#he's like one of those shivery tear stained dogs to me

[jerek]

Alright that's it [forcibly scrubbing all the nooks and crannies of Wrathion's face with a baby toothbrush and tearless shampoo]

[there-must-be-a-lock]

Red

Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 3680

Warnings: Kink and trauma. You know, in case you forgot whose blog you were on! Night terrors. Non-graphic flashbacks to violence, very graphic smut. Bucky’s head is just not a very fun place? References to brainwashing and torture. Kink discovery, including some hitting/slapping during sex and some power/control fantasies, all within the context of a very happy relationship. It goes down dark but there’s a distinctly soft aftertaste. 

A/N: For @cockslut-padalecki and her Decade Under The Influence challenge. My prompt was “The Crimson” by Atreyu. Thanks for always hosting the absolute best challenges, and congrats on the milestone! 

Pre-reads by @thoughtslikeaminefield @mskathywriteswords and @fangirlxwritesx67​. Inspiration from that scene where Sebastian Stan gets slapped. You know the one I mean. 

The companion fic to this will be coming soon! It’s significantly darker and way outside my wheelhouse, but please let me know if you want a tag. 

The Soldier stalks silently down the hallway to the bedroom, scanning the shadows. 

The closet. 

Something itches, deep under the ice: knowledge that closets are for hiding — 

— a small girl, giggling in the back corner of the closet — 

— ready or not, here I come — 

— but those frozen things don’t belong to the Soldier. 

He opens the door and finds the woman on the floor, trying to hide in the darkness. He picks her up by the throat. Moonlight from the open window glints off her wide eyes and the Soldier’s metal hand. She fights back, clawing at his arm uselessly. 

He waits for her to stop struggling. They always do. 

Bucky opens his eyes and bolts upright, gritting his teeth against the sweaty, shivery wave of nausea. 

It takes a moment for the numbing chill of the Soldier’s memory to fade. 

He knows it’s a memory. He lost so many things in the deep emptiness of cryo-sleep, but he couldn’t bury them forever, and now they claw their way out while he dreams. The darkness gives him back his life, one nightmare at a time. 

Sometimes he wakes up screaming. Sometimes he wakes up convinced that the bed under him is soaked with blood, and it takes a few awful seconds to realize that he just sweated through the sheets. Other times he’s paralyzed in the darkness, convinced he’s back in the cryo chamber, and he wants to punch and claw and fight his way out, wants to see the sun again, but he tried that one too many times — he learned his lesson about wanting things. 

At least he didn’t wake her this time. She makes a breathy sound as she stirs, but she’s still sound asleep, and when he inspects his hands in the glow of her night light, there’s no trace of red. 

She got the light about two months ago, when he started sleeping over. She didn’t ask him, didn’t mention it — he would’ve been embarrassed, if she asked, but it helps. She helps. 

He’s goddamn crazy about her. It hasn’t been long, but he knows this is it for him. 

Bucky curls up facing her. Her hair is a mess, and there’s a damp patch of drool on the pillow under her slack mouth, and she’s beautiful. It’s amazing that she trusts him enough to fall asleep next to him. 

He closes his eyes. This time he doesn’t dream.

The end credits of the movie start to scroll down the screen, and she makes a grumbling noise that means she doesn’t want to get up and turn the TV off. Her little apartment is full of the rich smell of whatever she’s got in the oven, and the day has been so sweetly domestic that Bucky wonders when everything will start to twist and distort and go bloody. He must be hallucinating. 

But the hallucinations always had a sort of airbrushed quality to them when they started, an inhuman perfection that felt easy, like he was floating. Right now his stomach is growling, and when she shifts, her elbow digs into his side, and she’s a heavy comforting warmth on top of him. 

The hallucinations were the product of his own brain, which might be why they came back all too quickly when he started to recover his memories. Even when he couldn’t remember his sisters’ faces, he remembered the drug-fueled torture that took place behind his closed eyelids, scenes that started like fantasies and ended like nightmares. 

Most memories from before the fall are weak and hazy, sepia-toned afterimages that overlay the living world like ghosts. Other things bleed through the decades, making it hard to keep track of whose memories he’s seeing. The Soldier’s memories are always sharp and cold, and they’re the hardest to shake off. Sometimes they’re triggered by the present, and it’s always a surprise; he’s stepping into a crosswalk and the past is washing over him like — 

The water from the hose is freezing cold as the handler rinses off the blood — 

— and he’s still staring down at the slushy puddle, but — 

— the Soldier keeps his eyes down, clenching his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering, watching the red swirl over the cold cracked tile and disappear down the drain, and — 

Bucky has to fight to hold on to the honking taxis and the Brooklyn stink, because the cryo chamber is quiet like a coffin in the last few seconds before he’s frozen into unconsciousness, and — 

— and sometimes he feels frozen even when the dreams dissolve, even when he knows they’re only dreams. 

The frigid paralysis was mental more than physical, for the Soldier, and that’s a hard thing to shake. The raw human parts of him iced over, head and heart numb while his body carried on following orders. 

