#Jack Nelson fanfic

[zablife]

Fragile Things

Jack Nelson x female reader

Author's Note: Written from an anon ask I can't find in my inbox anymore, requesting some soft, smutty Jack thru the seasons. It turned angsty at the end as I listened to "Munich" by the Editors, but I hope you still enjoy it! It's short with an open ending, but I thought I'd post it instead of letting it sit in my drafts any longer.

Warnings: hint of smut, mention of cheating

The open window blew a gentle spring breeze into the room along with the scent of lilacs you’d planted in the fall. You’d kept busy those dark months as Jack traveled, trying not to think what might happen if he never returned. It hadn’t been easy to calm yourself in the early days, whispering prayers into the wind. Your unsteady hands craved his touch upon your shoulder tethering you to reality. Without it, you felt as though you might float away. Sometimes you still found it difficult if he went too long without visiting.

But he’s here now, you thought as you gazed up at him, memorizing every golden fleck in his bright green irises. The feeling of his arms caging your upper body protectively was comforting and you dug your heels against the backs of his thighs, urging him nearer to your aching core. He pushed you further into the mattress with a deep stroke of his pelvis, full lips brushing yours before licking into your mouth hungrily. It was the first time your mind had truly quieted in weeks.

As you came down from your high, you whimpered at the loss of him as he withdrew from your body, rolling onto his back with a contented sigh. He reached for you with one arm, beckoning you to his side and you nuzzled into him. His fingers carded through your hair, massaging your scalp and tangling in your disheveled locks. You pressed your cheek against his bare chest to feel the rhythm of his heart, allowing it to lull you to sleep when he suddenly spoke. 

“Gotta go to New York tomorrow, doll,” he whispered on an exhale of breath. Closing your eyes against the tears threatening to fall, you snaked a hand around his waist possessively. It had only been two days since his return and the thought of him leaving again was too much to bear. You glanced at the clock on the bedside table quickly realizing your crushing loneliness was only hours away.

You sat up, clutching the bedsheet to your chest as you stared at Jack in disbelief. “Can't you stay any longer? You just got here,” you protested, hoping to change his mind.

Jack rubbed a hand along your back soothingly. “I know, angel, but it’s business. I have to,” he explained. Despite the softness in his voice, you took no solace in it.

Turning away from him to reach for his jacket, you fumbled in the dark for his cigarettes and lighter, needing something to distract you. “You’ll be a good girl for me, no pouting?,” he asked and without having to look, you could imagine his mouth curling into a charming smile. As your fingertips brushed paper, you frowned slightly. Pulling it from his pocket, you squinted in the light to make out a woman’s name and a New York address. Your heart dropped at the sight of the unfamiliar loopy handwriting and tomorrow's date inside a heart.

“Doll?” he called out when he realized you were softly shaking your head. His large hand came to rest atop your thigh and gave a gentle squeeze to get your attention, but your thoughts had drifted back where he could no longer reach you. You were somewhere in the garden planting flowers while he dined with her, falling asleep in a cold bed as he warmed hers and dreaming of a man who never thought of you.

You stood from the bed and glared down at him with a quiet anger he instantly recognized, the accusation written over your tear stained face. “People are fragile things, Jack,” you mused. “You should be careful what you put them through."

[evita-shelby]

They didn't know we were seeds

Chapter 6

Cw: sex trafficking, prostitution, allusions to child sexual assault

@justrainandcoffee @call-sign-shark @emotionalcadaver @peakyswritings

Eva knows he’s staring even as he tries to hide it.

Jack hasn’t spoken to her in the week leading up to the games and given that he’s on 2 and she on 10, their paths hardly cross until the big event begins.

Then they are shown to the grand hall where the games are viewed, where you schmooze sponsors who pay good money to be in the room and mingle with other mentors. It’s the first night of the games, all the big people are here, and attendance is mandatory.

Jack’s tributes have both made it to the career pack even if the boy isn’t strong enough to wrest control from the girl from 1. Eva’s lost the girl, Silvia, to blood loss, but Matty has made like a thief and gotten himself safe and in possession of a hatchet.

Matty is eighteen, has been working at a butcher shop since he was old enough to hold a knife and has been taking out tesserae since his dad was executed for cattle theft and poaching when he was thirteen.

She continues buttering up her favorite sponsor to convince him to sponsor him, hoping to get him into the finalists at least. Luca will do it, and she will pay for it the same way she paid for it four years ago: by fucking him.

Luca had paid an exorbitant fee for the honor of being her first, and while Eva would’ve never done that sort of work in a million years, there were worst candidates and becoming another cautionary tale like Haymitch made him incredibly desirable.

He was, as the Capitol tabloids called it, her sugar daddy. 16 years older than her with a penis that would shame a horse and controls the Capitol’s underworld and the very legal gambling dens.

Well, until he runs out of money or falls out of favor with Snow who chooses her customers and everyone else’s. Luca was her second client because his dear old dad kicked the bucket, and he did Snow’s dirty work for a price: his pick of the litter.

Besides, he could be worse and forced monogamy was easier than what some did to the others.

Enobaria from after her games had not fared as good as she did and after discovering that her filed teeth made her repulsive to these people, she went all out on it until she was taken out of the list. Cashmere, who won after her brother two games ago, had to pretend she was enjoying having men and women pawing at her and her brother and Finnick Odair wasn’t even allowed to wait until his dreaded 18th nameday going by the way the biggest donor leers at the fifteen-year-old boy.

The arena never ends, if Jack knew how right his words were, he would’ve never said them.

“Long time, no see, stranger.” Eva doesn’t mean to flirt, but it has become second nature to her these days. Just an angle she plays, the mysterious and sexy woman who needs a big strong man to satisfy her.

“You’ve become quite the whore since I last saw you.” He is blunt, a thing people attribute to his upbringing and not the torture inflicted upon him by the Capitol…or his mother’s slightly treasonous views.

“Your mentor never told you what happens to the pretty ones, didn’t he?” It sickens her, sometimes, to see what the Capitol made of her and hearing it from Jack stings.

Brutus pretends not to know because to say that he turns a blind eye when his former tributes are pimped out to pay for the games and other favors the president needs is as bad as doing the raping himself. And because he keeps his mouth shut and everyone knows he’s got the biggest crop of hot teenagers in his keep, they let him be.

Jack was spared because Lyme refused to let him join as a mentor claiming he was unstable after Laurie’s death, or so Eva heard. Except Lyme had to fold her hands and step away when Enobaria almost bit a client’s dick clean off last year and Snow demanded him to be put on the list.

Now Jack’s being put on the platter for deranged people who recapture their youth by stealing theirs. Eva hates how the women look at him, even worse, how some look at the two of them standing here together.

“That explains how they can afford it all.” Jack hides his disgust with a sip of his high-end whiskey. “Am I unattractive enough to be spared, Miss. Smith?”

He is flirting right back. Eva supposed time does heal all wounds going by the way Jack leans in close enough for him to smell his expensive cologne mingled with the whiskey. He’s still a dead ringer for his dad, and he’s outgrown the last of the softness of his teenage years making him rather striking leaving some of his resemblance to the boy she murdered behind him.

His confidence and envied pedigree make him almost as desirable as Cashmere and Gloss these days. He could drive the attention away from Finnick if he takes one for the team, let the kid turn sixteen at least. Some victors stick together to make this hell bearable, but others refuse to even give you a heads-up out of self-preservation.

Too soon to tell with Jack.

“Nope. Even if you were, your pedigree would make you as irresistible as poor Finnick over there.” She is honest with him just as he is with her and to keep the façade of flirtation going, she takes his whiskey with a wink. “You are trapped in this hell with me, pretty boy.”

“Laurie would’ve hated this.” He says quietly as grief gets a hold of his heart and gives it a good squeeze.

“Yeah, he would have.” Eva sobers up and drops the mask completely. The dark-haired woman gives him a genuine look of sympathy and a comforting hand on his arm.

He doesn’t flinch away as she expected.

“Do you think I’d be able to get the hag eying the little boy with my good looks?” he asks not hiding his disgust at the woman harassing 15-year-old Finnick all evening.

“You don’t have to, Jack.” Eva points out wondering if Laurie’s protective nature was something he and Jack shared too.

“We’re all trapped in this hell together, Evie. Besides Laurie would do the same if he was here.” Jack steels himself and offers her his arm as they scare the vultures off the youngest victor in known history.

It was never in his plans to seek her out.

Jack had promised himself to ignore her and do his job and yet he’s here sharing a cigarette after his first taste of the true burdens of being a victor.

He's practically raw from the scrubbing and essentially trying to power wash the sensation of shame and disgust he’s felt since he spoke to the old bat.

“Luca is not so bad, actually. He’s very possessive about his toys which keeps me off the table these past years.” Eva sports a gaudy and pricy diamond chocker she’s referring to as a dog collar and seems to have gotten past the initial stages of this new life.

Her strategy at the arena has worked here too, everyone knew what Changretta was capable of and even Snow seemed to fear his displeasure. No one dared to make a move on the sexy district 10 mentor even when he wasn’t around.

“I’m sorry I called you a whore.” Jack apologized for his initial assumption. Never in his life had he considered there is a punishment for winning the games. Well aside from the trauma that comes from being a tribute and then the kin of one.

“Whore, murderer, pet. Doesn’t faze me anymore, Jackie darling” she says imitating the grating voice the woman had after they succeeded in prying her off the boy. “But thanks anyways.”

She is nice underneath the mask she wears around the Capitol people; he has to admit. No longer the fragile shell of a girl he met during the victory tour, but still broken like all of them are.

“My real talent is woodwork, actually. Built myself a whole cabin in the woods with all the amenities.” Jack doesn’t know why he shares that with her when everyone else is told he likes hiking. “I also fix up cars for the hell of it now that I’m done.”

She smiles, “I make medicine, learned midwifery and bribed a medic to teach me the rest I didn’t know. I don’t like sitting still either.”

They were more than just pretty Capitol slaves; he thinks bitterly as he took a drag of her fancy cigarette before giving it back to her. These were hard to come by even in Two, and Eva was given all the contraband her heart asked for as long as she played the whore for her protector.

“Allies?” He asks knowing Eva won’t stab him in the back, in this arena at least.

“Allies.” Eva agrees, taking back her cigarette and adding quietly as if to herself, “You fix things, I fix people. Quite a team we make.”

Somehow, he finds himself in bed with her on the fifth night of the games.

She killed his brother, he tried to kill her and yet when Luca nuzzled and kissed Eva like he owned her, Jack wanted nothing more than to square up with the mobster.

So he waited to corner Eva at the elevator and kissed her like he wanted her. He did, in a fucked up way he wanted her, he had to admit.

“He will kill you.” Eva warns but doesn’t push him away. She wants him too. “He doesn’t like sharing his whores.”

“You’re not a whore, you’re not his, Evie.” Jack wasn’t afraid of Luca and tore off the diamonds from her neck to prove it.

It was worth the risk he thinks, see how far Luca’s power truly extends. He can’t kill a victor, especially one so publically adored like either of them.

“Jealousy is a good color on you, Jack.” She chuckles and kisses him back as hungry as he is for her.

There are no rules about fraternizing with a fellow mentor and even if there were neither care about following them.

Eva’s tribute is the only one to survive an arena event and becomes the winner of the 66th Hunger Games.

“See you in November.” He says as he kisses her goodbye.

What a pair they make, the victor who’s brother died in the games and the victor who killed him.

[michaelgraysmustache]

Office Quickie

Jack Nelson x Reader (SMUT)

A/N: All I am is stressed and horny. Please enjoy this dirty one-shot that I wrote on my plane ride back from brother’s graduation. 

WORD COUNT: 1,060

WARNINGS: NSFW, Smut

SUMMARY: Jack calls you in for a quick fuck before a meeting. You can’t get out fast enough and end up having to hide under his desk. 

"Go in Miss! Now!!" Jack's secretary, Margaret, hurried you along. Jack had been calling up your hour house all day trying to get you to drop by, but there was a family emergency so you were at your sister's house. It was only when you had come back home that evening that were you finally able to receive his message.

You opened the heavy wooden door to find Jack pacing the room. He looked tense. "Jack?" You asked, closing the door behind you "you said there was an emergency. I'm sorry that I couldn't come soon my nephew has been sick all morning."

He took a few long steps to cross the room, and before you knew it he had you pinned up against the door. Kissing you and growing in your ear, "I needed you. Fuck I needed you." His words left you dripping. Jack shaved every morning but by the evening his face was rough with stubble that scratch you as you kissed him. He kissed you desperately, mumbling something about the Italians and the meeting being moved to tonight. You didn't care to ask for more details, especially once his hands started exploring your body. Desperately grabbing at your breasts and ass, massaging them until you moaned into his mouth.

"Jack," you whined as he started to pull down your skirt. You helped him, unzipping the skirt and letting it fall to the floor around your ankles. He wasted no time yanking down your tights and panties. You started to unbutton your blouse but he stopped you,

"We have to be quick, Doll. They'll be here in ten minutes. I'll get you off after, I promise."

You rolled your eyes, pretending to be cross with him. But you knew that your lover would make good on his promise he always did. "Don't give me that look," he warned with a deep growl. "Bend over my desk," he pointed at the large wooden table and you eagerly followed. You grabbed your fallen clothes and walked over to them, placing them on the desk on it before bending over. Ass up, face down, like a good girl. You stood in between his two guest chairs, as you heard Jack unzip his pants and pull his cock out.

