#i hope i drew out enough details from the scene to make it cosy and nice

[eoinmcgonigal]

06: Bill/Johnny

From today's prompt from @almost-a-class-act I have gone with: Invited to a weekend at a cabin in the woods

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Johnny can tell his phone finally has signal, because it starts pinging like mad. For a moment he’s tempted to go to it, but the comfort and warmth he’s nestled in wins through. He doesn’t mind. How could he, when there’s a strong fire crackling in the fireplace, and Bill is curled up in his arms? In the glow of the firelight, the shadows dance and flicker around them, the lights down low so that they can enjoy this. Like everything else about this trip, Johnny thought it might be a fun adventure to spend a weekend up in the woods, but he’s finding that it goes deeper than that. The experience has taken him away from the world he knows, and brought him something new.

Stroking Bill’s hair, Johnny leans in to kiss just below of his ear.

Bill stirs from his not-sleep, wriggling back against Johnny. “Are you going to get that?”

“No,” Johnny hums, nuzzling against the crook of Bill’s neck. “I’ve got you.”

There’s a soft, harmless huff. The pinging stops. “Even I can tell that’s one of the cheesiest lines ever,” Bill mutters.

Johnny just hums again, kissing the soft little spot he’s found. They fall silent again, and Johnny listens to the steady sound of Bill’s breathing, the fire crackling and shifting, and Bill’s heartbeat steady beneath Johnny’s hand. As his eyes fall closed, Johnny relaxes into this place, letting it take hold of him. Everything unimportant falls away, and he smiles as he’s left with a new, slightly terrifying but completely wonderful truth.

“You know,” he starts softly, feeling the thing inside him. He’s sure of it, and it might be days or years from now, but he knows it’s true. He also knows that Bill likes to know the facts, and where he stands. Johnny presses another kiss to Bill’s hairline. “I’m going to marry you one day.”

He feels the way Bill shifts, his heart rate picking up. A hand closes over his own, holding it to Bill’s chest.

There aren’t any words, not in that moment. Johnny knows that Bill understands, that he hasn’t said ‘right now’ or ‘next month’, or even asked. Nothing has changed, really, beyond them both now knowing where this journey they’re on together is going to lead.

Bill gently strokes the back of Johnny’s hand, letting out a breath that sounds like it’s shaped by a smile.

“Okay,” is the answer.

And Johnny has never felt safer, or more at home, in his life.

War is Helloween

[thestoryweneededtowrite]

Javid Titanic AU - Part 31

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30

Lifeboat 14 picked up four people from the water that night. The first man had been pulled into the boat before it had found Jack and Davey; he wouldn’t see morning. After half scrambling, half been hauled into the boat, the first thing Jack did was make sure his sleeves covered his handcuffs. His wrists were burning with white hot agony but he couldn’t let the officers see the cuffs – they didn’t need a reason to throw him back overboard. Then he turned back to Davey, watching as he curled into a foetal position, trying to make himself as small as possible, on the floor of the boat. He didn’t have the energy to pull himself up onto a seat.

Jack knew he shouldn’t, knew it was a risk, but he shuffled until he was beside Davey and pulled him into his arms with the last bit of strength that remained from the adrenaline of seeing the lifeboat. It felt so good to finally be holding him again.

If he’d been alive, Davey wouldn’t have cuddled so close, not in front of other people. But he didn’t feel alive. Everything was so cold, even now they were away from the water, and this wasn’t what life felt like. He wasn’t dead either, because this wasn’t a fiery hell and it wasn’t a cosy, comfortable heaven. So this was purgatory? An endless wait for an absolution that would never come. And he was happy to spent that wait curled up in Jack’s arms, because he could hear Jack’s heart beating and that was enough.

Jack was too cold to move. He held Davey close and tried not to worry that instead of a warm body, it felt like he was holding a corpse. The officers gave them a look of confusion, but passed over a pile of blankets. No one had the energy to be prejudiced. Jack ended up tucked up to his neck in wool, with a fur coat draped over the top of his head to keep the heat in. Davey refused to move his head from Jack’s chest and Jack wasn’t letting go of him for love nor money, so they just draped blankets over him until he was cocooned in fabric and could slowly start to feel the first tremours of warmth tingling in his fingertips.

They didn’t talk, too focused on trying to stay warm enough to keep breathing. There was nothing dry for them to wear so they were still in the sodden, frozen clothes they’d put on the day before, when life had seemed normal, and Davey was starting to shiver violently under the blankets. But Jack knew shivering was good – it meant Davey’s core body temperature was raising a little. He was starting to shiver a little himself, too, his teeth beginning to chatter.

The lifeboat continued on through the endless corpses that filled the ocean and Jack couldn’t bear to look over the side. He’d made friends aboard, down in Steerage, and he didn’t want to see any of them about there. The officer in charge continued to shout out, but his calls of ‘is there anyone alive out there’ was met with silence.

Only one other man was pulled from the water. He’d been balancing on a piece of wreckage from a staircase and he was in much the same state as Jack and Davey, his face gaunt and pale, his eyes uncomfortably prominent and ringed in red. He didn’t even know Davey was there for a while, until after about an hour when Davey wriggled up until he could rest his head on Jack’s shoulder and press a kiss to his neck, not quite having gained enough mental functions back to remember why he wasn’t allowed to kiss Jack in public. Jack returned the kiss with one of his own to Davey’s icicle-patterned hair. The man stared, stunned to see two men being so casually affectionate, but Jack met his eyes and challenged him to say anything. They’d been through enough that they deserved this and the man seemed to be able to tell. He looked away, not comfortable with it but not about to speak out either. Jack could respect that.