She sits up and stretches, making her shirt ride up, and he notices bruises on her hips, wrapping around the side. 

“Did I do that?” he asks, voice thin. 

She looks down like she didn’t notice. “Probably.” 

He tugs the waistband of her yoga pants down a little and finds the shape of a handprint, stained purple. She twists to show him a matching set on the other side. They’re more defined on the side he was gripping with his metal hand last night. He feels cold all over. 

“Sorry.” 

“No biggie.” 

He’s too scared to meet her eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never hurt you.” 

“What if I asked you to?” she tosses back, playful and easy. 

Bucky doesn’t know how to react to that. He can’t let her see how badly he wants that, so he just freezes like a deer in headlights, forcing himself to go still, to shut down, to say nothing.  

“Whoa, hey, don’t do that,” she says, and she moves into his space slowly, deliberately, giving him time to tell her to stop. He blinks at her, and she smiles, soothing. 

He spent the first month of their relationship waiting for her to turn and run. It’s gotten better, but… 

“Why the hell do you trust me?” he blurts out. 

She frowns, and hesitates, and he wants to reach up and smooth out the little frown line that forms between her eyebrows, but he doesn’t. She curls up against him and kisses his jaw. 

“Would you ever choose to hurt me?” she asks. 

“No.” 

“There you go.” He feels the movement when she shrugs, as if it’s that easy. “You control your choices. That’s it.” 

“But I —” 

“No buts,” she interrupts, and her voice is firm. “I choose to trust you and you don’t get to talk me out of it.” 

Bucky lets out a huff of not-quite-laughter at that. She’s stubborn as hell when she wants to be, and he knows better than to argue. 

“Okay,” he says, and wraps his arms around her, kissing the top of her head. She settles closer, her breath a warm damp tickle against the side of his neck. 

His body used to be a weapon. 

“You can’t blame yourself for things that are out of your control,” she mumbles, as if she heard him. 

He takes a deep breath and says it again: “Okay.” 

He can see her reflection in the mirror; she bites her lip, teeth white against her bright red lipstick, trying to hold back, but the whimpers are getting louder by the second as he fucks her harder. She’s bracing herself with her forearms on the sink, her entire body shaking with each sharp thrust. 

“Shhhh,” Bucky says, half-laughing, but he doesn’t slow down. 

He’s pretty sure this was her plan all along. They barely made it an hour into the party before she tugged him into the bathroom, and usually he would protest, but he’s been half-hard since he first saw her in that damn outfit. 

She opened the door earlier looking like a pinup, complete with glossy curls and red lips and this dress: flared skirt, nipped-in waist, curves threatening to spill over the scooped-low neckline. He had just stuttered for a few seconds as a wisp of memory cast a sepia glow over her pleased smile. 

He used to have a dog-eared print of one of those calendar girls, and it was tame compared to some that were carried to war, but there was something warm in her smile that made him hold onto it. He used to daydream about her waiting at home, welcoming him at the door, when everything else was heavy and grey. He used to look at her smile when he couldn’t bear to close his eyes, knowing he’d only see blood. They took it when he was captured, of course, but he used to imagine — 

— this, he used to imagine this, the way the skirt is rucked up around her hips and she’s bent at the waist, the way she stretches open around the shiny-wet length of his cock. 

He has a flash of certainty that this is just a fantasy, something he’s imagining desperately as he fucks his own fist and tries not to make a sound, pressing his other palm to his mouth to muffle his labored breathing. He’s picturing this so vividly that when he opens his eyes and sees the stars, framed by the caved-in ceiling of another bombed-out shell of a building, he’ll have to fight back tears of disappointment. 

The sight of her face in the mirror is utterly pornographic, threatening to send him over the edge too soon, but when he looks down, he can see the way her ass bounces and jiggles as she shoves herself back to meet each thrust, and that’s goddamn obscene too. Bucky’s imagination has never been this good. 

She’s so close, too close to stay silent, and just as she lets out a high-pitched, keening moan, there are footsteps right outside the door. 

He reacts instinctively, before he can think better of it; he slaps his hand over her mouth, muffling the sound against his palm — the metal one, he realizes, a split-second too late. 

Their eyes meet in the mirror for one wild heartbeat. Her skin looks dangerously soft under silver fingers that could so easily break the fragile jawbone they grip. 

Then her eyes roll back in her head, and her orgasm blindsides both of them with its intensity. If he wasn’t silencing her, she would’ve shouted, he’s pretty sure; she spasms violently against his grip, writhing like she’s trying to shake him off, and — 

— he imagines her struggling, fighting back, until he pins her against the wall and — 

— it hits him like a gut-punch. He doubles over, curling himself around her as he comes with a rough shocked grunt, and the white-out lightning-bolt electroshock feel of it is so incredible he forgets, for a few seconds; he just buries his face in those curls and kisses the nape of her neck. 

He straightens up and realizes her lipstick is smeared over the metal hand, deep crimson red. 

“God, we’re a mess,” she laughs breathlessly. She turns to kiss him, eyes sparkling, and then they have to clean up, put themselves back together, and he brushes it off. 

