#jack Nelson smut

[davidsons89]

Can I request a Michael Gray x reader where he cheats on her with Gina, so she gets revenge by sleeping with Gina’s uncle Jack😽 x

revenge — j.n

pairings ; michael gray x female reader (former) jack nelson x female reader

summary ; your boyfriend of many years, michael gray, cheats on you with gina and leaves you for her. you’re not the type to let anyone disrespect you, so you decide to take revenge by sleeping with gina’s uncle, jack nelson.

warnings ; mentions of cheating, slight age gap between reader and jack, reader being arrogant and cocky lol, smut, sir kink, hickeys, unprotected sex, face grabbing, contains spoilers from s6. 18+ !!!

authors note ; is is bad that i have a huge crush on jack?🙃 he’s just super good looking don’t judge me. this was an amazing idea, thank you for requesting! <3 also this is not proofread or spell checked, so if you spot any mistakes, i apologize!

word count ; 3,228

Having a father who is friends with Thomas Shelby has many pros and cons. One of the pros being protection — having the power to make men fear you because of a gang. One of the cons being you’re not a free woman. Being a part of the Peaky Blinders means you have eyes on you at all times, which makes it difficult to keep secrets or do anything by yourself without words getting around.

You had met your boyfriend through the Peaky Blinders. Michael Gray. He is Tommy’s cousin, and the two of you got along pretty well, being similar in age and having the same interests and all. It wasn’t long before you developed romantic feelings for each other.

Then you did it. You got together and everyone was happy. The relationship was strong for years. You were one of the happiest couples Small Heath had ever seen. There were even talks of marriage, but Michael knew you too well to know you didn’t want to get married. It’s never been something you’ve wanted to do. The idea of being a wife, a man’s property, never seemed appealing to you. You don’t want to live life like every other ordinary woman. Get married, have kids, cook and clean for the rest of your life. You want to be happy and free. And you felt that way with Michael.

Michael loved you and knew the things you wanted, didn’t want, liked, disliked and so on. He knew you like the back of his hand, and that’s one of the many things you loved about him. He was an angel that stumbled upon you and changed your life. Years went down the line. Many happy years shared with your beloved boyfriend and his family.

That was until things started to go downhill. Michael’s mum, Polly, passed away. Tommy started getting himself into heaps of trouble with the law, the mafia, and even gangsters from Boston. And that’s where Gina comes into place. Nasty old Gina.

Michael had changed, even before Polly died, and you were one of the first to notice. Soon enough, everyone noticed. Michael was sent to New York for a few months to do some work for Tommy, only coming back a completely different person. He stopped writing to you, he ignored your letters, he acted like you didn’t exist.

He came back with another woman.

After discovering that he had cheated on you with his new woman, Gina, you were fast to end the relationship. Everyone was angry with Michael, you weren’t the only one. He had his cousins and his mother telling him how much of a fool he is for leaving a woman like you. He won’t find another you. Gina doesn’t even come close.

Months go down the line. Michael had turned against his own family. He joined the enemy’s side. After the death of his mother, he couldn’t look at his cousins the same way. He blamed them for her death. He blamed Tommy.

But Tommy didn’t care. Nor did you care. The only thing you wanted was revenge. How dare Michael think he can do this? Any of this. Not just to you, but to his own family, his own flesh and blood. With you being strictly on Tommy’s side, he’s grown to trust you more. He trusted you anyway, but now he can count on you. Which is why he sent you to spy on Michael for him.

Tommy knows Michael is plotting something against him, which is why you’re the eyes. You’ve been a Peaky Blinder for quite a few years now, meaning you know all their tactics and maneuvers. Tommy had been introduced to a new business deal with Gina’s uncle and Michael’s uncle in law, Jack Nelson. Michael thinks Jack is on their side, but Tommy can say otherwise. Jack only thinks of himself. Above himself, even.

To the least of his troubles is his niece and her new husband. Husband. They got married. It angered you but you didn’t let it get past you. You know better than to care, but you don’t know better than revenge. You’d never met Jack for yourself, though you saw him with Tommy a few times, but when Tommy sends you to a party as a pair of eyes, things don’t necessarily go according to plan.

Sitting at the bar drinking an expensive glass of champagne while surrounded by dozens of rich, upper class, fancy old snobby men and women is something your younger self would never see you doing, but here you are, having to act as one of them to blend in.

You couldn’t bare to be here any longer, but as the eyes of Tommy Shelby, you had no choice. Your eyes scanned around the room hundreds of times to find the likes of Michael and Gina, but there’s no sign of them. Maybe they just hadn’t arrived yet. You’ve seen a few familiar faces so far. Oswald Mosley, Diana Mitford. But not who you’re looking for.

You can’t stand Michael and never want to see his face again, but as a Peaky Blinder, you have to face your fears to get the job done. After finishing the last of your champagne, you ask the bartender for another one while being approached on your right.

“Might wanna slow down on your drink. The men here don’t take too well to drunk women.” The man tells you while ordering a drink of whiskey for himself. You instantly recognise him. It’s Jack Nelson. “Are you one of those men?” You snicker. Though you see him smirk, he’s still as intimidating as ever.

“Why would I need to take advantage of a woman when I can get laid whenever I want?” Jack jokes. You like his personality, he likes yours. Though you’ve never spoken, you know of each other. “Miss L/n, right?” He takes a sip of his drink, nodding at the bartender to say thanks. You grab your new drink, too.

“Yes. And you’re Mr Nelson?” You ask, already knowing the answer. “Yes, but you already knew that.” A smirk raises at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t get cocky, if it weren’t for Mr Shelby, I wouldn’t know you existed.” You smugly take a sip of your champagne.

“Arrogant. I like it. But please, call me Jack.” He smiles. “Whatever you say, Jack.” Your eyelashes slowly batter at him. You have a seductive look in your eyes, but what can you say? You haven’t had male attention in a long time, and Jack is handsome. He gently grabs your hand, bringing it to his mouth to plant a greeting kiss. You smile.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, miss L/n.” Jack says. “Please, call me Y/n.” You imitate him from before. You have to act as confident as ever, you are trying to blend in with the rest of the assholes here. “Y/n. Pretty name.” He smirks. He hasn’t taken his eyes from yours.

“Thank you.”

“Too pretty to be that mouthy.”

His smirk turns into more of a devilish smile. He likes your attitude, however. “My mouth too much for you to handle, Jack?”

“I’m sure I can handle more than that.” He leans closer to whisper in your ear. You have to admit, it sent shivers down your spine.

“What brings a girl like you to a party like this, anyway?” He asks. He looks like he knows something. “A girl like me?” You ask. “You know. A Peaky Blinder. A girl like you got no business with people like this.” Jack points around the room.

“You don’t know what business I have with anyone.” You take a sip from your glass of champagne. “I know you don’t have business with anyone here.” Jack tells you. He seems like he knows a lot. “Like I said, I’ve heard a lot about you.” He finishes.

“What have you heard? Good things, I hope?” You raise your eyebrows as your red lipstick stains the glass in your hand. “Well, I heard you used to be the woman of my nieces husband.” Jack shrugs. You roll your eyes. He can tell by the look on your face that you do not wish to talk about your past with Michael.

“Used to be is the key word.” You look away from him. “I also heard you’re the eyes of Thomas Shelby.”

Your mind went blank. You almost froze.

“Why else would you be here? Other than to spy on Michael Gray, huh, Y/n?” He smirks. He seems like he’s playing a game with you. “Like you said, I have no business with anyone here. I’m just here to charm the ladies on Thomas’ behalf.” You flick your hair over your shoulder.

“Doesn’t he have a wife?” He frowns.

“Don’t you?” You raise your eyebrows.

He scoffs in a half laugh. You have a smart mouth, where he has a quick one. “Well, if it helps you, Michael and Gina are here. See? They’re over there.” Jack points between a crowd of people as you follow his finger. You spot them having a chat with Oswald and Diana.

“So, little spy, you can report back to Mr Shelby that my niece is the one charming the ladies, not you. You’re sitting here drinking champagne.” He smirks. “Yeah, like I said, I don’t care for your niece or her husband.” You take another sip.

“She can charm all the ladies she wants. But for me, I much prefer charming the men.” You smirk. His eyes look back and forth from your red lips to your lit up eyes. “I don’t believe you. Why don’t you prove it to me?” He hints.

“I would love to, Jack, but we would need to go some place private, so I don’t, you know, set a bad example to the ladies I’m supposed to befriend.” You squint your eyes confidently. “I’m a bad example, huh?” He grins. “The devil of Boston.” A smirk toys at your lips.

“I’m going to find the bathroom. It would be such a shame to leave you behind.” You move closer to whisper the last part in his ear, brushing your hand across his chest as you stand up to walk away. He watches you walk away, waiting a solid forty seconds before following you.

Entering the bathroom, he shuts and locks the door behind himself. He sees you applying lipstick in the mirror. “Why waste time putting on more when it’s only going to come off?” He asks, approaching you to take the lipstick from your hands. You turn to face him. “Who says it’s coming off?” You ask, slowly taking off your fur coat to reveal your red dress underneath. His eyes immediately fall to your chest, admiring your perfectly shaped breasts and body.

“Me.” He answers.

“Why don’t you come take it off?”

Your seducing skills are top notch. You can practically sex your way in and out of anything. Jack’s only use to you was revenge against your ex and his new wife, or known as Jack’s niece. This couldn’t be better.

He takes your hint and rushes to kiss you. He wraps his hands around your waist while you cup his cheeks. You pull each other closer to deepen the kiss, hungrily making out while you feel Jack’s hands slip underneath your dress. Lifting your leg up to help him gain access, Jack rubs your clit above your underwear. You let out a low moan, breaking apart the kiss.

“That feel good, huh?” He smirks. His kisses trail to your neck where he sucks on your sweet spot. Letting out another moan to hum yes, your hands make their way to his suit, pulling off his jacket. As you undress each other, you both end up in only your underwear. “I hope nobody needs to use the bathroom any time soon.” You smirk. “Don’t worry about anyone else. Focus on us.” Jack tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist to lift you up onto the countertop.

“Yes, sir.” You whisper, sending shivers down his spine. You see his hairs stand up. You now know his weakness. Sir. “Don’t call me that unless you don’t want to walk for a week.” He warns you, teeth biting your neck. “That doesn’t seem too bad of a threat.” You wince. Your hands brush against his gelled hair.

“Oh, you’re one of them wild girls.” He smirks. “The wildest of them all.” You pout your lips for a kiss. He goes back in to continue making out with you while you finish stripping each other off completely naked. Now out of your underwear, Jack has full access to any part of your body, same as you with him.

He’s already rock hard for you. The only thing you had to do was call him sir and he lost control. You smirk to yourself, deepening the kiss as he grabs his length, bringing it closer to your entrance. Without hesitation, he pushes himself in, making you release a loud moan. His hand covers your mouth, making you look at him with doe eyes. “You wouldn’t want anyone to catch us now, would you?” He asks lowly. You shake your head. Though your thoughts are different. You’d love the thrill of being caught. Especially with Jack.

Thrusting into you with a slow but hard pace, Jack removes his hand from your mouth to grip your cheeks, forcing you to look at him. His face is inches away from yours, staring into your eyes. “You’re so beautiful.” He tells you and you smugly smirk. You already knew that. “I didn’t know Jack Nelson had a heart.” You say in a breathy moan. He didn’t say anything, he only gripped your cheeks harder, pushing your lips together.

Your lipstick is smudged and your mascara is running. Jack has your red lipstick stained on his face, but you don’t tell him. It just adds to the thrill. You moan like a pornstar each time he thrusts into you. “You want it rougher?” He asks. You say nothing, only nod. He smirks, allowing himself to pound into you roughly. You throw your head back, making him grip the back of your neck to pull you forward. He tuts. “Look at me. Only me. Understand?” He glares at you. “Yes, sir.” You grin while saying. You’re playing with him and he loves it. He grins too.

He takes it as a hint that you want more. So he gives you more. Gripping the back of your neck and holding your hip with the other, he manages to thrust himself deeper into you, hitting spots he didn’t hit before. Upping his pace to hard and rough makes you moan louder than earlier. He quickly covers his hand over your mouth to muffle your noises.

While chuckling, Jack shushes you. “Be quiet or you’re gonna get us both caught.” He lowly says.

“I- I cant.” You whine.

He feels you tense up below him. Your walls are tightening and your legs are shaking. He knows you’re close to coming. “Jack I-”

“Shh. I know. Come for me.” He grabs your face to look at him. Your eyes roll back due to intense pleasure as you wrap your arms around his back, pulling him closer as you moan, coming closer and closer to finishing. “Are you- close?” You manage to ask him in between deep breaths. “Yeah.” He nods. He knows not to finish inside of you. It would be a nightmare having Nelson babies running around the Peaky Blinders’ feet.

Your moans got more intense, making him pull your head down to his shoulder. You moan against his skin to muffle the noise as you come. Jack pulls out just in time. He stays wrapped in your arms as you ride out your highs. Your breathing eventually slowed down and your heart rates went back to normal. You got yourselves dressed.

“Tommy should invite you to our meetings more often.” Jack fixes his tie as you wipe off your smudged lipstick in the mirror. “Why? So you can fuck me in his bathroom, too?” You smirk at him in the mirror. He is stood close to the door just watching you. “You could say that.” He shrugs. “Maybe even in his bedroom if you’re feeling risky.” You wink at him.

“Hm. Now how would Tommy feel about this? About his little spy fucking his business partner?” Jack asks. “I bet he thinks you’re so innocent. But there’s not an innocent thought behind those pretty eyes.” He walks up behind you, grabbing your cheeks from behind to push your lips together. His other hand lies on your waist.

You grab his hand and pull it away from your face, turning around to face him. Your chest touches his as his hands hold your upper arms in a grip. “I wouldn’t worry about Tommy. I’d worry about your niece. What is sweet little Gina gonna think of this? Her uncle fucking her husband’s ex girlfriend? Hm?” You smart mouth him. He puts his tongue to his cheek with a grin. He has nothing to say.

His grip on your upper arms tighten. “Watch your mouth with me, kid.” He warns. You fear no man. “Or what? You’ll tell Tommy? I don’t think Tommy would take too well to his business partner fucking his best friends daughter. You’ll only be getting yourself into trouble.” You respond. He’s amazed at your smart mouth, saying nothing again. He just scoffs.

“I suggest this stays between us.” He sternly says. “You read my mind. Now, Mr Nelson, I think we should get back to the party before people raise suspicions.” Your eyebrows raise. You step backwards away from him, making his arms drop. You exit the bathroom first. Making your way back to the hall, Gina spots you.

“Oh, Y/n. What a surprise to see you here.” She fake smiles. You stop to greet her. “Hello Gina, hello Michael.” You fake smile back, turning to face her husband with a blank expression. “How pleasant to see you, darling.” You and Gina greet each other with a kiss on the cheek before being joined by Jack. “Gina, Michael.” He nods to the pair. “Ah, miss L/n, we meet again.” Jack pretends to greet you, politely kissing your hand as if nothing happened just minutes ago.

“You’ve met before?” Gina frowns. She seems almost jealous. “Yes, indeed we have.” You nod. “I know her through Mr Shelby. We’ve met a few times.” Jack looks at you. He sees your smirk. Michael rolls his eyes at how pretentious you’re acting. “Ah. I see.” Gina awkwardly says. She squints her eyes at her uncle, noticing he has faint smudged red lipstick across his mouth. She looks at your lips before raising her eyebrows. She connected the dots.

“Ooh. It’s hot in here, don’t you think? I better go outside. See you soon, Jack.” You smirk, slightly opening your fur coat to reveal the dark love bite on your neck. Your fingertips brush against Jack’s arm before you walk away. Gina’s eyes widen. Michael is just as shocked. You leave the party. Your job here is done. Gina is Jack’s problem now. And you’re sure he has a lot of explaining to do.

#jack nelson #peaky blinders smut #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders #gina gray #michael gray #michael gray x y/n #michael gray x reader #jack nelson x reader #jack Nelson smut #peaky blinder fanfic

[evita-shelby]

A Nelson Christmas

Smut, mdni 🔞

Jack Nelson x Eva Smith

Inspired by the wonderful @call-sign-shark Christmas gift

Cw: sex, daddy kink, power kink, mentions of usa politics of 1922/23 and use of religious imagery

For context a party boss is essentially a criminal who pretty much runs a political party partially or fully and the Nelsons have three kids by now

They don’t go home to their home in DC, no instead their driver merely takes them around the back where the White House Butler directs them up to the presidential suite.

“Florence said they need to make sure no one suspects they won’t be home tonight.” Eva brandished the keys to the kingdom and refused to let him unlock St Peter’s Gates.

“Think we can make Vice President Kennedy tonight.” The newly minted party boss and multimillionaire didn’t waste time the moment the doors shut behind them. Jack couldn’t get enough of her, even when she got as big as a house with the boys, he couldn’t stop wanting her.

I’ve bewitched you; she’d said with a grin when he confessed he was so in love with her he couldn’t keep his prick hard enough to stray.

“No, but we’ll make a duchess tonight. The Duchess of Devonshire to be exact.” The witch grinned and undressed him as they made their way to the borrowed bed.

Jack’s Midas Touch with business had him rubbing elbows with the who’s who of America, but Eva’s charm and blue blood was taking them the rest of the way.

No one could resist her, they all fell under her spell and before they knew it, First Lady Florence Harding was eating out of their hands. And as a show of their friendship and Eva’s bewitching nature, they were invited to help butter up the Mexican Delegates and keep the President’s bad health a secret.

It was a coveted invitation that took them closer and closer to their goal to become America’s kingmakers ---literally in their children’s cases--- even if it came at the cost of their Christmas traditions.

Had they been home the children would be in bed, the maid and the nanny at their parents’ homes and the Nelsons making baby number four on every available surface and position they could think of.

That first Christmas had been good, and the ones after too, but none compared to the Christmas of 1919.

Rosie had been made on the piano, keys clanging off key as he fucked Eva until the racket woke up the boys and once the boys were settled Jack fucked her on the desk in her boudoir some more. The piano had to be varnished again and the desk replaced, but the memories ---and the scratches--- his witch made will remain there forever.

The twins conceived that night they spent in the Lincoln Bedroom in the east wing. She’d moved with the agility of a dancer and Jack had exhausted his imagination and himself as he taught her every way they could fuck.

And tonight, the Duchess of Devonshire was going to be made in the bed of the current leader of the Free World.

The Hardings wanted the room to seem occupied tonight and Jack was going to make sure the world believes the President with his bad heart fucked the first lady to hell and back.

They were used to keeping quiet because of the kids, keeping the sound down was not going to be a problem. For him at least.

On her birthday he’d let her do anything she wanted with him, let her tie him up and blindfold him with the fine scarf he’d given her that morning. If anyone had seen what she was up to in the hotel room, they’d never fear him again.

Tonight, Jack’s gonna get his revenge.

“Have you been naughty this year, Mrs. Nelson?” Jack asks knowing she’s close to crying in frustration. He’d finger fucked her until she begged for his cock and he’d stopped her from cumming just to ask her this inane question.

“Hmm, doesn’t daddy like it when I’m naughty?” the witch asks as if she weren’t completely at his mercy and spread over the small breakfast table in the president’s bedroom.

She didn’t have to suck his fingers like she sucks his cock, but her petty streak demanded she pay him in kind.

“Gotta teach you some manners don’t I?” Jack removed his fingers from her wicked mouth and wiped them clean on the velvet of her dress before undoing his belt.

Wouldn’t be the first time he’s taken her across his lap and shown her the benefits of corporal punishment. Not the first time he'd used this belt on her either.

But he’s got a different sort of punishment in mind.

One involving the silk ropes tying the curtains of the four poster bed and Eva’s need to always be touching him.

Always needing to pull his hair when he goes down on her, always needing to pull him closer as he ruts inside of her like a beast, the need to interlock their hands as they make love slowly and tenderly.

The witch enjoys feeling him under her hands just as he enjoys having her completely and utterly under his control.

If the housekeeper thought the mess they made in the Lincoln bedroom ghastly, she’d croak seeing the one they’ll leave here tomorrow morning.