You looked over your shoulder and he smiled at you, lust in his eyes, as brought down a rough slap to your ass. It made your pussy clench as you let out a small cry of pain.

"Jack," you begged again and your wish was granted. Jack slammed his entire cock inside you. Forcing you to take it all in one go. "Good thing you get wet for me so fucking easily, sweetheart. I'd hate to hurt you." Funny, he'd always say things like that before grabbing fist fulls of your hair and pounding your pussy raw. He trapped you in between his body and the desk. The sturdy oak dug into your hips and thighs as he fucked you. Tears welling in your eyes as he showed no signs of slowing down.

The pain was worth it to hear his devilish moans fill the air around you two. You were making him feel so good. You pushed yourself up on your toes, raising your ass up higher, knowing he'd love that angle. "Mmmmm," he let out a low growl, "I'm close sweetheart."

"Mphffff" you urged him on, "cum inside me, Jack. Fill me up." You reached a hand and back and he scolded you, "we don't have time for that. Later, Doll."

"I'm reaching for this, sir." you took his balls in your hand. Holding and rolling the warm shaved parts. "Ohhhhh," he moaned cumming inside you as you smiled proudly.

"Fuck, baby girl. You always know how to take care of me." Still, inside you, he pulled you back and up for a kiss. You slipped your tongue into his mouth, hungry and wanting more. But he pulled away and scolded you again, "No. you need you to get dressed. The Mafia will be here soon." "The Mafia?!!" You screamed and he covered your mouth. Outside you heard a car door slam. What the hell was Jack getting himself into, fear filled your eyes. "Get dressed now and hide. Nothing bad is going to happen to you." He pulled you in for a hug, looking down at you with his silver-blue eyes. "Do you trust me?" You nodded, "good because I'm trusting you to not blow this for me. Get dressed and hide. I promise you that I'll make it up to you as soon as this meeting is done." You nodded and grabbed your clothes off his desk and he tucked his cock back inside his pants and combed his hair.

"Mr. Changretta," You heard Margaret loudly announced, giving you a final warning to hide. "Let me get the door for you." Jack looked at you and then motioned to his desk with his eyes. You knew what he wanted you to do. Hide underneath it. You nodded, quickly rushing to hide. Not bothering to dress.

There you sat for nearly half an hour as the men talked. You kept your hand over your mouth desperately trying to keep quiet. Cum dripping out of you. You felt so ashamed of how you were still turned on. Listening to jack conduct a meeting with the scariest men of the east coast while you hid under his desk, full of his cum.

The scent of cigar smoke filled the air, signaling that the meeting was almost over. You dared to reach one hand down and rub your clit. There was something about danger being so close that kept you wet.

So focused on your own pleasure, you hadn't noticed that the meeting had ended until Jack popped his down and said,

"You dirty doll! Did that turn you on?" He chuckled, offering a hand to help you up and out. He caught you as you stumbled forward, your legs were weary and tingly from being under the desk for long. He looked back at the carpet under the desk. "Looks like you made a mess," a dark puddle has formed from where his cum has leaked out. You looked back at it, face red with embarrassment. 

“Good thing you're so damn sexy. Now I believe that I promised you a reward."

[plentyoffandoms]

Main Masterlist ♡ Peaky Blinders Masterlist ♡ Jack Nelson Masterlist

Just like all my other stories, this has not been proofread, but please enjoy.

Gifs & photos do not belong to me.

Warnings: Some swearing.

Well this is alot longer than I expected it to be. Enjoy.

Summary: f/Reader is the nanny of Gina & Michael Gray & Jack takes a liking to her.

YN's POV:

"Shh, Shh, it is okay little one." I said to the young boy as I tried to comfort him. He can hear his parents arguing and his mother was yelling.

But then again when isn't Gina Gray yelling at her husband?

"How dare you talk to The Devil! Why does he have so much control over you Michael?" I can imagine the spoiled princess stomped her foot.

Laurence started to fuss again but I was able to calm him down well enough that he could play with a few of his toys without any fuss.

I just hope that his parents just drink themselves to sleep or fuck each other to get whatever frustrations that are plaguing them this day.

Just as I closed the bedroom door behind me, I saw Gina come stomping down that hall towards me.

I made sure to have my hands clasped infront of me and had my head down as she went past me.

Gina Gray and Michael Gray looked like the perfect couple in public. She was beautiful and he was handsome.

They had a beautiful child that was shown all over Boston just a few days after he was born.

But in this home, the love has faded, for at least one side. When Michael is away at work, Gina has one of her many men here or she spends the day at their place.

None of us can say a word obviously. It is our word against hers and in the end, her husband worships the very ground she walks on.

Just makes me shake my head at the thought. I can not imagine stepping out on my husband, but then again I am not married.

Even when I was in school I never once dated as I focused just on my studies. I was considered smart and beyond my years at school. I even went to University and my parents were so proud.

Just the thought of them made my heart ache. I was in my second year of University only a few short years ago when my parents passed away from consumption.

I was an only child and I did have money left to me, but not enough for me to live on and finish my schooling.

So I became a maid and then I became a nanny. I always enjoyed working for elderly women who were windowed or just never married.

Because the ones that were married, most of their husbands couldn't keep the hands to themselves.

Like my last place of employment. She was a lovely woman and he didn't understand the word no. He did try to force himself on me and only stopped when he heard his wife's voice calling for him.

I quickly quit, looked for any jobs and found the wanted ad for a Nanny in Boston. So I got on the train and left Somerville and found myself working as Nanny for the Gray family.

My thoughts were interrupted as the grandfather clock struck 6 PM. It is time for me to leave. The other nanny will be here soon to take over.

I quickly told Michael that I was done for the day and if he needed anything before I left.

"No YN that is all." I grabbed my coat, hat and gloves and was out the door before Gina had me staying longer.

I enjoyed the beautiful walk to my small apartment. The leafs are changing colour and that means that Autumn is on its way, which to me is the most beautiful time in Massachusetts.

I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and I bumped right into someone. They stumbled but were able to right themselves right away.

I myself, was not so lucky.

I landed on my butt and hissed at the slight pain.

"Are you alright Miss?" I looked up at the tall man as he held out his hand to me. I felt my face heat up at the sound of his typical Boston accent, that I hear day in and day out.

But for some reason it seemed different coming from him.

"Oh yes I am fine. Thank you." I said as he helped me up. "I should apologise. I was not watching where I was going." I said to him. I quickly noticed that he wasn't alone and that there was another man with him.

"And neither was I Miss." I apologised once more and asked him if he was okay. He told me he was.

My stomach growled at that moment. "I am keeping you from your dinner. As an apology, would you be so kind to join me for dinner?"

"Oh no sir. No need for that. I have food waiting for me at home and if I do not eat it, it will probably just go to waste. Have a good night Sir." I said as I walked past him.

"The name is Jack, Miss." I stopped and looked at him probably for the finale time. "And my name is YN. Nice to meet you Jack."

JACK NELSON'S POV:

I watched as YN walked away from me. I wanted to follow her but I did not as I have to meet my niece and her husband for dinner.

"Bobby, follow her and make sure she gets home okay."

"Yes Boss." Was all he said and we went in opposite directions.

I knocked on the door and Michael answered it, looking tired but he greeted me with a smile.

"Come in Jack. Dinner is almost ready." I nodded my head in greeting as I walked past him and hung up my coat.

I looked around at their home and really hope that they will move. I mean it is nice place, but not nice enough for my niece and her family. Maybe I can convince her to move.

And whatever she wants, Michael will do anyways. Speaking of Michael. He handed me a glass full of rum and I smiled at him in thanks.

"Uncle Jack." I turned at the sound of Gina's voice. I gave her a hug and kissed her cheek. In her arms is my Great-Nephew.

Dinner was served and it was just the three adults as the Nanny came and took Laurence away.

"I thought you hired another Nanny, Gina?" I asked her. I really do not know why she needed a Nanny or help at all as she is home.

"We did, just over two weeks ago. She is here from 6:00 AM - 6:00 PM. She has Sundays off as she goes to church." Gina scoffed.

"Now Gina, no need for that." I said to her. "There is nothing wrong with going to church. Maybe you should go as well." I made a mental note to go. It has been almost a good month since I gone.

~

Michael changed the conversation and we enjoyed the rest of our meal. Now we are in the livingroom when I noticed the time.

"Must be going. Got to be up early." The two of them didn't even question it. They know what I do.

"Thank you for coming Uncle Jack. Always a pleasure to have you over for dinner." Gina said.

Michael shook my hand and told me to come by anytime. Which I do anyways. They know that I come by when I can as Gina is the only family I have left.

People moved out of my way as I walked the streets of Boston. I didn't have far of a walk to The Bell in Hand where I knew Bobby and some of my other men would be.

I found Bobby and the guys in the basement of the old pub playing poker.

"Bobby, come here." The quickly stood up and came to me. "Did you follow her?"

"Yeah Boss. She lives in an apartment in South Boston." He told me the street name and I recognised it.

My attention was turned away from the conversation but my thoughts never strayed far from the woman I met earlier.

~

It is now Sunday morning and I am headed to Church. I have a big stack of cash in my pocket to donate, just like I always do.

I took a seat in the back pew, just like I always do when I noticed the woman who has plauged my thoughts since the moment she walked into me.

She wasn't far from me but her attention was solely on the Priest. How come I never noticed her before? Has she been here the whole time? I have to find out.

Once the service ended, we all left. I quickly handed the money to Priest Kelly and made very short conversation with him, all the while keeping my eye on YN.

She was talking to Maeve Higgins and her husband Lloyd. I started to walk over when I saw Lloyd look my way, he tensed up and excused him and his wife, leaving poor YN standing there confused.

"My my my, isn't this a suprise YN." She jumped slightly and turned to look at me.

"Jack. How nice to see you again."

"I have been going to this church for years YN and I have never seen you here once."

"Oh that is because I just started to attend only three weeks ago. I haven't been here long." That makes complete sense.

"I usually go for lunch after Church. Care to join me YN?" I can see that she is thinking it over.

"I don't see why not. I have not had a chance to enjoy the restaurants that Boston has to offer just yet."

~

"So Jack, please explain to me how I have been going to that Church since I moved here and I have never seen you there once."

"My work has kept me away but I do try to come when I can."

"A good Irish Catholic should never work on a Sunday Jack."

"And how do you know I am Irish YN?"

"My neighbour saw me that day we met. She became worried and asked me the next day if I was okay."

I waited for her to continue as she took a sip of her drink.

"I said I am because I was I then asked why but she never told me why. Her husband told her to mind her own business."

A smart man.

"But that left me even more questions that were left unanswered."

"And what questions do you have?" I asked her as I leaned back in my chair.

"Who are you? Really? Who is the real Jack? I want to know the man who the moment we stepped in this restaurant, the wait staff has done nothing but make you their priority. The Mayor is sitting in the next room and you are the one they are trying to impress."

I was not expecting for her to be so observant.

"I am just a business man and this is one of the businesses I have invested in." YN raised her eyebrow at me but didn't say anything waiting for me to continue.

"You want to know the real me? Okay, like I said I am a business man. I grew up poor but in a loving home. I had a brother and a sister but both have passed away as have both of my parents. The only family I have left are my niece, husband and their child."

Our waiter dropped off our food and I took a few bites before continuing.

"Now YN, I have told you about me. Now tell me about you. I too am interested in learning about you."

I listened as YN told me about her growing up. How she had to leave school due to the fact that her parents passed and now that she is working as a nanny.

I was going to ask her about her work but my attention was pulled away from her as Cian, my right hand man, came into the restaurant and leaned down to whisper in my ear.

All the while as YN just looked on. Cian pulled away and I just sighed, realising that our lunch will have to be cut short.

"I hate to end this early YN, but some business just came up that I must deal with it promptly. I hope to see you again." I said as I stood up.

The waiter came rushing over with my hat and coat. "Make sure she gets whatever she likes and just place it on my tab." I told him just to make it look good.

He just nodded his head playing along as he knows I do not pay. "I work all week Jack, but maybe next Sunday we can meet up?" YN said to me.

I smiled and I agreed with her, already making a mental note to clear my calendar to make sure all Sundays are free from here on out.

~

The weeks went on and we only saw eachother on Sundays. With our busy work schedules this seemed to work well for us, but I needed more.

When I wasn't with YN I was craving her company and only hers. She brings me a sense of inner peace that I so desperately need in my life.

We moved from friendship to a relationship smoothly. YN in my mind was the perfect woman for me.

She doesn't ask me too much about my work and what I do, but I suspect she knows that there is more than what I am telling her.

She is smart and what I have come to learn is a people observer. YN always seems to be one step ahead of people and I find that intriguing.

So I asked her about it as YN is curled into my side in my livingroom. I have a fire going for the two of us as we are planning our first Christmas together. I am also going to be asking her if she would like to join me for Christmas with my family.

"In my line work I always have to be listening for the child, noises outside or if my name is being called. Mostly it is to hear if someone is behind me."

"What do you mean YN?" I asked her as I put the strand piece of hair behind her ear.

I saw her take a deep breath. "Some men do not listen when you say no. These men will force you to do something or threaten your job."

"Who was it?" YN pulled back and looked at me. She placed her hand on my cheek and looked into my eyes with a soft smile on her face.

"He didn't get very far. I was able to get away. I left the house the same day, quitting on my way out. I left Somerville and ended up here working for the family I do now."

I kissed the palm of her hand and just nodded my head like I understood. I made a mental note to find out who she was working for before hand and send someone out there.

