(so, lil backstory - my friend and I were talking about other Collins x Reader fics that were all p much the same concept and how AUs would be super cool so this is like, a time traveler AU? that I originally wrote just for her and I to read but, fuck, let’s put it here)
Years from now, when he looks back on his youthful days as on old man, he’ll only remember you as the ‘future girl’. He’ll sit in his arm chair, his face riddled with wrinkles and his hair all colored white, and look back on the days he spent with you.
---
You weren’t supposed to meet him. Your mission was simple – go back to 1945 and retrieve the data that has since been lost through numerous pillages and burnings ever since and is essential for your country’s success. You come from a time where time travel is possible, where two more world wars have been fought, where countries have fallen and new ones rise in their place.
You catch his eye as you walk down the deserted street. He was walking at a snail’s pace compared to yours – out on his nightly stroll, you’d come to learn, that he always went on, looking up to the skies to remember a dear friend that never made it home. You were reviewing the folder, safely in your hands, when you rammed head-on into the tall, lean figure. The folder was sent flying out of your grasp, though you managed to keep from landing on your backside. Not much could be said for the one you ran into, however.
“Sorry – didn’t see you there,” A heavy Scottish voice called from below you as you picked up the folder from the sidewalk.
“Don’t worry about it – I wasn’t paying attention myself,” you replied, your eyes glued to the contents in your hands and not once glancing to the stranger. Your accent was different than your normal one – you’d studied British accents from this time period to be able to blend in – and thus had to fake the way your voice sounded.
“I should’ve been paying attention, as well,” the man started in a tone that held a bit of playfulness to it, and you let yourself peek over to who exactly it was you had collided into. Bright, breathtaking blue eyes pierced into your own, causing your breath to stifle in your chest for a moment. You both were so entranced that you didn’t even notice the silence lingering between the two of you, which the stranger broke with a stifled cough. “Uh, so, uh… would you let me treat you to a drink for the trouble I’ve caused?”
It should have been an automatic no from you. You knew just how dangerous it was to mingle with anybody from the past – a strict rule placed by your organization for good reason – and that anything you do could have adverse effects for the future. On the other hand, a drink to relieve the tension from the mission you just successfully completed. You deserved it, after all, you had the future of the world on your shoulders. Plus, you were a tad caught up in the idea of a random, handsome stranger taking interest in you enough to offer a drink – and it’d be an amazing story for the water cooler. One drink couldn’t hurt, right?
He led the way to a pub nearby and held the door open for you. Your muscles relaxed as you entered the warm room and escaped from the chilly night outside. He ordered drinks for the both of you, and soon enough you two were conversing over the glasses of beer.
Jack Collins. He fought in the RAF. He flew to Dunkirk, but crashed in the sea and was thankfully rescued by some civilians. You remembered the story faintly from an old history lesson – the incredible story of home coming for soldiers trapped on a beach.
“So, Y/N,” Collins started after he swallowed a sip of the golden liquid. “Now that you kno’ all about me, I figure I should get to learn about you.”
You’ve prepared for questions like this – it’s part of your training, after all. You answered the question easily with the fake story you’d worked up. “My family is from Surrey. We had a bakery there, before the war. I helped my mom keep the business going while my dad and brother went to fight. They made it back alive, thankfully.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Collins grinned and held up his glass. You did the same, clinking yours against the rim of his and bringing the glass to your lips as you took a sip.
After a few more drinks, the responsible side of you snapped out of the fantasy and realized it was time to go back home. Your stomach fell when you relayed this information to Collins who – oblivious to the literal meaning of your statement – asked to accompany you back home.
“I’ll let you walk me halfway, deal?” You compromised, a spike of panic hitting you as you hoped he wouldn’t be too gentlemanly.
“Fine, but only if you promise to meet me again,” His tone held a note of desperation – one that you struck you even worse than the panic did.
“Of course,” you replied easily, though your insides turned cold at the idea of him eagerly waiting for you, only for you to never show up. He asked you to meet him at the same pub the next night, to which you agreed with no qualms.
“Before you go –” he hastily added as you turned to leave. “I need, uh, collateral. So, I know you’re serious about showing up. Otherwise, I’ll embarrass myself by being stood up.”
A playful smirk stretched your lips. “Collateral? What did you have in mind, then?”
He stepped closer, closing the gap between the two of you. Your breathing hitched once more as you stared into his blue eyes, which kept glancing from your eyes to your lips. “This,” he whispered in a deep voice as his lips pressed against yours. One of his hands pressed against the small of your back to pull you closer in the embrace. You could have melted from the kiss, but the annoyingly responsible side of you nagged to pull away after a few moments of bliss.
