She leans over him, all sly smiles and eagerness, gently pressing her lips to his forehead, his temples, his nose, his cheeks, his lips. "Happy birthday, Jack," she murmurs before sitting up, revealing a neatly made tray of pancakes with all the fixings---his favorite. "Another year older, another year hotter. How do you manage that?"
His head had tipped back against the top cushion of the couch, eyes half-closed as he slowly drifted into sleep the further some lackluster Sunday program on the TV progressed. Jack enjoyed days off, enjoyed the dozing opportunities and the time he spent with Liv doing various things that had no mention whatsoever of weapons, drills, briefings, sims, and all the other daunting topics and parts of his daily routine. He would spend his mornings sleeping in and the evenings with his girlfriend at a nice Mexican restaurant. It was probably a dull existence compared to some other people, but it worked for them.
The soldier was immediately aware of her presence the moment she leaned over the back of it, the pressing feel of another being almost making him want to open his eyes, but his trust in her did not fail as her lips touched upon his forehead. Jack’s eyes remained closed as she moved from place to place, and kissed her back in earnest when her lips touched his. When she pulled away, he had a gentle smile to his face and blue hues looked up at her. “My birthday?” He asked, raising a brow, but of course he was toeing around it. He knew exactly what today was.
His eyes widened mildly at the stack of pancakes and he sat up a bit straighter to take the plate from her, surprise blooming across his features. Damn, Olivia knew him well. He had not told her that his birthday was coming up, didn’t drop any subtle hints that she may want to hunt for a gift. It was not a test for her to pass on whether she remembered his birthday or not; he wouldn’t have minded if it had gone unnoticed. Gifts were not a big deal to him and never would be -- though among other vices, he never sticks to that rule when it concerns other people’s birthdays.
”....Wow, Liv,” Jack said, his gaze glued to the pancakes except to briefly glance at Liv and take hold of her hand. “You really went all out with these. These look fantastic.”
Bringing her hand to his lips, he gave it a squeeze and craned his head to look at her, a genuinely happy smile on his face. “Thank you.”
[bc i’m trash and i needed practice and something not horse-related and oh i fucking love these two
The two Mitchell boys 8′) Oliver/Ollie and James/Jamie. Ollie is the oldest of the four and Jamie is the youngest (he has a twin sister). that’s all i’ll say for now since I drew them as adults and they don’t even exist yet woops]
His smirk is a mischievous one, one that says if honesty was one of his key virtues he may just call her out on it, but instead he gathers her in his arm and places a soft kiss on her nose.
Your wife is dead, Mitchell. Bleeding out in your own bed, no less. The blood trail leads you up the stairs to your room, and there she is. Funny how you can save the whole world, but you can never quite save /her/.
x | accepting (fuck u)
He tries to stop it. He does. He always does.
The sound of his footsteps is too surreal as he bolts up the stairs, shouting for her as if she will answer him. When he finds her, when he presses his fingers down on her wound without a second thought, he knows. He knows what’s already taken place. The blood only pools around his fingers, dipping them into a basin of it as her faded brown hues stare at him accusingly. Panic wrenches his chest and he shakes his head time and time again, yelling, begging, pleading for a way to fix this. But there isn’t one. There never is. All he can do is draw his bloody hands away, feeling them burn with guilt and grief and the madness in between. You did this. Liv’s deadened gaze says nothing and everything. You were not fast enough. Strong enough. Smart enough. You are responsible for this. You did this. No. No, no no no no. Please.
I didn’t.
You did.
I didn’t – -
You did this, Habibi.
Suddenly he’s lurching upwards, coughing and sputtering and clawing at his throat as he chokes on his own breath. His lungs refuse to work, refuse to grant a guilty man air, and he feels like he’s suffocating. He is suffocating. In the dark of the room he knows nothing but the name of fear, the crippling sensation that he has (or he thought) managed to dodge time and time again. It’s caught up with him now, tormenting him, making him pay with every strangled breath he manages to draw.
Why? Sweat has made his hair stick to his forehead and his clothes cling to his tacky skin. One hand curls into his shirt while the other digs into the comforter. A name – his – is barely audible over his rasps, with a voice different than his own, but Jack doesn’t register it. Why is this shit happening? The thought that in some part of his mind lay all these dreams, these horrible attacks conjured from his own head, makes him sick – really sick. As the first fear-born wave of nausea rolls over him he lunges towards the bathroom, barely making it before his stomach empties itself.