When we first became a couple I asked YN about the family she works for. She told me she signed a contract stating that she could not say who she worked for.

The only things I know is that the husband is nice and worships his wife and puts her above anyone and anything.

But the wife is horrible to work for. That she is cheating on her husband and is never home to look after their precious son.

I just shook my head when I was told that. I do not understand why married couples step out on one another. You are ment to love that person.

I changed the subject. "Since Christmas is a Tuesday this year and I know you work but I would like for you to meet my niece and her family. I will even ask that the meal be made later so we can be together."

"Oh Jack, I would love to meet them. Yes." My cold heart almost seemed to have melted at the look on her face. I knew she was scared she was going to be alone again for Christmas.

YN'S POV:

I am so excited to be meeting the only family he has left. I actually never thought it was going to happen.

I am so happy that nothing can bring down my mood today. It is Christmas day. I stood off to the side of the livingroom and watched the family open their gifts.

The smile never faded from my face as I heard Laurence squeal with pure happiness as he ripped open each and every toy.

Made me think about the gift I bought Jack. It wasn't much but I hope he will love it.

As the day went on, I kept a closer eye on the clock. When it struck 5:30 PM I was allowed to leave early.

Even though Gina didn't want me too. Michael informed me that I could leave and spend the night doing what I have planned as he handed me an envelope and a soft smile.

I thanked him and wished them a Merry Christmas as I left, making quick work as I walked home.

I had a hot bath the moment I got home but kept an eye on the time. Jack told me he was sending his driver to come and get me for 6:45 PM.

Just as I was drying my hair with the towel, I noticed the unopened envelope. I was going to open it but I noticed the time and I had no time to waste.

~

At exactly 6:45 PM, there was a knock on the door. His driver was never one to be late and not even the snow on the roads could stop him.

I sat in the back of the car, trying to keep myself calm and relaxed. I know this first meeting with his family has to go well.

Family is very important to men like Jack and I am nervous that his niece will not like me.

My heart was beating so fast as I knocked on the door. His butler Adam opened the door and took my coat, hat and gloves. I was clenching the small gift I have for Jack in my arms.

Adam announced my arrival the moment we stepped foot in the sitting room. Jack stood up and walked towards me with a massive smile on his handsome face. He kissed my cheek and told me how beautiful I look.

He handed Adam my gift and Jack wrapped his arm around my waist.

But I am not paying attention to him as I finally locked eyes with his niece.

The same niece who I said was cheating on her husband. The same one who barely acknowledges her child unless his father is home.

Gina fucking Gray.

She sneered as she looked me up and down but her sneer turned into a fake smile when her Uncle turned to look at her.

"Gina, Michael, I would like to introduce you to the woman who I have been seeing."

"YN, yes we know her." Gina said.

Jack looked between us, confused.

"Oh how do you three know each other?"

"She is our Nanny." Michael said.

I couldn't help but look at the ground. The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with knife.

Thankfully dinner was announced and we all went to the dining room. I sat right of Jack, who was at the head of the table and Gina and Michael were across from me.

After we said a prayer, we started to eat this delicious meal that was made just for us. But Gina started to ask questions.

"I need to know YN, how did you meet my Uncle."

"Gina I told you this story." Jack said.

"Yes but I would like to hear it from her. So?"

I told her how we met the first time. How we met the second time. I was sitting there, now hardly touching my food as my hands were in my lap, fidgeting with the napkin that I placed there.

"Gina, my love. Maybe we can change the subject." Michael tried to say, but when his wife's anger was fixated on something or someone, that is all she can focus on.

"So you saw a wealthy man and decided to sink your claws into him." She basically snarled at me.

"No, no, not at all. We got to know," I was interrupted by Jack standing up and slamming his hand on the table.

"Enough Gina. This is a family dinner and we do not talk like this one another." He said as he fixed his tie and sat back down.

"But she isn't family. She is just the help who found a meal ticket." At this point I had tears that were threatening to fall.

"I think I will go." I said quietly. I stood up but Jack was quick. He grabbed my hand gently in his and shook his head no.

I was about to stay when I heard Gina call out that I was fired.

I pulled my arm back so my hand was free. "I am sorry for ruining your Christmas. I will just go home."

"YN, no stay." Jack said.

"I know when I am not wanted." I said to him as I walked as fast I could in my heels to the front foyer, grabbing my belongings.

I was out the door, didn't even bother to put on my coat or hat or even my gloves first. The bitter cold air hit me quickly. Once I was far enough down the street, I put on my items and then went back to walking the long walk back to my apartment.

Jack Nelson's POV:

"But I want you here." I said to her, trying to get her to stay but she was the door, not even bothering to put on her coat.

I grabbed mine and raced out the door, but it was like she disappeared into the night. I couldn't find her anywhere and it was too damn dark to see her footprints in the snow.

I walked back into my house and I slammed the door behind me. I walked back into the dining room.

Michael was talking to Gina, but she just had a happy look on her face. Then everything that YN told me about my niece came rushing back to me.

"Dinner is over. Michael take your son home. I will like a word with my niece." I said calmly as I sat back down in my seat. Almost too calm but Gina didn't pick up on that.

Michael did. He moved quickly to do as I said. The front door closed quietly behind him and Laurence.

"Gina."

"Yes Uncle Jack." She said in that sweet voice of hers. I looked at her, I mean really looked at her for what I assume is the first time.

I do not know this woman. The woman who my YN described without ever saying her name. This woman who pretends to love her husband and to be a good faithful wife.

"What you did was uncalled for."

"Oh please. You can not tell me that you actually love her? You are Jack Nelson and," I cut her off.

"I do love her! But that is something you will never know anything about. She told me plenty about you Gina. You were raised better than this."

"I have no idea what you are talking about Uncle Jack."

"Cheating on your husband. Stepping out on the vows you said before God and before me. You are lucky I didn't say anything just yet to your husband."

"It isn't true. She was lying to you." I was stunned at her audacity to lie to me right now.

"YN never once said your name Gina! She never told me who she was working for. Now YN, so help me God willing, will be my wife and your Aunt. You will apologise to her. You will be nice to her."

"She is beneath our status." Gina tried to say.

"You really think that you would be where you are if our family stayed in Ireland? If your Father and I didn't do what we had to do to become this successful, you would be doing what YN is doing and maybe some hard work wouldn't be so bad for you. Might actually make you humble and see what you have isn't a right but a gift."

I filled a glass with some rum and drank it. I didn't even bother to look at my niece as I told her to go home.

I heard her huff and scrape the chair across my floor and left. I called for my driver to drive her home.

I closed my eyes when I heard the front door slam. I shook my head at how this Christmas day has turned out.

"Sir?"

"Yes Adam?"

"There is still one more unopened gift." He said as he held out the small gift towards me.

"I do not want it."

"It is from Miss YN." He said. I sighed and took the gift from him and I gently opened it.

It was a leather book and I can see that she etched our names on the front. I opened the the first page and saw that it was a sketch of me.

I knew she could draw, but seeing this just made me fall in love with her even more. I looked at the date, and it was the day we first met.

I looked through the book and I am just shocked at what she wrote. 'It may be too early to tell, but I am falling for him.' Our third time meeting after church is the date that was written at the top of that page.

There was the ticket for the show we saw together and every single one after that. A flower that has been pressed in between the pages from the first bouquet I ever got her.

She described each date we had and even her thoughts of when she found out what my real line of work was.

'My neighbour, who had a bit too much wine told me all about Jack and how he is a powerful gangster. But as I listened to her talk, I realised I do not care because to me he is just my Jack.'

Adam announced that the driver was back, pulling me away from my gift.

"Tell him I will be right out. I would like to go to YN's."

"Yes Sir."

YN's POV:

My face was freezing as I finally walked into my cold, lonely apartment. My tears have froze to my face and I had frozen snot under my nose.

I started a fire and went and grabbed a cloth and cleaned my face. Trying to get this night out of my head.

I changed into my night clothes and curled under the blanket that Jack got me. Just even the thought of Jack made my heart ache.

'Will he want to be with me after everything I told him?' I thought over and over again. I had to do something to distract myself, so I turned on the radio and tried to calm myself down.

But after about 15 minutes, there was knocking on the door. I called out for the person to go away, but they kept on persisting. The knocking getting louder and louder.

I grabbed my robe and made sure it was wrapped tightly around my body and opened the door.

To my complete and utter suprise, there was Jack, but he was on one knee, and in his hand was a velvet box with the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen.

I gasped and my shaky hands covered my mouth as he spoke.

"YN, I was going to do this after dinner tonight. Infront of my family that will hopefully be yours if you say yes. Infront of the big Christmas tree that the two of us decorated together."

He took another deep breath and said probably the most romantic speech I have ever heard him say.

"I love dreaming with you because you understand me as nobody would ever understand. I love being ill if I know that you will be near and take care of me. You encourage me to get up every morning, to do great deeds for you, and to constantly become better. You are my inspiration, my motivation, and my desirous goal. Will you marry me."

"Yes Jack." No hesitation. I love this man more than anything and no one will keep me from him.

He put the ring on my finger and he stood up and captured my lips with his. I smiled into the kiss and he did as well.

Our kiss ended and he pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. Our moment was ruined when the neighbour down the hall opened their door, gasped and quickly closed it.

~

Our engagement made it on the front page on every newspaper in Massachusetts it feels like.

"JACK NELSON ENGAGED." Was what bombarded me the weeks after we became engaged.

I was busy wedding planning. Jack and I were going to be married at our church. The reception will be held at one of the places that Jack owns of course.

The restaurant where we first ate together is doing the catering and the cake was massive and enough to feed every single person that is invited.

Over 200 wedding invitations were sent out and each one came back saying YES. But then the gifts started to pour in from the people who were not invited but still wanted to stay on Jack's good side.

A dress designer came to my apartment and made me my own custom wedding dress. Nothing and mean nothing was too much for Jack. Even when I insisted that we can have a small wedding.

"This is small my YN. If my mother was still alive, God rest her soul, almost every single person we ever met would of been invited."

I just shook my head at him but in reality my mother would of been the same way.

"Did Gina respond back?" I asked him, looking through the cards.

"No, but I can imagine she will show up just to make face." I agreed with him.

And he was right. As I walked down the aisle towards Jack on my wedding day, there was Gina, Michael and Laurence in the front row.

I paid her hardly any mind as I walked towards the man I love. I walked myself down the aisle as I had no one but none the less, it was beautiful ceremony.

When we were announced as husband and wife, the guests cheered, including the ones who waited outside in the cold.

I was stunned when the car pulled infront of the church and the streets were lined with spectators but I should of know better that to be shocked.

I have learned that Jack is like a celebrity and whatever he does, it is news and people want to be there to witness anything he does.

So as we left the church we waved to the crowd that was there as they cheered for us.

~

At the wedding reception, our guests came and congratulated us for what felt like hours until the last ones left were Gina and Michael.

Michael was ecstatic for us and I knew he was sincere. Gina, well Gina was Gina.

She wasn't happy with this and she never will be. I know Jack has her volunteering at the Church twice a week until he deems that she had learned her lesson, may whatever that will be.

But as I looked into eyes of the man whom I love, I am thankful for everything and everyone that brought him to me.

And silly as this may sound, that is including Gina Gray since she was the one who placed the ad in the newspaper all those months ago.

Part 2

Tag List: if you would like to be added, please let me know. @retromafia

[shelbydelrey]

hey, your moodboards are so fucking beautiful can i ask an ballerina/thief fem reader with jack nelson. they are kind of obssessed with each other and the reader leaves but jack hunts her till england to force her to marry him. kinda dark but yeah

Thank you so much for the compliment, darl! 😍 I'm so sorry if it took to long to answer but for some reason the ask wasn't appearing on the app 😭 I hope you like the result!

Y/n made a terrible mistake by not only stealing the goods but also the heart of an obssessive man.

[solomons-finest-rum]

800 Followers Celebration — Film Noir Masterlist

For the prompt “I wanted to see you again.” — Welcome to the Family with Finn Shelby by @zablife

For the prompt “It takes a certain type of woman to talk to a man the way you do.” — A Certain Type of Woman with Jack Nelson by @retromafia

For the prompt “Now, I ain’t gonna tell you twice, sweetheart – get out of my bloody office!” — Sugar&Spice with Alfie Solomons by @queenofthefaceless

For the prompt “What are your plans?” “For what?” “The rest of your life.” — Yet You’re Still Here with Tommy Shelby by @runnning-outof-time

[davidsons89]

Can I request a Michael Gray x reader where he cheats on her with Gina, so she gets revenge by sleeping with Gina’s uncle Jack😽 x

revenge — j.n

pairings ; michael gray x female reader (former) jack nelson x female reader

summary ; your boyfriend of many years, michael gray, cheats on you with gina and leaves you for her. you’re not the type to let anyone disrespect you, so you decide to take revenge by sleeping with gina’s uncle, jack nelson.

warnings ; mentions of cheating, slight age gap between reader and jack, reader being arrogant and cocky lol, smut, sir kink, hickeys, unprotected sex, face grabbing, contains spoilers from s6. 18+ !!!

authors note ; is is bad that i have a huge crush on jack?🙃 he’s just super good looking don’t judge me. this was an amazing idea, thank you for requesting! <3 also this is not proofread or spell checked, so if you spot any mistakes, i apologize!

word count ; 3,228

Having a father who is friends with Thomas Shelby has many pros and cons. One of the pros being protection — having the power to make men fear you because of a gang. One of the cons being you’re not a free woman. Being a part of the Peaky Blinders means you have eyes on you at all times, which makes it difficult to keep secrets or do anything by yourself without words getting around.

