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adelaidedrubman · 11 months

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Jestiny Rook cares about exactly three things in life: fishing, and the two girlfriends with whom she goes fishing. So Jessie takes it rather hard when Skylar and Sherri inform her she’s no longer part of their relationship. Luckily, Jestiny crosses paths with the likewise freshly dumped John Seed, and despite their mutual repulsion they concoct a brilliant plan to pretend to date each other in order to make their respective exes jealous and win them back. also available on ao3.

summary/notes: that’s right, i wasn’t joking about this and chapter one is here! john/jestiny fake dating au set post fish catching girlfriend and rye polycule breakup. chapter wordcount: 7.9k chapter warnings: physical violence, blood, unhealthy relationships (although technically pre/pretend romantic relationship now) alcohol use and intoxication, sexual dialogue and situations (still just a mature rating for now), emotional volatility, discussions of pregnancy, and lots and lots of fishing puns.

The first thing Jestiny felt after Skylar had said the words was…

Her eyes fell, drawn to the place on the table Sherri patted Skylar’s hand in silent concurrence.

Numb.

She felt numb.

The tips of her fingers were numb against the frosty glass of her beer as she skimmed a thumb along the neck of the bottle, the coating of icy white melting into clear gloss beneath it.

She cocked her head to the side with almost bored curiosity as she looked back up at them, the thought occurring this was the first time she’d ever really been broken up with, all her other relationships having ended with a tense but vague discussion about where things were going followed by her packing up her apartment and skipping town by the next sunrise.

The pit of her stomach hollowed, stretching out as if to scream itself readied for her heart to plummet into its depths any time now — but it failed to heavy, failed to even flutter. Numb.

She locked her gaze onto Skylar’s face, equally blank and resolute. She glanced over to Sherri.

She looked away from both of them, eyes landing on the bartender tensing her shoulders before shoving a rag covered hand into a glass mug. Then to the motionless shape of a body slumped over the counter in a deep, intoxicated slumber. She darted her eyes to briefly follow the form of a more lively drunkard staggering from the table presently shooing him away to its neighbor before lowering eyes to stare at the glazed wood surface of their own.

She turned the bottle in her hand, flexing her wrist so she could study the paper label of her IPA with something akin to bored disinterest. The words ‘Two Hearted Ale’ shouted at her in bright orange as she locked eyes with the image of a brook trout plastered beneath them, unable to contain the snort of laughter that tore through her as the irony occurred to her.

She hung her head as her shoulders shook with laughter, then tossed it back to let the noise echo through the rafters.

She continued laughing as she kicked a foot atop the table, rocking back in her seat.

“Sherri and I think this relationship should be just the two of us for a while,’” Jessie finally parroted as she swung a second leg up to cross ankles over the first, sole of her combat boots flirting with pushing Sherri’s whiskey off the ledge of the table onto her lap. “That’s funny.”

Sherri cleared her throat, unlacing her fingers from their place intertwined with Skylar’s to fold atop the table in front of her, stiff and businesslike. “It wasn’t a joke, Jessie.”

“It wasn’t a joke,” she acknowledged in something between agreement and mockery, tipping her beer. “It was funny, though.”

“Look,” Skylar cleared her throat, adjusting her hat. “We don’t expect you to be, like… All cool and shit with this right away, we know it’ll take time to… Sort through your feelings or whatever…”

“Cool?” Jessie scoffed. “Oh, I’m — I’m ice fucking cold, Skylar.” Cold and numb. “I’m goddamn cool as an arctic fucking grayling, Skylar.

Sherri frowned. “We don’t want to make this any harder than —”

“I mean, not sure why you’d even be worried about me.” She swung her legs to plant her feet back onto the ground, chair crashing down with them as she jabbed a finger between them. “I’ll be fine. What the hell is Dylan gonna do?”

Skylar and Sherri exchanged looks. Jestiny wondered for exactly how long they’d been exchanging looks she hadn’t noticed herself being left out of.

Skylar coughed. “Dylan ain’t really part of this.”

“No shit he ain’t,” Jessie replied. “How’d he take the news?”

Sherri looked at her whiskey. “Well, she means…” Skylar nodded her on. “Skylar is still dating Dylan, actually.”

Jestiny raised a brow, leaning forward. “So you’re not just gonna date each other now?” she asked. “Y’all’re still dating Dylan?”

“Well, Skylar is still dating Dylan,” Sherri answered. “I was never dating Dylan, I was just dating you and Skylar, now —”

“So Skylar’s still dating Dylan and you, and you’re dating me and Skylar but not Dylan, but Skylar is breaking up with me?”