Liv isn’t the first one who has visited him in these nightmares. Will’s death tormented Jack for months during his recuperation. Then came Cormack, bleeding out in the bed of the truck. Then Irons, face burning and accusations waiting for his prodigal son. More came along without prompt – Gideon. Joker. Ilona. His parents. His brothers. People he’s lost and people he hasn’t. A voice says his name again, higher-pitched and more afraid, but he saw nothing and heard little with his eyes shut tight and his stomach seizing.
The nights involving Liv are the worst for him. Losing your wife was a painful concept to think about, something that should only occur at old age in reality – and he was living it multiple ways in the past month. Such terrors always brought on a burden of paranoia, with shifty glares at strangers in grocery isles and double-checked locked doors and unsettled calls when he lost sight of her in even the smallest areas. It was too much. He couldn’t handle this. It was too much. It’s only a dream, he would scold himself. It can’t hurt you.
And yet – his dreams were the very reason why he was down on his knees, hands fisted into the tresses of his hair as he threw up everything he had in him and adrenaline raced through his veins. He was fucking special operations, and here he sat trembling like a rookie recruit who ran too many laps in training. This was the lowest he’d hit in a long time.
Cool fingers gently brush his sweat-drenched curls away from his face as his sickness slowly reduces to dry heaves. The fear still resides, still makes his hands shake, but his senses are coming back to him. His mind is coming back to him. Though his throat is burnt and raw and angry when he swallows, he lifts his head ever so slightly and calls, “Olivia,” which is automatically met with a low shhh.
“I’m here,” Liv soothes, and her hand shifts from his forehead to his back. “I’m here, Habibi.”
He prays she doesn’t notice him flinch at the name.
Clearing his throat once, twice, three times, he opens his eyes just a bit – but avoids her gaze. A shame like no other prevents him from looking at her, an ugly embarrassment that makes his face white instead of red, but she doesn’t ask him to look at her. Instead she offers him a towel, which he silently accepts and places to his mouth.
They stay like that for a moment, with no movement except for the small circles her palm makes across his shoulders and the clenching and unclenching of his open fist. When his heart rate begins to slow and he doesn’t find himself thinking so chaotically, he speaks with a rugged voice. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” She replies quietly, trying to be the same grounding point she always is for him, but there’s a waver in the last note that he doesn’t miss. His outburst had scared her just as it had scared him. I can’t keep doing this, Jack thinks. I can’t – I can’t do this. Not to her. “What time is it?”
“Around two.”
He nods, cloth still pressed over his mouth, and sits back, scooting until he presses against a wall. Liv follows suit, taking his hand in hers. After a pause, as if she’s garnering the words to say, squeezes his hand and rests her head lightly on his shoulder. “Again?”
Again. Jack’s eyes fall closed once more and he sighs, nodding slowly. She’s been dealing with these episodes for a few years now, too; the jolts, the panic, the disoriented look. But never this bad. His head drops like a dog that’s done something wrong. “….Yeah, again.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Jack,” Liv replies, and it’s his turn to squeeze her hand. Another pause. “Maybe you should stay home today.”
“I can’t,” He says. There’s a deflated look to him, a beaten and battered appearance that gives him ten added years on the lines of his already aging face. He clears his throat again. “Mission brief’s today. I’m sure it was just something I ate– -”
“Jackson,” Liv’s voice is soft, but the warning is there underneath. “I’ll handle Kingpin.”
The way his jaw tightens tells her he’s not happy with the idea, but he’s too tired, too worried about her to argue. “…Yeah, alright.” As he says it, his eyes water without warning and his throat closes up. He sniffs.
”I’m sorry,” He murmurs. “I’m sorry, Liv, I’m sorry…”
His voice quivers with his shoulders and he lets out a shameful, choked sob, one he quickly tries but fails to silence. The apologies repeat like a mantra as Liv pulls him to her chest, trying to soothe the man who’s fought too hard and gained too much burden.
“It’s alright, Jack,” She whispers to him. “It’s alright.”
And it is. When he rises in the morning, with weary eyes and a mildly green face, he forgets her suggestion. She knows he doesn’t -- especially when she hints that he should stay -- but he merely shrugs and tries to slip back into a normal routine, as if nothing had ever occurred between them. It’s alright. It is, indeed, alright. Because it has to be. Because he’s got nowhere to go if it isn’t.
x | limitedsend me □ for your muse to fall on mine and land on top of them
» He knows he’s slipping into the ‘hopeless’ level as the time between them progresses. Coming into her workshop when he’s available has become past ‘often’ and fled right to ‘expected,’ a routine he would pretend to not notice but absolutely does. The small little smirks, the tiny comments here and there -- all of it skirts around the elephant in the room every day, like a game, and each day he just grows more and more patient. Does he like her? Oh, absolutely. But he’s perfectly content to remain like this, to draw the line here if she wanted. It’s more than enough just to make his daily visits.