You had met your boyfriend through the Peaky Blinders. Michael Gray. He is Tommy’s cousin, and the two of you got along pretty well, being similar in age and having the same interests and all. It wasn’t long before you developed romantic feelings for each other.

Then you did it. You got together and everyone was happy. The relationship was strong for years. You were one of the happiest couples Small Heath had ever seen. There were even talks of marriage, but Michael knew you too well to know you didn’t want to get married. It’s never been something you’ve wanted to do. The idea of being a wife, a man’s property, never seemed appealing to you. You don’t want to live life like every other ordinary woman. Get married, have kids, cook and clean for the rest of your life. You want to be happy and free. And you felt that way with Michael.

Michael loved you and knew the things you wanted, didn’t want, liked, disliked and so on. He knew you like the back of his hand, and that’s one of the many things you loved about him. He was an angel that stumbled upon you and changed your life. Years went down the line. Many happy years shared with your beloved boyfriend and his family.

That was until things started to go downhill. Michael’s mum, Polly, passed away. Tommy started getting himself into heaps of trouble with the law, the mafia, and even gangsters from Boston. And that’s where Gina comes into place. Nasty old Gina.

Michael had changed, even before Polly died, and you were one of the first to notice. Soon enough, everyone noticed. Michael was sent to New York for a few months to do some work for Tommy, only coming back a completely different person. He stopped writing to you, he ignored your letters, he acted like you didn’t exist.

He came back with another woman.

After discovering that he had cheated on you with his new woman, Gina, you were fast to end the relationship. Everyone was angry with Michael, you weren’t the only one. He had his cousins and his mother telling him how much of a fool he is for leaving a woman like you. He won’t find another you. Gina doesn’t even come close.

Months go down the line. Michael had turned against his own family. He joined the enemy’s side. After the death of his mother, he couldn’t look at his cousins the same way. He blamed them for her death. He blamed Tommy.

But Tommy didn’t care. Nor did you care. The only thing you wanted was revenge. How dare Michael think he can do this? Any of this. Not just to you, but to his own family, his own flesh and blood. With you being strictly on Tommy’s side, he’s grown to trust you more. He trusted you anyway, but now he can count on you. Which is why he sent you to spy on Michael for him.

Tommy knows Michael is plotting something against him, which is why you’re the eyes. You’ve been a Peaky Blinder for quite a few years now, meaning you know all their tactics and maneuvers. Tommy had been introduced to a new business deal with Gina’s uncle and Michael’s uncle in law, Jack Nelson. Michael thinks Jack is on their side, but Tommy can say otherwise. Jack only thinks of himself. Above himself, even.

To the least of his troubles is his niece and her new husband. Husband. They got married. It angered you but you didn’t let it get past you. You know better than to care, but you don’t know better than revenge. You’d never met Jack for yourself, though you saw him with Tommy a few times, but when Tommy sends you to a party as a pair of eyes, things don’t necessarily go according to plan.

Sitting at the bar drinking an expensive glass of champagne while surrounded by dozens of rich, upper class, fancy old snobby men and women is something your younger self would never see you doing, but here you are, having to act as one of them to blend in.

You couldn’t bare to be here any longer, but as the eyes of Tommy Shelby, you had no choice. Your eyes scanned around the room hundreds of times to find the likes of Michael and Gina, but there’s no sign of them. Maybe they just hadn’t arrived yet. You’ve seen a few familiar faces so far. Oswald Mosley, Diana Mitford. But not who you’re looking for.

You can’t stand Michael and never want to see his face again, but as a Peaky Blinder, you have to face your fears to get the job done. After finishing the last of your champagne, you ask the bartender for another one while being approached on your right.

“Might wanna slow down on your drink. The men here don’t take too well to drunk women.” The man tells you while ordering a drink of whiskey for himself. You instantly recognise him. It’s Jack Nelson. “Are you one of those men?” You snicker. Though you see him smirk, he’s still as intimidating as ever.

“Why would I need to take advantage of a woman when I can get laid whenever I want?” Jack jokes. You like his personality, he likes yours. Though you’ve never spoken, you know of each other. “Miss L/n, right?” He takes a sip of his drink, nodding at the bartender to say thanks. You grab your new drink, too.

“Yes. And you’re Mr Nelson?” You ask, already knowing the answer. “Yes, but you already knew that.” A smirk raises at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t get cocky, if it weren’t for Mr Shelby, I wouldn’t know you existed.” You smugly take a sip of your champagne.

“Arrogant. I like it. But please, call me Jack.” He smiles. “Whatever you say, Jack.” Your eyelashes slowly batter at him. You have a seductive look in your eyes, but what can you say? You haven’t had male attention in a long time, and Jack is handsome. He gently grabs your hand, bringing it to his mouth to plant a greeting kiss. You smile.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, miss L/n.” Jack says. “Please, call me Y/n.” You imitate him from before. You have to act as confident as ever, you are trying to blend in with the rest of the assholes here. “Y/n. Pretty name.” He smirks. He hasn’t taken his eyes from yours.

“Thank you.”

“Too pretty to be that mouthy.”

His smirk turns into more of a devilish smile. He likes your attitude, however. “My mouth too much for you to handle, Jack?”

“I’m sure I can handle more than that.” He leans closer to whisper in your ear. You have to admit, it sent shivers down your spine.

“What brings a girl like you to a party like this, anyway?” He asks. He looks like he knows something. “A girl like me?” You ask. “You know. A Peaky Blinder. A girl like you got no business with people like this.” Jack points around the room.

“You don’t know what business I have with anyone.” You take a sip from your glass of champagne. “I know you don’t have business with anyone here.” Jack tells you. He seems like he knows a lot. “Like I said, I’ve heard a lot about you.” He finishes.

“What have you heard? Good things, I hope?” You raise your eyebrows as your red lipstick stains the glass in your hand. “Well, I heard you used to be the woman of my nieces husband.” Jack shrugs. You roll your eyes. He can tell by the look on your face that you do not wish to talk about your past with Michael.

“Used to be is the key word.” You look away from him. “I also heard you’re the eyes of Thomas Shelby.”

Your mind went blank. You almost froze.

“Why else would you be here? Other than to spy on Michael Gray, huh, Y/n?” He smirks. He seems like he’s playing a game with you. “Like you said, I have no business with anyone here. I’m just here to charm the ladies on Thomas’ behalf.” You flick your hair over your shoulder.

“Doesn’t he have a wife?” He frowns.

“Don’t you?” You raise your eyebrows.

He scoffs in a half laugh. You have a smart mouth, where he has a quick one. “Well, if it helps you, Michael and Gina are here. See? They’re over there.” Jack points between a crowd of people as you follow his finger. You spot them having a chat with Oswald and Diana.

“So, little spy, you can report back to Mr Shelby that my niece is the one charming the ladies, not you. You’re sitting here drinking champagne.” He smirks. “Yeah, like I said, I don’t care for your niece or her husband.” You take another sip.

“She can charm all the ladies she wants. But for me, I much prefer charming the men.” You smirk. His eyes look back and forth from your red lips to your lit up eyes. “I don’t believe you. Why don’t you prove it to me?” He hints.

“I would love to, Jack, but we would need to go some place private, so I don’t, you know, set a bad example to the ladies I’m supposed to befriend.” You squint your eyes confidently. “I’m a bad example, huh?” He grins. “The devil of Boston.” A smirk toys at your lips.

“I’m going to find the bathroom. It would be such a shame to leave you behind.” You move closer to whisper the last part in his ear, brushing your hand across his chest as you stand up to walk away. He watches you walk away, waiting a solid forty seconds before following you.

Entering the bathroom, he shuts and locks the door behind himself. He sees you applying lipstick in the mirror. “Why waste time putting on more when it’s only going to come off?” He asks, approaching you to take the lipstick from your hands. You turn to face him. “Who says it’s coming off?” You ask, slowly taking off your fur coat to reveal your red dress underneath. His eyes immediately fall to your chest, admiring your perfectly shaped breasts and body.

“Me.” He answers.

“Why don’t you come take it off?”

Your seducing skills are top notch. You can practically sex your way in and out of anything. Jack’s only use to you was revenge against your ex and his new wife, or known as Jack’s niece. This couldn’t be better.

He takes your hint and rushes to kiss you. He wraps his hands around your waist while you cup his cheeks. You pull each other closer to deepen the kiss, hungrily making out while you feel Jack’s hands slip underneath your dress. Lifting your leg up to help him gain access, Jack rubs your clit above your underwear. You let out a low moan, breaking apart the kiss.

“That feel good, huh?” He smirks. His kisses trail to your neck where he sucks on your sweet spot. Letting out another moan to hum yes, your hands make their way to his suit, pulling off his jacket. As you undress each other, you both end up in only your underwear. “I hope nobody needs to use the bathroom any time soon.” You smirk. “Don’t worry about anyone else. Focus on us.” Jack tells you, wrapping his arms around your waist to lift you up onto the countertop.

“Yes, sir.” You whisper, sending shivers down his spine. You see his hairs stand up. You now know his weakness. Sir. “Don’t call me that unless you don’t want to walk for a week.” He warns you, teeth biting your neck. “That doesn’t seem too bad of a threat.” You wince. Your hands brush against his gelled hair.

“Oh, you’re one of them wild girls.” He smirks. “The wildest of them all.” You pout your lips for a kiss. He goes back in to continue making out with you while you finish stripping each other off completely naked. Now out of your underwear, Jack has full access to any part of your body, same as you with him.

He’s already rock hard for you. The only thing you had to do was call him sir and he lost control. You smirk to yourself, deepening the kiss as he grabs his length, bringing it closer to your entrance. Without hesitation, he pushes himself in, making you release a loud moan. His hand covers your mouth, making you look at him with doe eyes. “You wouldn’t want anyone to catch us now, would you?” He asks lowly. You shake your head. Though your thoughts are different. You’d love the thrill of being caught. Especially with Jack.

Thrusting into you with a slow but hard pace, Jack removes his hand from your mouth to grip your cheeks, forcing you to look at him. His face is inches away from yours, staring into your eyes. “You’re so beautiful.” He tells you and you smugly smirk. You already knew that. “I didn’t know Jack Nelson had a heart.” You say in a breathy moan. He didn’t say anything, he only gripped your cheeks harder, pushing your lips together.

Your lipstick is smudged and your mascara is running. Jack has your red lipstick stained on his face, but you don’t tell him. It just adds to the thrill. You moan like a pornstar each time he thrusts into you. “You want it rougher?” He asks. You say nothing, only nod. He smirks, allowing himself to pound into you roughly. You throw your head back, making him grip the back of your neck to pull you forward. He tuts. “Look at me. Only me. Understand?” He glares at you. “Yes, sir.” You grin while saying. You’re playing with him and he loves it. He grins too.

He takes it as a hint that you want more. So he gives you more. Gripping the back of your neck and holding your hip with the other, he manages to thrust himself deeper into you, hitting spots he didn’t hit before. Upping his pace to hard and rough makes you moan louder than earlier. He quickly covers his hand over your mouth to muffle your noises.

While chuckling, Jack shushes you. “Be quiet or you’re gonna get us both caught.” He lowly says.

“I- I cant.” You whine.

He feels you tense up below him. Your walls are tightening and your legs are shaking. He knows you’re close to coming. “Jack I-”

“Shh. I know. Come for me.” He grabs your face to look at him. Your eyes roll back due to intense pleasure as you wrap your arms around his back, pulling him closer as you moan, coming closer and closer to finishing. “Are you- close?” You manage to ask him in between deep breaths. “Yeah.” He nods. He knows not to finish inside of you. It would be a nightmare having Nelson babies running around the Peaky Blinders’ feet.

Your moans got more intense, making him pull your head down to his shoulder. You moan against his skin to muffle the noise as you come. Jack pulls out just in time. He stays wrapped in your arms as you ride out your highs. Your breathing eventually slowed down and your heart rates went back to normal. You got yourselves dressed.

“Tommy should invite you to our meetings more often.” Jack fixes his tie as you wipe off your smudged lipstick in the mirror. “Why? So you can fuck me in his bathroom, too?” You smirk at him in the mirror. He is stood close to the door just watching you. “You could say that.” He shrugs. “Maybe even in his bedroom if you’re feeling risky.” You wink at him.

“Hm. Now how would Tommy feel about this? About his little spy fucking his business partner?” Jack asks. “I bet he thinks you’re so innocent. But there’s not an innocent thought behind those pretty eyes.” He walks up behind you, grabbing your cheeks from behind to push your lips together. His other hand lies on your waist.

You grab his hand and pull it away from your face, turning around to face him. Your chest touches his as his hands hold your upper arms in a grip. “I wouldn’t worry about Tommy. I’d worry about your niece. What is sweet little Gina gonna think of this? Her uncle fucking her husband’s ex girlfriend? Hm?” You smart mouth him. He puts his tongue to his cheek with a grin. He has nothing to say.

His grip on your upper arms tighten. “Watch your mouth with me, kid.” He warns. You fear no man. “Or what? You’ll tell Tommy? I don’t think Tommy would take too well to his business partner fucking his best friends daughter. You’ll only be getting yourself into trouble.” You respond. He’s amazed at your smart mouth, saying nothing again. He just scoffs.

“I suggest this stays between us.” He sternly says. “You read my mind. Now, Mr Nelson, I think we should get back to the party before people raise suspicions.” Your eyebrows raise. You step backwards away from him, making his arms drop. You exit the bathroom first. Making your way back to the hall, Gina spots you.