Sherri shifted in her seat, leaning back to put an arm around Skylar. “I’m also breaking up with you, Jessie. We’re both breaking up with you.”

Harsh realization clicked into place in Jestiny’s mind, driving her fist to clench and slam onto the table. “So you’re both breaking up with me and nobody’s breaking up with Dylan?!”

“We aren’t trying to hurt you, Jessie, honest,” Skylar mumbled. “This shit just isn’t working, but we still care about you and all. And we want this to be —”

“Silver Lake.”

“...Huh?”

“Silver Lake,” Jestiny repeated in a low hiss, scratching nails along the the label of her beer as she dodged the women’s pitying stares — only to find even more sets of eyes staring back at her from the crowd. She settled on the one pair that seemed to be averted from her, vivid blues belonging to that same stumbling drunk who was now propping himself unsteadily at the table behind Skylar and Sherri to shout something indecipherable to its occupants with a wave of his arms. “Who gets Silver Lake?”

The pair finally broke their gaze from Jestiny long enough to look at each other, so that Jessie was able to force her eyes away from studying the ugly tattoos on the man behind them to look them in the face.

Sherri furrowed her brow. “It’s — my fishing store is at Silver Lake. Can of Worms? The place you grab bait from without paying all the damn time?”

“Well I’m not askin ’ for the fucking store, Sherri,” she replied with wide eyes and an exaggerated grin. “I’m asking who the fuck gets to fish at Silver Lake.”

Skylar shook her head. “Jessie, you don’t even like Silver Lake,” she grumbled under her breath. “Ya always called it an ‘overcrowded, overrated tourist trap.’”

Jestiny felt a sharp sting ripple behind her eyes, fury bubbling up in her throat — of course she liked Silver Lake. A person didn’t fish somewhere for nearly seven months straight and not even like it. She might even say she —

She slammed her fist against the table again, hard enough for ice cubes to clink against the glass of Sherri’s whiskey from the force. “In summer it’s an overcrowded, overrated tourist trap,” she ground out, sucking a breath in through her teeth. “In winter it’s the only fucking decent place to catch trout!”

“It’s a big lake.”

“Not big enough for the three of us!”

“I’m not gonna stop fishing at the lake I run my own damn business at,” Sherri said, the slightest hints of a scowl beginning to furrow onto her face.

“Oh, well!” Jessie cried, shooting up to her feet with a grating scrape of the legs of her chair against the hardwood. “I would fucking hate to crush your goddamn entrepreneurial spirit!”

The sarcastic exclamation was apparently loud enough to even draw the attention of the wasted asshole in the tacky duster, who finally fixed his unfocused gaze on her — but blessedly only increased the volume of his own manic rambling in response, eyes of the crowd turning their heads back towards him.

“— because he can’t even stick a landing, by the way. Always veers to the —”

“Hell, I might as well give you the fuckin’ shirt off my back, huh?” she laughed, tugging at the collar of the graphic t-shirt bearing the outline of a bass splashing out of water beneath the slogan ‘My Fishing Line Isn’t The Only Thing I Get Wet.’ “Since I bought it at Can of Worms, too! Guess it’s all yours, now that it’s over!”

She actually thought she bought it the first day they — never mind that, she yanked the hem from beneath the waistband of her shorts to begin pulling it over her head.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Jessie!” Skylar barked. “We did this in a public place because we were hoping it’d make you less likely to make a scene.”

“Oh, I —” she threw the shirt down onto the table, pressing fingertips against the worn polyester of the sports bra covering her chest in gesture to herself. “I’m making a scene?”

“Big fucking scene,” Sherri agreed. “You always make some kinda —”

“This is not a scene!” she interrupted, waving a hand over the table. “This —” She grunted, swinging her arm back to point towards the creep prattling on at the next table so loud she couldn’t hear herself think long enough to form a proper argument about why she should get exclusive use of Silver Lake. “That fucker is making a fucking scene!”

“— an absolute disgrace of a cockpit —”

“Hey, asshole!” she shouted over Skylar and Sherri’s heads. “I’m trying to have a calm fucking discussion with my girlfriends about fishing spots over here!”

“Ex-girl —”

“So could you shut the fuck up?” Jestiny demanded, stomping a foot down. “What’s your fucking problem?!”

Blue eyes locked onto her, this time properly, with something more than hazy, drunken focus — breathy, sputtering laughter following in their wake.

“Problem?” he half-slurred in a rising huff. “Oh, no problem.”