#evacore #jack nelson peaky blinders #jack nelson x eva smith #jack nelson x oc #jack nelson smut #like an american #national anthem fic

[zablife]

Baby Fever

Jack Nelson x wife reader

Summary: You and Jack try to conceive a child. 

Author’s Note: A continuation of the blurb I wrote called “Jack Admits he Wants A Child with You.” Jack and his wife have been married two months and want children. Although it is reader insert, it is assumed reader is also Catholic and a virgin when she met Jack.

Warnings: 🔞,Pure smut, breeding kink, slight innocence kink

Read the first part here.

Jack placed you on the bed gently, watching you sit forward eagerly to unfasten his belt. He ran his fingers through your hair and massaged your scalp lovingly as you took his trousers off. You pulled his boxers down and watched his cock spring free inches from your face. Placing your hands on his thighs, you looked up at him with doe eyes and he nodded with a warm smile. Jack could tell the idea was turning you on as he watched you rub your thighs together unconsciously for friction.

“Go on, baby,” he coaxed and you wrapped your lips around him allowing a sinful moan to escape your lips. You knew it wasn’t ladylike to admit how much you loved this, but you did. Taking care of your husband this way gave you a deep sense of pride. It was also one of the sexiest things you'd ever experienced, feeling that amount of control over your powerful husband.

Jack gathered your hair behind your head to keep it out of the way. You felt him grip your roots excitedly as you took him into your welcoming mouth. Once he became aware of how tightly he held you, he released his harsh grasp, always wanting his touch with you to be soft and gentle. You watched out the corner of your eye as his other hand clenched and unclenched, practically shaking, wanting to hold something, but too afraid of bruising you. It seemed that Jack was forever holding himself back, worried his strength would break you. 

He let you set your own pace, bobbing along his length, taking him as deep as you dared. Hearing him take deep breaths through his nose, you knew he was enjoying himself. You had a steady rhythm going until, suddenly feeling overzealous, you took him too far into your throat and gagged violently. Jack withdrew from you, studying your face carefully asking with concern, “Too much for you, baby?” You shook your head defiantly wanting to continue to prove you could please him, but he knew better. He sat down beside you on the bed giving you a moment to relax and wiped your tears away. 

Sensing your anxiety, Jack pulled you in for a gentle kiss, gliding his tongue over yours and placing his large hand over your throat to stroke it soothingly. “You made me feel so good, sweetheart. I was gonna cum down your pretty little throat instead of your pussy. Can’t have that, can we?” he joked, lifting your chin to meet his eyes. 

Feeling composed enough to continue and still burning with need, you asked, “Will you make love to me now?” Jack considered you for a moment and rubbed a thumb across your cheek before answering, “Not yet, baby, I have to get you ready first or you’ll be sore tomorrow. I don't want to hurt my doll.” He pushed you back toward the headboard and laid you against the pillows.

You began to relax as Jack rolled your stockings down over each leg, kissing along the the trail of skin he exposed. You squirmed and giggled as his stubble moved over your inner thighs and the sensitive skin behind your knees. He grinned, knowing exactly which ticklish spots to torment, taking devilish delight in his teasing.

Your underwear came next and the sight of your bare pussy made Jack wild with desire. He bit his knuckle wanting to devour you, but drinking you in with his eyes in appreciation instead. He lowered himself toward you reverently and placed a full kiss to your lower lips. He moaned at the feeling of your satiny smoothness and lapped at the sweet juices pooling at your entrance. You gasped softly at the feeling, waiting for more. “Please…” you begged in a soft voice, dripping with sweetness.

Jack ventured a long finger into your soaking core and felt you clench around him. “So tight you can barely take my finger, sweetheart,” he said kissing your thigh softly to encourage you to relax further. You sighed with pleasure as you allowed him to push your legs apart, open and exposed to him. He adored how trusting you were with him.

When he had worked a second finger inside you and you were leaking juices over his hand, he knew you were ready to take him. He worked his way back up your body, taking a pert nipple into his mouth and sucking softly as he massaged your other breast. He found himself imagining them even larger, straining beneath a too tight dress you would outgrow as the baby developed. He groaned at the thought of you popping a button as you leaned over to serve him dinner and he made a mental note to keep you from buying any new dresses until it was absolutely necessary. He wanted to be able to see every new curve that burst forth to properly take in what he had done to you.

With that thought, he was unable to keep himself from you any longer. He hovered over you, keeping his weight off you as best he could and kissed you passionately. Jack pulled back to look at the hunger building in your eyes. “I know, sweetheart. Need me to fill you up, don’t you?”

You bit your lip and nodded. He lined up with your entrance and you caressed his cheek with your hand as you hooked a leg over his hip. He entered you slowly as you let out little gasps. Jack broke out into a smile. You were adorable when you were determined to take his cock all at once. He knew it was still too much for you though and would usually ease himself into you so you had time to get used to the stretch. He sank in a bit deeper and the feeling of your velvety warmth made him close his eyes and gulp harshly.

This was the most difficult part for Jack, trying to hold himself back from pounding into you the way he would have liked. It wasn’t easy when you were writhing beneath him, pulling him toward you with your heels hooked behind his back, begging for more. There was an itch in his brain that needed to be scratched, a relentless feeling that he needed to put his hand around your throat and fuck you into the mattress until you cried, but that was a dark dream. He would never hurt you like that. He could never break your trust that way. Instead he focused on what he truly wanted, to own your body with his seed. 

He turned you to your side, raising your leg over his, to move within you languidly, prolonging the feeling of being encased in your warm heat. You moaned at the sensation of Jack hitting a delicious new spot within you. He gripped your hip possessively, watching himself slide in and out of you as your ass jiggled in front of him enticingly. That stirred him to pick up his pace, knowing he wouldn’t last much longer like this. 

“Gonna carry my child? Let everyone know you’re mine?” Jack asked between thrusts.

“Yes…Yes, Jack…I’m yours,” you panted as his speed increased. You were rapidly coming undone, but you didn’t have to worry as Jack always took care of you. He placed a thumb to your clit and circled it rapidly, watching as you fell apart.

“That’s my sweet girl. Take it all,” he murmured into your hair, losing rhythm as you squeezed him.

“I want it, Jack,” you whispered to him. 

With your admission Jack felt the first waves of his orgasm hit. He released into you with a grunt and you felt a sudden surge of warmth inside yourself. You sighed in contentment, knowing you could be conceiving a child with your beloved husband at that moment.

You interlaced your fingers with his and squeezed his hand. Then you brought his fingers to your mouth and placed a soft kiss to his knuckles, holding his hand over your heart as he pushed himself as deeply as possible within you. Jack’s chin hooked over your shoulder and you felt his warm breath fanning your ear, sending a shiver down your spine.

When you felt him beginning to soften inside you, you moved to separate yourself from him. Before you could move away, he clutched at your side, stopping you from going anywhere. “Lay still, doll, don’t want to let a drop out.” He stroked your hair gently and left slow, lazy kisses along the back of your neck and you melted into him. “Go to sleep, baby. You’re gonna need your energy if you’re pregnant,” he said placing one last kiss to your cheek. 

After a few moments of silence Jack ran his fingers down your rib cage and splayed a hand across your stomach. You laid your smaller hand over his and whispered “Just think, what if there’s a baby there now?” you asked in awe. 

Jack kissed your temple. “I hope so, angel,” he said rubbing your stomach wishing it were true. “You want to try again tomorrow just to be sure?” He asked smirking against your back. You bit your lip and nodded, “Just to be sure,” you agreed. Then you both fell into a deep, contented sleep. 

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Tag list: @retromafia, @violaobanion, @daddyjack-nelson, @shelbydelrey, @theshelbyslimited

#Peaky Blinders fanfic #Peaky Blinders imagine #Jack Nelson fanfic #Jack Nelson imagine #Jack Nelson x female reader #Jack Nelson smut

[waterinz]

⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡

Jjk men and their fav position

parings: s. gojo, s. geto, k. nanami, k. choso, f. toji, r sukuna.

warnings: smut, named positions, choking (sukuna), dacryphilia (toji and sukuna), pet names, praising (nanami, geto, gojo choso).

A/N: someone request something, PLEASE 🙏🙏

⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡

Satoru Gojo: 100% mating press

His sinister grin was the only thing apart of your blurred vision, the position, the friction, the pace, it would’ve been damn near impossible to not fall in love with the way he fucked you, if y’all hadn’t already been dating. The amount of will he has over your body is crazy in that position, him being vocal as hell doesn’t help but god… it’s hot as fuck, him moaning whimpering or saying some vile shit in your ears like “fuck-.. if she doesn’t stop sucking me in like this, i might come a-already.”, “such a good girl” and other dirty things…

Suguru Geto: Spooning

As someone that’s always tired, this is perfect for him. Just being able to slide it in as y’all are laying down is the most ideal thing for him. Geto is a simple man that takes sex as a way to relax, relieve stress and relax the tension in your muscles.. but even with all those benefits and a girlfriend that he nicknamed “Jack-rabbit” simply because she couldn’t go a week without some kind of fucking. But one day he wanted to try something different. He laid on his side, you infront of him, grinding on you. This position gave him free access of your ass, tits, neck, and pretty much the rest of your body too.

Kento Nanami: Cowgirl/ Reverse Cowgirl

Now we know this old man is OLD fashioned as hell, probably alive during the BC and CE era, but one thing about him was.. he loved to fuck aswell. He loved the sight of his dick sliding in and out of that cunt while also seeing that white ring of cum being formed.

Kamo Choso: 69

He def seems like the type to not want to take control or advantage of you but still wanting a way to please you, so if there’s a way he can be pleased, AND please you? He’s down for it. Choso is probably really skilled at eating the box :3. Kissin it, small soft bites, licking anything that leaks out. :3

Toji Fushiguro: Full Nelson (especially infront of a mirror.)

Toji seems like the type to manhandle you. Folding and contorting your body past it’s limits, fucking you in unspeakable positions you can hardly manage. That shit eating grin, visibly displayed in the mirror. Choking you too, I mean it’s easy access. He manhandles you to your wits end and at this point, its painful as fuck, but hot ad fuck too. And your tears visible in the mirror too makes it so much better, well atleast to him…

Sukuna Ryomen: Missonary

Now sukuna doesn’t have a favorite position, he thinks every position that allows him to restrain you is perfect. But if he had to pick just ONE, it’d be missionary. Just being able to watch your face contort into expressions is literally heaven to him, and do not get me starteddddd on if he was in the big boy form. Easy access kissing, being able to fully restrain you under his touch and weight. His smirk that is displayed on his face could make you tremble just at the sight. And your tears visible? Yeah he would go all outttt…

⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡ ⊹ ࣪ ˖🍰₊˚⊹♡

#waterinzwork🦈 #geto smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #toji smut #jjk smut #gojo satoru #gojo smut #geto suguru #nanami kento #nanami smut #choso kamo #choso smut #toji fushiguro #ryomen sukuna #sukuna smut #kamo ch

[turtle-boris]

Jack hanma (NSFW)Head cannons

First time writing smut, sorry if it's bad. But enjoy anyways.

MINORS DNI

Has a biting kink, he likes marking what's his. He makes sure not to bite to hard though, just hard enough to leave a marks for him to enjoy later. You'll be covered in hickies and bite marks afterwards. I have a feeling he 100% has a breeding kink. His loads are huge so if he does cum inside, he's gonna stuff you like a pastry. As long as your on the pill of course. (I feel like he would totally call you his little stuffed pastry. He would call himself the pastry chef, because you know he stuffed you with his cream.)

His favorite positions are full Nelson, doggy style, and even if he doesn't like to admit it he likes it when you ride him. He likes watching you bounce, as you take what you want, but if it gets too boring for him he'll take over. If he's doing doggy style or full Nelson, that's when he wants to take you nice and rough. Would totally pull your hair in doggy style and whisper in your ear 'taking me so good darlin' or 'you like it rough, don't you sweetheart'. When he's got you in full Nelson he's just gonna have a cocky smirk while whispering things like 'aww, look at those pretty tears, am I fucking you that good baby?' or 'such a good little thing for me, taking me so good.' (They definitely call him Jack hammer for other reasons😏)

He's big into body worship, receiving and giving. So if you ever randomly say 'I'm so ugly' or 'I look horrible' in front of him, oh honey get ready. He will overstimulate you until your crying about how beautiful and perfect you are. He'll say stuff like 'Now, who's perfect, baby?' or 'Look how gorgeous you look right now, don't you agree?'. He loves it when you kiss his body and his scars, it makes him feel good. He adores it when you complement his body. He's worked really hard for his body, so you telling him how amazing he looks or strong he is makes him feel special and happy.

He 100% loves fucking you in front of a mirror. He loves being able to watch himself take you, while you writhe and moan. He will make sure your making eye contact with him in the mirror while he fucks you. If you look away, out of embarrassment, he'll grab your chin and make you look at him. He'll say stuff like 'look at me while I take you darlin, that's a good girl.' or 'tsk tsk, don't look away sweetheart, I wanna watch you come undone.'

He's big. About 12 inches long and 4 inches thick, so you need a lot of foreplay to be able to take him. But once he's inside, you'll feel impossibly full, and he'll talk you through it. Saying stuff like 'it's okay, your taking me so well sweetheart, being so good.' or 'There you go baby, take it.'

He makes sure to give you aftercare, he doesn't want you feeling used. He'll cuddle you and kiss where he bit you or gave you bruises or hickies. He'll clean you up and draw you a bath, while he changes the sheets. Then he'll cuddle up with you in bed and you'll fall asleep in each other's arms.

#jack hanma x reader #jack hanma

[silkendandelion]

My Own, Distant Home (Chapter 2), A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout fanfiction

Chapter 1, ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 16.6k Genre: Horror, humor, smut

Rated Explicit for sexual content, strong language, horror elements, frightening imagery and descriptions of violence.

A romantic, creepy, canon-compliant retelling of the game's narrative where Jack and Connor are more fleshed out characters, and not immune to the emotional threads that form when your only friend is a voice on the radio—until he isn't.

~*~

All Connor had offered him was some soup.

What luck could Jack attribute to his current predicament, standing between open knees while Connor leans against the cheap, peeling counter-top and allows him to kiss him?

His fuzzy thoughts, so captured by the arms around his shoulders, recall helping to clean the dishes so they could eat, some teasing comment from Connor about the size of his hands when he rolled up his sleeves. A polite but muttered “excuse me” as he placed his hand on the small of Connor’s back to get the hand towel, and the drift of curious eyes over Jack’s face when he does it again to get the spoons.

The soup was never actually served once Jack took the beer offered to him, downing half the bottle in one greedy, nervous swallow. He recalls a long moment of tension, standing too close, about to ask if Connor wanted one too when he takes the bottle from his hand, tongue pressed to the tip as he finishes it.

If Jack could wrestle his thoughts back, he might be horribly embarrassed he leaned in first, though how ashamed can he be for his enthusiasm when Connor answered by pulling him closer, fingers combing into his hair, and legs parting to make a space for him?

He moans into the lazy, welcoming kisses, surprised at the shiver that zips up his back when Connor answers him. If only he would let him, Jack would stay there for hours and kiss him until his lips are bruised, tongue sore, and drunk on all the genuine, little noises he offered up so freely.

“Hit the lights, will you?” Connor pulled away just enough to let those brown eyes take the rest of Jack’s reservations. “The stove gives off enough light, and I’ll be damned if some wet hiker thinks I’m on office hours and comes up here to see you inside me.”

Jack isn’t prepared for how hard that makes him, suddenly wrested for breath and tightening his hands on Connor’s sides. In his mind, Jack has already ravished him a hundred times, in all the lascivious and romantic ways he was too ashamed to admit. He nearly forgets the man of his most recent dreams is right here, wanting him, waiting for him to blink.

“You—is that no good?” Connor tries to backpedal when his distracted nervousness lends no answer, blushing hard as Jack stays frozen in the ‘v’ of his knees, almost nose to nose with their stares flicking between eyes and lips.

“We can do something else if you want, I’m down with probably most things you’ll suggest—” Connor gasps when both hands grip his waist, lifting him bodily and taking him to the bed to be dropped onto the mattress with a hard, ozone-tinged kiss.

Connor gives up a helpless moan into his mouth, having never been kissed with someone’s entire body: from the bold tongue coaxing him to moan again to warm palms skimming over everything they want to squeeze in the order they please. Down his thighs, up around the small of his back, leaving sparks on his heated skin as they flip up the hem of his shirt to dig fingertips into the soft skin of his admittedly ticklish sides.

“You brat,” Connor huffs out, shaking but not from the cold when he wrestles his lips back, and restless hips slot against him as his cheeky answer.

“Hey—new guy.” He slides his fingers into Jack’s hair and pulls him up from where he was getting distracted mouthing at the freckle behind his ear.

“You forgot the lights.” There it was, the smoke Jack remembered from his dream, deep as whiskey and just as hot in his belly, making his limbs all loose and cock prone to stiffen. But the smirk, the one declaring Connor is as willing as Jack is hard—that was new.

“Got it.”

He flies to hit the light switch—literally, giving it a little swat before he nearly trips over himself to be back on the bed, crowding into Connor’s personal space in what he considers record time.

“Took you long enough, Jack, now I’m cold again,” he teases quietly, bumping their noses to catch his eyes.

Surely, Jack thinks, he must be able to hear his heart racing from so close. Would he be pleased if he knew it races most times he speaks, every time he teases him? It might never slow down, now that he knows what Connor looks like, biting his kiss-swollen lips and working his body to heatstroke with only his inviting gaze.

“I’ll do better next time.” Jack pants, licking his lips for another kiss.

“Next time?” Connor chuckles, leaning coyly out of the reach of his lips, and pressing a plastic bottle of lube into his palm Jack hadn’t seen him grab.

When he speaks again, the smoke is all but gone, leaving a melancholy that didn’t belong in a warm bed on a stormy night with the closest thing they both had to a friend. “Guys like us… we don’t get a lot of next times.”

His answering sigh is grateful, soft and trailed by the quietest moan when Jack tries to chase the dark thought away with nibbles of kisses up his neck, stopping to speak into his ear. “I’d like to have a next time with you, if you’ll have me… and—did you get this lube from under your pillow?”

“I keep that up my ass, actually.”

“You’re—” Jack stifled his chuckle against the shoulder bared by Connor’s rumpled shirt. “Stop making me laugh, I don’t wanna get soft.”

“One laugh gets you soft? Well, I’m in trouble then—oof.” He grunts when Jack adjusts them to fit better on the small bed, admittedly not wide enough to condone most physical activity. But where there’s a will, and all that.

“What a gentleman.” Connor says, sarcastic but only teasing when Jack makes sure he gets the only pillow behind his head. There was something else in his tone, something genuinely adoring Jack didn’t have the allocated brain capacity to dwell on.

“Kinda makes me miss the bear who threw me down on this bed, though.”

“I should have apologized for manhandling you.” Jack admits shyly, fidgeting with the peeling corner of the bottle’s label, ‘For Men and Women, Made in the USA.’

“Don’t.” Connor replies, and the smoke returning to his voice has Jack meeting his eyes to admire him, the beginnings of a flush creeping down his neck, the excited tent of him in his sweatpants.

“I want all of you.”

It was the moment Jack realized he had a switch, somewhere, and Connor clearly got off on playing with the damned thing. He wanted to tell him to be gentle, but couldn’t deny his curiosity to find out how good it might feel to be held by someone who wanted your pleasure as much as theirs.

“Let’s get these off you,” said Jack, rough and needy.

But as their layers come off over disheveled hair, the appearance of more skin only makes it harder to stop kissing. Jack takes his lips back, what he believes is selfishly, to suck kisses into the dusting of blonde hair on his pectorals, his perked, dusky nipples, and Connor answers with the bite of his nails on his shoulder blades, then curling into the damp hair at the nape of his neck.

Jack waited for the inevitable switch, to be punished for being seen wanting, for asking, for taking, but Connor only encouraged him with revelry.

“More, Jack, feels—good,” he panted, raising his hips into Jack’s wandering lips as they leave wet marks across his stomach, and a hard suck over his iliac crest makes his back arch off the sheets.