“Oh, Y/n. What a surprise to see you here.” She fake smiles. You stop to greet her. “Hello Gina, hello Michael.” You fake smile back, turning to face her husband with a blank expression. “How pleasant to see you, darling.” You and Gina greet each other with a kiss on the cheek before being joined by Jack. “Gina, Michael.” He nods to the pair. “Ah, miss L/n, we meet again.” Jack pretends to greet you, politely kissing your hand as if nothing happened just minutes ago.

“You’ve met before?” Gina frowns. She seems almost jealous. “Yes, indeed we have.” You nod. “I know her through Mr Shelby. We’ve met a few times.” Jack looks at you. He sees your smirk. Michael rolls his eyes at how pretentious you’re acting. “Ah. I see.” Gina awkwardly says. She squints her eyes at her uncle, noticing he has faint smudged red lipstick across his mouth. She looks at your lips before raising her eyebrows. She connected the dots.

“Ooh. It’s hot in here, don’t you think? I better go outside. See you soon, Jack.” You smirk, slightly opening your fur coat to reveal the dark love bite on your neck. Your fingertips brush against Jack’s arm before you walk away. Gina’s eyes widen. Michael is just as shocked. You leave the party. Your job here is done. Gina is Jack’s problem now. And you’re sure he has a lot of explaining to do.

[runnning-outof-time]

Ok, I’m Curious…

Feel free to share and say why in the tags!

[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, deceptively 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. The main story of the game remains relatively untouched, as well as carrying over horror elements and frightening imagery to surround the added subplot.

~*~

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 would have clean bowls, 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 reblogs are always welcome! ❤️

[call-sign-shark]

𝒮𝒽𝒶𝓇𝓀’𝓈 𝒳𝓂𝒶𝓈 𝓅𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓎, 5th December

"Conquering a country didn't mean one should forget about the Christmas spirit. As a white and nationalist American man, Jack Nelson gave special importance to Christmas, enjoying these holidays since he was a child. As he grew up, the idea of a perfect celebration became an expensive dinner at home and one night of torrid fuck with a woman, multiple orgasms being the ultimate gift. Unfortunately for Jack, political duties came along with his ambition to run for president, and the intimate night ended up being a party at the White House. Dinner at home was canceled, but not the second part of his plan: He was sure the presidential bedroom would please his witch of a wife." For @evita-shelby, based on National Anthem.

To celebrate Christmas I’ve been using my free time lately to create 23 gifts that are already programmed, most of them for my beloved Peaky Blinders mutuals. I’ll post one gift per day until Christmas, so stay tuned in because yours are coming. You just don’t know when! 🎄

[zablife]

Jealous of Your Love

Jack Nelson x wife reader

Summary: Jack becomes possessive over his wife after Sir Oswald Mosley flirts with her during a business meeting. He is unaware that his wife has unresolved jealousy issues of her own.

Author’s Note: This was requested by a lovely anon who wanted to know how Jack would react to Mosley flirting with his wife and then she admits she feels equally jealous when he meets with his mistress.

Warnings: language, mention of cheating

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Nelson. My fiancé so enjoyed your company at tea yesterday. She said you were an immaculate dresser, but she didn’t tell me you were quite this lovely in person,” Sir Mosley said as you entered the drawing room of his estate. Jack’s jaw clenched at the sound of your name in his mouth. He didn’t care for the devilish smile he was giving you and he pulled you into his side possessively. Your eyes darted to his as his fingers pressed into your hip sharply. You tried not to grimace in discomfort, but your husband’s iron like grip was going to bruise if he didn’t let you go soon.

When Sir Mosley and Mr. Shelby had crossed the room, you leaned into your husband and whispered, “Jack, you’re hurting me,” and he let go, but still kept close to you as you took a seat near the fireplace. 

He immediately claimed the seat next to you, spreading his legs wide, touching his knee to yours and draping a hand over your thigh casually. You knew he wanted to seem impervious to these English bastards, but you knew better. He was staking his claim.

The other men were ogling you and that was surely sending him into a frenzy. If he could have fucked you right there over the sofa, he surely would have to prove to the two gentleman that you were his and his alone.

As the meeting got underway, you sipped the champagne you’d been given when you arrived. Jack’s eyes darted back to yours frequently during the conversation watching your lips touch the rim of the glass and you wondered if his mind was on business at all. When you had drained your glass, Mr. Shelby offered to get you another, but Jack leaped to his feet to fill your glass instead. 

When negotiations resumed Jack began making aggressive demands of his new business partners. You wondered if he wasn’t being impolite. Although you didn’t think your hosts would notice as they already felt all Americans were ill-bred and pushy. 

When it came time to leave, you stood, slowly straightening your skirt as Jack shook hands with Oswald and Thomas. The men approached you as well to wish you a good day. Sir Mosley took your hand in his to lightly place a kiss upon your gloved hand. “It was my pleasure,” he said holding your gaze a moment too long for your comfort. 

“The pleasure was all mine, Sir Mosley. Thank you for the invitation,” you had replied politely. You noticed his lips curl up in a smile that showed his teeth and he looked as though he might bite into your tender flesh if you hadn’t pulled away quickly.

Mr. Shelby wasn’t much better. While he didn’t smile, he did look you up and down as though he were undressing you with his piercing blue eyes. You had to take a step back to stand slightly behind Jack for him to look away. 

As you hid your face in your husband’s arm, he ushered you out to the waiting car muttering under his breath, “Jesus Christ, what a couple of horny assholes.” You had giggled at that comment because while you were thinking it as well, you would never have said it out loud and certainly not in that language.

As you drove back to the hotel, you knew something was on Jack’s mind. He silently stared out the window on the way back to the hotel in a brooding way that told you not to disturb his thoughts. You wondered if it was the business deal. Perhaps he felt he hadn’t gotten everything he wanted. Then you began to wonder if you had been a hindrance to his negotiations.

Jack continued his torturous silence when you reached your suite upstairs. You thought he was intent on sulking all night, so you removed your hat and gloves and kicked off your shoes, eager to have a long, hot bath. 

Jack had other intentions. He pulled you close to him in that same bruising grip he had employed earlier and pulled your chin up harshly to meet his gaze, “What the hell was that, y/n?” 

“What are you talking about, Jack?” You replied, confused by his sudden change of mood.

“I mean telling Mosley it was a pleasure. You want to fuck him?” He said with a growl.

You tried to pull away from your husband in anger, but his grip only tightened further like a vice and his fingers sunk into your cheeks until he was pushing your lips together. You shook your head as best you could before he threw your head away.

“God, Jack, what’s gotten into you? I was only being polite to your business partners,” you said trying to catch your breath.

Jack ran his hands up and down your body hungrily as he asserted, “You’re my wife though, y/n, mine,” he said emphasizing the last word to be sure you heard him.

“Who else would I belong to, baby?” You asked softly, knowing he needed nothing more than a little reassurance when he got like this. “I love you so much. You’re the only man I’d ever want,” you said placing your hands on his face gently to ground him in the truth you were speaking.

You felt his body relax at your touch and he closed his eyes to take a deep breath in. When he opened them he looked at you intently as he began, “Don’t know what I would do without you, angel. If one of those bastards ever laid a hand on you, I’d…”

As you felt his fists clench at his sides, you cut him off saying,”You’d kill them. I know, sweetheart, but you don’t have to worry about that.”

Jack leaned down to place a searing kiss to your waiting lips. You returned his passion before pulling away slowly. There was something you needed him to know and now was the best time to illustrate your point.

“Jack, the way you feel now, the indignation, the rage…Baby, that’s how I feel when you’re with her.” You didn’t need to say her name, Jack knew you meant his mistress. “You think I don’t feel what you do? Sometimes I want to kill somebody too,” you said looking down, suddenly afraid now that you’d spoken up about your long-held grudge. It wasn’t that you minded a quick fuck from a whore. You knew he was a man with insatiable needs. You took issue with the woman he’d been seeing regularly for six months, leaving you alone and upset too many nights to count. He knew you knew, but it was an unspoken thing between you…until now.

Jack swallowed harshly, breaking away from you to fix himself a drink. “Jack, did you hear me? I don’t want you to see her anymore. I’m begging you,” you said firmly, tears forming in your eyes as you realized how you truly felt, a mix of pride for speaking up and fear of rejection lingering in your mind. You held your breath waiting for your husband to turn from the bar. When he did, he slammed his glass down and crossed the room in long, even steps. 

He loomed over you holding up his left hand. For a moment you wondered if he was angry enough to strike you, but then you noticed a look of vulnerability in his eyes. “You see this?” He asked. 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to see, Jack,” you said with a sigh.

He tried to remove his wedding ring and it didn’t budge. He couldn’t get it past his knuckle. “You see? It does’t come off. Not for her, not for anybody. I haven’t taken it off since the day we got married, y/n. That means somethin’ to me,” he said approaching you and cradling you to his chest. 

You nuzzled into him, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart as he placed his chin on top of your head. 

“I’m not good at showing it, but I love you. Only you,” he said softly, rubbing circles into your lower back to soothe you. You nodded against him, allowing your mascara to run over his shirt front. You wrapped your arms around his waist and hugged him tightly. 

“I’m yours and you’re mine, sweetheart…forever” he said into your hair. 

“I’m yours and you’re mine,” you repeated to him in a whisper and in that room, in that moment you did belong to each other completely. 

---------------------------------------

Tag list: @retromafia, @shelbydelrey, @theshelbyslimited, @daddyjack-nelson, @evita-shelby, @peakyswritings, @kittycatcait219, @lovemissyhoneybee, @severewobblerlightdragon, @wandawiccan60, @tommydoesntpayforsuits, @easilyobessedbutflighty, @peakyrogers, @christinasyellowflowers, @alanadetigy, @peaky-cillian, @kpopgirlbtssvt, @celticmelody

[evita-shelby]

A Nelson Summer

Smut

Cw: pregnant sex, wet dreams, somnophilia, vaginal fingering, p in v sex

It hadn’t been intentional.

Jack would’ve let her finish her nap unmolested if she hadn’t murmured his name like that.

With four children and a fifth(and sixth) on the way Eva was prone to dozing off.

And jumping his bones any chance she got, eating anything sugary they had, and complaining about losing her figure again.

She’d cried petulantly for giving her a Mother’s Day gift that became his Father’s Day gift.

“Jack,” she’d murmured and then pressed herself against him, seeking out the friction like as she humps his leg like a bitch in heat. “Please, baby, fuck me.”

The witch got wet dreams sometimes, better than the nightmares he thinks. Jack wasn’t surprised to feel her cunt already soaking through the fabric of her knickers when the hand on her waist crept under her dress to confirm what he already knew.

Definitely better than the fucking nightmares by far.

She’s already cooking, might as well make use of the privacy. No nosy neighbors, the children all being taken care of by the nanny and the maids, just him and his insatiable wife in the backyard.

“So needy for daddy, aren’t you, doll?” he coos as his rubbed her pussy through the fabric. The gangster had been wanting to try this, to see how long would it last before the sleeping beauty woke up thoroughly fucked.

He’s copped a few feels before and knows she doesn’t mind him doing it. His witch won’t mind this, he thinks as he slipped the underwear aside and stroked the genie’s lamp carefully.

“So wet, so tight for me, aren’t you, doll?” doesn’t take long before his fingers are wet enough for Eva’s pussy to take them in with ease.

The sleeping beauty was not disturbed by the intrusion, in fact began to ride his hand in her sleep. Her barely coherent words turned to the moans and sighs he knows so well, he could be blind and still he’d know just where to touch his witch until she burst from the pleasure.

If he could just move into a different position, he could bury himself into her, fuck her softly until her own orgasm wakes her up.

And he does, she stirs slightly as he shifts on his side to be in the perfect position to fuck her awake.

“Such a good little whore for daddy, letting him use you like this.” Jack teased the head of his aching prick against her clit until he was sure she would feel every inch of it as he pushed inside of her warm wet pussy.

Eva's face scrunched up in pleasure and tightened around him as beautifully as if she was awake.

She was close, her eyelids fluttering and her consciousness growing in tandem with his thrusts. It wasn’t long before his name was going from a drowsy groan to broken cry and he’s spurred on when it starts to become a shout.

“Fuck, Jack, could’ve just shaken me awake.” Eva says once she’s fully woken up as he continued using her to finish himself off.

“Where’s the fun in that, sweetheart?”

[michaelgraysmustache]

HERE’S TO COMPLEX FEELINGS PT. 2

Ada finally meets Jack and his mysterious wife.  PART ONE

Jack Nelson x OC/Reader (Carmen Nelson) x Ada Thorne

WORD COUNT: 2.6k

SUMMARY: You and Jack Nelson married when you were 21, it was marriage of convince and safety. You, a queer woman, needed a beard and he needed a wife who he could trust and understood that he’d never be monogamous. Things get complicated when you both taken on Ada Thorne as a lover.

A/N: Yeeeeee I finally updated this fic. I hope you enjoy.  

WARNINGS:  none

- 1915 - Boston, Massachusetts, USA

"We should get married!"

"Jack, are you serious?" you whispered into the phone, "I'm at work right now. I don't have time for one of your games."

"It's not a game," he pleaded, "I'll swing by and pick you up after work and explain everything."

"Okay," you agreed and a few hours later he was standing outside the home, leaning against his new Ford. Jack drove you to his apartment so that you could talk privately about the suggested proposal. Nestled into his purple velvet couch with a whiskey in both your hands, the discussion began.

