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leetoxic

Jun 18, 2024

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! ❤️

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