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afiniteredwood · 1 year

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Self-indulgent angsty fanfiction for @hybbart 's Ranchers Apocalypse AU :) I haven't stopped thinking about these guys for a solid month. The number of things I had to change after the first draft because I read the Notes Posts is incredible so don't hesitate to mention if I messed up the details somewhere

(Meet Me In The Woods by Lord Huron)

Day 543

Sleeping next to Jimmy objectively sucks.

Don't get Tango wrong- Jimmy is wonderful, a sleepy hugger and a furnace of a man, and Tango is never cold during the winter months. And, mostly, he doesn't have nightmares and doesn't talk in his sleep and Tango knows that he does that. Really, Jimmy has it worse.

But Jimmy is also all ruffled feathers and whimpered noises brought on by elbowed and healing wounds, and the click-fssssssss of the breathing machine, only worsened after his recent battle with pneumonia. It becomes hard to breathe next to him, the farm dust once trapped in Jimmy’s wings clouding into the air whenever he rolls and the regular rumbling of the machine instilling preemptive terror in Tango’s stomach.

Still, on most nights, it is entirely bearable. Tango sleeps. On the days when he does sleep, he sleeps like the still-dead, and on the days where he doesn’t it’s because of the nightmares or the fact he has pointedly not taken his metal arm off, not because of Jimmy.

He always dreams of blood on his hands, spilling in rivulets down his clammy skin. Not what has happened to them, not what could happen, just blood. It’s probably Jimmy’s.

So when, two hours after he had bade ‘Goodnight’ to the bedroom already full of the sound of Jimmy’s even breathing, he gets up and sneaks out again, it is an unusual thing. Revy notices his loss, curled up at the end of the bed, raising his head once and whining. Tango shuts the door softly on him. Revy returns his head to Jimmy’s thigh.

Yellow eyes open in the muted dark.

Tango’s sneaking isn’t particularly effective. (It terrifies him a little, how easy it would be for one of the undead to kill him now.) He’s so tired he feels like he could pass out at any second, and really, the creaking of the farmhouse with every gentle gust of wind is more than Tango will ever be able to unsubtly make.

He makes it to the bottom floor, following the moonlight marking a square of light up the stairs from the glass patio doors to his feet. Spring is still only a dream, so the floor is cold beneath him, and he stands on tip-toes to stumble towards the doors. Something wants him out there- something about being one with nature, of just being able to sit and breathe and relax for a blissfully freezing moment.

Opening the door is difficult with fingers numb from cold on one hand and metal fingers clicking ineffectively over the lock on the other, but he manages. Shit, but it takes him ages though, trying awkwardly to turn the key in the lock with his flesh-and-blood hand and using his other hand crossed over to turn the handle even though the angle hurts. It’s fine. He’s capable of doing whatever needs doing.

He continues unsteadily outwards, dropping down to sit on the edge of the patio when he reaches it, legs dangling in the empty space below him. The forest is spread out in front of him, the house backing directly onto the wildlife that before-the-apocalypse had never allowed him. Quiet. If the apocalypse has done anything good, it has brought silence. It’s too early in the morning yet for birds, but there is wind through the trees and the sleepy mooing of distant cows and the even more distant, barely audible and mostly harmonious groans of the undead.

He hooks one leg back up onto the patio and hugs it against his chest, resting his chin on his knee.

It should be colder than this, really, but it is an exceptionally early spring this year. Already the ground is beginning to thaw during the day and the old seeds in the tool shed have started to smell damp and earthy again. At night and this early in the morning, it is still bitterly cold, but it's not quite as cold as it should be- not quite.

Tango exhales and his breath crystalizes in the air in front of his face. He shivers in his t-shirt and hugs his knee tighter and thinks of Jimmy.

Jimmy stands at the top of the stairs and wonders what he must have done in a past life to deserve Tango. Something great, surely- he must have been a hero.

There is a certain sharp beauty to the way that Tango is outlined against the darkness with his blue fire and sparks that makes Jimmy think of gods he doesn’t believe in. He’s just sitting there, shivering and exhaling stars, and he looks so entirely ethereal doing it. Totally silent, just the regular hum of his breathing that Jimmy can only see from this distance, beautifully poised, like a beast that Jimmy could startle into bolting at any moment.

But he carries the same inherent fear in him as wild animals do, and Jimmy frowns. Tango is never usually scared- not how he is now, hunched in on himself with one hand gripping the deck in the way that only Jimmy can see the tension in. He is only ever on edge, only ever afraid for someone else, only ever worried when there is genuine danger on the horizon.