It was probably a memory, a ghost whose features he confused with hers in one fevered second. Unwanted memories — 

— dreams — flashbacks — fantasies — hallucinations — 

— invade his reality every day. 

It didn’t feel like a memory, though. 

She smiles, and there’s no doubt in his mind that the smile is real, so Bucky swallows his guilt and smiles back. Her hand is warm in his. 

There’s a knife in his hand and blood on the floor. 

It’s messy, but those were his orders. Easier to frame the mistress this way. At least the carving knife was sharp. Red drips down the blade onto the metal fingers.  

He’s about to place it next to the corpse when he hears the gasp. The mistress had been asleep four minutes ago, but people are unpredictable that way. 

Messy. 

The Soldier pivots, finds her standing in the doorway, hand over her mouth, eyes wide. She’s paralyzed by fear, like a deer in headlights as he stalks closer. Usually they run. Sometimes they fight back. This one just stares. 

“I won’t say anything,” she whispers. “I didn’t see —” He grabs her wrist, and she shrieks, trying to twist away, until he pins her against the wall and holds her in place. Tears start to roll down her cheeks. “No, please, I’ll do anything you want — just don’t kill me! You can — anything, I promise, I won’t struggle! Do you want —” 

“Want” is buried deep under the ice. “Want” is for bodies that are warm and soft and human. The Soldier is a weapon.

He presses the knife into her hand and forces her fingers to close around the handle. She was supposed to be asleep. 

She’ll be blamed, one way or another, but maybe it’s better this way. Cleaner. 

No witnesses. It’s an order. 

Bucky wakes up. He’s trembling, sitting up with his hands twisted in the sheets, but it’s not as bad as it could be. She’s sitting up next to him, one gentle hand on his chest as she watches with wide sad eyes. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out. “Fuck, I hate waking you up.” 

“Almost time anyway,” she says, which is when he realizes that it’s morning. Sunlight is streaming in through the sheer curtains. He settles back against the headboard, taking it in. They’re both naked, with her big downy comforter around their waists, and the residual chill of memory thaws immediately in the cozy warmth of her bed. 

She leans in hesitantly and brushes her lips against his. He can read the worry plain on her face — she doesn’t know what he needs right now — but he tugs her onto his lap, tilts his head back, mouth opening easily under hers for slow lazy kisses that stretch like taffy and then turn deep and dirty. She swears like a sailor as she sinks down slowly onto his cock. 

Christ, she’s gorgeous. 

It must be real. He could never hallucinate something so flawed and incredible as the way she looks naked, the stretch marks under his palms, the calluses on her fingers when she cups his jaw, the way she moans when he plants his feet on the bed and fucks up into her. 

She’s flushed and dewy with sweat, moaning in the sharp bitten-off way that means he found just the right angle, and her thighs are shaking hard enough that he has to grip her hips and hold her steady. He can feel her starting to get close, clenching and flooded around him, when her alarm goes off. 

“Cocksucking motherfucker,” she snarls. 

They both look helplessly at the phone, just out of easy reach on the nightstand. Bucky’s tempted to just ignore it, but she’s already leaning over. She twists at the waist but doesn’t stop rocking her hips down against him, squeezing in little pulses like she can’t help herself, so he settles her more firmly on his lap, holding her weight and anchoring her as she reaches for it. He works his right hand down between them, an awkward angle that’s totally worth it when he can rub her clit with the pad of his thumb and feel her spasm around his cock. 

“Five more minutes,” he suggests breathlessly. 

“Not gonna need that long if you keep doing that.” She trembles and almost collapses before finally grabbing the phone, and she hits the snooze button immediately. 

He’s already rolling his hips, grinding in deep, and he must hit something just right at the same moment she starts to straighten up; it makes her twitch, jerking uncontrollably against him as she moves, and her elbow cracks across his jaw, snapping his head to the side hard enough to rattle his teeth. 

“Shit!” she hisses, and then: “I’m so sorry, I — are you —” 

But the rough throb of pain hit like a swell of heat in Bucky’s gut, making him jerk up into her and shudder with pleasure. He lets his head loll, taking a deep heaving breath and letting it out as a moan. 

It’s not until he tilts his head back to look at her stunned face that he realizes what just happened. His cheeks burn but she doesn’t look disgusted; her eyes go all heavy-lidded and she bites her lip as she starts to ride him again, swiveling her hips. 

He’s opening his mouth to make some excuse, to deny it, when she leans in for a bruising kiss: teeth scraping his lower lip, a whimper rough in her throat, cunt silky-hot and soaked, so good his head is spinning. 

Then she asks raggedly, “Do you want me to do that again?” 

Without even thinking about it, he blurts out, “Yes.” 

Her palm connects with his cheek, a sharp sting that draws a guttural sound from deep in his chest. He moves on pure primal instinct, gripping her hips to slam her down on his cock. 

From there it’s rough and frantic and desperate. He’s only dimly aware of the way she moans, bucking against him, the way they’re moving against each other like animals, the way she bites his lip so hard he tastes copper and then he’s gone, coming so hard his vision goes white with the first intense pulses of it. She shudders as she follows him, riding out the shocks of pleasure with her forehead pressed to his and her hands in his hair. 