When he steps through her automatic door again, the music is cranked up as usual and she’s standing over one of her newest projects. Just like always, he takes his spot on his favorite stool, head tipping as he tried to get a glimpse at what new grand thing she was tinkering with. But instead of her usual acknowledgement of his presence, be it with a small glance and soft smile or even a “Hey, Mitchell,” she remains quiet, focused solely on the trouble the pieces of the puzzle were giving her. Part of him wants to ask, but the other part knows better. He remains silent, ever relaxed, waiting for her to dictate the cards that are played. Silence is key; even offering assistance can ruin concentration -- which he’s learned the hard way a time or two before. No, he’d just watch her work.
It never fails. Eventually, she surfaces long enough to look at him and ask, “Mitchell, can you help me with something real quick?”
Of course, he’s springing up to the task. “Uh -- sure,” He says, an inquisitive look on his face as she makes room for him. It’s complex, whatever it is, and a long ways away from being finished. Two small squares of steel overlap, small holes drilled every quarter inch down the touching sides, covering what appeared to be delicate circuit boards and wiring. One of Liv’s gloved hands tap the two sheets, the other opening up and revealing screws. “I need you to line the holes up so that I can insert these. They’re not cooperating and I can’t do it with just two hands.”
“Copy that,” Jack says, automatically responding to a given order. He thinks he sees Liv smirk at the odd phrase. Reaching forwards, careful to leave room for her to work, he holds the pieces in the proper place. Liv ducks under his arm to get a closer look, popping in the screws one by one. (Though he tries to keep his mind off of it, he doesn’t miss how he has to crane his head to keep from bumping into her. She’s so close.)
“There!” Her sigh is airy as she withdraws, mouth twisted into an expression that looks half relieved, half frustrated. Brown hues flicker to blue and she nods to him. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” The soldier replies, offering up a small smile to her. “What -- is this thing, any--- !”
He had tried to take a step back, to stand beside her, but cord of her radio had caught on the end heel of his army boot and he stumbled backwards -- right into Liv. There’s only unanimous gasps of surprise as they both go down, and it’s by sheer luck that he manages to twist around and shove his palms out. When his elbows lock at a 90 degree, a sore crackle of pain runs up his flesh arm, but he doesn’t feel it. In fact, he’ll be damned if he can feel anything.
Because holy hell he’s mere inches away from her face, his own surprise reflected in Liv’s elegant features, and her hands are braced against the broad expanse of his chest. The stereo has gone silent, the plug pulled, leaving nothing but the heated breathing brought on by a sudden adrenaline surge from the two of them. He can feel his ears get redder and redder as he realizes what an embarrassing mistake he just made, and suddenly he’s off of her, rushing to his feet. “Oh, Olivia, I’m -- so sorry, ma’am, really, I just -- “
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Liv responds, breathless, and she accepts the hand he offers to pull her upright. A flurry of dissonance between them erupts as Jack continues his chaotic formal apologies and Liv tries to disarm them, reassuring him that she was not, indeed, hurt -- and she didn’t believe in the slightest it was intentional. “Call me ‘Ms.’ or ‘Ma’am’ one more time again, Mitchell,” She finally warns jokingly. “I tell you this all the time -- Liv. Do I look fifty to you?”
It shuts him up, all right. He retreats back to his stool (with another quick, “I really am sorry,”) and she pauses to plug in her radio again before returning to her work. Despite the music playing loud and the scene returned to some semblance of normalcy, neither of them can hide the darker tones of red on their faces.
[text] One of us needs to be functional tomorrow and it won’t be me. I’m drinking liquor out of a fishbowl.
x | accepting
[ TEXT : 12:47 a.m. ; LIV ] : okay 2 questions[ TEXT : 12:47 a.m. ; LIV ] : 1) where are you[ TEXT : 12:48 a.m. ; LIV ] : 2) how did you get a fishbowl to drink booze out of anyways
» The sudden flood of light startles him awake, and immediately squinted eyes and a hiss of breath accompany his sudden consciousness. “-- Liv,” He grunts, rolling away from the window’s blinding light, “Close that.”