“These too?” Jacks asks softly while thumbing their boxers, and Connor nods, both of their hands coming down to strip the other. He stills, and Jack briefly believes he’s being lazy, until he realizes he has a… stunned audience.

There, Jack laid against the length of him—thicker, longer, with an attractive curve, a head on him, peeking from beneath a velvety foreskin that made saliva pool under his tongue. Connor considered himself pleasantly average, he was, but Jack was… gorgeous.

“That’s a nice surprise,” he said, so quietly Jack figured he meant it more to himself than him. If he hadn’t, the pull of his teeth over his lip while he stroked him, gently and too loose was enough to communicate loud and clear he liked what he saw.

The sight of him gawking gave Jack all sorts of pesky ideas, of Connor coaxing him to lie back, swallowing him down at whatever mind-melting, teasing pace would drive him to insanity, the long line of his toned back arched up for Jack’s viewing pleasure. Ideas he really, really needed to shake away if he was going to last long enough to please him.

“Do you want to put your mouth on it?” An embarrassing question, one Jack regretted as soon as it left his mouth, but Connor just licked his lips. Seemed he was imagining it too.

“Next time.”

Jack managed, barely, to stay strong under the shiver that raced up his back. If Connor kept being so patient with him, pressing soft, overwhelming words like “please” and “wanted” into his skin, he wasn’t so sure he was going to be able to leave—he might have to ask to move in.

“Get inside me already.”

Maybe he could raise a tent down in the forest if Connor wouldn’t let him sleep in the bed.

“Okay. Yeah, all right,” he said with one more deep kiss, fumbling to slick his first and second fingers while Connor’s hips made impatient little circles.

“Start slo—ow,” Connor moaned when Jack busied himself with swirling around his rim, neglecting to dip inside, not even as his pulsing, ignored cock dotted pre onto the back of his spread thigh.

“Not that slow… C’mon, Jack, I’m sufferin’,” he murmured with the rural drawl that crept into his voice when he wanted something bad enough to beg.

Jack nodded, flushing shy at his unintentional teasing, though the moonlight and wood fire hardly gave away his redness. Below him, Connor’s eyes slip closed, head pressing into the pillow when he finally has long, calloused fingers inside him. Eager, decidedly not clever fingers that drove him crazy with their missing of his prostate. And yet they spread him gently, thoroughly, touching parts of his insides he usually ignores, and making his body simmer on a steadily rising heat. Against him, Jack’s growing need has become a steady, sticky dribble, with lips seeking any skin he can reach.

“A little to your left—let me show you.”

But Connor never gets the chance because Jack takes his instruction to the letter, suddenly all over the sensitive spot, too much too fast, capable only to cry his surprise as Jack grinds his fingers upwards in the same rhythm as his cock against the back of Connor’s thigh.

“Shit—” Connor moans for him, voice beginning to shake and rocking his hips down into his palm until the lightning in his belly is outpacing the storm outside.

“F-fuck me,” he hisses. “Fuck me already, Jack, I want it.”

“Yeah… Yeah, okay.” He leaves a last kiss on his shoulder and rearranges their limbs among the wounded gasp Connor makes when he slips his fingers free.

He uses his dirty hand to get himself wet, not that he needed anymore help (or stimulation). A pair of clean hands take ahold of him, one bringing Jack bodily forward to cover him with his warmth, and the other to guide him into his body.

To be seated inside him, his flushed body and glowing charm, is to find stars in a thunderstorm.

“Are you… all right?” Jack asks finally, both proud of himself for thinking to ask a polite question, and worried to watch Connor’s brow scrunch and twist. The breath he gasps out is decidedly pleasure, overwhelmed by the heat at the base of his spine while he wonders if Jack thinks he’s making an attractive face.

“Fuck me. Please.”

Connor swears to the rickety ceiling when he starts moving, urgent and honest moans worked up from his throat by the enthusiastic, steady throw of his hips. The little bed certainly wasn’t made for Jack’s eagerness to please, but there was little room in Connor to care when he was so full.

“Yes… Yes, fuck—” He grabbed at the mattress for leverage to rock back against him, stoke the fire that curled beneath his navel.

Damn the storm outside whipping around windows, damn the worry about what really lives in these woods, the only thought in either of their bloodless brains is to have more of each other, more of this raptured attention they didn’t know could light up their nerves with all the clarity of a lightning strike to the forest floor.

Connor’s audibly displeased when Jack pauses his stroke to lean up, perturbed at the cold air slipping between their chests. A soft “I’m sorry, baby” is only mildly soothing to his buzzing nerves, but the revised position promises strength, leverage, and Jack’s shaking fingers come down to grip like hot iron on his waist to yank him back into the snap of his hips. The liquid fire up their spines is immediate, as is Connor’s vocal appreciation, unable to keep his eyes open while he moans Jack’s praises in a litany of fervid gasps.

“G-god, that’s good, Jack. Jack, oh—my god.” His moans migrate to his chest, deeper, sounding fucked out already when his numb hands can no longer hold onto the sheets.

Jack swallows, his mouth is so dry but he can’t imagine not chasing this heat, not when Connor’s fluttering around him, getting tighter, moans suddenly caught in his throat as he floods the soft plane of his belly with hot cum. Surprise creases his brow as much as pleasure, among the bone-deep bliss of an untouched orgasm in the tears on the waterline of his lashes.

He fucks him through it, couldn’t imagine not answering those sweet, pleading gasps of “don’t stop, don’t stop”, prolonging his pleasure like it was his own to chase. The shivers he gets when Connor whimpers, stuttering out “too much, s-stop”, are worth his delayed gratification, as are the soft, sleepy eyes he turns on him when his legs quit shaking.

“Did you—?” Connor says as he swallows, moving up onto his elbows, though whatever concern he meant to voice was cut off by his startled gasp when Jack gently pulled himself out.

“What are you—oh,” he crooned, hands threading into Jack’s hair when he covered him suddenly, whimpering among fevered panting as his fist flew over his swollen, red cock. Connor cradled him in the open angle of his thighs, the fingers on his nape, his own stomach flipping at the wet, slick sound of Jack’s wrist working himself into shakes.

“Come on, Jack, you—” He kissed him hard to capture his startled cry, undulated his spine to catch his spend in the mixed pool of them on his abdomen. Among a muted, faraway rumble of thunder, he smoothed his palms over all the heated skin he could reach, quelling his shakes and letting him come down slow in the warm bend of his shoulder. “You did… so good.”

When Jack had come to his tower tonight, confessing he was worried, Connor found little shame in offering a little stress relief if he was also interested. It wasn’t a habit he made, to kiss the New Guy, especially not the one who believed there were people in these woods building fires for occult rituals.

But he could hardly feel embarrassed, not now that he felt… cherished was a good word.

“Hey,” he called, quietly but more than a little upset when Jack untangled them to try to leave the bed.

“I thought you were a gentleman. Or do people not cuddle anymore?”

“Uh—sure,” he chuffed with a little smile. “Let me get something to clean you up first.”

“Already on it, new guy. You think I keep lube close and not rags? I’m hurt.” Connor ran a flannel over their cum on his belly, though he found his hole too sore to fuss over.

Jack’s self-awareness returned to him with the feeling in his legs as his orgasm settled into a pleasant buzz. “Am I still ‘new guy’ after everything?”

“You’re ‘new guy’ whenever you say something dumb. ‘Jack’ is… he’s a little insecure, but he’s sweet. Always does his best.” Connor simpered at him, drowsy and warm as Jack scooted up to lay against his side.

“Are you saying that because you like me?”

“I’m saying that because you laid me like pipe, goddamn,” they both laughed quietly in the darkness. The storm outside was less thunder now, more white noise rain pattering on the old roof of the tower.

“And because I think you’re a good guy… Jack.”

For a long moment, there’s only the blanket of the rain and their slowing heartbeats between them, among the quiet blooming of something gentler, fed and watered by a moment of vulnerability in an inhospitable landscape.

“Don’t go chasing rumors. Don’t create monsters where there are none. Not when the world can’t afford to lose any more good guys. And when it doesn’t need any more monsters than it already has.”

When Connor spoke so confidently, the way he always did, so sure of his own opinion and trusting of his own eyes—Jack felt he could almost believe him.

For now, there was nothing he could do in the dark, nothing he wanted to do besides lie contented in Connor’s version of the world, relaxed and warm with a guy he didn’t need to know well to know that here—for now, he was safe.

“…Okay, Connor. You got it.”

“Night, Jack.”

“Goodnight.”

The two of them fell into a dead sleep for hours, long enough to rest until the sky is clear, the sun is up, and the birds are all that’s watching them from the trees.

5 DAYS LATER

Only hours after Jack leaves Tower 12 does Connor’s generator stop working completely, and for days after the solution continues to evade him. That’s nothing to be said about the piece of junk’s age, but Connor is nothing if not determined, though most everyone who’s ever met him has chosen to use the phrase “stubborn ass”.

The portable generator Billy loaned him, the one meant to jump-start his truck’s battery in an emergency, couldn’t hope to keep the lights on or the appliances running, but was thankfully enough to keep his radio alive for communication. Still, Jack was tasked with monitoring his sector for fires, as well as checking on him twice a day, appearing over the trail ridge every morning and night with a pep that Connor swore out-shined the sun.

Oh, the sun.

He supposed the wild temperature changes also explained the sporadic rain, but such unseasonably warm days during this crisis of utilities could only either be tragic luck, or one of his scorned ex-girlfriends had actually sought out a witch to hex him like they threatened. Well, not directly, but that’s what his sister said she would do if a guy ever broke up with her the way he had: callous words, an indifferent phone call, the attempt of a lonely man to forget everyone who wasn’t simply, absolutely perfect.

Were it not for his unfiltered hatred of MRE’s and granola bars, as well as his intermittent visits from the cute, new fire lookout, he would have already punted the ungrateful machine off a high cliff and down to a violent, splintering death.

“Got time for a break?” Jack smiled at him when he appeared in the afternoon, offering his metal water bottle with the hand that wasn’t in his jacket pocket.

“How can you wear that shit?” Connor said, hoarse and appropriately grouchy as he snatched the bottle to drink in greedy swallows, tiny streams slipping down his chin and lost in his tank top, the collar ringed by a shade of deeper gray with sweat.

“Forecast says rain. You’ll be forced to turn in early, hopefully.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He dumped the rest out onto his hands to scrub at his fingers, dark with machinists grease, and his reaching for a nearby rag revealed a tattoo on the back of his left shoulder that Jack hadn’t noticed before.

“Is that a… bear?”

Connor shooed him away where he had leaned to see the faded art better. “Supposed to be. Dumb thing I got in the army—I forget it’s there most of the time, honestly.”

“You were in the army?” Jack took it upon himself to sit on the scaffolding of the tower across from Connor’s open toolbox.

“You think I was born this welcoming and sweet?”

His smile, nearly a smirk as it pulled towards one of his dimples, as well as the dusting of red on his cheeks is achingly genuine, shy despite all they shared. All of it summed up to glaring evidence Jack never had enough friends, never the kind of lover that might have taught him the nuances of misconstrued flirtations. “Welcomed me in pretty easy.”

“Hey, fuck you!” Connor’s temper was ignited in an instant, chucking the water bottle at the ground beside Jack’s dangling feet hard enough to dent the bottom and startle him off his perch with a thud as he fell back into the brush.

“Oh—shit, are you all right?”

Jack opened his eyes to Connor above him. His frown spoke of shame, perhaps at his outburst, perhaps at memories Jack wasn’t privileged to hear, and the hand checking the back of his head for blood is unexpectedly gentle.

An honest “I’m sorry” leaps up from Jack’s tongue before he can catch it, more evidence of his confusion at the harshness of which he finds most company, his desperation to be the kind of person they might want to treat with kindness.

Though none of them have ever bothered to check him for bruises afterward.

“You’re sorry? There’s no way you could have known.” Connor helps him to his feet, kicking aside more hazards in scattered tools.

“Know what?”

“I…” His brow furrows, lips poised to speak. “Now, let’s be clear—”

He stops again, the first attempt he’s made probably ever to try to be more understanding, if only because Jack gave it back. “Regardless of what’s happened between us, I don’t actually know you that well.”

Jack doesn’t want it to sound so much like a rejection, not when the clouds bursting open above them leaves little time to reconcile.

“Shit!”

“Well.” Connor’s flat, dispirited tone lifts up from where he tilts his head into the water, grabbing some semblance of comfort as he scrubs his face clean.

“Don’t say it.”

“It can’t get any worse.” Connor sighs, grinning before he can stop it, and Jack isn’t prepared for how handsome he finds him, all clean, white teeth and warm brown eyes beneath damp lashes. His soaked hair can’t manage to be unbecoming as it sticks to his forehead, and Jack just hopes he makes a better image than soaked hiking pants and pathetic. If he was better at managing his anxiety, he might be able to see Connor was admiring him too, gaze darting between bright, hazel eyes and smiling lips that were almost too red, always.

A shiver runs through him, one Connor can’t blame on the rain when he remembers how gentle those hands were on his scarred skin, as big as his own on the shorter man. The next shiver is sad, he realizes, hoping to whoever would listen that he hadn’t fucked this up. For all the times he had chased people away, deliberately and not, to count Jack among them would actually hurt.

“You’re gonna get sick.” Jack spoke up above the rain, already taking off his jacket.

“Keep it, new guy. You have to walk back to Tower 11.”

“… You’re right.”

Connor finds little courage to do more than pat his shoulder, squeeze it firmly. “Don’t look so kicked. You can come up next time it rains, I promise. I’ll even make dinner again.”

Jack hopes his face isn’t turning as red as he thinks—he really hadn’t meant to offer more than a jacket, certainly not an innuendo—though his anxiety is sufficiently quieted by his joy that Connor is back to flirting with him. Seems the rain washes away most ailments in this forest: fear, and even shame.

“I’ll call you later to check on you.”

“Get home safe, Jack.”

1:33AM

The rain has stopped when the radio wakes him.

Connor’s sigh fills the tower. ‘We got another one. Jack, do you copy?’

For all the fog holding Jack’s body, his eyes bleary and limbs weak, it must be some time in the small hours, confirmed by his glance at the little plastic face on his alarm clock. He manages to sit up slowly as the radio clicks on again, more apologetic this time. ‘I know it’s late but you’re going to want to see this. Jack? Jaack?’ I need you to wake up.’

“I’m coming,” he says to no one over Connor’s continued calling for him, and picks up the receiver. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

His mirrored words from weeks ago don’t register to him, or maybe he’s simply too irritated to entertain him. ‘Look, Jack, I don’t have the energy to deal with this right now. I’m exhausted, and we’ve got smoke in the north on your side.’

“Another campfire?” Jack yawns into his arm.

‘I think so. See if you can get eyes on it and call me right back, all right?’

The sleep finally manages to roll off his shoulders, and he wonders how Connor is even upright with the bags under his eyes he saw that afternoon. Yet here he was, still working on his junk generator, still watching the trees. “You haven’t been to sleep yet, have you?”

‘I napped a little during the rain. And I would like to have electricity sooner rather than later, new guy—so no.’

“Get some rest. I’ll update you in the morning on anything that happens. If they don’t run away, I’ll book ‘em and give their info to the authorities tomorrow. Everything will be fine, so go to sleep. Please.”

Static on the other end wavers between what Jack thinks could either be contemplative silence, or simply Connor falling asleep sitting up. ‘I think I’ll take you up on that, actually.’

“Real sleep. Not napping for four hours and deciding to stay awake after you’ve gotten up to pee.”

He huffs, almost a chuckle. ‘Yes, sir.’

His sleepy reply, slurred against the radio receiver, is too soft for the typical smart-mouthed and defensive Connor who prefers to not be seen through. To hear him acquiesce without fuss makes Jack’s heart flutter, sparking his memory of the tender, sweet man who pulled him into his bed.

‘Goodnight, Jack.’

“Night.”

The radio clicks silent as the transmission closes.

Outside on the porch, Jack spots the smoke easily, down near the lake and to the north—exactly as Connor said. He grabs the binoculars from the top of his dresser, though he has to swipe the lenses clean with the bottom of his sweater before he can actually see to use them.

What he sees in those lenses stops his blood in his veins.

His hands fumble to clean the binoculars better, wipe away the scene in front of him, but when he looks again they’re still there. Dressed in black robes, heads covered with hoods and concealed down to their feet. The hoods are peculiar, nothing he’s ever seen on late-night documentary TV or read about in 99-cent paperback novels: horned, all black, except for a singular figure that stands in matching robes on the other side of the fire, all white.

In the center of them is a large bonfire, stacked with dead tree limbs, arranged in a rectangular funeral pyre and elevating a long bundle, wrapped in white. A body? He had to assume so, no matter how it cramped his stomach. To think anything else would be stupid, even if he wasn’t sure he would ever sleep again knowing this was the truth about the woods that had eluded him.

How he envied the stupid.

He fished for his cellphone, mournful the little plastic lenses’ resolution would only cast doubt over his claim. Regardless of it’s quality, he thought surely the experts could tell the image was undoctored, at least. He cursed his hands to stop shaking, fidgeting with the focus button for long seconds until he clicked the shutter—

And a flash lit up the forest.

The hooded figures froze, spinning to face the tower and meet his eyes through the cellphone’s pixelated screen. He jumped, managing not to scream but not strong enough to keep his grip on the phone. It slipped out of his hands, bouncing off the knotty boards, and down over the edge to it’s assured death.

“Fuck!”

A bird breaking the treetops in flight alerted him to their position, and the crunch of the trail as he spotted them running up the path to his tower.

“Oh—shit,” he whispered. There was no time to flee, too many stairs, nothing to do besides stay trapped like a treed fox to hungry hounds.

So he would just have to be trapped.

He darted back inside, thankfully the tower was already dark, no electronics buzzing to imply a human had only been there minutes ago. The space between the bed and the floor was a squeeze for a grown man, but he managed to slide into his hiding place moments before the sound of stomping boots came flying up the stairs.

They paused at his door long enough to jiggle the handle, to Jack’s wracking unease when the knob yielded easily.

How could I not lock it?, he thought with his hand pressed tight over his lips, eyes wide to watch black boots with thick, muddy soles wander back and forth across his floor. No doubt they studied his radio, feeling for warmth on the stove, any signs of immediate habitation.

They came to stop beside the bed, close enough to scent pungent, black leather polish and the ripped grass that clogged the grooves of their tread. Jack held his breath, surely a collapsed diaphragm would be less painful than immolation—

And then they were gone. Out the door, beyond his sight, though without the clunking of boots on metal stairs.

I have to go now.

He bolted without hesitation, shoes skidding on the damp, uneven floor, out the door and nearly over the railing when he launched himself into the face of the cultist. They gasped, too surprised to suppress it as Jack braced—and ran.

He skidded down the steps, his leverage completely in the fulcrum of his grip on the railing, until he reached the bottom. Footsteps followed him, there was just too little time, all alone, nowhere to hide—

From inside the portable toilet, he waited.

The cultist appeared to know the trail as well as he did, no surprise there, as Jack watched them track down to the fork in the path. They paused, spinning, searching for footprints to deduce his direction of travel or listen harder to hear his running. In the quiet, Jack slipped away, out of the toilet and around the tower. North, to the only ally he had.

2:57 AM

Connor is as asleep as anyone had ever seen him, sprawled across the little bed, on top of the blanket and with his boots still on. He snores quietly, unaware how Jack scrambles up the flights of stairs to his door, until frantic, repeated knocking on the window panes rattles him awake with a snort.

“H-huh? Hello?” The room swims into focus, as does the pounding headache at being denied his rest.

‘Connor! Connor, wake up! Please!’ He hears a voice among the tapping, trying to be quiet despite their urgency.

“Jack? Jack!”

His body protests in cracking joints as he hauls himself up, the door slamming open the moment the lock’s hammer is flicked free.

“Whoa, Jack—” He staggered back to not be mowed down. “What happened? What are you doing?”

Jack hardly heard him with his heart hammering in his ears, eyes darting across the dark through the window panes, breath ragged as Connor gripped him by the shoulders.