He shivers against her, breath hitching as reality washes in like ice water. 

“I can feel you freaking out,” she mumbles. “What, they didn’t have kink in the thirties?”

It surprises Bucky enough that he lets out a huff of laughter. “No. Not exactly.” 

“Why is this freaking you out?” 

He stutters for a second before he manages, “What’s wrong with me?” 

She sits up and looks at him intently. “Fucking nothing.” 

“That should be the last thing I want,” Bucky mutters, cheeks burning. 

“That’s not how it works,” she snaps. “Sex isn’t — it doesn’t always make sense. It’s messy.” 

“I’ve had enough of hurting people for a fuckin’ lifetime.” 

There’s something vulnerable in her sheepish half-smile. “Sometimes your body likes shit it shouldn’t. You can’t control what gets you off. Believe me, sweetheart.” 

He blinks, ready to question that, and she leans in for a quick kiss. As if on cue, her alarm goes off again. 

“Fuck.” 

“I gotta go,” she says reluctantly. “But later — later we’re going to talk about some things. Okay?” 

He doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks it very clearly in that moment: I love you. 

“Okay.” 

The Soldier pins her brutally against the wall, one hand around her wrists, the other around her throat. He doesn’t squeeze, not yet, just holds her there and savors the thrill; she’s writhing and lashing out at him like a caged animal, but he’s got her and she knows it. 

It’s beautiful, the way she snarls and tries to struggle. 

He wants —

 — so this must be a normal dream, not a memory, but — 

— he wants to fuck her just like this, up against the wall, and —

— his hips jerk and his cock throbs, and — 

— fuck, he wants her. 

“Baby?” Her voice comes out as a sleep-slurred moan. 

He tries to blink away the dream, but instead he’s rolling over and pinning her, rocking his hips down before he can stop himself. She sucks in a breath, spreading her legs to meet the next slow thrust, and she blinks dazedly up at him, mouth dropping open as they rut against each other. 

“What was it?” she asks, raspy and heated. 

He lets out a pained sound and drops his head, hunching to bury his face in the crook of her neck. He’s so goddamn hard, so close, all over a fucked-up dream, and — 

“I was holding you — up against the wall. Your wrists.” 

“Yeah?” she says, voice smoky and eager. “Remember what we talked about?” 

“Traffic lights. Red if you want me to stop.” 

“Do it.”  

Oh. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Fuck yes.” 

He snatches her wrists and crosses them over her head, watching the way her lashes flutter at the touch of metal, the way she bites her lip. She shifts under him, squirming until the length of him is slotted up against her slickness and her legs are up around his hips. 

He slides in slow, relishing every inch, her body welcoming him with living dripping heat. She arches up, and he adjusts his grip on her wrists, squeezing slightly as he braces himself. All he wants in the entire damn universe is to drive into her, piston his hips until she’s screaming, but he starts to fuck her with steady even thrusts, holding back, trying to let go of the last lingering doubts. 

“Doesn’t this scare you?” Bucky asks hoarsely. “That you’re trapped.” 

She lets out a moan that sure as hell doesn’t sound like fear. This isn’t a dream any more, but it still feels surreal. 

“Yellow,” she says.  

“Shit. What’s wrong?” He tries to pull away, but she’s got her ankles hooked, keeping him in place with her legs. He lets go of her wrists, at least, and hauls in a deep breath, trying to make sense of that fierce expression on her face. 

“Nothing. I just wanted you to see that you’re in control. You chose to stop.” 

He swallows hard. “Yeah. I did.” 

“Stop punishing your body for wanting this,” she says. 

His breath catches, and for a moment all he can do is stare. She gives him a smile so soft it threatens to rip him open.

Then he curls his fingers around her wrists again — they’re still crossed, right where he left them. He waits for her nod. 

“Green.” 

Companion fic is here. 

[stacispratt]

glorious fire

big thank u to @coffeebucko​ without whomst this fic would not exist <3 thank u for chatting with me about stacijacob & also putting your eyeballs on the first draft of this thing!! without further ado here’s jacob asking how staci would kill him as foreplay

also posted on ao3!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

“When you fantasize about escaping,” Jacob says, as he looks up from his Chosens' reports to rest his eyes on Pratt's rigid form, “how do you do it?”

Pratt, sitting on Jacob's bed, in the middle of scribbling notes on his clipboard, only locks up stares at him. His eyes are wide, knuckles white, like he can’t believe Jacob is even asking— he thinks it’s a loyalty test. It’s as plain as day on his face. He stays quiet, manages to slip the pen into the top of the clipboard despite shaky hands. He's thinking up the perfect response, the perfect string of words to please Jacob, to make him secure in Pratt's loyalty. His fear. 

That's not what he's looking for. Jacob’s not fucking stupid. No man in his right mind would think Pratt is loyal to him or Eden's Gate.