You watched as he talked, leaning your head against the sofa, tired from a long day at work. 

"Carmen, look, you've been my best friend since were seven years old. No one on this planet knows me better than you." He spoke with sincerity, something you hadn't heard from him in years. It was like you were talking to the little boy Jack once was. The boy who taught you how to throw a proper right hook when you were eight and how to shoot a gun when you were thirteen. He made sure you knew how to defend yourself, and in turn, you watched your back. "I want you to have a happy life. Hell, I want that for the both of us." You nodded along and took your hand in his.

"Car. I want to keep you safe and give you a happy life. You understand me, you know that I won't give up my other women. What's that saying your brothers have? Una en la casa, una en las calles. one in the house, one in the streets. Yo tengo tres en las calles. I have three in the streets. " Growing up around your family, Jack had picked up some Spanish phrases. It always made you smile whenever he used them. 

"So you want to marry me because know you'll whore around?" you laughed at the idea. 

"In theory, I want to marry you because together we can both be free to be who we are. In application, whore around is accurate." 

"Okay, MAYBE this isn't a bad idea." 

Jack's accomplished cocky grin spread across his face. You were almost agreeing to marry him, or at the very least taking his proposal a bit more seriously. He finished his glass of whiskey, a preemptive celebration, and stood up to pour himself another glass. 

"Who knows, maybe a spark of love will blossom between us," he winked and you rolled your eyes. 

"You read one poetry book and all of sudden you're all 'we should get married' this and 'blossoming love' that."

"I happen to be a sensitive man with lots of passion in my heart."

"I wouldn't say that's where you keep your passion." you glanced down at his cock, then back up at his eyes, and took a big sip of whiskey. 

"You better watch what you say about my passion. You'll have to pop out a few Nelson babies to please our parents."

"Jesus, that's horrifying. Let me rescind my acceptance." 

Eight Years Later, 1924. 

Carmen Nelson was your name now, eight years had gone by since the proposal and wedding. Jack's empire had expanded further than either of you thought possible. He showered you and your kids with gifts and love, your marriage was working out as well as Jack had hoped. You gave Jack two kids...both after nights when you were drunk and horny. Grasping at each other's bodies trying to find a spark to ignite the sexual fire. If there was such a spark between you two, you weren't able to find it on those nights. 

You each had a list of lovers, Jack's was longer than yours considering that he liked to fuck at least once a day. They had their list of rules: No lovers around the children, No lovers in the family home, and No lovers around at family events. It was simple but it kept your personal and sexual lives separate. It was agreed that you had you could find more than sexual relief from the women you slept with, but had yet to test that. You were busy helping Jack expand his empire, the workforce alliance between the Mexicans and the Irish immigrants was as unbreakable as you two. 

Just about every night you two come home to each other. You talk, you laugh, and you go to sleep. Sometimes in separate beds, sometimes in the same bed. Wrapped up in strong arms, you felt safe and loved. It was different from how falling asleep with your mistresses, then where you were being held fleeting feelings of pleasure. You wondered if you'd ever find a girl you wanted a relationship with. You and Jack had talked briefly about the future possibility of adding another woman into the relationship, one that could live at the house and really be a part of their daily lives. As you closed your eyes and welcomed a deep sleep, you wondered if such a woman was out there. If she was, you asked God to bring her to you. 

A week later, you meet her. Her name is Ada Thorne, she was a potential new business partner for Jack who had just come over from England to invest in real estate and expand her family company into the Americas. He burst through the front door, elated with a wide smile that you wish you saw more of. He used to smile so much but the stress of life was getting to him. You greeted him with a hug and kiss on the cheek.

"There's a new woman in town and I'd like you to meet her." He said to you as he picked up your youngest kid, Georgie Nelson. You looked at him, brow raised, confused he had never wanted you to meet a woman he knew before. Sure wives and sisters of business partners, but that was different. That was always a dejected ask, knowing that you would hate the small talk. Right now, Jack was glowing. He went on to explain her business in the states. 

"Did you sleep with her?" was the only thing you could think of to ask. A worried feeling stirred inside you, had he found someone that he liked more than you? Was there finally a woman who could give him everything you couldn't. Had he fallen in love? 

As your words hit his ears Jack's demeanor changed, a look sympathetic look in his eyes as put your son down and pulled him in for a hug."No. I want to, but I want you there too." He let go of you and sat back down, "You should have seen her in this meeting." That glow about him returned as he recounted all things she said and did in the meeting. How she handled every hardball question with ease and called him out on his lowball offer. Slowly, a smile crept into your face too. This Ada Throne didn't seem too bad, in fact, she seemed a lot like you. She called Jack out on his bullshit with wit and without hesitation. You agreed to meet her. There was a meeting set up for tomorrow night at The Fantasy, a club that he owned. 

Ada Thorne wouldn't leave your mind, for the whole next day you couldn't help but try to imagine everything you could about her. She was already so intoxicating and you hadn't even met her. As the sun lowered in the sky, you began to get ready for the rendezvous. Failed outfits littered the bed, dresses, and skirts weren't going to cut it tonight. Plus you hated wearing them most of the time, they were fine on nights where you were playing the part of Mrs. Nelson the perfect wife, but tonight you wanted to present wholly and entirely yourself. You knew what you wanted to wear, the question was, were you bold enough to walk into The Fantasy a woman in a suit. 

...

"Carmen?" Jack called out, his deep voice echoing through the hallways of your large Boston apartment. "Are you ready to go?"  His quickened footsteps rattled the floor, your husband was nervous. 

"Yes, sweetheart," you cooed as if you were talking to a small child. The footsteps stopped and you smiled, knowing that in the other room he had his arms crossed like a pouting child. You laughed to yourself. "I'm just putting in my earrings and then we can leave." The clasp locked into place, and you rose from your chair and walked into the hallway. "So...what do you think?" You spun in a slow circle, showing off the tailored blue suit that matched his. 

"When did you get this made?" he smiled down at you, proud of how powerful you looked by yourself and next to him. A matching pair. God, Ada Thorne was going to quake in her shoes at the sight of you two. 

__

Even in America, trouble seemed to follow Ada Thorne. She supposed that was a consequence of every contact she had been related to her brothers, or maybe it was because she and her husband were registered communists, or maybe it was all due to the Shelby blood that followed through her veins. Her people were never quiet or ignored, they were the center of mischief and innovation. Even when she met a man of her own accord, a property manager in Boston, he seemed to be just as much trouble as she was...perhaps even more. 

Jack Nelson. She couldn't get him out of her mind, the way he smoked cigars and drank whiskey neat. A smokey earthy aroma filled the air of the meeting. He felt so familiar, yet so foreign. Mr. Nelson didn't talk down to her or doubt her credentials, like so many other people she met. He listen to her, treated her as an equal, and invited her out to a club he owned. She of course had to say yes, one couldn't say no to the first invitation out. 

"Tomorrow is a Friday night, the best night at The Fantasy by far. You have to come out, there are a bunch of people that I'd like to introduce you to." Jack was promising an eventful night for both her professional and social life. The latter feeling more important to her at the moment, Ada had just moved across the world with her son. Between being a mother and running the American expansion, she had little time for friends. "I'll send a car to get you."

Trying to fit in with the East Coast fashion, Ada selected a modern style of dress. A light pink dress with beaded straps which she picked up in London before her move. She applied a light layer of makeup to head to the club. As Jack promised a driver was waiting for her in the lobby of her apartment building. 

At the club, Ada pushed her way through the crowd of people and up to the bar, wanting to secure a drink before attempting to Mr. Nelson. "Whiskey on the rocks," she told the bartender. A woman in a white blouse and trousers turned to Ada and said, "Good choice." It was Mrs. Carmen Nelson, she was drinking the same thing. "Please top me off, William." She instructed the bartender who quickly refilled her drink after making Ada's. Carmen smiled, Ada Thorne really was just as beautiful as Jack promised. The Brit welcomed the company of this new woman, wondering if they had any more in common than just their drink preference. 

As the night went on, Ada and Carmen talked about everything the sun while Jack watched from his usual corner booth. She was so engrossed in conversation with Carmen that she hadn't even bothered to scan the room for Mr. Nelson. She reasoned that he'd be able to find her if wanted to say hello. Joy raided from Mrs. Thorne as she spoke, finally, there was someone who understood her. She didn't feel alone anymore. 

___

You were having a wonderful night, everything was going according to plan. Your faux casual introduction to Ada went smoothly, all you had to do was wait for a British woman to order whiskey at the bar. The conversation went on smoothly, there was hardly ever silence. Anything was fair game to talk about, except for Jack and the kids, but you knew how to talk around those subjects. 

Eventually, you wanted a bit more than pleasant conversation, you wanted to test the waters.  You let your hand swing down and rest against her knee atop the beaded fabric of her dress. A warm smile appeared on both of your faces as neither of you pulled away. You leaned in to kiss her, heart racing as you did so, one hand brought up to cup her soft curls when -- BAM. A drunk patron pushed his way between you two, rudely calling out for the bartender's attention. A wave of quick hot anger rose from inside you, not only had he knocked over your drinks but he had ruined this carefully crafted moment of intimacy between you and Ada. 

"Hey!" you rose to your feet and challenged the man, hoping for his sake that he'd apologize and get out of your way. 

The stranger didn't back down, "Calm down, lady. I'm just trying to get a drink for me and my friend." He waved over another man and Ada mouth 'GREAT' to you. This other friend immediately noticed that you and she were without men at your sides and made it his personal mission to keep you two company. 

"Nico, be nice to these women. Buy them some drinks."

"We're fine," you replied, a sour look on your face. 

"Oh come one, two ladies as fine as yourselves alone at the bar. You look like you could use the company. I'm Steven."

"Really, we're good," Ada spoke up and you recognized the fire in her eyes. She wouldn't back down either. These guys were going to have to take a few hits to their ego, or bodies before they back down. Steven made the mistake of putting his arms around both of you and saying, "we'll get you some drinks. They'll cool you down, make you more agreeable."

Everything next happened so quickly. Ada stomped on his foot and you punched him in the face. As your fist hit his face, security descended on the scene and pulled the two men back. Seemingly out of nowhere, Jack appeared behind you. He had been watching the scene unfold from his booth in the corner. The presence of your husband and several of the security staff had been enough to make Steven and Nico shrink into themselves. Around you, the party continued on but in this five-foot radius, things were tense. 

"Get them out here," Jack's voice boomed. He looked each of the men in the eyes and told them they were never allowed back in. Ada looked at Jack, wondering how he fits into all of this. Why had he appeared just now? Then the answer was given to her when one of the staff holding back the men that been harassing you two said, 

"We're sorry about this, Mrs. Nelson. It won't happen again."

"Just get them out of her." You waved them away and placed a hand on Jack's arm, silently telling him to calm down and that everything was okay. That you and Ada were just fine. 

"Mrs. Nelson?" Ada mumbled, seeing now how clearly they fit together. Carmen had ditched her suit jacket hours ago, now wearing a blouse and tailored pinstripe suit pants cut from the same material as Jack's. Two people and their outfits were cut from the same cloth. 

Jack turned to Ada, his vicious stare now replaced by his usual cocky smile. "Mrs. Thorne, I see you've met my wife." 

The question was now, what did they want with Ada Thorne.

[plentyoffandoms]

Jack Nelson x f/Reader

Main Masterlist ♡ Jack Nelson Masterlist

Warnings: Some swearing.

Just like all my other stories, this has not been proofread, but please enjoy.

Gifs & photos do not belong to me.

Kind of continuation of This Can't Be Love , but can be read on it's own.

Just a short chapter. If anyone would like me to continue this, please just let me know.

Summary: f/Reader is Jack Nelson's wife & is attacked one day by a new gang in Boston. They steal the car, not realising that their son is in the backseat. Jack will do everything he can to avenge his wife & find his boy.

Jack Nelson's POV:

The hospital staff moved out of my way as I walked through the halls of the hospital. Every single person there knows who I am and why I am here.

The moment I got back to Boston, I went straight to the hospital. I had a police escort from the train station so I could get there quickly.

The moment I stepped out of my automobile, I was told by one of the officers which floor my wife was on.

"She has the whole floor to herself Mr. Nelson."

"Good." Was all I said to the man. I knew the Police force was nervous. They knew what may come out of this if they do not find the men who did this.

The elevator ride up was tense. My men and I having no idea what we may find in that room.

The elevator finally made it to the third floor. The doors opened and I could see that the floor was infact deserted except for a few men.

The men who belonged to the Mayor's own protection detaile. Good to see he wasn't lying when he said that he had his own men outside her room.

I acknowledged them as I passed them. Wanting, no needing to see my Wife. My men waited outside as I entered the clean, white room.

I saw that a nurse was there, talking quietly with YN as she was checking her vitals.

The two of them were deep in conversation that they didn't notice me and I got a good look at YN.

She had a bandage on the side of her neck. Some bruises here and there, but she looked to be okay.

"Jack." I smiled at the sound of her saying my name.

"I will leave you two alone Mrs Nelson." The Nurse gently put YN's hand back on the bed next to her.

"Thank you Mary." YN said.

"Yes, thank you Mary." Mary gave me a small smile as she walked past me. I made a mental note to leave some money for her.

I stood next to the hospital bed and finally got a good look at my wife. I leaned down to kiss her and smiled into the kiss when I felt her kiss back.

"I am okay my love." YN said as she cupped my cheek in her hand. I leaned into it and closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Where else were you hit?"

"My side, but the Doctors got the bullet out and I am expected to make a full recovery."