No words needed to be exchanged after that private moment. You flashed a smile his way before turning away from him – leaving a dazed Scottish boy alone on the sidewalk, his heart fluttering in his chest.
---
Maybe it was the kiss that brought you back. Maybe it was the riskiness of it all – of time traveling back and forth and hoping not to get caught like lovers who sneak out in the late hours of the night. And, maybe, it was him. The charm, the blue eyes, hell, even the accent. Something kept pulling you back – and you ended up traveling back and forth a few more times after that to meet with him again. A month into the endeavor, though, you almost got caught in your miscellaneous travels, and had to lay low. There were dangers to excessive traveling – especially when you were traveling to around the same time each trip.
Consequently, you knew being caught would come with worse ramifications – your equipment revoked, your termination, and a possible memory wipe to keep you from wondering about your experiences. So, you waited. For nearly a year and a half, you kept your time traveling to work-only. In this time, you read up on Collins – anything you could find online you’d consume instantly.
What you found was… heart breaking, to say the least. You’d read that he married and had kids and grandkids and lived a full and happy life, without you. It was selfish of you to think that way, but you couldn’t help but have your heart sink every time you thought of it. And so, you came up with a solution.
If you don’t go back – if you leave him heartbroken – what if he never meets the woman who he will marry? He broods, stays indoors, and misses his life-changing moment. You couldn’t do that to him; you wanted him to be happy. Even after all this time, his happiness was important to you.
You’d decided to come clean to him the night you went to his house for the first time, which was only a week since you last saw each other for him but forever for you. It was risky to tell anybody in the past of the secrets from the future, but to leave Collins without the truth would kill you.
It was a night like all others you had spent with him – bellies filled with beer, giggles cutting off most of your sentences. After spending so much time away from these memories, seeing them alive again felt like a wave of nostalgia hitting you. In fact, upon seeing Collins for the first time that night, you had to stop yourself from tearing up and remarking over how good he looked (though you may have hugged for just a tad too long - but you’re sure he didn’t mind).
You walked with him back to his house, knowing that a private place would be the best location to reveal your deepest secret. The stars were shining brightly that night as he kept an arm around your shoulders to keep you warm from the chilly night air. In another life, maybe this could have been a lovely routine.
“You can take a seat, if you’d like,” he stated as you entered the front door into the living room. It was modestly decorated, and you saw that he was referring to a brown couch in the middle of the room. He finished hanging your coat up on the coatrack before joining you.
“Jack, I need to tell you something,” you started, your eyes transfixed on your folded hands in your lap. You could feel him tense up beside you, as if expecting some terrible news. To be fair, it wasn’t going to be good news. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I sincerely hope you do.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, causing you to continue. You looked up into his eyes as you began to speak, though the concern and desperation was easily noticeable. It made your stomach tighten as words struggled to come out. “I’m a time traveler.”
Dead silence. You wondered if he thought you were crazy, or just coming up with some lie to explain not being able to see him. You shook the thoughts from your mind and continued. “The night we met, I was on a mission to retrieve important documents. I’m from the future, and I didn’t mean to meet you or keep this going for as long as it did, but –”
“If you wanted to end things, you could’ve just said so,” he cut off, his voice sharp and filled with hurt. “I would’ve understood that instead of stringing me on.”
“No, no that’s not it, I swear,” you hastily tried to explain as you searched his eyes. Your own filled with tears as you denied his assumptions. Your words came out in a blurry as you hoped he would listen to your explanation. “They always warned us not to even say hi to anybody on our missions because we could grow attached and I see what they mean now because I’m in love with you and I don’t want to leave you.”
He froze when those words came out of your mouth. You did, too, for you didn’t realize what you had said until moments after you had uttered it. You saw his eyes soften, offering you a small glimmer of hope to further make him believe.
“Look,” you said, fumbling through your pockets to find the time-travel device you always kept on you. It was a thin, rectangular device that projected a clock with blue digits, showing the year, month, day, hour, and second. “I can change the settings to a few seconds from now, if you want me to demonstrate –”
“No.” Collins interjected, his eyes moving from the projected numbers to your own gaze, then he brought his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. “No, I believe you. I just – it’s hard to think about.”
“I know,” you pocketed the device. The next part was going to be even harder to get through. “It’s dangerous for me to keep teleporting back and forth. This is going to be the last time I can see you.”
“What?” His head shot up and searched your eyes for any sign of deception. “What do you mean?”
“Time traveling excessively to the same place and around the same time can severely alter the future, and that’s the best-case scenario,” you continued, your throat tightening as you saw the desperation cross his features. “I can’t come back here again.”
“Then just stay here. With me, in this time,” Collins offered. You knew he’d plead for that, and you had toyed around with the idea of staying in this time – but ultimately you knew that couldn’t work out. “I can take care of you here.”