Silence sinks between them. The air sucks out of the room like a thunderstorm is about to break out, localized to just Jacob's bedroom, until Pratt looks like he might start to hyperventilate.  

But Jacob Seed doesn’t repeat himself. He doesn’t ask again. 

Instead, he sighs long and deep, and leans back in his chair. Looks back down to his records, though he doesn't read them. “When we were kids—Joseph, John, and me—we had some foster parents who worked us like dogs on their farm. Wouldn’t let us in the house, made us sleep in the barn." He taps his pen. "Beat us, too. Was doin’ my best to take the brunt of it, but one day I saw some bruises on John, even though he was just a damn baby.” Jacob pauses, glances over to Pratt, gauges his reaction. He's blank as stone, though there's something twitching in the corner of his mouth. Jacob hums once and sets his papers down. “So I burned the fucking barn down.”

He fixes his eyes decidedly on Pratt now, gaze hard and focused. Pratt's watching him back, like maybe he understands. Like maybe he knows better who Jacob is. What makes him tick, that— that what makes Jacob tick makes him tick, too.

“So, Peaches,” he says. “What barn are you burning?”

Pratt swallows so loud it clicks. Then he says, “I'd kill you while I shave your throat,” and Jacob smiles. He's not looking at Jacob anymore, he's staring at the floor— maybe the bloodstain on the unfinished concrete from when Jacob gave him the cut that now traces down the line of his cheek. His hands stay behind his back obediently, but his shoulders flex like maybe he's fiddling with his fingers. Weak, but Jacob can let it slide, so long as Pratt keeps outlining his escape plan. "And after– after you bleed out I'd disguise myself as a Chosen and escape."

Pratt's eyes fuzz out as he recalls his escape plan. It's not his realistic one, not a real plan. Jacob has seen him eye the weekly truck deliveries, sneak glances at the rotating guard schedule. Good. He's not stupid enough to tell Jacob his real plan. Just his favorite fantasy.

Jacob brings his hand to his face and rubs his mouth. "After. After I bleed out." He doesn't take his eyes off Pratt as his eyes rise from the floor to Jacob's face— first his finger perched on his lips, then to his eyes. He looks frightened, but not in the way he was at first. He doesn't look frightened of Jacob himself. More like he's frightened of his own thoughts, his own desires.

The thought has delight curling in Jacob's stomach. 

"Yes," Pratt husks. "Yes, I have things to… to say."

An honest to God smile pulls up the corner of his mouth. Jacob is careful to cover it with his hand. "Like what?"

After a moment, Pratt says, "I guess you'll have to find out," his muscles tense like he's ready to bolt.

Jacob's smile widens into a grin. He fucking laughs. "Guess I will, Peaches," he croons, as he taps his finger to his lips, just once. "When you get the guts to dig in the knife, I guess I will." He hesitates, smile fading, then prompts, "Show me how you'd do it."

Pratt's jaw closes so tightly the muscle visibly flexes. Controlling himself, his gut reaction, but right after he does, he pries his mouth open and chokes out, "How I'd—?"

"Kill me," Jacob finishes for him, as he stands and comes around his desk. His arms fall to his sides, while Pratt's come up to his chest defensively. Jacob only hums and tugs his desk's metal chair into the center of the room. Over the old blood stain. "Come here."

He waits until Pratt steps forward to sit, then unsheathes his hunting knife from its holster on his thigh and offers it over his shoulder without looking. 

Pratt hesitates for a heartbeat, then all at once swipes the knife from Jacob and presses it near instantly to his throat. Not hard, though— he'll need to press harder to kill Jacob.

But he never will.

Of course he won't. Jacob knows Pratt, and he won't. He'll never kill Jacob. He doesn't have it in him.

That's why he's never done it before when shaving Jacob. That's why he didn't do it in front of the Deputy. That's why he won't do it now. That's why it's only something Pratt thinks about late at night, lying on the dirt in a cage outside, when nightmares keep him awake.

Pratt takes a shuddering breath. Jacob tips his chin up in offering. He pulls the knife in toward him, and there's just enough bite to tell Jacob that Pratt actually managed to nick him. Warmth trickles down through the stubble on his throat and settles in the dip of his collarbone. 

Jacob clucks. "Not a bad spot, if you'd actually make the slice." He grabs hold of Pratt's wrist and yanks the blade up his throat— hard enough that he can feel the skin go red and irritated, with blood vessels burst just under his first layer of skin. Pratt's hand trembles under his, flutters around the knife handle. "But you won't have any time to whine and cry at me if you get my artery. You'd have to cut…" he trails off for a moment while he guides Pratt's hand through the killing motion, glides the knife oh-so-gently across his vulnerable throat. "Just here if you want time to watch the light leave my eyes, Peaches."

Pratt's breath hitches audibly. Jacob adds, "Would even leave me the air to give you a little conversation, if you like." When there's no response, Jacob drops his hand to his lap and prompts, "Your turn, Pratt. Make the fucking cut."

Pratt still doesn't speak. Jacob insists, "Escape. Don't you want to? Don't you want to crawl to the Whitetails, beg and plead them to help you now that you've killed the Big Bad Wolf?"