“STOP. Jack, stop.” He repeated, gentler when he finally stood still. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Do I—what?” Connor looked him over, his bloodshot eyes, clammy skin. Disheveled hair stuck to his face and neck with sweat despite the cool night, like he had seen a ghost. Or some kind of monster.

“There’s something really wrong in these woods, Connor, I—don’t look away from me! The smoke in the woods wasn’t a campfire, it was a bonfire! I think they were b-burning a body, a—we have to go. Now. They know I saw them!”

“Are you… drunk?” Connor asked, though he knew nothing of his friend’s haggard demeanor suggested he was anything other than horrifically sober, frightened for his life and seized by adrenaline.

“I’m not DRUNK, why do you always—why do you DO that?”

“Do what, Jack? Be sensible? You have to know how this all sounds.”

“Oh, you would, Connor. Of course you would,” he spat, his frown twisted by disgust while he worried if their friendship would survive this life-and-death difference of opinion. “You always do this.”

“I care about you, Jack, I don’t want to see you destroyed by this conspiracy theory. Look at yourself. It’s eating you.”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory. I’ve seen it!” He pleaded.

“Yeah well, I haven’t.” Connor’s dismissive wave made his stomach swim, a half-hearted gesture that didn’t reach the pull of his frown. “Why can you see it but I can’t?”

“Don’t you get it? They leave you alone because you’re the perfect skeptic. Why would they risk scaring off somebody who willingly covers for them at every opportunity?”

“That’s… bullshit,” Connor says, though he doesn’t sound nearly as confident as his words suggest, and he fidgets where he stands by the sink.

“That’s not possible. I’ve worked here for years! And this creepy stuff only started happening for the last few months.”

“So you HAVE seen things?”

“… No,” he backpedals. “I’ve found empty campsites, of course they’re empty because these stupid fucking kids take off and hide in the woods when they don’t want to get in trouble. People disappear because they mess with bears, or get lost because they went hiking with no equipment. It’s not ghosts, it’s not cults, there’s a reasonable, rational explanation for everything that happens out here.”

“Do you think I chased myself here?”

“Someone’s chasing you?” Connor’s eyes flicked over to the baseball bat he kept beside the door, and the rifle case beside it.

“You of all people, please believe me. I know what I saw, and I—if I hadn’t dropped my phone, I could show you.”

“You… took a picture? And lost it.”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“How else am I supposed to look, Jack?” He threw out his arms in a huff. “I’m willing to believe you if you could show me something but you can’t, very conveniently, which isn’t saying anything against you.”

“It feels like it, Connor. It feels like I’m alone in this, like I’ve been alone in—in everything else. Only now, I’m afraid for my life.”

Connor is quiet as he takes him in, all his thoughts and scenarios playing out visibly across his honest face in order of possibility. He had always been honest, above all else, to the point he became stagnant, ever unchanging when his stubborn nature left him pigeon-holed to become unchallenged.

“What do you want me to do?” He said finally, with nothing more than earnestness. Anything Jack wanted, from him or from the world, he would find a way to make it happen.

“… Don’t let them kill me.”

“Jack,” he whispers, a plea.

“Don’t.”

Connor ignores his quiet protest, crossing the room to fold him into his arms. He holds back some self-serving comment about “it’s okay to cry but it’s not okay to hide” in favor of staying quiet, a rock for Jack to cling to until his shaking subsides.

“Dawns a long way off still. Let’s get some rest, and tomorrow I’ll do anything you need me to, make any phone call you want me to make. Okay?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. I would have left right now but I… I couldn’t make sense of the trails in the dark, scared as I was.”

He resists the urge to squeeze his hands into Jack’s fleece, reminds himself: this wasn’t about his feelings, and they could talk about everything else once Jack was somewhere he felt safe.

“You could have led a killer to my door, chasing up the stairs like that.”

“Don’t make fun of me—”

“I’m not. I mean, I don’t mean to.” He thumbs his cheek, as close to an apology as Jack was going to get.

“Come on. Bed time, Jack.”

He gets under the blanket without protest, mildly mournful the sheets smell of detergent instead of the night they spent together. Connor goes through his nightly routine with no input from Jack, though the latter notices how he checks the lock twice and props the baseball bat beside his alarm clock.

Even if Jack hadn’t managed to convince him of the truth, hopefully these seeds of doubt would carry them through.

~*~

A scream rips him from his sleep. Not a red fox, a real, frightened—Connor’s scream.

Jack flies out of the bed, feet tangled in the blanket, the old quilt almost ripping as he frees himself and looks back to see he slept alone. The flashlight from the desk is gone, the wood fire a semblance of embers. He ponders only briefly the rifle case Connor had moved to under the bed, deciding it would be more of a danger than help when he’s never shot a gun in his life.

He dashes out the door with the only two weapons he was qualified to use: bear mace, and the bat.

The scrapes and grunts of a struggle float up from the stairwell, all the while Jack poured more sweat with every stair, terrified he would get down to the bottom step in time to see Connor murdered right in front of him.

From the top of the last flight, he could finally see them: Connor splayed across the ground, felled from a wound Jack couldn’t see, and the cultist who stalked a few paces away. In the yellow of the floodlights, he spotted the silver gleam of a Bowie knife, probably flung away by a resourceful Connor.

“Connor!!” Jack hoped his shout would provoke him to rise, move, speak, but he laid still, and the cultist turned their attention to him.

To him, the bat seemed a decent plan to survive, until he realized a grown man wasn’t a practice ball shot from a pitching machine, and this was someone who overpowered Connor, a former soldier who was both taller and stronger than Jack. Their gloved hand clamped down on the end of the bat, enough to remove any kind of momentum from his swing, but couldn’t defend against Jack ramming the tip into their face with all his weight.

They go down in a heap, the thud of the cultist breaking his fall slamming in both their chests.

Panting and scrambling to make some distance, he immediately crawled over to Connor. “Connor! Wake up, please, come on. We gotta get out of here before he wakes up—”

“Pfft, fuck.” He spluttered in the dirt beneath his face, roused by Jack’s vigorous shaking. “Jack? Oh god.”

He winced, holding his face where his cheekbone was already splotchy and swelling with a scrape that oozed pin-holes of blood. “He—hit me… with one of my wrenches when I grabbed the knife.”

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Jack lied. “You’re okay. Let’s get out of here, can you walk?”

“Yeah, my legs are fine. It’s my head that’s killing me.”

“Come on.”

Jack recalls making the hike alone weeks ago, so unaware he walked into an underworld he couldn’t begin to understand, now forced to run from those woods and the job that was once his sanctuary. Beside him, Connor worked his jaw to assess the damage with one hand, his other clamped around Jack’s, worried he might be snatched away into the dark and never seen again.

“Did you park in this lot?” Jack asked.

“No, my… sister dropped me off. She has my truck.”

“Let’s take my RV then—”

His words were cut off by the snapping of twigs behind them, and the sudden, deafening crack of a baseball bat hitting the tree beside his head, the tip splintering off to fling into the bushes. Still reeling from his own wound, Connor stumbled, and Jack’s quick decision to duck, thus leaving his skull intact, took them both down into the dirt.

The forest is too crowded by trees to offer light, and the clearing of the parking lot—just at the end of the path—seems forever away as they struggle to process their surroundings. Jack feels the world slow down, thick and oily behind the lens of his panic, his legs pinned by the body of the cultist grappling him. He sees the flash of a knife, clear and silver, a spike of moonlight coming down in an arc towards the vulnerable rise and fall of his chest.

But pain never comes.

Connor cries out above him, the knife caught by the meat of his calf, a predicted outcome to his choice to kick the cultist away.

The world slams into fast forward, the coppery smell of Connor’s blood in the air and petrichor in his aching lungs when he reaches for his bear spray.

Anger seizes him, hearing Connor thud to the ground beside him—and empties the can into the cultist’s face. Behind the blood rushing in his ears, the can clinks against a tree when he flings it to the side.

“Let’s go, Connor, come on.” He reaches under his shoulders to haul him up with a groan that betrays how much strength it requires.

He doesn’t remember getting to the RV. Looking back, his memory stops at the open gate to the park, finding the guard shack empty, dark, and resumes on the road, the yellow headlights the only source of light on the two-lane blacktop, among the sound of Connor’s panting where he lays on the bench. His stinging eyes look to his hands, scratched and bleeding, white-knuckled around the steering wheel, until the road blurs and he has to stop.

~*~

The first call Jack makes is to Billy, that he was right and neither he nor Connor were ever setting foot into those woods ever again. That he could send their last paychecks to the addresses on file and donate their stuff to the little church he passed on the drive up there.

The second phone call he makes is to directory assistance, whose bored operator scoots their study materials aside long enough to locate the nearest hospital to the mile marker he gave.

He walks Connor into the emergency room with his arm around his chest, both men spattered with mud and dark, dried blood. A few hours later, Connor passes through the automatic doors a second time alone, squinting up into the bright light of the overhead sign and navigating around the cracks in the sidewalk with the finesse of someone who had used crutches at least a few times before.

Still double-parked in the fire lane where he left him, Jack smokes against the side of the RV.

“I would have come back inside if you called me, said they were releasing you.” He presses the rest of his cigarette out and opens the cabin door for him.

Connor regards the open door with suspicion, gaze torn between the concrete path and Jack’s waiting offer.

“You have my phone. And I didn’t… know if you would still be here when I got out.”

“I told you I was just going to smoke. They wouldn’t keep you for too long for a puncture wound, would they? I mean, unless you needed surgery but I would have just posted up by the road and taken a nap.”

“That’s not—” Connor cuts himself off with a sigh, a stuttering, weak thing.

“I know that’s not what you meant.” The sound of Jack’s voice, alarmingly sober and gentle, captures his vulnerable gaze.

“I’m not mad, you know. I was—worried, more than anything. Just let me take you home, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Somewhere safe.”

The last few months had been a nightmare, a long “based on a true story” tale meant to be told around a campfire, one that gossipy summer camp counselors will inevitably shorten to make more exciting. As he studies the softness of Jack’s open face: the hazel eyes struggling to hold him, the dried mud behind his ear that he probably missed while washing his face in the hospital restroom—he doesn’t want to cut them out. Of all the people he wanted to forget, Jack wasn’t one of them.

Behind the waiting room glass, the little collection of small-town locals (one stomach bug, a couple who gave each other the flu, and one who came in for a fireworks incident) all lean forward in their chairs to watch the two kiss, hearing the muffled clatter of Connor’s crutches falling to the sidewalk.

A nurse clears her throat from around the desk. “Next, please.”

ONE WEEK LATER

When Jack awakes, it’s to the gentle, filtered sunshine coming through the curtains on the RV, and the awkward tilt of his head on the bare mattress. He found out immediately that Connor sleeps how he lives: unapologetic, deliberately, a thief of pillows, not blankets, especially after they worked out a system to prop up his wounded leg for a better rest.

From where he’s curled around Jack’s pillow, his back is so warm, the shampoo from his midnight shower still strong behind his ears as Jack slides in close to wrap the blanket back over them both.

“It’s hot,” he hears a muffled rumble.

“Nah. It’s cold, actually.” Jack teases him quietly, placing kisses over the slope of his shoulder and the old tattoo while he tries to squirm away from warm breath and warmer lips.

“Are you hungry?”

“Sleepy.” His breath puffs across the pillowcase.

“Mm. Keep Just Jack company for me, will you?” He places a kiss behind Connor’s ear and climbs out of the bed to look for his clothes.

Connor huffed to himself, a half-asleep chuckle at Jack’s request, almost a joke if not for him cracking open his eyes to glance at the stuffed bear sitting on the windowsill beside a short stack of rented DVDs. A gift from Jack, the little card in his arms declaring “Get Well Soon” in a bright blue cursive, bought alongside a candy bar from the first truck stop they came to after crossing state lines.

Jack had stuttered to defend himself when he saw Connor’s unamused expression, one crutch under his arm and the receipt for gas in the other hand. He rushed off towards the trash can, thinking himself rejected, when Connor snatched the bear away.

“You said it was for me, right? So he’s mine… Thank you.” He said, as Jack bumped the gas nozzle on the RV’s paint at least twice trying to get it into the hole.

“What do we name him? What’s Jack short for?”

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “No secret government name. Just Jack.”

Connor looked to the bear in his hands, smoothing the ruffled fur on it’s ears. “Sounds perfect, actually.”

When Connor awoke the second time, it was to the digital sound of Jack answering his voicemails at the table. ‘Message saved. Please press 1 to return to the main menu, or press 3 to delete.’

“Jack?” He called over his shoulder, smelling breakfast and coffee when his brain finally came back. Yet, even after a week of nursing his wound, he never managed to remember not to stretch his bad leg when he wanted to shake off the sleep.

“Fuck, that stings.”

“You want a pain pill? I made some eggs, toast will only take a second.”

He huffed, a discontented, sweet sigh, his hair ruffled and good leg sticking out from the rumpled comforter. “I want you to come back to bed.”

“Miss me that much already?” said Jack, meaning it to be a tease but unable to hide how his throat suddenly stings.

Somebody wanted him. Not just somebody, actually, someone who’s company he also enjoyed. Framed by the sunshine in the curtains and the warmth of his eyes, he had to touch, needed to feel him—make sure he was real.

“I only left to make food and answer my phone.” His feigned confidence doesn’t fool Connor, a master of the art himself, and he makes a small, vulnerable sound against his lips when he pulls him in.

“Wait, I have to tell you something,” he gasps when Connor busies himself with the side of his neck, mischievous fingers opening his shirt as far as it went and pulling the collar away to give himself access to more skin.

“How important is it to you? Really?” His teeth pull playfully at the skin near his pulse.

“They offered me my old job back. At the other park.”

Connor’s mouth clicks gently as he releases him, pondering the statement for far less time than Jack had assumed he would need. “Do you want it?”

“Not really… but I wanted to know what you t-thought.” The kisses have resumed in double time, pinkening his neck and weakening his legs where he kneels above him.

“There’s a lot of parks, all over the country. How about we drive until we find one we like?”

“… We can.” He says, suddenly, as if Connor had proclaimed to have discovered a new science. Unlatching him from his neck is full of mumbled protests and one spiteful snap at his open collar, but he manages to gently lay him against the pillow to meet his eyes plainly.

“What do you say, Connor? Want to stay with me?”

“I just told you I—”

“Not that. Tell me what you want to do.”

No one speaks for long minutes, and Jack stays perfectly still to allow himself to be seen. All of him. For as long as Connor needs to see him, however he wants, because months of uncertainty, fear, and doubt have pushed him repeatedly into the first spotlight that hasn’t burned, the first firelight that feels like home. He isn’t prepared for Connor to break the stillness by pulling him close.

Strong arms, fit for chopping firewood and building houses, feel too much like the quivering arms of a scared young boy around his neck, the one who fled an iron home into the fists of the army, and then to the open palms of a string of lovers until he decided the middle of nowhere was the only place to get some peace.

Jack holds him without hesitation, drinking in his affection, what he feels is selfishly, to find peace among the embrace of a person who is suffering. It feels better than the drink, better than the cigarettes he fell into when the drink threatened to kill him, as filling to his heart and soul as the kindest, rarest words: “I’m proud of you.”

He is so proud of them.

“I want you to keep me.” Connor admits to the skin of his cheek, too prideful to say anymore, lest he risk drawing attention to the moisture he’s leaving on his shirt.

“And I want to be kept by you.”

Jack knows they are tears, of course he does. He knows because his face is wet too, and he is so happy, so proud they are alive to cry. Deliriously happy they cry together. Of all the choices they made to survive, to fight, to run—together is the reason they live.

AN: Thank you for reading, likes and replies/reblogs are always welcome! ❤️

#Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins #jack nelson x Conner Hawkins #fears to fathom #fears to fathom ironbark lookout #ironbark lookout #fears to fathom fanfic #indie games #indie horror #indie horror game #rarepair #the rarest of pairs they don't even have a ship name #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #fanfic #mlm fanfic #Jack Nelson #Connor Hawkins

[peterman-spideyparker]

Bad Liar (Matt Murdock x Reader)

Author’s Note: *ahem* *mouth trumpet fanfare noises* *confetti* This is for my dear sweet Amanda’s ( @mattmurdocksscars​ ) 1,500 writing challenge!!! Amanda is such a wonderful human who I am in awe of every time I see her stories pop up on my dash--my sweet baby angel is as talent as all heck!!! I’m so glad I could participate. This was so incredibly fun to write, and I literally got it done in maybe 40 minutes after inspiration struck after a meeting today. It was nice to do a little change in pace as I fight writers block for other things. Enjoy, my darling, and congrats again!! :)

Summary: You have been going strong with Matt for quite some time, but it turns out there was something that you didn’t know about him that Foggy divulged, even though he was sworn to secrecy. When Matt comes home and find you trying to get into a locked closet, the truth comes out.

Prompt: “Need any help?”

Warnings: Angst (lil conflict and misunderstanding since the reader doesn’t know about Matt’s, uh, extracurricular activities -- Matt goes a bit Devil mode in his tone for a second), fluff and softness (emotion an memories involving Jack), implied smut

Other Characters: Foggy Nelson (mentioned)

Word Count: 1,236

“Hey, Matty,” you say with a smile, trying your hardest not to panic or laugh as you look at him from right in front of his closet under the roof access stairs. 

He narrows his eyes slightly in suspicion as he moves along the hallway before he places his glasses on the countertop. “Hi, angel,” he says, his voice smooth as butter. “Need any help?”

“Hm? No,” you say nonchalantly as you casually saunter over towards him. You place your arms gently on his shoulders and let them slide down to his arms, pressing a soft kiss to his lips. “It was just a long day, and I missed you. That’s all.”

“So, you were by where I keep my dad’s trunk because you missed me?”

“Yes.” Unfortunately, it’s not entirely convincing for your boyfriend. 

“You really shouldn’t poke your nose behind locked doors, (Y/N),” he says, his voice lower than you’re used to. It sends a chill down your spine. 

“I’m just thinking I should know things about the man I’m in a relationship with,” you tell him as you try to keep your heart from racing. With the nerves and adrenaline coursing through your veins, you lean forward, brushing your lips against his ear as you whisper. “Like that my boyfriend had an earring in high school and undergrad?”

You watch as bright pink begins to burn the tips of his ears, his skin much hotter than before, the muscle in his jaw feathering. You press a kiss on his cheek, fixing the hair that swoops on his forehead with your fingers, the feeling in your gut telling you that you need to lighten and soften the intense mood. “Knowledge of that image would make me question your street cred as a lawyer, huh?”

Matt lets out a nervous laugh before a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes pulls across his face after a solid few seconds of processing your words. 

“Y-Yeah,” he stutters, wrapping his hands around your waist. “Can’t have you spreading that to all of New York, now can I?”

“I know I shouldn’t have been snooping, but Foggy had mentioned a photo album and said ‘the evidence is all there to prove that Matt Murdock had an awkward phase’. It was nowhere else in the apartment, so I figured it had to be there. I’m sorry that I made you that upset. That wasn’t my intention.”

“No, no, I’m not upset. I just wish you would have asked me first.”

“So you wouldn’t have tried to call Foggy a ‘traitorous liar’ or a ‘scabby sea bass’?”

“‘Scabby sea bass’?”

“I think it has something to do with the alleged earring in question. That, and it sounded like he was watching Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Ah,” Matt says softly, his entire demeanor following his tone. “But, no, none of those phrases exactly. I would have tried to deflect your attention from seeing those pictures, though.”

“Deflect all you want, Murdock, but nothing is going to get seeing those pictures off of my mind.”

“Even if I do that thing with the silk sheets you like?”

“Mm, a very good attempt. Might even work. But I still want to see them. Pretty please?”

“Not the pretty please,” he smirks playfully before leaning into a kiss that wrinkles the fabric of your shirt. “Give me a second, and I’ll grab it.”

You move to sit on the couch as Matt retrieves the album and makes the quick trip next to you, the spine of the book cracking from not being used for a long time. You let out a soft gasp as you see pictures of Matt from the youngest points of his childhood. 

“You were so small, Matty,” you coo as your eyes move over a page of baby pictures. 

“We were all that small once, y’know, not just me,” he chuckles.  