Jimmy takes a step closer, down the stairs, grimacing at the noise it makes. Tango does nothing, so he shakes his wings gently and cracks his knuckles and breathes louder through his mouth than he usually does in an attempt to not scare Tango out of his skin when he makes his presence known. Nothing.

He abandons any subtlety and follows Tango’s elongated shadow to the open doors, quiet regardless of how much he tries not to be. The doorframe is cold underneath his fingertips.

Tango might be crying- he’s not sure. Noise outlines him in gold and cyan and it ripples with every breath, peaking at weird times that could be from tears or could just be the wind around the collar of his shirt. Jimmy’s almost too scared to ask- does he really want to know why Tango is crying? Why he’s scared? Why he’s hanging onto the back porch of the house Jimmy found for them like he’s fighting the urge to slip down and run away forever?

Yes, Jimmy decides. Yes, he does want to know.

“Tango?” that voice says from the doorway, soft as anything. “Are you working on something?”

Tango does his absolute best not to jump, but he’s pretty sure that Jimmy notices anyway. He shakes his head to dissolve the tension in his frozen muscles, turning only slightly to look at Jimmy’s shadow’s head. He wipes his tears on the back of his hand entirely unsubtly.

“No,” he admits, an invitation bare and raw in his voice. “Not really.”

Jimmy’s exhale casts a faint shadow next to his face in his image on the deck, pluming outwards from where his mouth must be. Jimmy has always had a fun shadow, Tango notices absently- deformed up around his shoulders where he isn’t really, his wings held awkwardly up against the cold. It really does make Jimmy look strange, like some kind of monster, shifting and growing- Jimmy drops down beside him, leaning defiantly back on the heels of his hands and looking up at the sky.

Tango swallows his heart and looks at the ground, where he’s sure he won’t see Jimmy’s face. Whatever, Jimmy has a face like a deity incarnated into the body of someone who has known what love is, whatever. There are plenty of those around, plenty of people who make him want to hide himself away because all his fire and grace pale in comparison to the solid humanity of the man next to him.

“What’s on your mind?” Jimmy asks, before the silence swallows them both.

“Nothing,” Tango says, his eyes on the ground, the tone of his voice meaning ‘Ask me again and I’ll tell you about how I don’t think I ever made my mother proud, and how she’s probably dead now so I’ll never get to know whether I did. Ask that question again and I’ll tell you how there is so little left of her in the world, and how little there was of her when we lived together, and how there was so much more I could’ve done for her that I never did and will never get to do. Ask me again and I’ll tell you that I regret every decision I’ve made since the end of the world, even in and with you and guided by your hand.’

A gust of wind through the trees and a bird coos softly into the open air.

“Tell me,” Jimmy says anyway, face half-turned to catch the sharp moonlight and to try to meet Tango’s eyes. “What are you thinking about?”

The dog comes pattering out from the house behind them, having followed a few minutes after Jimmy. He shakes himself all over and grunts, then settles down between the two of them and noses at Tango’s hand until Tango gives in and pets him.

“Big man,” Tango says, smiling, avoiding the question. “Big shake- oh he wants some scritchies, does he?”

Jimmy frowns at him, but pets Revy too all the same.

“Tango.”

Tango sighs and cannot bring himself to look at Jimmy. Instead, he finds himself looking outwards, at the forest from which one of the undead stragglers could emerge at any time and they would never be prepared in time to defend themselves.

“Don’t you ever feel like you’re running on borrowed time?” he asks the forest, voice quiet and careful.

Jimmy says, “No!” and laughs with such ferocity that it startles Tango into looking at him. Revy leaps up at the sound and jumps and dances around them, barking in the ‘play with me!’ manner that all dogs do when the air around them is happy.

Shit- Tango remembers why he had known it would be a bad idea from the beginning to look.

With his head thrown back and hair tangled around his ears, moonlight catching on his throat and on the fragments of glass and sand still in his wings, Jimmy looks every bit the picture of brilliance. Whatever god has possessed him has made him beautiful, has made the night split about him and the sun spill from his eyes when he opens them to look back at Tango.

Tango’s not sure what face he’s making. Something just short of shock, no doubt- genuine affection blooming in his chest and sneaking onto his face along with this new sort of amazement. He feels himself smile and Jimmy's genuine happiness is so damn contagious that he can't help it even if he doesn't mean the emotion behind the smile. It’s just such a strange reaction, and so much more so from someone like Jimmy-

“Why are you laughing?” he still has to ask, even as Jimmy is still giggling into his hands. “Jimmy?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Jimmy amends, tears in his eyes. “I just- you feel that way?”