The knife rocks against his throat as Pratt readjusts his grip. There's more pressure against his skin for just a moment, almost enough to make him bleed again, and then Pratt lifts the blade away from him, drops it to the floor, and steps back.

Jacob lets Pratt feel the silence for a few heartbeats. Then he stands, retrieves his knife, and straightens his back to look at Pratt. He doesn't smile this time, just steps forward to Pratt's figure, still as stone, and gently pinches his jaw between his thumb and first two fingers.

He doesn't speak until Pratt's damp eyes rise to meet his.

"You understand, don't you?" he murmurs. "You're a smart boy." Pratt nods, jerky as if he's controlled by broken machinery. Jacob strokes his jaw with the tip of his pointer finger. "Good. You're mine. And nobody else in this county— no Whitetail, no Hope County Cougar, no piece of their Resistance— is ever going to take care of you the way I do."

They breathe together for a few moments. Pratt's eyes have fallen shut, though tears still glisten at the corners and along his lashes. Jacob thinks absently how he wants to make Pratt cry until there's no more tears left in him— until there's no horror left worse than anything he's already felt.

"There's nothing for you out there," Jacob says. Promises. Reassures. "There's only me."

Pratt doesn't say a word, but Jacob hears him all the same:

Only you.

Jacob lingers. Strokes his thumb over Pratt's lip.

Pratt opens his eyes at the sensation, stares up with those wide brown eyes— Jacob exhales softly and sinks down to press their lips together. Slides his thumb out of the way just in time, drags the corner of Pratt's mouth down as he slots their lips together. Pratt's breath shakes out of him. Jacob swallows it up.

"Staci," he murmurs, and clenches his hands on Pratt's hip and the back of his neck when he shudders in response. Jacob holds him steady, no longer kissing him, though their lips still brush. He doesn't move. He waits for Pratt.

Who takes one more halted, shivery breath, then steps abruptly back from Jacob.  He dips his head to escape Jacob's hold on his neck, then just stands there, three feet from him. Jacob hums. Runs his hand over his beard and rubs his knuckle into his chin. "Staci," he repeats, and it instantly draws Pratt's eyes to his— Jacob's never used his first name until now, and it's having just the effect Jacob hoped it would. He holds his gaze and doesn't move closer. Lets Pratt keep his distance. "We're all we can rely on. That's why we cull the herd. That's why we need to train them."

Pratt stares at him. Jacob can see the cogs turning in his mind. Can see him grinding up the we, trying to process it. Make it digestible. 

"Together," Jacob adds, without looking away. After a moment, he steps forward, pats Pratt's cheek, then steps to the door and twists the handle. "Bring me a report on the Bliss supplies by ten. See you tonight, Peaches."

Alone in Jacob's bedroom, Staci brushes his middle finger over the developing scar on his right cheek. He follows it down to his mouth, and presses his first knuckle to his lips.

Staci, Jacob says in his mind, Together.

[sheliesshattered]

Here are the first few scenes (~2500 words) of the new AU that suddenly grew legs and started going tonight. I’m not sure yet if I’m going to pursue this, or if this is more of an exercise in skimming off the top layer of whatever odd stuff is floating around in my head so that I can get back to working on the stuff I want to work on, but I would be curious to hear reaction to this either way. Tagging a few people who I know follow my Doctor Who writing, but anyone who reads this, feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think.

Vaguely inspired by this post, fwiw.

Working title is Poltergeists and Real Estate (Do Not Mix) but that may very well change as this grows a plot and becomes less of a crack-fic. Oooor it may end up sitting in my over-populated WIP folder forever, we’ll see.

Thoughts? Lemme know. Tagging a few people, but open to comments from anyone. @praetyger, @megsann13, @claraaoswald, @puddlejumper72-blog-blog​, @tounknowndestinations​, @chipsandcoffee​, @the-chumblies​, et al

Poltergeists and Real Estate (Do Not Mix)

There was a certain amount of irony, Clara reflected, that her first reaction was I’m going to kill him.

Her ‘special friend’ had just cost her the sale of her grandmother’s house. Again. As in, not for the first time. This had to be roughly the twelfth adorable little family or nice couple that had stepped inside her ancestral family home only to turn tail and run before she’d even had a chance to tell them about the antique hardwood floors or the fully restored kitchen. At this point, her ‘special friend’ wasn’t even being subtle about it anymore.

The longer the house sat on the market, the fewer calls she was getting to schedule walk-throughs of the property. She was beginning to worry that word of the house’s strangeness was getting around the real estate community. If things kept up at this rate, she was going to be permanently saddled with an inheritance whose tax burden she could barely afford, in the form of a one hundred and thirty year old, gorgeous, sprawling, haunted house.

Clara used her key to let herself in through the front door, grumbling under her breath. As soon as she closed the door behind her, the cabinets in the kitchen began to rattle ominously.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, dropping her purse and keys on the small table in the entryway. “It’s just me.”

The door to the upstairs washroom slammed shut.