“Wow,” you breathe, pausing on a picture of a man holding infant Matt in a big comfy chair. Your fingers gently trace over the edges of the picture. “This must be your dad. You look like him.”

Matt doesn’t respond to that claim. Instead, he slides down into the couch slightly and wraps his arm around your shoulders. You slowly move through the pages, enjoying these little snippets of Matt’s life until you find a picture that looks like it’s from his undergrad years. His hair is long and floppy with the 2000s swoosh across his forehead. He’s sitting on the floor in black jeans and a gray henley, resting against a sofa, smiling at something someone out of frame is doing. Then it catches your eye: a thin little silver sliver of metal looping on his left earlobe. 

“Oh my God,” you say with a giggle, leaning forward as you bring the scrapbook up to your face.

“I was convinced it looked cool,” he sighs with a little laugh. “Clearly, a blind guy should not determine what looks fashionable, nor should it be encouraged by other college boys.”

“Matty, you look hot,” you say as you linger on the image. “And since when do you have chest hair? You’re as smooth as a seal!”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Are you telling me that you’re turned on by my 2000s look and my chest hair?”

“Firstly, Matthew, you should know that you always turn me on. Secondly, yes. College me is going feral inside, right now. I need to know, though: did you ever wear a necklace or any kind of rings at all?”

“Yeah, sometimes. The rings were every once in a blue moon, though. Parties and things like that.”

“Matthew,” you moan, feeling your cheeks grow hot. This man will be the death of you. You twist and lean forward to take a peek at his ear. “Oh my God, you can still kinda see the hole from the piercing.”

“Again, not my best choice. Besides, like you said, it’d ruin my credit as a really good lawyer.”

“Fine, if you don’t want to bring back the earring, how about the chest hair?”

“Seriously?”

“Stupendously serious,” you say with a straight face.

“I’ll think about it. Chest hair would make it harder too—.” He cuts himself off before he can finish that sentence.

“Harder to what?”

“We can talk about that a little later,” he deflects with a kiss to your neck. His hands wrap around your hips and spin you into his lap so you face his front and straddle his legs. “I was thinking, while you were here, maybe we can do that thing with the silk sheets?”

“Matthew Murdock, are you trying to distract me?”

“Not at all,” he says as his hands lazily rub up your waist and down your thighs. You can tell he’s lying, but he’s already shown you one thing about him today that he probably didn’t want to, and this position is so nice. Not to mention the memories of what he is suggesting sends an erotic shiver throughout your body.

“Okay, then, Murdock,” you hum with a smile as you lean forward. “Do your worst. Make me feel all kinds of good.”

In one swift movement, he lifts you up from the couch, making you clutch onto his shoulders and wrap your legs tightly around his waist.

“Trust me, angel. When we’re done, those pictures will be the furthest thing from your mind.”

Permanent Taglist: @majesticavenger​​​​​​​​​ @steampowerednightvaler​​​​​​​​​​ @themusingsofmany​​​​​​​​​​ @just-the-hiddles​​​​​​​​​​ @toozmanykids​​​​​​​ @dangertoozmanykids101​​​​​​ @clints-worldavengers @theburningbookshop​ @itwasthereaminuteago​ @peter1ismybrother​ @hellskitchens-whore​

#Amandas1500 #mattmurdocksscars #matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x reader fluff #matt murdock x reader angst #matt murdock x reader smut #matt murdock fluff #matt murdock angst #matt murdock smut #matt murdock fanfic #matt murdock fanfiction #matt murdock x you #daredevil #daredevil x reader #daredevil fluff #daredevil smut #daredevil angst #daredevil x reader fluff #daredevil x reader angst #daredevil x reader smut #daredevil fanfic #daredevil fanfiction #daredevil netflix #daredevil disney+ #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction

[samantha-rae-velcher]

What I write and who I write for

Movies/shows

Gotham

Star wars

Spartacus

Boardwalk Empire

Marvel

DC

The Walking Dead

The Witcher

Salem

Star Trek

Harry Potter

Fantastic Beasts

IT

Barry

Stranger Things

The pirates of the Caribbean

Lotr

The Hobbit

NCIS

___

Gotham characters I write for

Oswald Cobblepot

Jerome Valeska

Jeremiah Valeska

Jim Gordon

Harvey Bullock

Ed Nygma

Alfred Pennyworth

Mr. Freeze

Victor Zsasz

Butch Gilzean

Star Wars characters I write for

Darth Maul

Kylo Ren

Darth Vader

Han Solo

Poe Dameron

Lando Calrissian

Finn

Boba Fett

Jango Fett

Din Djarin

Paz Vizsla

Spartacus characters I write for

Ashur

Gannicus

Crixus

Agron

Spartacus

Glaber

Caesar

Boardwalk Empire characters I write for

Al Capone

Richard Harrow

Eli Thompson

Frank Capone

Ralph Capone

Nelson Van Alden

Arnold Rothstein

Meyer

Lucky Luciano

Gyp Rosetti

Marvel characters I write for

Tony Stark

Steve Rogers

Scott Lang

Stephen Strange

Zemo

Loki

Thor

Clint Barton

Bruce Banner

Peter Parker

Bucky Barnes ❤️

Ultron

Pietro Maximoff

Peter Quill

Drax

Yondu Udonta

Ronan

Rocket (platonic! We ain't furries here!)

Groot (platonic)

DC characters I write for

Superman

Batman

Bane

Joker (Heath ledger or Jared Leto)

Captain Boomerang

Chato Santana

Rick Flag

Oliver Queen

Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett)

X-Men characters I write for

Victor Creed

Wolverine

Colossus

Deadpool

Cable

TWD characters I write for

Aaron

Father Gabriel

Rick Grimes

Negan Smith

Shane Walsh

Daryl Dixon

Merle Dixon

Eugene Porter

Abraham Ford

Paul "Jesus" Rovia

The Witcher characters I write for

Geralt

Jaskier

Filavandrel

Mousesack

Eskel

Salem characters I write for

John Alden

Cotton Mather

Beelzebub/ The Sentinel

Samael

Sebastian Marburg

Star trek characters I write for

Captain Kirk

Spock

Dr. McCoy

Quark

General Martok

Weyoun

Damar

Dukat

Garak

Julian Bashir

Shran

Captain Archer

Malcolm Reed

Trip Tucker

Phlox

Harry Potter characters I write for

Harry Potter

Draco Malfoy

George Weasley

Fred Weasley

Neville Longbottom

Lucius Malfoy

Remus Lupin

Sirius Black

Severus Snape

Fantastic Beasts characters I write for

Newt Scamander

Percival Graves

Albus Dumbledore

Gellert Grindelwald (Mikkelsen or Depp)

Jacob Kowalski

IT characters I write for

Richie Tosier

Ben Hanscom

Bill Denbrough

Eddie Kaspbrak

Henry Bowers

Pennywise/ Bob Gray

Barry characters I write for

Barry Berkman

Noho Hank

Monroe Fuches (As father figure)

Stranger Things characters I write for

Steve Harrington

Billy Hargrove

Dustin Henderson (platonic or as little brother)

Eddie Munson

Pirates Off The Caribbean characters I write for

Jack Sparrow....."Captain! Jack Sparrow!"

Captain Barbossa

William Turner

Bootstrap Bill

Davy Jones

James Norrington

Cutler Beckett

Salazar

Lotr characters I write for

Boromir

Faramir

Samwise Gamgee

Mary

Pippin

Aragorn

Haldir

Legolas

Elrond

Èomer

The Hobbit characters I write for

Bilbo

Thorin

Fili

Kili

Bard

Elrond

Thranduil

Legolas

Azog

NCIS characters I write for

Tony Dinozzo

Tim McGee

Joshany Gibbs

YouTubers I write for

Mully VR

Josh dub

Your favorite Narrator

Juicy

Eddie VR

Smashing

Jacksepticeye

Markiplier/Mark's egos

Angry Cops

___

What I will write

Smut/NSFW

fluff

Male character x Fem reader

Traumatized reader dynamic

Mentions of abuse

Mentions of Death

Mentions of Blood

Slight torture

Knife play

___

What I won't write

Male Character x Male reader (Unless platonic)

Fem Character x Fem reader (Unless platonic)

Incest

Rape (depends on Character and how graphic)

Pegging

Gore

#fyp #foryou #fanfic #foryoupage #x reader #smut #markiplier #markiplier x reader #markiplier x fem reader #barry berkman #barry berkman x reader #marvel #marvel x y/n #the walking dead x reader #mully x fem reader #joshdub x fem reader #eddie vr x reader #your narrator x fem reader #negan the walking dead #the pirates of the caribbean #jacksepticeye x reader smut #angry cops x reader #geralt of rivia x reader #jaskier x y/n #filavandrel x you #gotham x reader #harry potter #salem x reader #fantastic beasts x reader #star wars x reader

[rewritethisstxry]

Hello and welcome to my mixed mosh little corner of tumblr. Here I write for a variety of fandoms and characters. Primarily will be featuring drabbles with the occasional longer piece. Headcanons will feature from time to time.

At the time I do NOT consent for my work to be translated or posted anywhere else.

Below you will find some more information on who and what I write.

MINORS DNI. Due to the nature of potential content, only 18 and older are allowed.

Characters || Rules || Masterlist || Slasher/horror writing blog : @slxsherwriter

What I will write:

Angst

Fluff

Smut

Platonic relationships

Alpha/Omega dynamics

What I won’t write:

Snuff

Rape, rape play, non con

Underage

Inc*st

Real person fic

Marvel: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Alexei Shostakov, Peter Parker, Victor Creed, Deacon Frost, Peter Quinn, Frank Castle, Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson, Bruce Banner, Brock Rumlow, Nathan Summers, Eddie Brock, Cletus Kasady, Otto Octavius

DC Universe: Bruce Wayne, Harvey Bullock, Jim Gordon, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Jonathan Crane, Clark Kent, Arthur Curry

Stranger Things: James Hopper, Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers

Stargate Atlantis: Rodney McKay, John Sheppard, Ronan Dex, Carson Beckett

Sons of Anarchy: Jackson “Jax” Teller, Harry “Opie” Winston, Filip “Chibs” Telford, Juan Carlos “Juice” Ortiz, Lincoln Potter, Galen O'Shay

The Walking Dead: Rick Grimes, Shane Walsh, Negan Smith

What We Do in the Shadows: Nandor the Relentless, Guillermo de la Cruz, Laszlo Cravensworth

Resident Evil: Karl Heisenberg, Albert Wesker, Chris Redfield

Ted Lasso: Ted Lasso, Coach Beard, Jamie Tartt, Roy Kent

Good Omens: Gabriel, Aziraphale, Crowley

Video Games: Connor RK800, CaptainJonathan Price, Simon Ghost Riley, Sniper

Movies: Finn Brody (Godzilla), Raleigh Becket (Pacific Rim), Terry Malone (Black and Blue), Abe Guevara (Point Blank), Bobby O’Neill (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard), Guy Clifton (The Crash), Roy Pulver (Boss Level), Sloan (Into the Ashes) Braxton Wolff (The Accountant), Ethan Sawyer (Those Who Wish Me Dead), Bradley James (Grudge Match), Sam Rossi (Sweet Virginia), Mr. McCarthy (Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl), Grady Travis (Fury), Griff (Baby Driver), Adam Frawley (The Town), Buddy (Baby Driver), Clyde Brenek (The Posession), Patrick Sullivan (The Accidental Husband), Harvey Russell (Rampage), Jude Fisher (Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding), Luke Vaughn (Heist), Franklin Clay (The Losers), Max (The Resident), Nicomund the Red/Santa Claus (Violent Night), Doug Dennison (Sleepless), Frank Masters (The Equalizer), Hellboy (2019), Alex Baldr (Max Payne), Matt Graver (Sicario), Douglas Hunsiker (The Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Steve Emmett (Boa vs Python), Joe Braven (Braven), Lee Christmas (The Expendables), Deckard Shaw (Fast & Furious)

Musicals: Jack Kelly (Newsies), Dewey Finn (School of Rock), Hades (Hadestown)

Tv shows: Ike Evans (Magic City), Jason Crouse (The Good Wife), John Winchester (Supernatural), Mason Baldwin (Elementary), Colton Fisk (The Equalizer), Kevin Tidwell (Life), Declan Murphy (Law & Order: SVU), Eugene McGillicutty (Royal Pains), Chuck Martin (ER), Dickie Flood (Th Practice), Malcolm Bright (Prodigal Son)

Tolkien: Boromir, Faramir, Eomer

#fandom imagines #fandom writing #dc comics #marvel #sons of anarchy #lord of the rings #what we do in the shadows #pacific rim #resident evil #Ted lasso #walking dead #stranger things #good omens #obscure characters #obscure writings

[evita-shelby]

12 Days of Smuff: Day 2

Jack Nelson x Eva Smith (oc)

Day 2: Dreams and Dirty Talk

Cw: somnophilia, vaginal fingering, dirty talk.

For all his talk of nothing changing in his life once he found a wife, Jack could admit having a wife who satisfied him was wholly unexpected.

Jack had never been the type to stick to one woman since he was old enough to sweet talk girls and now he comes home craving his woman despite the house full of brats.

Eva had to hire a second nanny to help with Rosie’s special needs and the three-year-old twin girls they had two years after Katherine.

Six children were a handful even if they were so fun to make. Sure Eva fought with God himself as she used every weapon at her disposal to keep her body as perfect as it was a decade ago, but damn it was worth the trouble.

If only they didn’t tire their mother so much.

Jack had some business to deal with making him come home late enough to find a cold dinner and the incense Eva burns when they fuck burned out.

“If you were awake, I’d fuck another baby into you, sweetheart.” Jack whispers as he pressed a kiss at her hair ---done in waves for the occasion--- and settled for spooning her instead.

His hands roam her front, using the excuse of getting comfortable to feel her up and slip a hand under her nightgown to stroke the genie’s lamp. Something she pretends not to like and something that tells him Eva didn’t let the rose incense go to waste.

“So you had your fun while daddy was out bringing home the bacon, sweetheart?” He asks the sleeping woman as his rough and calloused fingers find the aftermath of an orgasm he didn’t cause.

Well, Jack’s gonna have to remedy that, won’t he? The gangster thinks to himself as the light touching of his wife’s pussy turns into something that’s bound to wake her up from whatever dream she’s having.

They’ve done this before, her napping with him on a hammock down at their place in Florida and his wandering hands gave her a very good dream and him a fantastic afternoon.

She’d gotten back at him by waking him up with her wicked mouth on his dick the next morning and soon it became a habit.

Doesn’t take much for Jack’s fingers to make sleeping beauty dream of him fucking her going by the way she mumbles ‘oh god, jack’ and begs for him to fuck her harder.

Her dark eyes flash open as she cums around his fingers and stays there gasping for air wondering what the fuck happened.

“Did you have a good dream, baby?” he asks as he admires his handiwork.

Whatever deal his wife made with the devil for him was worth every penny.

#evacore #jack nelson smut #jack nelson peaky blinders #eva smith #jack nelson x oc #12 days of smuff

[zablife]

Heatwave

Jack Nelson x wife reader

Summary: Jack and his wife find creative ways to survive a heatwave.

Author's Note: Requested by a lovely anon who wanted to know how Jack would react with an s/o during a heatwave.

Warnings:🔞,smut, drinking

“Jack, I’m too hot. This weather is stifling,” you complained standing at the open window to feel any hint of a breeze. The clock in the corner ticked off the seconds in a painfully slow rhythm. Like the cool air that refused to blow, time too was becoming stagnant in this suffocating heat when all you could think of was the day you could sail home to Boston. 

As Jack’s pen scratched along paper, the only other sound was the clinking of melting ice against an ornate silver bucket. Jack had ordered it for your drinks after you’d threatened to steal the ax from behind emergency glass in the hall. “I need more air in this room and I’ll chop right through this wall if I have to,” you’d shouted dramatically.

Despite taking cool baths and walking around in only your negligee, there hadn’t been a single moment of relief in days and you felt as though you would scream. Fanning your face and neck with a paper fan, you cut your eyes at your husband, “If I had stayed at home instead of following you to this horrid place in the middle of a heatwave, I could be at the Cape right now having a lovely time at the beach.”

Jack was sat at the desk ignoring you, choosing to focus on his export license paperwork instead. He felt the thick air all around him, making his shirt cling to his back uncomfortably, as wet as the condensation forming on his whisky glass. He could have ignored it in his stoic fashion if it weren’t for your incessant whining. You came to stand over him in a bid for attention. “Jack, did you hear me? I said…”

Cutting you off before you could utter another word, Jack stood suddenly and pushed you against the wall. The hand that had been gripping his whisky glass moments ago now clutched your throat menacingly. “My patience is gettin’ thin doll. You’ve been awfully mouthy this trip,” Jack said daring you to continue with a dangerous look in his eyes. 

You were barely paying attention, too caught up in the wonderful sensation of his cool hand against your jugular. You closed your eyes in relief. The feeling overwhelmingly pleasant and erotic. Jack took note of your slack jaw and how you let your fan fall from your fingertips. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?” He said pulling his hand away with concern. He wondered if you were finally succumbing to heat stroke.

“No, wait!” you cried out, eyes flying open at the loss of his touch. “That felt…good,” you admitted, moving his hand back to you. Jack raised an eyebrow at you and you could tell he had an idea. Delving into his glass he found a large cube and held it between his fingers. He showed it to you before placing it wordlessly to your neck and you tilted back against the wall to allow him better access.

You gasped at the considerably cooler temperature and shivered for a moment with the shock of it. As the cube began to melt at your pulse point, Jack moved it down your throat toward your negligee. As he pawed at the straps impatiently, his tongue lapped up the rivulets of whisky flavored water running down to your breasts. You gulped at the feeling of him devouring you and quickly helped him push your gown from your body.

With the remaining sliver of the cube, Jack circled it slowly against your nipples watching appreciatively as they peaked under his touch. He gave your cool, pebbled flesh a gentle suck and then a light flick with his tongue before pushing you onto the bed.

Jack asked you to wait as he retrieved another cube and you sat up on your elbows watching him. You watched intently as he popped the ice into his mouth and sunk to his knees in front of your spread legs. “Jack, what…” you tried to question, but your breath was stolen from you as you felt his frozen kisses resume in a much more intimate place.

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

Tag list: @retromafia, @violaobanion, @daddyjack-nelson, @shelbydelrey, @theshelbyslimited, @cillmequick, @kittycatcait219, @peakyrogers

#Peaky Blinders fanfic #Peaky Blinders imagine #Jack Nelson fanfic #Jack Nelson imagine #Jack Nelson smut #Jack Nelson x reader

[mega-catmuncher]

None of our business

Chapter 01

Pairing: College!Matt Murdock x fem!reader

Summary: You are a winner. Always have been and always will be. In your final year at Colombia you're aiming to earn an internship from an esteemed law firm which will ensure the success of your career post law school. Someone however, is making life difficult and his name is Matt Murdock. For some reason he's always in your business, everywhere you turn he's there and while you never expected it maybe he's just what you need.

Word count:3.4k

Warnings: swearing, people acting absolutely unhinged and ‼️T/W Frat Bros‼️ (Future SMUT I promise 🤞🏻😮‍💨)

a/n: academic rivals mixed with work/office rivals. Matt and reader are somehow smart enough to be in law school but not smart enough to realise they like each other. Also ALOT of these background characters are OC’s and the only people mentioned from the daredevil series is Foggy(nelson) and Jack (Matts Dad)

(not gonna lie that summary was a lil corny 💀please forgive me 🙏🏻)

You’ve always been the best at what you do. You uphold yourself to a high standard and its gotten you all the way to your final year studying law at Columbia. It feels surreal at times wondering if you deserve this but you remember how hard you have worked and how proud you will be once you’ve become the best lawyer in New York.

Tonight you’ve got a shift at the local bar and restaurant Barry’s. You’re the star waitress and have earned some regulars who tip very well every time you’re on. Tonight though you are really considering quitting. It’s not only one of the busiest nights due to the Columbia Lions winning last nights football game and their victory party being hosted by Barry’s but you are also responsible for the new trainee who is truly testing your patience. “Foggy, you cannot stay at a table for over 30 minutes after giving them their food. Being overly friendly will not get you tips it will get you fired” you sigh in frustration and you can see he feels bad for upsetting you “sorry” he whispers. Before you can apologise he’s left to get the drinks for the next table. You feel bad but food service can have you dealing with the worst kinds of people and you don’t want Foggy to get discouraged from a little criticism.