"I need you to tell me everything about that day. We need to find Donal." I took a seat in the chair that was next to the bed.

I listened as YN recalled what she could about that day.

By the end of it, she was crying. "I am sorry Jack. I can not remember much. It happened all so fast, and the men...they tried so hard." I placed my hand on hers and gave it a squeeze.

"I know they did and they will get proper funerals. Their families will sent money. I know they did everything they could for you and Donal."

~

I hated that I had to leave YN, but she was in good hands. I left a few of my men there as well and we left the hospital.

Once we were in the car, Bobby started to speak. "We are going to the morgue. Three bodies are being held there until we get there."

"Our men?" Bobby shook his head no at me.

"Who are they? Who are they affiliated with?" I asked him.

"No idea. I have photos from the scene that the Police handed over when we got off the train. They each have identical tattoos. A new gang."

I took the photograph that Bobby handed me. I looked at the tattoo that was on the man's hand, trying to figure out if I have ever seen it before.

"Any ideas boss?"

I sat there, looking at the tattoo. Then it hit me.

"Remember that old bar that shut down, The Founding Fathers?"

"Yeah Boss."

"Doesn't that look like the old sign that was outside the door?" I handed the photograph back to him.

"Looks like there is a new gang Jack."

"And they have my son."

[chaosinkest1996]

In The Graveyard with Lilith Rose Shelby (and Jack Nelson)

This work is inspired by @zablife and her 2K celebration: An Evening at The Arrow House. The OC of Lilith Rose Shelby is my own. The characters of Scarlet Shelby, Aurora Sabini, Heaven Shelby and Eva Smith belong to @zablife, @evita-shelby and @call-sign-shark. I only mentioned them because they inspired me. Eva is only mentioned by name but I did my best to do Scarlet and Heaven justice. Thank you for inspiring me.

TW: Violence, Sexual Content, Swearing.

Lilith Rose Shelby was all grown up. She’d flown the coop and (unlike most members of the Shelby clan) had miraculously escaped the clutches of Tommy’s schemes. Some suspected that her untapped freedom had to do with her immense luck in life… but for those who knew better….it was because Thomas Shelby loved no one more than his youngest sister. No one held such an influence over the greatest gangster turned MP in all of Great Britain (and its dominions) than Lilith, no one else had the keys to his smile or to his heart. You might ask Why, then, she was allowed to roam free? Not shackled to the Arrow House as Ada had once been to the shithole in small heath. Not obligated to attend every family dinner or family meeting that Tommy threw whenever he felt like it.

       “Why?” The new Mrs Shelby kissed up Tommy’s back as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Will she not meet me?” Of all the people she desired to make a friend of in this family, Mrs Shelby wanted to make the best first impression on her mysterious good sister. Everyone spoke of her with reverence. Lilith’s name was the very essence of sorcery. Once spoken, even whispered in corridors and in dark corners, a shiver danced up one’s spine…or one’s blood spiked with adrenalin and excitement.  

Thomas bristled and stiffened, not responding. Mrs Shelby paused, a pout forming on her nervous lips. In truth, she had expected for Thomas to be eager for his new wife to meet Lilith. The siblings were so close, that she’d expected for her to have been the first person he’d have introduced her to. Instead she was met with a cagey Thomas.

       “Lilith doesn’t like Arrow House.” He deflected easily, lighting a cigarette as he stood up and wandered to the window, looking out into the foggy grey autumnal morning. He exhaled some smoke in the way that had her swooning, before he spoke again. “It reminds her of Grace.” Mrs Shelby’s heart dropped. Grace, the woman whose shadow she was forever enshrouded by. She didn’t openly wish to express her dislike of Grace or Lizzie, but she was beginning to despise them. She knew their spirits were mourned and honoured in this house…. if only by the staff and the children. It was complicated. But she hated being compared to them, hated the way the children refused to acknowledge her but would gaze in awe at the portraits of their respective mothers. It made her feel like a replacement…. nothing more. Perhaps Lilith would think the same of her. She chewed on her lip.

        “She must have loved Grace a lot.” She mused. Tommy scoffed.

        “On the contrary, Lilith hated Grace.” He licked his lips, glancing at his wife. He’d put it politely for her, spared some of the details. No one hated Grace more than Tommy’s beloved little demoness. “She disliked Lizzie as well, but for different reasons.”

        “Oh.”

        “Grace betrayed me. Lilith refused to forgive that. The only reason she refrained from dancing with joy when she died was that she loved me too much.”

        “And Lizzie?”

        “Lizzie broke John’s heart.”  Tommy spoke casually, remorselessly as though he’d had nothing to do with it.

        “I’ve not done anything to hurt anyone.” Mrs Shelby sulked, looking at the floor. Tommy strolled back over to the bed and took her into his arms.

        “Quite right.” He kissed her forehead. “Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to invite her this weekend.”

        “But she hates the Arrow House.”

        “She’ll come for the family, and for me. The kids will be delighted to see her”

        “She’s good with them?” Her interest was piqued. Perhaps Lilith could shed light on the way to Charlie and Ruby’s hearts.

        “She dotes on them.” He smiled, a real genuine smile. “They’re mine, after all.”

*****

Mrs Shelby skipped towards Tommy, her letter filled left hand raised in triumph. Her sparkling sapphire engagement ring sparkled in the light.

     “They’re coming.” She kissed him joyously. “They’re all coming.”

     “All?” He chuckled.

     “All.” She confirmed. “And they’re all staying. Scarlet and Luca will stay in the room opposite Finn and Aurora. Alfie and Ada will stay in the room opposite Polly and Aberamma.” Tommy smiled as she babbled out her arrangements. He imagined it was a good idea that Alfie and Arthur should stay in separate wings of the house…. otherwise Ada and Heaven would be forced to intervene, and no one wanted a mess. Gina and Michael would go next to Ada and Alfie. John and Tatiana would have to be kept in the room next to Tommy and Mrs Shelby so he could keep an eye on that mad bitch. Speaking of that insane Russian duchess…. she’d have to be kept as far away from Lilith and her beloved husband, Jack Nelson. Last Christmas had been a disaster when Tatiana – having had way too much to drink – announced that herself and Lilith had been lovers for the entire year before Lilith had met Jack. Jack had hated her guts since. The children would have three whole rooms to themselves. Something Mrs Shelby wasn’t sure was appropriate, but something Tommy had insisted was necessary.

     “They all love being together.” He insisted. “And it’s not like we’re giving them the entire house.”

     “I’m still so shocked they’re all coming.” She smiled dreamily up at him. “I’ve always wanted a big family.”

     “Well, now you have one.”

     “You never told me Lilith was married.”

     “Ah.” Tommy looked sheepish. “I didn’t think she’d bring him.”

Two years ago she’d eloped with Jack Nelson, the last man on earth Tommy had thought suitable or good enough for Lilith. Jack Nelson was everything Tommy (ironically) hated. He was unfaithful, violent, a fascistic Irish American and he was the most obnoxious, ambitious, cunning bastard he’d ever encountered…It was like looking in an ever so slightly warped mirror. His dislike of the American hadn’t stopped Lilith marrying him though…And yet somehow, the marriage worked. Jack followed the little Shelby witch round like a lost puppy, salivating whenever she looked at him. It was like she held some sort of magical enchantment over him. The loved up pair made Thomas feel a little bit sick. Mrs Shelby smiled teasingly.

      “You can’t stand him, can you?”

      “He’s not good enough for her.” He grouched. “But for some unfathomable reason, he makes her happy. That’s enough for me.” From the way he gritted his teeth it seemed like that hardest thing he’d ever had to say.

      “Everyone thinks you’re a big bad gangster…but I know you’re really just a big softy.”

      “Don’t go telling everyone, ey.” He laughed, “I have a reputation to uphold.” Wrapping his arms around her waist he hoisted her up onto the table, taking her lips with his own. Someone coughed. Tommy turned to see Mary, the maid.

       “The house is all prepared for the guests, Mr Shelby.”

        “Thank you, Mary. That will be all.” She nodded, turning to leave but not before she eyed Mrs Shelby with frigid, calculating eyes. Thomas didn’t seem to notice though as he shifted his attention back to Mrs Shelby as his fingers slid beneath the hem of her dress.

*****

They were nothing like she expected. None of them. Polly arrived first, gliding in like the image of sophistication, barely glancing at Mrs Shelby. Aberamma following closely at her heels. He grunted in greeting, simply tilting his head after removing his hat. Arthur and Heaven arrived at the same time as Scarlet and Luca. Arthur’s greeting had been sweet. He seemed to like her, spluttering over his words to greet her. His hands shook and his eyes looked a little wild. But he meant well. Heaven waltzed in behind him, looking like an angel in her white fur coat. The snow haired beauty’s presence seemed to ease Arthur’s nervousness. He wrapped his arm around her waist as she held out her hand for Mrs Shelby to shake.

     “You must be Heaven.” Mrs Shelby stuttered, transfixed by her crystalline eyes.

     “Pleasure.” Heaven’s eyes slid to Tommy and her expression instantly shifted to a predatory one. “Bastard.” She acknowledged with a cat like smile.

      “Yes. He is.” Scarlet stated as she sauntered through, pushing her way past them and following Polly into the drawing room.

      “You’re not going to say hello, Tesoro?” Luca paused in the hallway, smiling at Mary as she took his hat and coat.

       “There’s no point in greeting Tommy’s latest victim. Knowing him, she won’t last the year.” Scarlet called back. Tommy watched Mrs Shelby’s confidence dissipate momentarily. Headlights glowed in the driveway.

       “Heaven, why don’t you take Arthur and Luca into the drawing room.” Tommy suggested. Heaven’s icy eyes hardened before narrowing at him. Her lips parted in order to respond in a somewhat poisonous manner but Mrs Shelby stepped forward and whispered to her.

       “I wouldn’t normally agree with Tommy but Alfie’s just arrived.” Heaven observed the mouse like woman Tommy had married for a moment before she nodded, escorting her husband and brother in law to the drawing room. Music blared as the door opened and Mrs Shelby could see the reflection of Scarlet in the large mirror as she turned the gramophone up.

       “SHALOM Thomas!” Roared the bear of a man as he wandered in. Ada rolled her eyes beside him. She hugged Thomas tightly before embracing Mrs Shelby, much to her surprise.

       “I hope they’ve not been too scathing to you.” She whispered. “Don’t worry, they’ll warm to you with time.” She pulled back and smiled. “This is my son, Karl, my daughter, Elizabeth and this,” She brushed her hand over her swollen midsection as Alfie beamed with joy. “Is baby Solomons.” Tommy paled as she spoke, only just noticing the pregnancy.

        “Jesus Christ.” He muttered beneath his breath.  Mrs Shelby held his hand and gave it a squeeze as she spoke.

        “You’d better head on in before he has a stroke.”

Tommy had just about recovered when the door to the drawing room opened and he heard Arthur exclaim.

         “Fookin’ hell Ada! You bloody kept that quiet, din’t ya?!”

Finn and Aurora Sabini arrived next. Polite and jovial as ever, though Aurora didn’t appear to like the way the youngest Shelby boy looked at his new sister in law. John, Tatiana, Michael and Gina all arrived together. Lawrence ran in from the cold, zooming in circles around Tommy and Mrs Shelby before running past them to the drawing room, banging on the door and yelling “Granma, Granma!”

       “My boy!” Polly called in joy as she came out and greeted him, swooping down and collecting him in her arms before slipping back inside. Gina made a noise of disgust.

       “Thomas.” She acknowledged.

       “Regina.” She scowled as he full named her.

       “So this is you’re newest whore?” She studied Mrs Shelby with critical eyes. “She doesn’t look like much, I’m surprised you’re so taken with her.”

        “She’s worth ten of you, Regina.” He snapped.

       “Michael.” Mrs Shelby smiled warmly. “Thank you for coming.”

        “It’s nice to see you again, love. I hope he’s treating you right.”

        “He is. Very Much.”

        “I took the liberty of bringing a wedding gift. It’s out the front.”

        “That’s very generous of you. Really, you didn’t have to.”

        “Yes, Michael. You didn’t have to.” Gina snapped before stalking off to the drawing room and loudly demanding a drink. Michael winked at Mrs Shelby, smirked at Tommy and left them to it. He turned to greet John and Tatiana and froze.

      “Fuck!” He fumed. “What the fuck are you wearing?!” He looked at John. “What the fuck is she wearing John-boy!”

      “Don’t worry, Thomas.” Tatiana purred sensually. “It’s not for you…or your wife.” She stepped around him, the thin scrap of material she called a dress clinging to her figure. “Tatiana Petrovna Shelby, delighted to make your acquaintance.” Mrs Shelby blushed and stepped closer to Tommy as the Russian duchess invaded her space. Grabbing her jaw, Tatiana kissed both of Mrs Shelby’s cheeks.”

       “She’d got a beautiful neck, Thomas. I can see why you like her.” She paused. “And that ring!” She snatched Mrs Shelby’s hand, admiring the sapphire encrusted in diamonds. She tutted. “I would have thought you’d learned your lesson with sapphires.”

       “They’re a particular favourite of my wife’s.”

       “Grace liked sapphires too.” Tatiana smirked, her dark eyes flickering madly in the candle-light. “Is Lilith here yet?” She changed the subject.

       “Is she the reason you’re dressed like a whore?” Tommy took a swig of the amber liquid in his tumbler. “You not bothered by this John?”

       “As long as I’m the only man she fucks, doesn’t matter to me.” He joked.