Tango has to look back into the distance. Yes.

“Yeah.”

Jimmy has no joy in him anymore.

“Oh- I- sorry.” He swallows and returns his hands to the dog, who has fallen back onto the deck with her belly in the air. “Tell me. What do you mean?”

Tango sighs. This was meant to be an emotion dealt with alone.

“You know,” he starts, before realizing how clearly Jimmy does not know. “I mean- we’re still just running from the end of the world. We’re never really going to be safe, are we? We’re always going to be living like this.”

Jimmy tries and fails to not take that comment to heart. Like this- like what? Trapped oh-so-cruelly in the house he had chosen for them, bound by the land nourished by their own hands and the burden of the animals they have given hope to with their presence? Oh, what a truly horrible fate it is, to have to live with one’s friends and family in the countryside.

“You don’t…” Jimmy casts around for words that won’t come out sour and hurtful. “You don’t want to live like this?”

Something in his tone catches Tango’s attention (maybe it’s the betrayal squirming just beneath his skin) and he looks up.

“I don’t want to live during an apocalypse, Jimmy. I don’t want to be in danger. I don't like being scared all the time.”

Oh. Understandable, but-

“We’re not in danger now, are we?”

Tango frowns at him. “That’s not the point-”

“No, but….” He hesitates. “I don’t know. I don’t think we’re running out of time.” That’s not what I said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted, Tango- a farm and a family and a dog and freedom and, you know, what we have.”

“No- not that we’re running out of time.” Something grips Tango and he wants to say things that he’ll regret. “We’re running on borrowed time. It’s going to catch up to us eventually.”

Jimmy laughs. “Same thing, really.”

Tango shakes his head but it doesn’t matter anyway because Jimmy isn’t looking at him anymore. Instead, he stretches out and lies back on the deck, feet still dangling over the edge, wings crushed beneath him, looking at the sky. Revy squeaks and wiggles over to sit next to him, planting his face on Jimmy’s chest.

“We’ll take whatever comes to us, Tango,” he says, somehow with so much calm certainty that it’s almost convincing. “No matter what. We’re going to be okay.”

Tango wonders whether that’s a lie.

“Okay,” he says instead of asking whether it is. “Okay. Okay. Yeah.”

Jimmy glances over at him. There’s nothing but uncertainty in Tango’s self-reassurance.

“Trust me.” Jimmy reaches out to touch whatever part of Tango he can reach- his upturned palm on the deck between them, the metal of it cold. “Tango. Trust me. We’ll get through this.”

Tango’s hand twitches towards the space where his other arm should be and he chokes on a pained whimper- shit, fuck, losing a limb shouldn’t keep hurting after it’s gone. Revy’s ragged tail wags between them in his almost-sleep.

“Okay.”

Sensing the lack of conviction in Tangos’ voice, Jimmy grabs Tango’s arm and tugs him to lie down next to him- well, as close as they can get with the dog snuggled into the little space between them. Tango has never been so uncomfortable in his entire life. He doesn’t move.

“Tango,” Jimmy says, rolling onto his side to take Tango’s face in both of his warm hands. “I promise. We’re going to be okay.”

Tango doesn’t mean to, but he’s crying again, so Jimmy clambers over the dog to crush Tango in an embrace, tucking him close to his chest. Tango struggles closer still, sobbing into Jimmy’s shirt as he clutches onto it.

Jimmy hushes him, rubbing his back in circles. His every breath sounds that little bit more laboured with the air spilling out from the cannula, and Tango’s metal arm is stabbing him in the side.

“We’ll be okay,” he whispers. Tango nods furiously, desperately. Jimmy is briefly glad that Tango’s fire does not catch on other people. “We’re going to be alright.”

Tango makes a choked noise and manages, “We’re going to be okay,” his voice watery and sharp with tears.

Jimmy half-smiles, continuing to rub circles onto Tango’s back. Revy pokes him in the shoulder with his nose and curls up again near Tango’s head. Tango’s whole body shakes with every sob.

“We’re going to be okay,” Jimmy reiterates quietly. “I’ve got you, Tango. We’re going to be okay.”

#tango tek #jimmy solidarity #solidaritygaming #team rancher #rancher apocalypse au #hybbart #fanfiction #angst #this is meant to fit pretty solidly within canon and i did my absolute best with it king #my writing

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