You’ve just shown foggy how to lock up and its nearing half three in the morning. After an 8 hour shift with no breaks you are ready to drop. Pulling out of the parking lot you see Foggy at the bus stop. “You know the first bus doesn’t come until six thirty, you can’t wait here for three hours” you tell him from your car. “ Don’t worry about it! I’ll be alright, I’m just too tired to walk” you wouldn’t let Foggy stay there even if you believed him. “Do you live on campus?” you ask. “Yes, but please you really don’t have to driv-”Foggy doesn’t get to the end of his sentence before you’re unlocking your passengers side door and beckoning him into the car. “I know I was hard on you tonight but I promise I’m not an asshole …I’m sorry” judging from Foggy’s smile you think he’s accepted your apology. “ It’s okay..you know you’re not as scary as you look” foggy immediately regrets saying that as you give him a very unimpressed look. “I mean you never smile in lectures and you just always seemed very…cold..from a distance! But getting to know you better tonight you’re cool. I mean I only know so much since Matt does talk-” “it’s okay Foggy I understand what you’re trying to say”.

-

Waking up Monday morning you regret signing up for an oral presentation workshop. However, you’ve made matters worse by not putting on an alarm and expecting your roommate Lisa to wake you up. Late and rushing you find yourself in not your finest of moments running across campus in yesterday’s mascara and underwear.

In your flurry to get to the workshop you trip over something and find yourself on top of someone. “I am so sorry, are you alright?” you ask frantically. “I don’t think you trip over blind men often so it’s fine” that voice belongs to Matthew Murdock a man who has a talent for getting on your nerves. Why? Because like you Matt is smart but unlike you it comes naturally for him and he takes every chance to throw it in your face. Between having the last word in mock trials to countering your points in class just because he feels like it. “If I didn’t know any better I would think you tripped me on purpose Matt” “ Well you’re still on top of me so I don’t think there’s any hard feelings”. Your rush to get off Matt, help him up and collect your things. “What are you in such a rush for?” Matt asks “ Professor Loc's speech workshop, I’m so late it’s pointless”you say dreading the effect this is going to have on your attendance record. “Don’t worry it’s been cancelled, I was on my way there but I got the email before I walked in” Matt says. Looking through your bag and finding your phone you see the late notification that the class has in fact been cancelled. “Shit I wasted my morning for that” you’re about to turn away until you hear chanting. Very loud chanting.

“ What is going o-” Matt is interrupted by Kevin the star quarterback and frat senior letting out a loud battle roar and running across campus naked being cheered on by freshmen, senior frat members and several other people fascinated by the display. “If I were to tell you exactly what is going on you would regret asking” and in a split second you notice Kevin’s path has changed and he is now running for you and Matt. “Walk with me and don’t ask questions” you grab Matt and begin walking towards the parking lot. “I expect better of you than to rob a blind man y/n”. “I’m not robbing you I’m saving us from embarrassment, unless you want to be between me and a naked Kevin I suggest you keep walking”. Matt suddenly quickens his pace and unfortunately so does Kevin. In a quick span of events you evade Kevins line of sight and pull Matt into a random shed near the library. “Janitors store room, we’ll have to wait out here until the crowd and Kevin have passed” you tell Matt out of breath.

After waiting for 10 minutes Kevin and the group are still chanting near you and Matt. “You might as well test me for our next exam” Matt says. You're dissatisfied with the situation but seeing an opportunity to outsmart Matt Murdock you won’t pass up on. Flipping through your notes you hear Matt huff a laugh “You can’t test me without your notes?”. Although Matt is amused you are not “I need to make sure you don’t try and finesse your way into giving me a bullshit answer that’s only half right” “woah y/n didn’t know I could get you riled up so easily.. did seeing Kevin naked get you excited?” Frustrated with Matts teasing you decide you’ve had enough. “Actually it did.. I have to confess Matt I’m really excited right now” you say trying to sound convincing. “….really?” Matt says genuinely confused. “Yes..and oh I need help to release some of this tension” Matt is slightly bewildered but also intrigued. “Y/N I didn’t expect..” “Matty c’mere I wanna show you something” as Matt approaches you pull the leaf blower from the shelf and turn it on to his lips. Sucking half of his face into the leaf blower is funny for a few seconds until you release it and he seems genuinely mad. “Y/N what the hell!?” Matt yells. You giggle about to say something until you hear the crowd is no longer chanting near you and Matt. “I think we can go back now Matt”

-

There was something special about today. You didn’t know why but you had a feeling that today something was going to happen that would change the trajectory of your life forever. Minus the pigeon shit that just fell on your coat you expected good things to come your way today.

“ I bought you coffee!!” Your roommate Lisa pops out from the crowd surrounding the campus cafe. “I felt bad about the other morning, you know how forgetful I can be” Lisa says reminding you about the drama surrounding last Monday. In between then you’ve had some time off to prepare for your final year, you bought a whiteboard and you scheduled study sessions with Foggy whenever the both of you weren’t working. “It’s okay, it’s my fault I’ve got to really get my shit together. It’s my final year and I’m lagging because my brain knows I’m at the finish line” you’re a little disappointed in yourself for not being motivated but that’s going to change now that the fall semester has begun and you can officially put your plan in place to get back on track.

Dropping Lisa off at her class you go across the way to the building where your lecture is being held. You sit beside Chris who, although doesn’t seem to listen in lectures he still manages to get great marks and have good notes. In comparison to the mess on your paper at the end of lectures over the years you've benefited more from listening through and copying Chris’s notes after. “How have you been doing? You look good” you’re slightly taken aback by Chris’s compliment. Although he flirts a lot he never teases and often times you think about bitting the bullet and asking him out. That’s if you ever get the time to. “ I’ve been good working, studying and working some more” you laugh feeling a bit pathetic that this has probably been your answer through the whole of your law degree. “ There’s a reason why you're so smart, Besides I heard you’ve organised a study group and didn’t invite me.I’m hurt” he puts his hand over his heart acting wounded. If it were anyone else you would roll your eyes but when Chris’s voice cracks at the word hurt added with the sly grin he has on his face has got you silently begging to to be alone with him. “The group is open, if you want to come just let me know and we’ll make a time to meet up”. Feeling proud of yourself for finding a way to get Chris's contact. Ripping a piece of paper off his notebook he quickly writes something. “ Here’s my number text me and I’ll make sure I bring my notes just for you”. You feel yourself about to sport an embarrassingly big smile until you hear a stick tapping near the doors.

“Murdock! There’s a seat here” you whip your head to Chris and see he’s pointing to the seat next to you. This is not what you had in mind when you thought of your positive mantra of today being a good day. Matt greets Chris and they reach across you to hug. If you were being honest being crushed between Chris and Matt wasn’t that bad, you were blissfully daydreaming away until you felt someone flick your ear. “After sucking my face off you could at the very least talk to me” Matt says grinning mischeviously. Chris is taken aback at the insinuation that you and Matthew Murdock are somehow involved and you are seething that out of all times he decides to start with you in front of Chris. Before you have time to clear any confusion your professor begins the class.

By the end your eyes are drooping from exhaustion and you feel close to calling a cab to get back to your apartment to avoid walking 20 minutes. "Hey sleeping beauty, class is dismissed" Chris tries to nudge you awake. Suddenly becoming alert you give him a tired smile and gather your things. "Do you want to take my notes home?, I won't need them back anytime soon" Chris says. Before you can respond Matt interrupts the seemingly tender moment. " I see my dig about notes the other day hasn't motivated you to aim higher". You are so close to chocking Matt the only thing stopping you is the scandal of assaulting a blind man in public. Ignoring Matt you thank Chris and take his notes with you. On your way out of class you can see a crowd forming around the bulletin board. "They're only offering two places!" "Highest score on the next exam?!". You're near the board to find out what all the commotion is about when you see plastered on the board the opportunity you've been waiting for.

The internship to Cheraus & Pels one of the best law firms in all of New York. You can feel the sweat on the palm of your hand reading over the details then, you feel a presence near. "Too bad they're offering two spots. There's no challenge now". You wish you could formulate a good response but all you can do is focus on the letters on the paper in front of you. "Are you okay? you seem like you're coming down with the flu" Matt goes to put his hand to your forehead but before he can you swat his arm away. "Matt, I have never been more serious about something in my life and the fact that you're treating this like any other thing is absurd to me" you feel bad afterwards for being difficult with Matt in front of everyone but the stress of how real everything is starting feel is getting to you. "Despite how nonchalant I can be, I have sacrificed a lot to even be in this building. Yes y/n, I am taking this very seriously but if I stressed myself out as much as you do I 'd be ill before I even put pen to paper". After hearing what he had just said you came to the sad conclusion that Matt Murdock was right.

-

Over the next few weeks you had been seeing less of Lisa and Chris and even Matt. You've closed yourself off from the world and against Matts advice you were stressing yourself out. Going only between classes and your apartment to take breaks from preparing for the upcoming exam to eat and sleep. You even gave Barry notice that you would be taking the month off just so that work wouldn't get in the way of studying. What you didn't know was how worried everyone was. Lisa called your mom who then spent an hour on the phone threatening you with a visit. Chris had texted you a few times but you didn't want to distract yourself. Foggy even told Matt about you taking the month off. Which became the last straw. At 9:30pm on a Friday night you heard a knock at the apartment door, you expected that Lisa would get it since she knew you were busy. After a while you realised Lisa wasn't home and whoever it was, was still waiting. Looking through the peephole you get a wave of aggravation seeing Matt at your doorstep.

"I am so busy right now Matt its not even funny" you say opening the door. Matt looks very unamused and goes as far as to walk right past you and let himself in. "y/n this is an intervention, I understand you want that internship as bad as anyone. Trust me I've been doing overtime in the library. That doesn't justify you working yourself so hard".You're about to lose your shit. How dare Matt come into your home uninvited and tell you how you should be living. You're about to yell at him when you realise you're so tired you don't even have the energy. Matt knows something isn't right when he hears a thud and he knows something is definitely not right when you haven't said anything. Checking that you're still breathing Matt carries your fast asleep self to your bed and lays beside you. He doesn't know why but he stays the night. He tells himself its because Lisa isn't home and he doesn't want to leave you in the apartment alone overnight but deep down Matt cares about you and wants to make sure you're alright.

Over the years Matt has grown a sort of affection for you. He's not in love. He just cares, you both work hard but he admires your drive and passion. Because for him, you challenge him to do better and that means a lot. In your first year Matt was having trouble accessing braille translations of archived case documents and while you weren't happy about it you took the time to read out those case documents for him. Once, Matt had come down with mono he missed a week of classes. He didn't want to ask for your help but he didn't have to. You told him to meet you at the library where you proceeded to catch him up on everything he had missed. These moments compiled with all those other times you've helped Matt out over the years makes him want to be the one to help you out this time. At least he though he was helping. He's not so sure now that you've woken up in the afternoon and realised you've missed six and a half hours of study time. "I don't know who you think you are to waltz into my house and control my life. What the fuck was the intervention for?! an addiction to studying. I have never heard something so stupid in my life". Any other time Matt would give you some cool response to one up your little tantrum but right now among all the yelling your eyes are red and he can hear your stomach grumbling. "If I took you for some lunch would you stop yelling at me. Would you stop talking altogether actually?" . You're contemplating committing homicide in this very moment but through the exhaustion, anger and hunger you can see Matt is concerned and while you don't owe him anything you definitely don't think it's fair to let him worry about you. You've also just come to the realisation it wasn't fair to let everyone else in your life worry. "Sorry, let me get dressed and then we can go" Shocked Matt doesn't mention your change in demeanour and lets you direct him to the couch to wait. While you have the time to yourself you send off some quick texts to Lisa, your mom and Chris letting them all know you're alright and there's no need to worry.

-

Lunch with Matt wasn't as bad as you'd thought it would be and spending time with Matt outside of school proved to be surprisingly beneficial to your mental wellbeing. You had been taking a walk in the park chuckling at some stupid law pun Matt had made when you snapped back to reality. The date of your exam was in three days and you felt so underprepared. Noticing your sudden silence Matt nudges your shoulder. "I didn't think my comedy would kill the mood, If you didn't like that one I've got a whole notes app filled with them" Matt says. "Its not that, I'm just thinking about the exam. After tomorrow we've only got a couple more days". You remove your arm from Matts and go to sit at the bench to clear your mind and figure out what your going to do about everything. "y/n I don't want you to get upset with me but Im going to make you an offer that hopefully you can't refuse" Matt goes on to ask you something you would have surely lost your balance from the shock if your weren't already sitting down. "You can stay at my place until the exam is over. You seemed to have slept better with me at the house and as much as you would hate to admit it we work really well together. My best grades are from when I study with you. "

You feel your resolve melting and as much as you want to keep your regular bitch attitude with Matt he's doing something really nice. Most of all he doesn't need to do any of this. He didn't need to spend the night or come to the apartment to check up on you, he didn't need to get you lunch or take a walk around the park with you and most of all Matt didn't need to worry, but he did. Or does... you don't know but what you do know is Matt is right. In a way things have always worked better when you've done them with Matt. Group projects, study sessions and even those dreaded mock trials. If you were any less oblivious you would realise Matt challenges you in a way you like. In a way that drives you to be better and in times like this it means everything. " I can't believe I'm saying yes but I will move in with you for three nights and four days" you don't know why but you're smiling. "Its settled then, let's shake on it roomie" "shut the fuck up".

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock #matt murdock x fem!reader #matt murdock x female reader #matt murdock x you #matt murdock x y/n #daredevil x reader #daredevil x you #daredevil #mega-catmuncher

[gvtted-ratz]

>request/idea rules<

requests: open

>marvel<

anthony "tony" stark/iron man, peter benjamin parker/spider-man, wade wilson/deadpool, helmut zemo, james "bucky" barnes/winter soldier, matthew "matt" murdock/daredevil, franklin "foggy" nelson, frank castle/the punisher, william "billy" russo/jigsaw, miguel o'hara, spider-punk/hobart "hobie" brown (smatsv)

>horror/thriller<

slashers/antagonists

billy lenz (black christmas 1974), brahms heelshire, martin mathias (martin 1977), harry warden/the miner (og and remake), asa emory (the collector), jason voorhees (og and 2009 remake), michael myers (og and rz remake), lester sinclair (house of wax), mark hoffman (saw 4/5), lawrance gordan (saw 2004)

final/”good” guys

arkin o'brien (the collector/the collection), nicholas "nick" henry jones(house of wax), peter strahm (saw 4/5), adam faulkner stanheight (saw 2004)

>games<

error 143

micah yujin

john doe +

john doe

 duskwood 

richy rogers, phil hawkins, jake "hakermen", thomas, daniel "dan" anderson

killer frequency

forrest nash, henry barrow

the price of flesh

machaete, thomas (tom), jackal (jack/dean), derek goffard, matt goffard, mason heiral, dragon (jace/jason), komodo (mike/michael), the announcer (fox/ren hana)

that's not my neighbour 

physicist/dr. w. afton, milkman/francis mosses, hoon (milkman doppelganger), scarlet milk (milkman doppleganger), pilot/steven rudboys, d.d.d agent (hazmat guy), teutates taranis, abducius morail, yog sothoth

call of duty (+modern warfare 2)

könig, simon "ghost" riley, kyle "gaz" garrick, john "soap" mactavish, alejandro vargas, rodolfo "rudy" parra, gary "roach" sanderson

>tv/movies/web-series<

the batman (2022)

the riddler/edward nashton

 there will be blood (2007)

eli sunday

marble hornets (2009-2014)

masky/timothy "tim" wright, skully/jay merrick, alexander "alex" kralie, hoody/brian thomas

>will not do<

• incest

• suicide

• ddlg/ddlb

• scat/urine

• pregnancy

• heavy angst

• teacher/student

• sa/rape/non-con

• full smut/sex scenes

• illnesses/issues we're unfamiliar with (ask)

• underage/child anything (papa, uncle, child, etc. reader &/or character)

• fem reader (including pronouns/detailed anatomy due to high discomfort) - anything else is fine

> can/will do<

• fics (1k+)

• past abuse

• headcanons

• drabbles (100-1k)

• alpha/beta/omega

• polyamory relationships

• blood, gore, violence, etc.

• self-harm (to a degree. ask)

• anything soft, comfort, fluff

• aus (soulmate, cafe, bookstore, etc.)

• some ships/otps/rarepairs (feel free to ask)

• death of character/reader (character/reader kills the other)

• nearly any pronouns (including neos, just provide pronouns)

• male/masc, gender-neutral, nonbinary, trans male reader, neogenders/xenogender reader (this includes monster, human, alien, divine etc. readers)

• "steamy" scenes/dub-con <- will be posted on ao3 ONLY (link will be provided for requests)

#request rules #x reader #x male reader #x trans male reader #x gender neutral reader #marvel #marble hornets #duskwood #duskwood game #john doe visual novel #cod mw2 #cod #tnmn #killer frequency #the batman 2022 #there will be blood #slashers #tpof x reader #micah yujin x reader

[asyouleft]

Thank you for the tag @happyaspie

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

- 89! I have a lot of other works that never made the move from LJ to a03 tho.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

- 1,100,235. I like to think this is an indication of how my mental health is, lmao.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

- Mosly MCU Irondad but I have caved and started writing Heartstopper lately. And I have some Our Flag Means Death fics in the works. I used to write a lot of McShep for Stargate Atlantis, as well as Supernatural, Harry Potter, Torchwood & Doctor Who.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

- Five Time Faculty Members Had to Call Peter's Emergency Contact + One Time He Shows Up Anyway 5,410 kudos

-Five Times Tony Stark's Fabled Intern Just Showed Up + One Time He Was Invited  2,824 kudos

- The Hero of Our Own Story 2,033 kudos

- There is Always One Last Light to Turn Out 1,854 kudos

- For We are Bound by Symmetry 1,730 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I like to say thank you to everyone who comments because I am forever grateful for it!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

If You Find That You Feel Lost, I'll Be Your Ticket Back which I think has a happy ending to it but others disagree. And Films About Ghost which also is a happy/sad ending. There's resolutions but it's not what everyone wants.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hmm, I think they all end kinda happy? lol Maybe Operation: Graduation but it's very light hearted.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yeah, not very often but I think sometimes I like moving away from tropes and mixing it up a bit. For We Are Bound by Symmetry got some hate on how I handled the bio!Dad thing. We Always Walked a Very Thin Line got some unexpected hate! And recently there was an anon on Edges of Your Name that poked a little.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes, I'm writing one now, lol. I mostly do slash but I've dabbled in het a few times.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Nah, not really.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope! I don't look for it anyway and I doubt anyone would want to steal my shit, lol.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! Oh my god, someone did two fics in RUSSIAN and I was so happy I cried! Honestly I felt so good about it!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A very long time ago, I did a Hanson shoebox AU with my friend, haha. And even before that me and my high school bestie cowork some Hanson fics but nope! I'd love to though. Someone cowrite something with me, please!!!

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Ngggh. This is hard because my brain is like MCSHEP BITCH (John Sheppard/Rodney McKay) and then immedatly followed by Nick Nelson/Charlie Spring, Aziraphale/Crowley, Ed/Stede, Jack/Ianto. And I just realized a majority of these are CANON which NEVER HAPPENS TO ME and I think I might die of happiness knowing my ships are canon. (Also wow my brain did not come up with a single het ship lol opps)

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

My WIP folder has about 49 fics in it, so yeah. There's a Richard Parker Alive but Terrible Parent fic that I was pretty far into before I gave up. I'd like to actually finish that but I've lost the plot bunny somewhere.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hmm, I dunno, honestly. I think I can write certain characters well like the funny sarcastic ones (Peter Parker, Charlie Spring, Rodney McKay and even Tony Stark) because it's just me, hi, that's me.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Aside from spelling, lolz? I think I get too wordy sometimes, I have to cut paragraphs off in editing because I just keep going. I also think I can't end a scene to save my life sometimes and get frustrated when I don't think the end point works.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't think I really have? I dunno, Nick hasn't spoken French in a fic yet, damn I might just have to add that soon...

