Hiii it's me with another request! “I’ve made so many mistakes, but you’re not one of them.” for Jacob/Rook?
Sweet friend!!! Thank you for this!! I’m so sorry it took so long but I’m a disaster person and I can’t get anything done ever 😭 but I hope you enjoy this nonetheless!
Charlotte sits bolt upright. With her hand pressed flat against the swell of Rook’s belly and her blue eyes blown wide open in shock, she’s something of a caricature.
“Yeah?” Rook laughs. She reaches out and runs her fingers through Charlotte’s wavy red hair. “You know, I think they wanna dance with their big sister.”
Tentatively, Charlotte leans back down next to her on the bed. With her head resting on the mattress, she curls into Rook’s side and smooths her palm gently over her bellybutton.
“Yeah,” Rook says. She looks down where Charlotte’s hand is and doesn’t have the heart to remind her that her new sibling may very well be a boy. “I used to talk to you all the time when you were in my tummy.”
Charlotte’s face crumples up in thought. For a moment, Rook is reminded of the way Jacob looks when he’s truly focused. She can’t help but smile.
“I don’t remember that,” Charlotte says matter-of-factly. She peers up at Rook with those wide eyes of hers and purses her lips. “Maybe you weren’t loud enough.”
“Maybe,” she says softly, her voice breaking on a laugh.
In the corner of her eye, Rook sees movement. Her eyes flicker up toward the doorway and settle on Jacob. He’s got a strange expression on his face, one she can’t quite place — wistful, maybe? She doesn’t have time to think about it; Jacob takes a couple steps into the room and stares at Charlotte.
“You talkin’ to your brother?”
Charlotte scowls, sitting up suddenly and crossing her arms over her chest with more indignation than a four year old should be able to muster.
“My sister,” she says, levelling Jacob with a very serious stare. “She’s a girl.”
“If you say so,” he shrugs. He barely manages to hide the mischievous smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “C’mon, it’s bedtime. Give your mom a break.”
It’s the wrong thing to ask for. Charlotte’s entire demeanour shifts — she’s a good kid most of the time, but she’s stubborn as all hell, and getting her to do something she has no interest in is like pulling teeth.
“I’m not done saying goodnight!”
“I wasn’t askin’, Charlie,” Jacob tries, aiming for stern and coming up short. Sometimes, Rook has a hard time reconciling this Jacob Seed with the ruthless man that existed before the Collapse. “Do you want a story or not?”
“Fine,” Charlotte grumbles. She flops back down onto the bed and curls up right next to Rook’s belly. “Can I have five more minutes?”
“You can have ten seconds,” Jacob offers, not unkindly. “Fifteen, if you’re lucky.”
She fixes him with a glare that’s cuter than it should be. Absently, Rook runs her fingers through the waves of hair that have tumbled onto her stomach in all the commotion.
Charlotte gives a noisy huff and turns her head toward the swell of Rook’s belly.
“Daddy says I gotta go to bed if I want a story,” she leaning close to whisper conspiratorially, as though neither her mother nor her father can hear her. “Love you.”
She kisses Rook’s belly through the scratchy fabric of her shirt, then clambers off the bed. Her feet pound against the floor as she flies past Jacob and into the hallway.
They watch their daughter go — Rook with a smile on her face, and Jacob with his eyebrows raised. When he turns to her with his arms crossed over his chest, Rook can’t help but flash that same smile at him.
“You’re getting better at this negotiating thing,” Rook quips, shifting on the bed. She leans back against the headboard and curls an arm around her stomach.
That same unusual look creeps back onto Jacob’s face as he watches her. He scratches the side of his nose absentmindedly, a strangely nervous habit that Rook hardly ever sees, then crosses his arms over his chest.
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he says in the same rough, gravelly tone he always speaks in. “Especially not the tiny ones. Can be tricky.”
Rook snorts. “My mistake.”
A second of silence passes between them, and then Jacob makes as though to head out the door after their daughter.
“Hey,” Rook says softly, suddenly. Jacob stops and turns back toward her. “Are you alright?”
His expression falters, just a little. Rook knows him well enough that she manages to catch the emotional shift and frowns.
“I’m fine,” Jacob assures her. His voice is impressively steady. “Gonna put her to bed. I’ll be back.”
Before she can say anything else, Jacob heads into the hallway and follows after the sound of Charlotte’s footsteps, shutting the door behind him.