Clara groaned and buried her face in her hands and counted to ten before looking up again. “Listen, I get that you’re cross with me for bringing people by, but I am beyond livid with you, so let’s skip the part where I yell and you throw things and just agree to be angry with each other in silence, okay?”

The house went quiet in a manner entirely too creepy for her liking. If not for the undercurrent of petulant passive-aggressiveness, she might have actually been scared.

Not that Clara had ever really been scared of the ghost that lived in her grandmother’s house. He had never once made her feel unsafe, not since she’d first seen him as a child. But the sudden silence was still unnerving. 

“Well, good,” she said into the preternatural stillness, more to prove to herself that she wasn’t scared than anything else. “It’s nice to actually be able to hear myself think, for once.”

The top step of the staircase creaked once, as if to make a point.

“Still shut up,” she grumbled.

She went about the short list of tasks she’d come to see to, putting away the food she’d set out for the potential home buyers, watering the house plants, closing the curtains, and flicking on a few lamps to make the home look lived-in. Of course, she didn’t envy anyone who tried to break into the house while it sat apparently empty. At some level, a poltergeist was better home protection than a dog ever could be. For the right owner, it might even be a selling point, she mused. Perhaps she ought to rewrite the home listing.

Her chores complete, Clara returned to the foyer to find her purse where she’d left it, but her keys conspicuously missing. She sighed, hands on her hips, and turned towards the cold spot she could feel forming near the foot of the stairs. He was nothing but a faint wispy outline in the light of the setting sun filtering through the stained glass window over the door, but even that outline was familiar enough that she was able to find his eyes and fix him with a displeased glare.

“Where are my keys?” she demanded. She still hadn’t forgiven him for his behaviour earlier, and she was in no mood to play find-the-lost-trinket tonight.

“I didn’t want you to leave before I could apologise,” the ghost said, not quite meeting her gaze. His voice raised gooseflesh along her arms, as it always did, but she much preferred the low rumble of his Scottish brogue to the slamming of doors and rattling of cupboards. Not that she would ever openly admit that to him.

“So apologise and tell me where you’ve hidden my keys!”

“Clara,” he said, and she clenched her teeth against the shivery reaction she always had to the way he said her name, like it had been invented just so he could say it. There were days when she lived for that rush — and many, many more nights, in her love-struck teenaged years — but today was absolutely not one of them.

“...Was there more to that sentence?” she asked when he didn’t go on. “Saying my name doesn’t constitute an apology.”

He glanced up at her, looking more solid as the sunlight waned. “I’m sorry that I upset you. That wasn’t my intention.”

“No, your intention was to make certain I can’t sell this house, and don’t bother to deny it.”

He chewed his incorporeal lip for a moment, then shrugged. “I won’t deny it. I don’t want you to sell the house. But I’m still sorry I upset you.”

Clara sighed. “I have to sell it. You know this. And someday, I’m going to bring by someone too brave or too stupid to fall for all your clattering, and that’ll be that.”

“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, his eyes flashing blue in the gathering dusk.

“It’s the reality of the situation,” she said evenly. Another irony not lost on her: arguing the state of reality with a man dead nearly a century. “So you’d best start making peace with that. Now, where are my keys?”

The ghost hesitated. “You don’t have to leave,” he said. “You could stay?”

“I never stay the night in this house. That was your advice to me, more than twenty years ago. No sense in breaking with tradition now.”

“I think maybe I was being overly paranoid at the time.”

“And I think maybe you’re acting like a lonely old man, now,” Clara snarked back.

“Alone in a house that you of all people are dead-set on evicting me from? I can’t imagine why I’d be lonely!” 

“Keys, now!” she snapped. “Traffic is already going to be horrendous—”

“All the more reason to stay,” he said petulantly.

“But,” she went on forcefully, speaking over him, “I have tomorrow off of work. If you tell me where my keys are, I’ll come back first thing in the morning. I still need to finish going through all those old boxes in the attic. We can spend the day working on that together, okay?”

“You’re going to drive all the way home only to turn around and come back in the morning? Why not just—”

“Or I could spend the day doing something fun with people my own age, very far away from here. Your choice.”

“Oh, fine,” he said, shoulders sagging. “Your keys are hidden in the parlour, I’ll show you where.”

“Thank you,” she said mildly, and followed him into the parlour.

--

As promised, Clara arrived back at her grandmother’s house early the next morning, take-away coffee cup in hand. There had been a moment, whilst she stood in the queue to order, when she’d found herself thinking she ought to order two coffees, bring her ghost a peace offering to smooth over their row from the night before. Thankfully she’d realised how ridiculous it sounded before it was her turn to order, but she still felt strangely off balance as she unlocked the door and let herself in, like she had forgotten something important.

“Hey,” she called to the empty house, as soon as the door was closed behind her. “It’s just me, no need to go rattling the hinges on my account.”

He appeared in a shadowy corner of the foyer, smiling at her shyly. “Good morning, Clara. You look lovely today. Have you had a wash?”

She narrowed her gaze at him, trying to ignore the way her heart flipped over at the way he said her name. “Why are you being nice?”