19. First fandom you wrote for?

OKAY if we're going to be for reals about this, most likely the Hobbit or The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. I was writing fic as a kid (self insert no less) without realizing it. Later I'd write "episodes" of like Rainbow Brite, or Carebears, Inspector Gadget, Captain Planet. I'd also write one off Marvel/DC stuff with a self insert superhero (aka me with powers, usually I was an x-man lmao).

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Nhggh, that's hard. I like, act like I like what I write but I also end up like, hating it? I think I really love how Just an Intern turned out, from conception to finishing it, it was a fun write. And I quiet like how Edges of Your Name has come together too. But I think I had a little magic in me when I wrote There is Always One Last Light to Turn Out somehow. I wrote the thing in like 2 days and I think it came out rather well for something I mostly texted to speech as I was driving to work, ha.

And I'm terrible at tagging people so whomever!

#fanfic #asks #irondad fic #heartstopper fic #a03 #i like talking about my own writing if you couldn't tell

[silkendandelion]

My Own, Distant Home (Completed), A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout fanfiction

Chapter 2 (END), ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 16.6k Genre: Horror, humor, smut

"Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing."

Or

A romantic, creepy, canon-compliant retelling of the game's narrative where Jack and Connor are more fleshed out characters, and not immune to the emotional threads that form when your only friend is a voice on the radio—until he isn't.

Rated Explicit for sexual content, strong language, horror elements, frightening imagery and descriptions of violence.

Cross-posted to ao3, same username, here.

Cheers to rarepairs, and to all the people who had a crush on Connor during the game: I have heard you. If you like Firewatch, or Do You Copy, check out fears to fathom, you could play the entire series in a day but I liked Ironbark the best. Even if you haven't played the game, I'm sure this can be read alone for people who like horror and making love in a thunderstorm 💙

Chapter 1 (Below)

It was only a transfer.

Not usually a big deal, this other park needed to fill a lookout position urgently, and Jack was probably the best suited for it. Not only because his coworkers spoke highly of him, but because he had the RV, and relocating was as easy as driving down the road. When you’re this free, no wife, no friends, no obligations, 2 hours is nothing to go to the next job.

Yeah, he thought as his eyes wandered off the road to the side mirror, the endless blacktop behind him, the empty road in front of him. No obligations. Free.

So why did driving up to the trail-head make his stomach ache?

He blamed it on his last meal in civilization for the time being: a perfectly greasy, buttery cheeseburger, no doubt made by a certified home-cooked chef with hairy arms. He wasn’t used to eating out, eating so much, and in hindsight, the large coke was a bit of an Icarus move.

Just a bit of indigestion, nothing to worry about.

Not at all related to his walk to the gas station next door for cigarettes that was interrupted by a creepy local. The one leaning against his car and mouth-harassing his own hamburger, gossiping cryptically about big foot and missing kids like he was a Stephen King minor character. Real “you wanna watch out for that road” stuff.

The same missing kids on the poster across from the gate office. Gone without a trace, with no more search parties willing to keep looking after they lost some of their own people to what witnesses called “strange whistling in the dark”. Anyone saner, smarter, might have gotten back in their RV and not looked back. But Jack loved nature, and liked his job. Until he heard this strange whistling for himself, he had bills to pay and a guy named Billy to see for check-in.

The light to the guard shack was on, the door unlocked as he turns the handle. Worn out and road-fatigued, his brain hardly lends him the advice he should have probably called out to see if anyone was inside. His eagerness earns him a twin-barrel to the face, and a rightfully earned yell from both of them.

“You scared the piss out of me!” The ranger scolded him, and Jack fired back—

“Do you shove a gun in the face of everyone who sneaks up on you? What if I was a camper?”

“You can’t be too careful out here. There’s bobcats, bears and—wait, you say you’re not a camper? What are you doing barging in here anyway?”

“I’m Jack Nelson… Your new hire? Tower 11?”

“Well,” the mustached man regarded him with suspicion beneath his black cowboy hat. “Tower 11 is empty, but I didn’t hear about any new hire. Give me a second.”

“Oh,” Jack refrains from saying anything nasty, regardless of his fatigue, and puts up a patient, half smile. “Sure. Take all the time you need.”

He wandered out of the shack, back to the billboard with the missing poster, only half-reading the posted copy of the trail map he already owned when Billy came back out.

“You’ve been vetted. Sorry about all that, I don’t check my email as often as I should. You must be tired from driving, I’ll just take a copy of your ID and get the gate open so you can start the hike up to the tower.”

Billy was gone for only a minute before he came back, enough time for Jack to get his duffel and lock the RV. He handed back his ID, and pushed open one of the arms of the gate.

“… Hey.” He called before Jack could get passed him.

“Tower 12 is your closest neighbor, call him if you need anything. And don’t—I mean, do NOT go out further than maybe a 1/4 mile north of your tower on foot. Got it?”

“Uh, sure?” Jack gapes at him, unprepared. “Why?”

“It’s dangerous out that way. You’ve got bears, bobcats, all sorts of stuff.”

“Right… Thanks again, Billy. Goodnight.” He waved, eager to make some distance between him and this newest creepy local, and start wearing down the trail to his tower.

Did everyone in this town take etiquette lessons from a paperback horror novels? They were at least in the same book club, which actually wouldn’t be weird for such a small, quiet place.

The walk to the tower is easy, if a little cold by the time he crosses the creek. Tower 11 sits up against a nearby radio spire, lit up red and guiding him to the foot of his home for the foreseeable future. He knows to gas up the generator and crank it before he starts up the long flights of stairs to the top, and the tower cabin, small but not cramped, is a welcome sight.

The sheets on the bed are clean, free of holes and smelling of cheap detergent (ocean breeze something, he guessed), and the good burn of a wood fire seems to be baked into the panel walls and secondhand furniture. All his needed tools are haphazardly scattered but identifiable at a glance, and the fridge, beginning to kick on, is filled with old, freezer burned food.

Not rotted, there’s no unpleasant smell besides stale, and the room is otherwise well-kept, but he can’t help feel that the last occupant left in a hurry. Beside the bed lay a pair of abandoned wool slippers, and those go in the trash too.

All he needs to do is lay out his blanket and pillow to call himself moved in, and getting a fire going is even faster. He’s tying off the trash, waiting for the microwave to finish heating up a cup of coffee, when his radio, boxy and cumbersome on the little desk, clicks to life.

Static greets him before another male voice, deeper than his own.

‘I saw the lights go on. You copy, new guy?’

“Yeah, hey. I’m Jack.” He squeezes the receiver on and off as he sits in the old, steel chair in front of the desk, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.

‘Connor, Tower 12. Your new neighbor, I guess.’

A beat of silence, and then a click. “Billy mentioned you, just not by name. Nice to meet you.”

He hears Connor hum into the receiver, distantly wondering if it was a sound of irritation at him or something Jack couldn’t see. ‘Well, you got a fire started, that’s good. It’s good to see Tower 11 alive again.’

With a pause, his voice was friendly again, like whatever he was worried about suddenly resolved itself. ‘Anyway, don’t let me keep you. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your report before you go to bed.’

Jack suppresses his yawn with a wince—half headache, half ready for bed, and clicks the receiver. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

‘Get some rest, new guy, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Over and out.’

“Over and out.”

The radio dims with no open connection, and Jack forgets his coffee in the microwave when he can’t manage to avoid dozing off in the chair.

A few hours pass, midnight rolls upon the park and an unintelligible static rouses him from his sleep. He wants to investigate, his instincts whispering to him that something was wrong, something lurking in the forest beyond his tower, but an ache in his lumbar and the pressure in his bladder leaves no room for anything except the urgency to get comfortable quick. He stretches until his back gives a satisfying crack, and with a quick leak off the railing of the tower, he falls into bed without another thought.

NIGHT 2

On nights like this, Jack can imagine being a lookout forever, nipped by the last throes of winter on a chilly wind yet cradled safely between the warmth bleeding out of his tower and the hot coffee in his hands. Perched up high, nearly brushing against the clouds, the sunset seems brighter than down on the trail, all melted pinks and oranges that don’t begin to betray how in less than an hour the forest will be all but black.

The static of his radio breaks the silence.

‘New guy, this is Connor from Tower 12. Do you copy?’

He drops his empty mug among the dirty dishes from dinner when Connor speaks again. ‘Tower 11, do you copy?’

“Tower 11, I copy. What’s up, Connor?” Jack answers before he eases himself into the desk chair.

‘Son of a bitch! Nobody bothers to get a camping permit anymore. Do you have eyes on the smoke north of your position? Looks like it’s off the Lacey Trail.’

“Give me a second, I’ll check.”

He grabs his binoculars, is almost out the door when Connor’s opening the line again. ‘I need you to confirm.’

“You can hang on, it won’t kill you,” says Jack to himself while peering off the railing. Exactly as Connor described it, north of his tower, and near enough to likely be off the Lacey trail—a closed area—he spies the telltale white smoke of a campfire.

‘Do you see that smoke up north?’, comes the radio again and Jack answers with what he hopes passes for patience.

“I see it.”

‘Shit. People like that don’t clean up after themselves either, and fire risks are high this season. Do you mind checking it out?’

“I’ll head up there, and report back anything I find.” He rises to get his coat and boots.

‘Stay safe out there, new guy. Don’t forget to carry your bear spray. Over and out.’

Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing.

Lacey Trail was several miles away on foot, no matter how close the smoke had seemed in the binoculars, and he pocketed both his bear mace and his flashlight before leaving the tower.

~*~

Unseasonably cold air nips through his fleece jacket, fingers already red around the knuckles as he fumbles to zip himself up. The beam of the flashlight bobs about over the dark trail, “3.2 miles” the optimistic sign had declared back near his tower. Only, the longer he walked, surrounded only by the icy wind biting on his ears and a deafening chorus of insects, the more it felt like “ETA unknown”.

A campfire lights the path around a bend in the trail, a match flame at the end of the path.

Whatever he wanted to call out, “hello”, or “get lost”, was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a man’s scream.

He makes no attempt to call back, taking off in a sprint towards the glowing campsite. The campfire in the center of a couple picnic tables and a tent illuminates the entire clearing between the trees, fresh wood popping, what must have been tossed in only minutes ago. But the campsite is empty. The tent’s open flap reveals a rumpled sleeping bag, the tables are crowded with an oil lantern, a battery-powered radio, and heaps of fresh food—but completely empty.

“Hello? Where are you?” He shouts into the dark with no answer. On the side of the clearing closest to the creek, a closed gate and red sign read ‘No camping allowed’.

“Are you hurt? Where—oh!” Jack coughs out a startled grunt, nearly tripping into the dirt over what he discovers is an abandoned flashlight.

His blood chills, colder than the unseasonable weather. Beyond the cautionary signs, where the darkness swallows the unkempt trail, drifts up the sound of a whistle. A human whistle, devoid of any recognizable melody.

It’s all he can do to stagger back, swipe an empty dinner pot from the picnic table and douse the fire with cold water from the creek. He tosses an unseeing glance over his shoulder, and is hoofing it out of the campsite and up the trail before the campfire has even stopped sizzling.

The cold air stings his lungs as he runs most of the trail back, hot blood thrumming into his ears and all but drowning out the insects. Were he less panicked, he would have heard over the sound of his own breathing that the insects had actually stopped, startled to silence by the looming shape in the treeline.

~*~

The glow of his tower beckons him home, and he scrambles his faculties to remember to grab firewood before climbing the steps, as well as relieve himself in the portable toilet beside the stairs. With what he witnessed, too vivid to not want to trust his own eyes but too strange to possibly be real, he wasn’t sure he would have the nerve to walk back down before dawn.

His radio flashes with an open channel, presumably Tower 12, and he sits heavy down in the metal chair. “Tower 12, do you copy?”

Beats of silence remind him his blood has yet to warm up.

‘Loud and clear, new guy. Sorry for delay, I was just cooking up some hot—’ Connor pauses, too much like Jack did when he thought he was being boring.

‘Nevermind that. What did you find out there?’

“The campsite was abandoned. Not a soul around,” Jack said, pushing down his nausea and the phantom sound of an eerie whistle.

‘Are you—’ A loud clang in the receiver, like a fork dropped in a bowl. ‘Kidding me? Son of a bitch. People like them are part of the problem, and on top of everything they run off.’

Jack fingers the sleeve on his jacket, realizing suddenly he had been too worked up to shrug off his fleece or his boots when he came inside. “I put out the fire, but there’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

‘No no, I get it… Thanks for checking it out, Jack. Tomorrow morning, I’ll report it to the authorities and they can take care of it.’

The words are out of Jack’s mouth before he can scold himself for being frightened in front of someone else. “I heard a scream. Honestly, I feel kind of bad for not sticking around to look harder.”

‘A scream? Probably just a red fox, they sound almost like a screaming lady when the rest of the forest is buzzing.’

Jack clamps down on a protest that it was a man’s scream, clearly no fox, then Connor is speaking again.

‘This is the third time this month. Ever since those kid’s went missing, there’s all sorts of rumors about the area being haunted, and we just can’t keep people out. Well, maybe I could, but not from this tower. I’ve got a job to do.’

The whistle is back in his mind, as vivid as Connor’s voice over the radio but, again, Jack keeps that to himself.

‘Well.’ Connor breaks him from his thoughts. ‘I’ll let you get to dinner, or whatever it is you do after you log off. Goodnight. Over and out.’

“Goodnight, Connor.”

2:27AM

He can’t explain what wakes him.

Nothing immediately seems wrong but he can’t begin to trust his senses, not with the greasy film that smudged his eyes no matter how hard he blinked, the heaviness of his limbs, and a sluggish mind at the helm, ripped from the deepest parts of his sleep cycle.

But even blind, dumb, and lame—he knew he was being watched.

Weak hands scrubbed at his face, trying to clear the sleep, until the room came into some kind of focus. Moonlight drifted in the one open panel behind his computer desk, casting the upright shadow of a—

His heart all but stopped. He squinted, unbelieving, blinking more at the peculiar silhouette painted across his front door. Unclear if it was man or beast, the sloped shoulders suggested humanoid but the shape of the head, wide with points that could be horns or ears in the dark made him unable to do anything more than stare.

Struck by a sudden wave of courage, he leapt up from the bed, throwing the blanket aside without certainty his legs would support him, and dashed to the light switch.

The shadow vanished with the incandescent bulb over head, banished by the light but lending no evidence as to whether it was some paranormal, hungry entity vulnerable to light, or something more secular afraid to be caught. Jack didn’t know which was worse, and standing alone in the center of his floor, he could finally hear how fast his heart was racing.

Whether by insanity or curiosity, though they hardly seemed different from where he stood, one of his shaking hands grabbed his bear mace while the other went for the door. The abrupt quietness of the night lent him courage where it shouldn’t, and upon venturing outside he was horrified to realize he was truly, tragically alone.

Or he was now.

Against the railing, and almost disturbed by the bear mace that clattered to the ground, was a skull.

Goat, from what limited knowledge he had, flanked by a few, worn, lit candles, and smeared across the ivory forehead with a red symbol he refused to get closer to identify either it’s shape or composition. He resigned to shove the door shut, slamming the lock’s hammer in place with no regard for the bear mace he abandoned.

“Tower 12, come in.” He tries the radio receiver, met with static. “Tower 12, can you hear me?”

More static and another beat of silence makes his stomach ache. “Connor, I need you to wake up.”

He’s never been so happy to hear the quiet click of another radio opening the line.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’

“This is an emergency.”

‘Are you okay? What’s happened?’ Connor immediately sounds more awake, like he’s sat up straight.

“Someone’s been on my tower, I woke to—I heard footsteps, it woke me up.”

‘Are you kidding me?’ Less composed now, angry but not nearly as when he vented about the campers earlier that evening. Though it was easily explained by the remnants of sleep clinging to him.

“I think they’re gone now.”

‘Did you see what they looked like?’

Jack’s mind raced back to the shadow, the beastly silhouette, and the footsteps that seemed to vanish when they passed by his door.

“N-No, but they left a skull on my doorstep. An animal skull, goat or—something, with candles, what looked like blood. Sick shit, Connor, I don’t—know—”

‘Take a deep breath, new guy. Let’s think about this rationally. You went and investigated a fire tonight, right?’

“… Yeah.”

‘So we know there’s unregistered campers in the area who don’t care about rules or regulations, probably bratty kids or college students. Suppose they wanted to get back at the fire watcher who doused their evening, it wouldn’t be that far of a walk. It’s just kids, Jack, don’t let it bother you.’

“You—” He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “You’re right.”

‘Did you happen to get a photo of the thing?’

“I didn’t think about it.”

‘No shame in that. It’s all right to be riled up, but it’s not okay to panic. Lock your door, try to get some rest. Take a photo in the morning, and we can file a report with the authorities.’

But no sooner was Jack beginning to calm down, the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise, his stomach tightening with the idea that Connor was only coming to the conclusion of what limited information he had.

“Connor?”

Sleepier now, the other man’s voice came back a bothered rumble. ‘Yeah, Jack?’

“What if it’s related to the disappearances? At the campsite tonight, sure, it was empty but I heard… I heard whistling beyond the barriers for the closed trails. It’s a heck of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

For all his neighbor’s frustration at being woken so suddenly, there was no doubt that he was fully awake now, deliberately staying quiet on the other end of the line as Jack waited for any kind of answer.

‘New guy… You don’t believe all those rumors, do you?’

Behind his ribs, Jack’s heart is back to hammering. “Nah. No, I mean. You’re right, it’s gotta be kids.”

Connor didn’t seem convinced, even for a disembodied voice. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll send someone to check on you tomorrow. For now, try to get some sleep, new guy. There’s nothing we can do in the dark.’

“Yeah… Thanks. Of course.” He rakes his hand through his hair like if it might knock his anxiety loose. “Goodnight, Connor.”

‘Goodnight, Jack.’

~*~

The skull was gone when he awoke the next morning. Nothing ever came of the report, and for a short time, the forest was quiet.

He’s gotten quite used to this little routine: submit his report, have dinner, say goodnight to Connor, bed.

Check the weather, put dinner in the oven, submit his report while talking to Connor, bed.

So they continued for days, falling into the comfort of predictability and looking forward to their goodnight radio checks.

‘Honestly, I envy you a little bit,’ said Connor one night while Jack posted himself up beside the radio, blanket around his shoulders and holding a hot mug of coffee. Probably not the best idea before lights out, but the warmth in his core more than made up for what his little wood stove lacked in power.

“Envy me? Why?” Jack sipped quietly.

‘You’ve got the RV, you can literally just pick up and go wherever you want. Hell, you did it once already when you relocated out here.’

“It’s… lonelier than I like to admit.”

Down in his cup, Jack could see the undissolved granules of his coffee lying along the bottom. With a quick swish, they’re gone and Connor speaks again.

‘While Tower 11 was empty, I forgot how nice it was to have someone to talk to.’

“You must really be desperate if you’re enjoying my company that much.” Jack found himself smiling, a bittersweet thing.

‘I should be the one saying that to you. Every day I call you to vent about these fucking campers, leaving their trash and shit. And you answer for me every time.’

He chuckled, unaware Connor was also smiling on the other line. “It’s kind of my job.”

‘Ouch.’ They laughed together this time. ‘You’re not supposed to agree with me.’

“Then maybe you should be nicer to yourself.”

‘You first, Jack.’

A comfortable silence falls over both sides of the radio transmission, twin smiles and the warmth of more than quick and dirty coffee between them.

‘You still with me? Sounds like you’re about to go any minute now.’ Connor said, soft and slow. If Jack kept his eyes closed, he could have imagined he said those words beside his ear.

“I think that’s all I’ve got, Connor.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “You get some rest too. Goodnight.”

‘Night, Jack.’

BETWEEN 2 AND 3 AM

A hand over Jack’s mouth bolts him awake, his entire body tensing as he grabs at the arm that holds him.