It had been a long day for them all. Davey hadn’t slept in 21 hours and in that time he’d renounced his family, slept with the love of his life twice, and more or less lived through the most terrifying experience he could imagine. His entire body was in pain from the enduring cold in his veins, his ribs still ached from his collision with the side of the lifeboat as he’d fallen, and he just wanted to rest. Jack did his best to tuck the blankets close around Davey and whispered nonsensical, comforting things to him as he drifted off to sleep against his shoulder to the sound of we’re gonna get our happily ever after, baby, I promise and this is all gonna be over soon and you’ll be warm again and I love you more than life itself. He wasn’t sure that Davey could really hear him, but he was going to repeat it every day from now on so there was time.

Jack was doing his best to ignore the pain in his wrists from where the handcuffs pinched. The metal had contracted in the cold and, whilst it was expanding a little and pulling at his skin as he started to warm up a little, the cuffs were leaving rings of fire. He just wanted them off but it clearly wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The keys were likely lost to the ocean.

It was an eternity into infinity when they saw the lights on the horizon. Jack was certain it wasn’t real. The officers on the lifeboats had been waving green flares, their glow colouring everything, and he figured maybe that had affected his eyes. But the lights only got stronger and it became clear it was a ship. Jack didn’t pass the news on to Davey, not wanting to wake him when he finally looked so peaceful. He was breathing evenly and was as warm as it was possible to make him given the circumstances, so Jack figured it was alright even if he knew sleeping whilst hypothermic was unwise.

Jack just watched as the ship got closer and closer, trying to internalise that that was their salvation. That ship was going to pick them up and get them warm and take them to New York. The endless waiting could finally come to an end.

The rescue ship’s lights were burning brightly in the darkness, especially now the torches on most of the lifeboats had died out. Jack knew he wasn’t alone in watching as it drew towards them and eventually stilled a couple of hundred yards away. Then nothing happened. No noise and no movement. The Carpathia had arrived expecting a floundering ship, ready to rescue passengers from aboard. When they had reached the coordinates of the last known position of Titanic and found nothing but ocean, they’d stalled. Until a light from one of the lifeboats shone, a dull green spark from another flare, as it began to make its way towards Carpathia. Titanic had become wreckage and memory.

It took a long time for all of the survivors to make their way up to the deck of the Carpathia, gripping rope ladders with frozen fingers. As lifeboat 14 approached the ship, towing a collapsible lifeboat that couldn’t travel under its own steam and rescuing thirteen more passengers from an overturned boat being used as a raft, all of whom had the good sense to ignore the two men cuddled around each other in the corner, Davey slept on.

Moonlight turned to sunrise and, as light began to creep back over the scene, Jack could finally start to make out details of their night. There were a few pieces of rubble, some splintered boards or abandoned chairs floating on the water, but the bodies had drifted or drowned and Jack was darkly glad he didn’t have to see their faces in the daylight. Each body was a hundred connections, family and friends and loved ones who didn’t even know they were dead yet.

The worst was the ice. They were surrounded by icebergs, some several dozen feet high, and Jack couldn’t help but look at them all and wonder which one was guilty. Which innocuous looking piece of frozen water had decimated the souls aboard the Titanic and sunk her to the ocean floor. He didn’t want to think about it, instead focusing his attention on Davey.

Now that he could see things better, he was by no means comforted by the state of his lover, although he was sure he looked much the same himself. Davey was still so pale, with the faint bruise Esther’s slap had left now prominent on his cheek in a way that made Jack’s blood boil. Jack tugged the tartan blanket, as he now saw it was, up a little higher to hide the mark. The movement had him skirting his fingers, just for a second, across Davey’s cheekbone and it was enough to wake him.

It wasn’t quite how Davey had imagined waking up next to Jack for the first time, but it would do. The fact that he knew there was going to be the next morning, and the one after that, and the one after that, made it all alright.

Seeing the blue of Davey’s eyes again made Jack want to cry. Even though they were dazed and reddened and sad, it was a sight Jack had resigned himself to never seeing again. Davey managed a small smile up at Jack before turning to see the Carpathia, now looming above them as they waited for the boat before to finish unloading.

“We’re okay?” he asked, his voice cracked and painful.

Jack grinned and pressed a kiss to Davey’s forehead.

“We’re gonna be,” he promised.

__

 Sarah spent her night huddled close to Medda for warmth, both of them sharing Medda’s fur coat. They had turned their backs on Esther and were trying to pretend like she didn’t exist. Sarah could never forgive her for what she’d said about Davey, not this time, and she was resisting the urge to push her mother overboard. She’d never have done it of course, the night didn’t need another tally mark for the dead, but she wished Davey could take her place. Or Mayer. Or even Jack. Someone who deserved it just that little bit more.

It felt horrible to be wishing her mother dead, but it was impossible not to when she knew that it was most likely that her brother and her father had gone down with the ship. She just hoped it had been fast and painless and that, wherever Davey was, he was with Jack now. Somewhere Esther couldn’t touch him.

Still, as lifeboat 12 drew closer to the Carpathia, the final boat left on the water, Sarah couldn’t help but hope Davey and Mayer would greet her at the top of the ladder.