       “It’ll only ever be you Johnny.” Tatiana turned and kissed him.

       “Aye, John-boy. As long as you’re a Shelby, she’s not picky.”

       “What’s that supposed to mean?” Mrs Shelby asked, nervously glancing at Tommy.

       “It means that before she chose me, she was fucking Tommy…until she got bored of him.” John answered. 

         “Are we interupptin’ somethin’?” Came Uncle Charlie’s deep gravelly voice. He stopped short to shake Tommy’s hand, flanked by Johnny Doggs, Isiah and Curly. Curly smiled bashfully at Mrs Shelby and handed her some flowers. She blushed.

         “Thank you Curly.”

         “How’re you findin’ us so far, petal?” Johnny Doggs asked loudly.

         “So far I’m struggling to find someone who likes both of us. Polly, Aurora and Gina dislike me, everyone else has a gripe with Tommy.” Johnny Doggs barked out a laugh. “Welcome to the clan!”

          “Families.” Isiah scoffed. “Who’d have em?”

*****

Lilith Rose Shelby was the most beautiful creature Mrs Shelby had ever seen. So beautiful, that the air rocketed out of her lungs when she first saw her. They heard Jack first as he escorted her up the steps and held the door open for her. She looked like a goddess, draped in silk. Tommy was fascinated that Jack never once looked away from her. His only greeting to the new Mrs Shelby was a nod and a smirk. He sneered at Tommy before his attention gravitated back to his wife. She had the most beguiling dark eyes Mrs Shelby had ever seen. They were like pools of endless night. Lilith catapulted herself into Tommy, who embraced her tightly and inhaled her scent. Pomegranate and dark amber. She relaxed into him. Releasing her, Tommy cupped his baby sister’s face in his hands and looked at her for a moment.

     “You grow more and more beautiful every time I see you.” He smiled.

     “Brother.” She spoke quietly….and she sounded like magic. Soft and sensual. “You look well.” She beamed at him. And Mrs Shelby’s heart fluttered at her smile. Jack snaked a hand around Lilith’s waist and pulled her back against him.

      “Shelby.” Jack acknowledged. “Married again? You can’t seem to get em’ to stay, can ya?”

      “Nelson.” Tommy spoke evenly. “I can keep women just fine. In fact, I’ve never had to cross a continent and steal a woman away to make her mine. I suppose that means I have better luck than you.” Lilith covered Jack’s hand with her own.

     “Or,” She interrupted loudly, “It simply means that I was special enough that he had to travel all this way to find me.” Mrs Shelby watched, fascinated as both men melted at Lilith words. Jack kissed Lilith’s forehead and Tommy smiled.

    “Could be.” He agreed. Lilith stepped away from Jack and turned her attention to Mrs Shelby. All the noise fell away. She couldn’t hear anything. Apart from the sound of her blood pulsing through her at a rapid speed. She glanced at her husband, and watched his beautiful lips move as he spoke to Lilith and Jack. She watched Lilith study her, eyes raking over her in an unreadable manner. Mrs Shelby’s finger twitched as Lilith’s eyes pause over her engagement ring, her full soft lips quirking into a small smile for a moment before it vanishes. Mrs Shelby gasped, startled when Lilith unexpectedly stepped forward and smiled at her. Lilith took Mrs Shelby’s left hand in both of hers. Her thumb brushed over the sapphire. Her eyes pierced into Mrs Shelby’s hypnotically and Mrs Shelby found herself transfixed as Thomas brushed a hand up and down her back, comfortingly…. obliviously.

      “Sister.” Lilith tested the word on her tongue as she surveyed Mrs Shelby. “You’ll be good to him, yes?” She sounded so innocent. So angelic. Her eyes held no malice. Mrs Shelby stuttered.

      “Y-Yes. I shall try to be all that he deserves.”

Lilith beamed at her and released her hand. Mrs Shelby’s ring finger throbbed momentarily as she watched her fascinating sister turn and enter the drawing room with Jack. She saw through the reflection in the mirror as Polly embraced her niece tightly and was startled to see Lilith’s reflection gazing predatorily through the looking glass at her.

*****

Dinner was a fucking disaster. It had been nothing like she had hoped. Perhaps she was just projecting her own fears but it seemed that none of them liked her…. even the ones who appeared to. It seemed as though they were watching her every move with a pre-existing negative judgement. She was guilty to them, of something. The problem was she didn’t know what and she didn’t know how to change that. Tommy had enough to deal with, especially after Tatiana had goaded Jack into a row and she was swearing at him in Russian. Arthur had had way too much to drink. Scarlet was screaming at Tommy for something he’d done years ago and Luca was trying desperately to calm her down. She turned to look at Michael, who was in a heated discussion with Gina…and Aurora kept throwing her dirty looks.  In the end she’d left the table, claiming to check on dessert. She’d just found a quiet alcove to take a few moments when someone touched her shoulder. She jolted and turned to see Lilith.

    “Feeling overwhelmed?” Her voice was so soft, sympathy swirled in her onyx eyes.

    “A little.”

A lot. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

    “I know. We can be a lot to handle.” She looked out into the darkened garden. “Why don’t we go for a walk.” She suggested. “Take a moment to ourselves.” Mrs Shelby’s heart soared at the prospect of having a moment alone with someone who might actually like her and in doing so, might sway the opinion of the others. She nodded and took Lilith’s offered arm as the two of them stepped out into the cool autumn air.

It hadn’t been long since they had returned from their honeymoon and so Mrs Shelby hadn’t yet had time to explore the grounds of the Arrow House properly. In the dark murkiness of the evening she couldn’t really see where she was going and clutched on to Lilith’s bare arm a little closer for security. She smelt dizzyingly alluring. Away from all the smoke and whiskey the magic of her perfumed the air in a wonderful way. 

    “How did you meet my brother, if you don’t mind me asking?”

    “Da’s one of his employees at Shelby Company ltd. I met Tommy when I brought Da his lunch.”

    “How…. quaint.”

Mrs Shelby wasn’t paying attention. She was too bust staring at the purple love bites littering Lilith’s creamy throat. Lilith flushed and giggled when she noticed.

    “I’m sorry, I should have covered up more, Jack can get carried away some times.”

    “He’s very fond of you.”

    “And I, him.” Lilith patted Mrs Shelby’s hand. “I never expected to find Jack. But he’s my better half. As Heaven is Arthur’s and Luca is Scarlet’s. We were worried Thomas would never find someone….worthy.” Lilith stopped her movements and released Mrs Shelby’s arm. For the first time, Mrs Shelby noticed her surroundings. Lilith had brought her to the churchyard close to the Arrow House. She turned, only just able to see the outline of it looming in the moonlight. She shivered, looking back to Lilith who was now staring at something in front of her. “Thomas has very specific needs.” Her voice had lost all of its warmth. Mrs Shelby’s mouth ran dry as she read the names on the gravestones in front of her.

Grace Burgess Shelby.

Daughter, Mother, Beloved Wife.

Elizabeth Stark Shelby

Mother, wife, friend. Lost to childbirth.

Something rustled behind them. Lilith turned and smiled adoringly as Jack stepped out of the shadows. Mrs Shelby wondered how he had known where to find them. “You have to be a certain kind of person to survive in this family. Don’t you, my love?”

    “Ya got that right. It’s an honour to love a Shelby…to be prepared to kill and die for them.”

“Thomas needs a fighter.” Lilith reached out and caressed Mrs Shelby’s cheek. “You didn’t fight tonight. You fled, little mouse.” Lilith tutted and stepped closer, so close, Mrs Shelby could feel Lilith’s sweet, warm breath burning against her flesh. “How can I trust that you’ll fulfil him?” Lilith shook her head, looking sad, disappointed even. Jack brushed his wife’s hair off her shoulder, exposing her flesh. He pressed a kiss into the crook of her neck. Mrs Shelby watched Lilith relax a little. “You’re not good enough for him.” Lilith purred softly, Jack’s lips and tongue trailed down Lilith’s neck as she spoke. “Neither of them were, either.” She glanced to the gravestones behind her. “I was lucky with Lizzie; God took care of her. But I had to intervene with Grace.”

  “B-but we’re happy.” Mrs Shelby spluttered, fear creeping into her voice every second longer that she spent in Lilith’s presence.

   “For now. Until he realises that you’re not enough for him.” She paused, relishing in the look of despair on Mrs Shelby’s features. “Don’t worry. He’ll be happier than ever with Eva. They’ll be perfect together.” Jack hummed in agreement with his beloved and imprinted his teeth in a perfect love bite into her neck as she slid home a beautiful carved and somewhat bejewelled blade into Mrs Shelby’s sternum. Mrs Shelby gasped in pain, a sharp sound leaving her soft lips. “She’s earned him, you haven’t.” Lilith continued as she twisted the hilt, a horrible tearing noise was heard before Lilith let go. Mrs Shelby staggered back and fell back against the willow tree overhanging the makeshift graveyard.  Lilith looked down at her blood spattered fingers. Lifting them to her face she licked one, smearing her lips in the substance. Greedily, Jack took her fingers and painted his own mouth with them. Lilith spun in Jack’s arms, giggling and moaning as their lips fused, unbuckling his belt. She murmured something to him and he acquiesced without question, sitting and leaning back against Grace’s headstone. Lilith slipped her dress over her head until she was wearing barely anything in the coldness of the autumn night. She straddled Jack, kissing him deeply before sliding down onto him in the ghostly glow of the full moon.

Mrs Shelby heaved, opening her mouth. She tried to call for help but no sound emerged. Instead she found herself mute, only coughing and spluttering on the crimson blood as it tried to liberate itself from her mouth. Her vision grew blurry for a moment as tears gathered and obscured her sight.

And then she saw them.

The ghosts of Grace Burgess and Lizzie Stark, both completely drenched in blood and staring in horror, not at her but at Lilith and Jack, as he flipped his wife over and took her like an animal. Lizzie’s expression was melancholic. Her hair loose and wild, eyes ceaselessly spilling tears and her mouth agape in silent cries of agony. Her body had been slit open from chest to lower abdomen and still, even in death, she was bleeding. Grace stood beside her still in the gown she wore the night she was murdered. the bullet wound on her chest still wept even though she didn’t. Her face was curiously, disturbingly calm. The sapphire around her neck pulsed and throbbed and pulsed and throbbed. And suddenly Grace wasn’t looking at Lilith and Jack anymore, her pale grey eyes locking onto her second replacement. Mrs Shelby found herself growing shivery and yet unable to move, unable to scramble backwards as the sapphire whispered to her over and over some kind of spell in Romani. The curse…. she recalled hazily as she forced her limbs in an attempt to move. Tommy believed it had been cursed by the Russians. Mrs Shelby’s fingers dug into the soil as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Every movement was excruciating in both pain and in effort. Her eyes fluttered closed in exhaustion and the spell of the sapphire seemed to sing louder and louder, it’s feminine voice echoing seductively in her ears. She realised it was coming not only from the necklace Grace’s ghost wore, but also from the ring on her engagement finger. Struggling, she tried desperately to remove it. But to no avail, it was as though it had fused to her flesh, strangling her finger.

Mrs Shelby’s eyes snapped open. Just in time to see the ghost of Grace stood over her.

“I should feel sorry for you.” Grace whispered. “You’re a victim of this family, just like me.” She paused, licking her discoloured corpse lips. Grace heard it too. She heard that it was Lilith’s voice cursing her inside the blue sapphires, not Tatiana’s. “And Tommy does love you.” There was a moment of silence. “But… I’ve come to realise something.” Grace leaned down and kissed Mrs Shelby’s lips, her ghostly fingers coming up to wrap around Mrs Shelby’s throat. “If I can’t have Tommy…” Grace murmured as she pulled back looking deeply into Mrs Shelby’s eyes.

Her grip tightened...and tightened…and tightened. Mrs Shelby choked and spluttered, her body convulsing. The last thing she saw was Lilith’s dark eyes staring at her over Jack’s shoulder, her nails digging into his back as he held her to him. And Grace’s hoarse voice looming over her.

“Then no one can.”  

[divinekangaroo]

just enough to let me drown - pettiot - Peaky Blinders (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | ? | ?

During S6-E5, starting with Tommy meeting Diana at the narrowboat, how he gets back to Arrow, that particular Dinner, through to Tommy returning home after dropping Jack Nelson off at the train.

Tommy was running out of women who didn’t look like other women. If Lizzie found out, he’d have only redheads left to fuck in his old age.

No. No old age. Only this.

.

Diana Mitford/Tommy Shelby, Past Oswald Mosley/Tommy Shelby, Tommy Shelby/Lizzie Stark, Past Oswald Mosley/Lizzie Stark, Jack Nelson, Charles Strong, Small Heath Sex Worker | Reference to Incest, Dehumanisation, Cigarette Burns, Disassociation, Racism, Class Issues, Intrusive Thoughts, Extremely Dubious Consent, Post Rationalisation, Flashbacks, Dyfunctional Relationship, Self Harm, Oral Trauma, Trauma, Plausible Deniability, Close POV/Unreliable Narration, Horrible Dinner Parties, Prostitution, Shame, Hurt/Comfort, Eating Inedible Objects, Vomiting, Pre-Seizure Markers, Where Fascism becomes a Personally Targetted Sexual Nightmare, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Falling Off the Wagon, Unreliable Memory, Hoarding, Orgasm Control, Innuendo, Ethnic Slurs, Trying (so fucking hard!) to Communicate (emotion is the enemy of oratory!), Spiralling, Purposeful Ambiguity, Failed Love Confession/s

.