“Shh! Shh, Jack. It’s me… Its Connor.” He hears a familiar voice somewhere above him, and the blonde man comes into focus as Jack blinks away the last of the sleep. Moonlight shines through the open paneling, illuminating the side of his handsome, worried face, the width of his broad shoulders in a thin t-shirt.

“There’s something outside.” He looks briefly to the window. “Scoot over, Jack.”

He hardly has time to obey, let alone time for rational thoughts like What’s outside? and How is us both getting under the blanket supposed to help? before the other man is climbing into the single bed and pressing against him from the shoulder down.

“What are you doing?” Jack half demands, half pleads.

“Shh.” Connor hushes him, and he wants to relent—almost does—under such dark eyes, close enough to see they were brown in the dim light. “We have to be quiet, or they’ll hear us.”

“Who will hear us? Connor? What’s happ—mmf! M-mm,” Jack moans, startled, when their lips meet, smooth and wet like Connor had licked them before he leaned in.

His belly twinges, toes curling from only a kiss, and he might have been embarrassed if it weren’t for the hot outline of an erection digging into his hip. Connor’s tongue tastes of instant coffee, no doubt he himself tastes like cigarettes, but Connor doesn’t seem bothered. Not with how hard he is and the firm grip of his palm on Jack’s ribs through his old shirt, the way his thumb flicks at his nipple with little regard for how it makes him shake.

Teeth rake his bottom lip when their kiss turns deeper, hungry, panting hot into each other’s mouths as they work together to yank their sleep pants down to their thighs. A whimper jumps up between them as Connor’s hand clasps around them both, and Jack realizes it must have been him because when his thumb slips in the pre leaking from his tip—he makes it again.

The hand retreats long enough for Connor to lick his palm, but Jack knows he’s getting wet enough for the both them, so long as those capable hands keep pulling needy noises from his lips, pulling on his cock like that. Just like that, just how he likes.

“They’re gonna hear you, baby, you gotta be—quiet,” Connor pants against his wet lips. Jack wants to kiss him back, needs it, but he can do little more than leave fervid little moans against his tongue, joined by the spit-slick sound of Connor’s hand, warm and tight around them.

“I’m—s-sorry, Connor,” Jack fusses when the tightness in his belly finds the next gear, and for all his warnings, Connor is doing nothing to help him make less noise when he leans down to suckle at the side of his neck.

“Come on, baby, you’re almost there. Say it again,” he whispers warmly into his shirt collar. The rumble of him speaks to control, all whiskey and smoke, but Jack can feel how the rhythm of his forearm waivers, how the leg he has threaded under Jack’s begins to shake.

“C-Connor, get something to—Connor—”

Jack’s eyes throw themselves open on a gasp when he wakes, startled from the dream by the warm wetness seeping into the front of his underwear. He tries to sit up as best he can but his stomach quivers, heart thumping, as wave after wave of pleasant ache widens the stain on his sleep pants and steals his breath.

“For fucks sake,” he sighs, letting his body flop back to the bed when the feeling in his hands returns.

Awareness follows right behind his mess, and he flips the blanket away to hopefully spare himself the further embarrassment of taking the damned thing to the laundromat. But, even that was better than doing a spot wash in the sink, and having to tell Connor it was an Italian food incident when he sees it draped over the railing to dry.

First his waking hours, now his dreams. Connor filled his mind with thoughts of normalcy, the lingering ache of loneliness, and the insane idea of enjoying another person’s company. Such a luxury eluded him most days, a comfort he hardly believed could be found in these ominous woods.

Between distracting daydreams, some salacious, some sweet, and his immersion in his work, he almost forgot to be afraid.

~*~

The days that follow are easy but hardly quiet, not with Jack’s brain torn and oscillating between the paranoia of the encroaching forest—and his growing crush on his neighbor. His heart struggled under the stress of peering over his shoulder in the dark woods at every broken twig, just to be riled again by his nightly check-in. He began to sympathize with the rabbit his sister had when they were kids, perfectly still for all their fervent affection, until their veterinarian explained it’s early health problems were stress-related: poor creature was unable to distinguish their childish, heavy-handed petting from the musings of a predator biding it’s time to feast.

People had already disappeared. How long did he have until he was eaten too? Swallowed by the woods until all that remained were the tenets of skeptics and a ghostly whistle.

He busied himself with maintaining the tower, hammering down loose boards and checking the horizon repeatedly until the sun was long gone and the eerie quiet had settled it’s blanket across the forest.

“24.4 knots…” He murmured to fill the silence, as a flare lights up the north. Before he can go for his binoculars, the radio flicks on with an unfamiliar man’s voice.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

“This is Tower 11.”

‘Oh! Oh, thank god.’ The voice, a young man, shaking and unsure, comes over the line. ‘I’m lost and—I’m really starting to freak out.’

“Take a deep breath,” said Jack, his free hand opening the trail map on his computer. “Can you tell me where you are?”

‘I don’t even know where to start. I went out exploring and lost track of time. Everything looks different at night. The uh, the last trail marker I saw was by a stream, but I couldn’t read it from where I was. I’m walking west because I remember walking east to get here but… I’m definitely lost.’

“What equipment do you have?”

The hiker ignored his question, excited to finally be somewhere familiar. ‘Oh, man. I found the fork in the trail. But, I don’t remember if I’m supposed to go right or left to get back to the trail-head.’

“I have a map, let me take a look.”

‘Thank you.’ He says, but only lets Jack look for a few seconds before trying again. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

“One more second, it’s all right.”

‘Oh. Oh, I see you!’

Jack looks to the radio, shocked to silence while phantoms of a predator’s fingers slip up the back of his neck, loosing shivers in his warm tower.

“What? What do you see?”

‘I hear you. You’re whistling to me. I’m right here!’ The hiker shouts, surely waving his hands above his head to welcome the unknown danger, and Jack’s thumb nearly cracks the receiver.

“Hey, HEY! That’s not me, I’m—”

‘What do you mean? You’re starting to freak me out—’ The transmission ends early, no crackling, no screams. Only silence, save for Jack’s breathing, his pounding heart.

Fuck.

He shoves the desk chair away, jumping up to grab his flashlight, and was two hastened footsteps from the door when a knock startles him almost to shout. Whatever possessed him to wrench open the door without a second thought, he hoped a well-aimed flashlight is enough to take them down.

“The hell are you doing in there? I’ve been out here knocking for awhile.”

His heart jerks, relieved, having never thought Billy would be the cause. “S-sorry. Was helping a lost hiker.”

“At this hour? Lord have mercy,” he drawled, his perpetually rumpled mustache shifting across his troubled frown. “Anyway—here’s your supplies. Just the essentials.”

“Thanks.” Jack turned away to set the box on the counter, when Billy spoke again. “I hear you been a little stressed lately. Everything all right?”

He never considered himself a liar, but Jack liked to think he knew how to pretend well enough to avoid suspicion about most things. Especially in regards to his own well-being. The smile that slips over his face is practiced, appropriately tired for the time of night. “It’s taken me a little longer to adjust to the new environment than I thought, but I’m getting there. Thanks for asking.”

Address the question logically, formulate a response from a half-truth. Acknowledge their concern. Easy.

Billy is so willing to not push the subject, it’s almost too easy. “That’s the spirit. Well, I won’t keep you. Get some sleep, Jack. Don’t forget to submit your report.”

He leaves as fast as he can without falling down the stairs, and Jack is happy to clap the door shut behind him. In the back of his mind, routine called to him, rubbing on his shoulders and offering him a cigarette after an exhausting day.

“Firewood, dinner, Connor in bed—THEN bed. Firewood, dinner, talk to Connor, respectfully, professionally, finish my report. Then bed.” He waved the flashlight back and forth anxiously as he wandered down the stairs, single-handedly determined to not have anything scary happen for the rest of the night.

If only he hadn’t gone for firewood.

The pile in the shack isn’t dwindling as fast as he anticipated with the weather warming up, and he makes a mental note to skip chopping more wood tomorrow. He balances the wood under one arm, flashlight tottering in the other as he leaves the shack—straight into another man.

“AH—damn! You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he pants when the bald man in clean coveralls doesn’t immediately move to disembowel him.

“No need to be afraid, son… I’m a worker, here for some routine maintenance on the radio tower over there.” The man’s flat, almost drowsy cadence is anything but comforting, too close to Jack’s liking of what he imagined a wax figure or mannequin to sound like, speaking slowly and quietly to not arouse suspicion of their sentience.

“Thought I would say hi to the new guy everyone’s been talking about.”

“… What’s your name?” Jack said as his hands flexed on the firewood, itching to run.

“Names can be deceiving. Call me Silas.”

“Do you always work so late?”

“Every Sunday.” A strange thing to admit, rather than lie about being up on the mountain so late for something so menial. “Just trying to keep the communication lines open. We must ensure the right messages meet the right people, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right,” Jack said without hesitation, though he doubted he and Silas were talking with the same subject in mind.

“Absolutely. You watch for fires, but some fires are meant to burn. And no amount of prevention can stop them.”

His fingernails ache from holding the firewood throughout their conversation, and he can feel his heart beginning to thump against his ribs. “… It’s late. I should be going back. Goodnight, Silas.”

“Nature has plans,” he called after him, the intonation of his voice carrying without having to shout: an orator’s calm, suffocating inflection. “Ones even you can’t control. It will be cleansed.”

Upstairs, Jack shoved the firewood into the stove, both to relieve his stinging arms and to burn away the creeping dread that prickles at the back of his skull. Something is wrong with these woods, wrong with the people, from the supervisor who seems to have had his tongue stapled to the roof of his mouth, to the radio repairmen who spouted doctrine with the affect of a puppeteered corpse.

When had the woods he found such comfort in become so grim, promising only death to those who didn’t know when to run?

‘I can see the smoke coming from your tower. Don’t tell me you’re not in there?’ Connor’s voice, unbothered and probably craving his evening small talk, laid a calm over the quickly warming cabin.

‘Jack? Come in, new guy.’

“Here, Connor.” He lowered himself into the metal chair, pulling his jacket over chilled fingers.

‘Finally. Where you been?’ If Jack concentrated hard enough, perhaps he could sponge his blissful ignorance, or at least pretend to take refuge in the wrap of his arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he hugged anyone besides his sister, and most recently was still months before he left for the middle of nowhere.

“I went downstairs for some firewood and ran into Silas.”

‘Who?’ He says, half-muffled like he’s sat at the radio with his dinner.

“The guy who maintains the radio tower. Creepy as hell, spoke in riddles—I don’t think I actually saw him blink.”

The silence over the channel lasts long enough Jack reaches to flip the receiver on and off, hands skimming the metal casing for any sign the call had been disconnected, then Connor scoffs with some one-sided realization.

‘Is this about the other night? Tryin’ to yank my chain?’

Jack has to bite down on his lip next to bleeding to not fire back “I am not nearly funny enough to yank anyone’s chain, and if I was going to pull on anything of yours it would be your—”

‘That radio tower’s been out of service for ages now.’

His heart drops into his stomach. When he doesn’t answer, Connor continues to explain as if Jack wasn’t reeling, two seconds from puking into the receiver. ‘It was closed down right after I got here because a lightning strike fried it’s systems. Mitch said he would get it fixed next time there was room in the budget, but—well, you know how that’s going.’

“Then who did I just talk to?!” Jack shouts, too frightened to be embarrassed for his volume, and only hoping it didn’t hurt Connor’s ears or break their speaker.

‘Easy, Jack,’ replies Connor, too cool for the pounding in his ears. ‘Hey, you’re okay. Listen to me. This isn’t our first run-in with pranksters, is it? They got you again, but that’s all they can do. They’re not gonna hurt you.’

“He called me Jack.”

‘He knew your name? Do you think he’s been listening?’

“I don’t know, maybe?” He ran his hands through his hair, hoping to dispel some of the compounding anxiety of an imminent death.

‘Either way, we need to report this. Next time you see him, get a photo or his ID and anything else we can use to identify him. We’ll figure it out, Jack. Don’t worry.’

“Thanks, Connor.” His hands scrub down his face, he can not keep up this pace of being frightened and then having to convince himself nothing’s wrong just to keep from running into the woods and not stopping until he sees the road.

‘Call me if you have a nightmare, all right? I’ll put you back to sleep.’

“You asshole.” He can’t help the chuckle that sputters from his suddenly warm chest, hearing Connor’s smile through his cheeky tone.

‘Got you to laugh, didn’t I?’

Jack’s face is hot, he knows he’s blushing hard, and he summons the strength to not say anything too embarrassing (like “come over”) with a shuddering sigh. “Goodnight, Connor. Thank you… for everything.”

‘So sentimental. I like that. Night, Jack.’

The line clicks closed before Jack can chase him through the line, demanding to know what he meant, why his voice had to drop into the register that made his stomach flutter before disappearing from the face of his very, very small world. His suffering sigh rattles from his chest.

“I need to go to sleep.”

2 DAYS LATER

If it rains any more, his tower might flood.

All day, all evening, Jack had spent the majority of the day watching the shower soak the forest, ignoring the chores he tended to avoid anyway, and drinking far too much instant coffee because it was his only alternative to water. Although, he did get the spray duster out from under the counter, just to say he did.

“Maybe I’ll ask Billy to put some teabags in my next resupply,” he said, pouring out the last of his cup into the sink and picking up his cigarettes to take with him outside.

The forest below should look half-drowned after drinking all day, but it only sways elegantly in the gentle wind, not strong enough to push rainwater over the railing where it might disturb his smoke break. Tower 12 stands in the distance over the treeline, the soft, golden lights in the window suggesting Connor was taking a lazy day too.

Was he reading a well-loved, dog-eared novel? Cooking something warm and spicy? Maybe he fell asleep, belly full of warm food and blanket curled around his legs as the novel slips forgotten to the floor. Down into a deep sleep, the kind of rest what leaves him too warm when he wakes, hair rumpled and shirt risen over his middle to bear birthmarks or a secret tattoo.

“Jack, come back to bed.”

“Ah,” he grunted, sudden static from the radio ripping him out of his daydream. He presses out his cigarette, kicking over the ash tray as he hurries to his feet.

“This is Tower 11.” Silently, he congratulated himself for sounding perfectly professional and not guilty in the slightest.

‘This—does it—damn.’ Connor’s voice over the radio is smothered with screeching electronic snow, laced with intermittent words of increasing urgency.

‘Can’t—need h—Jack—can you hear—’

He whipped around to the window. The lights of Tower 12 hadn’t dimmed, but the persistent static and ominous, disconnected message chilled his blood. He gave no further thought to logical explanations, common sense could hike up the mountain with him if it really cared that much—and ran from the tower without changing his jacket to something waterproof and only his flashlight to protect them.

Above him, the rain pounds down harder, deafening as it pushed through the treeline to soak him, splattering over his trousers with every puddle he stomped across to get to Tower 12 as soon as he was physically capable, or sooner, even if it wounded him.

He reached the bottom of the tower not long after nightfall, expecting to be met with some sign of a struggle, but found nothing. Apart from the generator flashing a yellow warning light and the stack of firewood down nearly to nothing, there was no ripped grass, no gashes in the mud to suggest there had been anything unsavory in the woods that night. He tore up the metal steps anyway, two at a time, not convinced and not bothering to knock before he threw open the door—

And found Connor at the sink, half-dressed, the last dregs of shaving cream on his cheeks in thin stripes, steaming rag in hand.

He just stared at him.

Jack stared back.

“Can I help you?” Connor broke the silence, wiping his face clean and grabbing the henley draped over the back of his chair.

“You’re alive.”

“Jack?” He gaped at him, blonde head popping from his shirt’s neck hole to piece together the voice he knew with the grainy, black and white photo he had glimpsed on the staff directory website.

“Yeah that’s… that’s me.” Jack’s voice muddled down to a tiny murmur as the embarrassment threatened to melt him into two humiliated puddles inside his boots.

He really ran here, never-mind the several miles, ran here in the rain, dragging in water and mud like he was going to self-promote from fire lookout to ghost-buster with just a flashlight and some home-grown, grass-fed nerve. Death would have been kinder, he thought.

“God, you’re soaked. Here.” The towel that flies across the room to slap gently against his face smells like their cheap, provided laundry soap, with a thin vein of cologne, sharp and clean, a smell Jack suspected was baked into most everything fabric Connor owned.

“Sorry about your floor.”

“If I actually cared, I’d make you clean it,” Connor smirked at him, rummaging through his open duffel on the counter to hand over a sweater, boxers, and a pair of sweatpants of the same brand as the ones he wore himself. “Put these on, I’ll hang up your clothes by the stove.”

Jack changed obediently, careful not to spread his mess any further than his little corner by the door, and sheepishly offered his wet clothes for Connor to thread over hangers.

“You’re a mess.”

He thought to protest, finding he could only continue to rub the towel over his hair, a little like a nervous tick. “Feels like it.”

“So. You gonna tell me why you tore across the mountainside and threw yourself into my lap half-drowned?” Connor said as he leaned against the counter, arms—nice arms—focus Jack—crossed over his chest. But, for all his posture and words that spoke to some degree of scolding, he could only find warmth in his gaze, patient enough to hear every word of his reply with grace and an open mind.

“The radio…”

“The radio?” Connor went to flip it on, demonstrate how it crackled and sputtered before coming online, green light ready.

“My generator started giving me crap a couple hours ago, I thought the power surge might have killed it so I tried to call you. You didn’t answer, I thought you just couldn’t hear me.”

The embarrassment releases him in an instant, he’s suddenly back where he had been an hour ago, disoriented and tearing down the trail. “It was terrifying, you sounded like—you weren’t making sense from the words that did get through. I didn’t know if you were being murdered up here and calling for help.”

He scoffs, then turns away from him, towards the window. “Is this about the missing campers again? Because I’m not willing to entertain all of your theories right now, all right—”

“I was worried, Connor. Scared the shit out of me.” His words left him in a rush, hanging between them, the only sound among the hum of the fridge against the wall.

“… You came all the way up here—in a storm—because you were worried?”

Jack couldn’t bear to look up to see the extent of the confusion he heard in his voice. “It’s—just a shower, really. It’ll stop soon and I’ll get out of your way,” he mumbled and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Weatherman says it’s gonna get bad. You should stay.”

The timber of his voice, softer, almost nervous, had Jack raising his head to meet his eyes.

“I’d like you to stay.” He offered, and the nervousness turned out to be more uncertainty, testing a boundary he wasn’t sure would welcome him on the other side. “I’ll feed you. There’s soup, a couple beers left in my stash. What do you say?”

Jack’s hands tightened in the damp towel, suddenly he struggled to breathe.

“I’d like that.”

Chapter 2 (END)

#fears to fathom #fears to fathom ironbark lookout #Jack Nelson x Conner Hawkins #jack nelson x connor hawkins #ironbark lookout #fears to fathom fanfic #indie games #indie horror #indie horror game #ao3 fanfic #rarepair #fanfiction #fanfic #mlm fanfic #the rarest of pairs they don't even have a ship name #Jack Nelson #Connor Hawkins #horror fanfiction #romance fanfiction #romantic horror

[ao3feed-fratt]

For you, I was a Flame

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/43818135

by serpentinefiend

Post resurrection, Matt picks up where he left off: with his life in ruins. But he has more people now, has more time to build and restructure his relationships, and he intends to do just that—so long as he doesn’t get side tracked by the lure of his white whale, the target he’s been wanting to take down since law school.

And then there’s the Frank of it all, the potential for something good, something lasting. But can he trust it? Trust Frank? Trust himself?

And, more importantly, will he even get the chance to figure it out, or will it just be another thing taken from him when he wants it the most?

(Sequel to Just Because You Can.)

Words: 5195, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of My back is broad, but it’s a-hurtin’

Fandoms: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Matt Murdock, Frank Castle, Karen Page, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Jonathan "Jack" Murdock

Relationships: Frank Castle/Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Karen Page, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Frank Castle & Karen Page

Additional Tags: tags updated as i go, Getting Together, Matt’s Childhood, Depression, Fluff, Romance, Action, Smut, Developing Relationship, Karen Page: Epic Third Wheel, Matt’s senses, Matt is a really good lawyer

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/43818135

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #Fratt #FrankMatt