him won’t let him die without a fight.

His therapist would also be pretty upset if he died out here.

Fucking Mason Chadwick would probably be the one to find him.

He’d probably feel like shit forever.

Recovering bodies is a part of the job that sticks with you, but it’s worse when it’s people you know.

Staci knows from experience.

He stumbles his way through the forest.

After walking for several minutes, it occurs to him that he might actually not survive this.

He’s numb to it.

He doesn’t allow himself to ruminate too much on the kiss, how it felt. Instead he searches himself for why he did it. He had nothing else to lose?

But he wanted something too.

He wanted to do it 6 years ago, but it was dark and complicated and laced with the dream of escaping Jacob.

He often wondered what it would have been like if they met in another life.

And here they are, in another life, and Jacob doesn’t want anything to do with him.

Far in the distance, he can finally spot the trail of smoke through the snow flurries.

The cabin.

The last thing he said to Jacob replays in his mind, and he wonders if Jacob intends to make him eat his words.

Staci treks down an incline in the land and finds himself at a frozen riverbed. From here he can see yellow rectangles of light of the cabin.

He actually made it.

Whether Jacob turns him away or not… He made it.

He looks down at the barrier between him and survival, the frozen river cutting through the forest, treacherously wide and long, so long Staci will die trying to walk around it.

Staci finds a fallen branch that makes a suitable walking stick, and stabs at the ice.

It’s frozen solid.

Staci takes a deep breath and puts his foot where he jabbed the stick, hesitantly sinking his weight.

It doesn’t give, so he pulls his other foot with him.

His heart drops to his stomach as he looks over the frozen sheet of ice and the distance he’ll have to shuffle, but he’s encouraged by each step.

He looks up. He’s made it halfway.

Then he sees Jacob, standing very far away.

He’s so far away that Staci can’t hear what he’s shouting, but he sees him gesturing for Staci to leave, waving his arms wildly.

Staci clenches his jaw and looks down before he takes a step forward.

An audible crack.

He cant see it under the snow, but he feels the ground crumbling under his feet.

His eyes meet Jacob’s, and then the ice gives out.

A thousand tiny knives pierce through his skin as his world goes blue.

He fights until his body betrays him, his limbs growing heavy and his lungs panicking, sucking in freezing water until his vision goes from blue to black.

…

Pratt is blue when Jacob drags him into the cabin, but retains his smart mouth.

“I knew… Y-you wanted to… Get me naked.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jacob snarls at him, ripping off his wet pants and throwing them aside. “That's your problem. It's not that you dont think. You don't give a damn. You just do whatever the hell you want, until someone has to come save you. What if I wasn’t there?”

“I would be at home,”

That puts an end to his tirade.

Staci scowls at him, the best he can while shivers convulse through his body.

Jacob grunts in acquiescence and continues to strip him out of his frozen clothes.

Once naked he towels him down and wraps a thick wool blanket around him.

Jacob hefts Pratt in front of the fireplace and hunkers down on the floor to inspect Pratt's toes and fingers, one by one.

“You… You…” Staci struggles to get his words out.

Jacob spares him a glance.

“Y-you l-like me. Ad-d-d… Admit it.”

Jacob snorts, his gaze dropping back down to Pratt's fingers. “I like you with all your fingers and toes.”

Color is returning to Staci's face, now.

Jacob stands up and starts to work on undressing himself– he's soaked and half frozen himself.

So much for putting your mask on before helping someone else.

He assesses his own extremities while drying off with a dirty t-shirt.

The feeling of being watched makes him look up and catch Pratt's lingering gaze.

“Bed.” Jacob orders, pointing to the back of the room.

Jacob takes his spot and rotates himself in front of the fire for several minutes before crawling in after him.

Pratt stares at him like he’s lost his mind, then makes an undignified noise when Jacob presses up against him beneath the heap of blankets.

“Ja-Jay-”

Cold hands press against his chest and Jacob grabs them, rubbing the blood back into his fingers.

Jacob heaves a weary sigh. “What in the world are we gonna do with you?”

Staci’s breath hits his cheek and Jacob is momentarily winded by the visage of Staci here, in his bed, his dark hair fanned across the sheets, his eyes glimmering with invitation.

Jacob kisses Staci on his blue lips, and the storm continues on outside.

…

Staci wakes up warm in the marred embrace of his former captor. His toes curl as he replays the night before, the long slow kisses and delicious lack of conversation.

He studies Jacob’s sleeping face.

His lips are prettier than Staci’s, full and red. He’ll always have Staci beat in the scar department, even if the rest of the world makes Staci feel like Freddy Kruger. He huffs out a laugh as he admires Jacob’s freckles and thinks of all the people who’ve asked him about cosmetic surgery.

A normal life.

They could live here like this.

Jacob's eyes flutter open, and he immediately jerks away. His eyes focus on Staci's face, and he relaxes back into the bed with a long sigh.

Staci kisses him and feels Jacob smile against his lips.

“Peaches,” Jacob’s voice is thick with sleep as he rolls onto Staci, threading his fingers in his hair. “You watching me sleep?”

#damn! thats a lovely read #staci being a pushy brat is my favorite lol #jacob seed x staci pratt

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