Well, Rook thinks. If that’s not her cue to get ready for bed, she doesn’t know what is.
She rolls over gently, mindful of her belly, and slides down the bed until she’s flat on her side. Jacob’s old shirt makes for a satisfactory night dress, and her teeth were long brushed before Charlotte decided she wanted to snuggle. Rook tugs the blankets up around her and reaches for the lamp on the bedside table. With a click, the light dims into darkness and she settles in comfortably.
She’s just starting to nod off when she hears the door shut. Jacob’s footsteps are unmistakeable, his boots echoing off the concrete floors until he shucks them off and pads over to the bed in his sock feet. Rook rolls over in time to see him shrug out of his clothes.
“She asleep?” she mumbles, shuffling over to make room.
Jacob pulls back the blankets and slides in beside her. The blue of his eyes is piercing, beautiful, as he looks at her fondly.
“Out like a light,” he says softly.
They watch each other like that for a few preciously quiet minutes. Rook has grown used to the silence that comes with their relationship, and she finds she doesn’t mind it much anymore.
It can’t last, though. The thoughts come to her mind unbidden, and the curiosity and concern over how strangely he’s been acting all evening filter back into her consciousness slowly.
“Something’s on your mind,” Rook starts. She tugs the blankets up closer, over her shoulders and just under her ears. “What is it?”
Jacob tucks her head under his chin and threads his arms around her. These days, Rook’s a little too big for him to pull her flush against him, but she still enjoys the warmth of his skin against hers where they do touch. She thinks the baby likes it too.
“The mistakes I’ve made,” he starts quietly, mouth moving against her hair. “I don’t—”
He cuts himself off, like he’s searching for words that just won’t come. Rook feels the press of his jaw on the crown of her head as his muscles clench and unclench anxiously.
He gets like this sometimes: quiet, brooding, despondent. They don’t talk a lot about the what happened before the Collapse — neither she nor Jacob have very pleasant memories of that time — but Rook knows there are things he feels guilty about. Hurting her, she knows, is one of them; spending more time hunting her down than loving her is another. He won’t apologize for the things he did to keep his brothers safe, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t agonize over them when the nights get too quiet.
He doesn’t understand why she stays. He doesn’t understand why she wants him. It’s been almost five years, and Rook’s learned there’s not much she can do to silence the thoughts that run rampant in his mind.
There’s no point trying to force him to change. All she knows how to do is love him through it.
He shushes her, carding his fingers through the loose tresses of her hair.
“Just—“ he cuts himself off with a soft, frustrated noise. “Just let me do this.”
So she does. Rook goes quiet, nuzzling her way into his neck, and waits for him to say his piece.
“I’ve made so many mistakes. Too many. You’re not one of ‘em,” Jacob murmurs eventually. His voice seems to echo in their otherwise silent bedroom. “Neither’s Charlotte. Or this little guy.”
He shifts a little, just enough so he can rest his hand on the side of her belly. Rook feels a tingling under his palm — not quite a kick like before, but instead a gentle fluttering, as if the baby is moving.
It’s not hard to figure out what he’s really trying to say. Rook wants to kiss him, wants to run her hand over the side of his face to feel the scratch of wiry hair and the bumpiness of scarred skin, but their position won’t let her. Instead, she leans close to press her lips to the column of his throat.
“I love you, Jacob,” she says in response. She tilts her head back down toward her stomach pointedly. “We all do.”
The room is so quiet Rook is sure she can hear her heart beating. Jacob leans down and kisses her forehead, a show of gentleness that’s becoming more and more commonplace with every day they spend underground together.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. His voice is rough and ragged. “Yeah, I know.”
Jacob tucks her a little closer to him, and Rook goes willingly. The blankets and his body bathe her in a warmth that makes her eyelids burn heavy with sleep.
In the morning, Jacob will be himself again. The self-loathing will dissolve into nothing, if only for a little while. He’ll wake her up with lazy kisses and gentle touches, hands roaming the soft curves of her body until Charlotte finds her way into their room and curls up in the space between them.
“The baby likes it when you talk to them,” Rook says, an afterthought murmured sleepily into his skin as she starts to fade into unconsciousness. She tangles her legs with his and shifts to get more comfortable. “They like the sound of your voice.”
She feels Jacob squeeze her tight and kiss her temple. The wiry hair of his beard scrapes soft across her skin.
“Go to sleep,” Jacob whispers.