“Because it works on you,” he shrugged nonchalantly. He hesitated, then added, “And because I really am sorry about last night.”

“Well, apology accepted,” Clara said. “And I’m sorry I yelled at you. The process of selling this place has been entirely too stressful, and I’m really starting to worry it won’t happen before the property taxes are due,” she sighed.

He ran a semi-transparent hand through the hair at the back of his head. “Yeah, about that...”

She suppressed a groan. “What did you do?”

“Post came early today,” he said, sounding more apologetic than he had earlier. “I didn’t open it, but one of the envelopes has a rather official looking return address. I left it on the dining room table.”

She dropped her keys and purse on the table by the door and trudged off to the dining room, unable to contain her groan when she saw the envelope in question. Opening it, she found that he was right: property taxes were due in six weeks, the total even higher than she had anticipated. It was more than she made in a month at her teaching job. Even with the small amount she had stashed away in savings, she would hardly be able to pay it and the rent on her flat, and still expect to feed herself.

“What about the rest of your inheritance?” he asked, sounding genuinely worried.

“I put it all into fixing up this place to sell,” she said.

“Which I’ve made impossible,” he murmured.

Clara covered her face with her hands, fighting back tears and hoping he wouldn’t notice. Yes, he was the reason she hadn’t been able to sell the house to any of the dozen or so families who had shown initial interest. But he was also the only one in her life who even knew or cared what she was going through.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she told him honestly, still hiding behind her hands. “If I don’t pay it, they’ll just add late fees on top of that already ridiculously large sum.”

She felt a coldness drift across the back of her hands, felt her hair stir in a non-existent breeze, and wished, not for the first time in her life, that her ‘special friend’ was the sort of friend who could offer a hug when she so desperately needed one.

“I don’t suppose there’s a secret stash of diamonds in the attic?” she asked him, only half joking. “Or a map to buried treasure?”

“Your great-grandmother was a very adventurous woman,” he replied, voice sounding distant and thoughtful. “I don’t know what all is up there, but anything is possible.”

Clara dropped her hands from her face and squared her shoulders, not looking at her ghost until she was certain she wouldn’t spontaneously burst into tears. “Well, let’s hope there’s something up there that will help.”

--

The attic had never been Clara’s favourite place in her grandmother’s sprawling house, cramped and dusty and full of ancient boxes that gave off a far creepier vibe than the literal ghost had ever managed to do. But on the plus side, it was also windowless, dim enough that he was able to appear to her in a fairly solid state and even move lightweight objects around as though he were a real person existing in the real world.

She had removed all the larger pieces from the attic ages ago, furniture and blanket chests and boxes of old clothes, all sorted through and distributed to extended family or donated to charity, or else restored to the best of Clara’s ability and set out to decorate the house in a manner befitting its age. All that remained were boxes of keepsakes, photographs and journals and old letters, small family things that required far more of her attention.

If not for the threat of the taxes due, it might even have been a pleasant day, sitting together amidst the dust and papers, slowly unveiling the history of her family, layer on layer, like an archaeologist digging through levels of sediment. 

“Oh my god, these photos of Mum,” she said, turning the yellowed photo album towards him so he could see them, in all their early 1970s glory. “She must have been, what, about fifteen in these?”

“Her first formal school dance,” he confirmed, leaning in to examine the photos. “With that older boy, what’s-his-name. Your grandfather did not approve.”

Clara snorted. “Can’t really blame him. Look at those side-burns. I’m not sure I would have let her go out with him at all.”

“They had a huge row about it, if I remember correctly. In the end, your grandmother took your mother’s side, and she was allowed to go.”

“Why didn’t you ever appear to any of them?” she asked, flipping through the pages and pausing to linger on what looked to be polaroids of a football game. “You were here all that time, but you never talked to anyone until I came along?”

He shrugged. “You were the only one that was you.”

“Thanks. That clears it right up.”

“It’s the only answer I’ve got,” he objected.

“I scared the daylights out of Mum and Gran when I told them about you, I was probably all of six years old at the time.”

“Five, I think,” he said quietly.

“God, five. I might have a heart attack if my five year old started talking very confidently about her special friend the ghost that lives at grandma’s house. I just assumed they knew about you, too. Why wouldn’t they?”

“I’m not sure I could have talked to them, even if I wanted to. And I never did want to.”

Clara looked up at him, studying his face in the dimness. Without direct sunlight, he looked almost human, almost alive, the blue of his eyes and the salt and pepper of his hair seeming so very real, so very close at hand. He still seemed as ageless to her now as he had when she’d first seen him, more than two decades earlier. Ageless and ancient, wise and funny, solemn and sardonic. She thought perhaps she knew his face better than any other, living or dead.

“But why didn’t you ever want to talk to them?” she pressed.

“Why do you need a key to enter the house?” he asked in response.

She felt her eyebrows come together in consternation. “Because the door is locked.”

“But why that key?”

“Because... that’s the key that fits. That’s the key that goes with that lock.”

He shrugged, most of his attention on turning the page in a journal he’d been perusing. “You are the key that fits. I don’t have a better answer than that.”