“I can’t leave my home,” you answered firmly, though inside you were anything but. You felt like you would break at any moment. “I’m sorry, Collins, it’s just not an option. If I stay here, something worse could happen to my timeline in the future. I could even cease to exist.”
The last sentence cause Collins to understand why you couldn’t stay behind. What would be the point in you staying if you ended up disappearing in the end? Wordlessly, he got up and disappeared into a hallway. You watched him go, puzzled as to what he was doing, and saw him come back with a record in his hand. He placed it on the record player sat on a table in the living room, and soon the melodic sounds of a trumpet began to fill the air.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5THTGXG0sA)
He walked back to you and offered you his hand. In an effortless action, he pulled you to your feet and held you close to him. You two began gently swaying as the music swelled, his hand on your waist and his other clasped around yours tightly.
“I figure we can have our first and last dance together, right, future girl?” he whispered into your ear as you spun around his living room. You smiled at his nickname and nodded into his chest.
“Of course.”
He held you tightly throughout the song, as if you would disappear from him if his grip was too loose.
“I’m in love with you, too. And if this is the last time I’ll ever see you, I want you to know that.” He whispered into your ear. You kept yourself from looking at him then, for you knew you’d start crying if you did.
You finally looked up at him as the song came to an end and, without a moment’s hesitation, he brought his lips to yours in one last, longing kiss. When the kiss ended, you noticed his eyes welling up with tears. You wiped one stray tear away with your thumb and brought his cheek to your lips to give it a small peck.
“Listen, I need you to forget about me,” you started, and you saw how your words made his features mix with confusion. He was about to protest when you began again. “If our meeting stops you from your destiny – from meeting your future wife and having the kids you were meant to have – who knows what could happen to my world. I need you to live your life like I never existed.”
Collins was silent for a few moments, as if trying to find any reason to disagree with you. Finally, he sighed, and nodded. “It won’t be easy, you know. You’re unforgettable, and I won’t ever stop wishing for my destiny to be… you.”
Silence fell between the two of you, as you melted back into his arms for a last embrace before going into the dark of the night and leaving Jack Collins alone in his living room, his heart plummeting in his chest.
---
Jack Collins sat in his room at the nursing home, his eyes reading the morning newspaper behind a pair of thick bifocals but not taking in any of its meaning. He was in his 70s, his hair faded into a white and slowly falling out. With his faint hearing, he thought he heard the melodic beginning of a Louis Armstrong song play from the doorway. He turned slightly, and started when he saw who was standing in it.
You. And you looked the same as you did that night all those years ago. He stood up, afraid that he was imagining it. You set the speaker playing the same song the two of you danced to on a nearby table and smiled at him.
“Mr. Collins. Fancy a dance?” You asked as you held your hand out. His wrinkled one was placed in yours and the two of you began swaying in a much similar fashion to the way you did in his living room, though a bit slower. Nurses passing by the doorway pondered for a moment if one of his granddaughters had come to visit, but the truth of it was only shared between the two of you.
“Are you going to leave again?” He asked when the song ended, though his tone was more playful than it was sad.
“Actually, I’ll be here for a while this time, I can afford to be,” you replied with a smile. Soon the two of you were sitting in the two arm chairs in his room, you listening to the stories of his life after you left. You listened with excitement, your soft hand placed over his aged one, as he even retold how excited he was when he met you. His wrinkled face lightened up with the recalling of all his fond memories. How nervous he was when he waited for you to arrive each night, afraid you were too out of his league to come back to him.
“But you always showed up, and knowing now how difficult it was for you to keep your word, well, it means a lot to me even more.” He said and smiled fondly at you. “And look, you even came back to me now. A little late, but I guess it’s better late than never.”
“You have not lost your sarcasm,” you replied with a giggle. He gave your hand a gentle squeeze.
“I do mean it, though. It’s great to see you again – I never thought I would.”
That night, Jack Collins passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 73. He lived a long and fruitful life, and is survived by his children and grandchildren. You, of course, knew this when you traveled back to see him, and hoped that he was content that the last thing he’d see before falling asleep that night was the smiling, happy face of his future girl.
so, i updated the collins x reader one shot i have on my blog w the help of a friend editing it with me, and getting advice from another lens.
the total word count is now well over 3,000 words....YIKES and honestly i love the idea so much it mightt even get it’s own series dedicated to it. who knows.
anyway, click anywhere on this sentence and you’ll be redirected to it.
if you’ve already read it, i’ve just added some dialogue and extra explanations to make things hopefully more understandable. plus, there’s some time jumps. if you skim over, you should be able to see what’s been added. reminder: requests are still open~