He stumbled a few steps forward towards her, until she could smell the stench of expensive liquor and cheap weed clinging to him, and feel the hot puffs of his laughter falling against her face as he leaned in with a clumsily sway.

“In fact, I’m celebrating,” he hummed with the rise of his eyebrows — reaching forward into her space to grab her beer bottle off the table, raising it up in cheers. “I’m going to be a father,” he said as he brought the bottle to his lips to take a swig.

She snatched the beer bottle from his hand the moment he lowered it, growling, “You’re gonna be a fucking corpse if you touch my beer again.”

She tossed her head back with a harsh jerk, throwing the bottle back with it to chug the rest of the beer in some show of retaliatory dominance against the stranger, feeling the satisfying fizz of it tingle down her throat until —

Until she felt a matching tingle mist along her neck down to her cleavage, opening her eyes in time to see beer mixed with spittle spraying from the man’s mouth as he choked on and coughed up her drink.

“What the fuck?”

“God,” he coughed, casting a disdainful look towards the bottle in her hand as he raised his own wrist towards his mouth — apparently thinking better of it as his eyes darted towards the airplane-patterned sleeve, instead reaching for the discarded t-shirt on the table to bunch up and wipe the mess of beer foam dribbling down to soak into his beard. “That tastes terrible.”

Jestiny was suddenly, ardently inspired by what an absolutely perfect landing zone the broad, flat, freckled temples of his head made for the body of her empty bottle.

“Maybe you’ll like it better served this way, asshole!” she screamed as she swung two hands towards his face — the left arriving more quickly to cradle the side of his head and keep it in place as the right smashed the bottle against the opposite side with more force, shattered glass burying itself with a satisfying sting into the flesh of her palm.

“Aa-aah!” he let out the most exquisitely rewarding wounded cry from the strike, unsteady legs easily giving way beneath him — a spurt of blood gushing from the freshly opened vein of his temple to sling crimson across Sherri’s arm as he fell to the floor.

“Shit, I’m sorry Sher-bear.” Jestiny moved the man’s body further out of her way with a jab of the toe of her boot against his abdomen, yanking the crumpled shirt from the clutches of his hand to wipe Sherri’s arm. “Fuck that asshole for getting his fucking blood on your —”

“Get away from her, you fucking psycho!” Skylar shouted, thrusting a hand out to shove Jestiny away from Sherri forcefully enough she lost her balance and landed on the ground beside the drunk bastard.

“I —” She eyed the t-shirt in her hand, deciding it must be the object of offense — of course, she should have thought better than to have used the same shirt the creep had used as a spit rag. “Fuck. Let me get a nap —”

“Alright, that’s about enough.” A stern voice sounded behind Jessie and drew her attention before she could reach to pull herself back to her feet. She turned her head to see the bartender standing behind her with arms crossed, the cook who usually kept himself scarce behind the order window towering just behind her. “The second blood gets spilled is when folks officially stop being welcome here.”

“Mary May, thank fucking Christ!” Jessie exclaimed, hopping to her feet. “This asshole has been —”

“I would think the person being asked to leave would be you,” the man hissed, gripping the ledge of the table to pull himself to stand. “You’re the one who assaulted an innocent patron trying to —”

“I’ll see you out as well,” Casey interrupted, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket to pull him towards the door like a mother cat dragging a kitten by the scruff of the neck. “We’ve been getting complaints about you harassing customers all night. None of them are too happy to hear you speaking ill of the Ryes just as they’ve gotten news of such a joyous blessing.”

“ — a First Amendment right to be in a public gathering place, not to mention to tell the people of this community the truth about exactly how that little blessing came to —”

“Ha! I’ll have Mary May mail you a bill for the beer!” Jestiny shouted after the man continuing to rant himself even redder in the face than the excessive alcohol had colored him, waving a hand in an exaggerated arc of ‘goodbye.’ “Maybe next time learn to swallow instead of spit, you —”

“You’re leaving too, Jessie,” Mary May said firmly. “You can’t go screaming all night and breaking bottles over people’s heads, even if assholes like John Seed do deserve it. You gotta take that shit outside,” she offered with a nod towards the door Casey was presently throwing the aforementioned asshole out of. “’Sides,” she tacked on, giving Jestiny’s mostly bare torso a once over. “No shoes, no shirt, no service.”

“Well, fine!” she scoffed, stomping a boot against the hardwood before looking towards Skylar and Sherri, the former cradling the latter with one arm while the hand of the other wiped the blood from her arm with a cocktail napkin wrapped around an ice cube. “Let’s go,” she waved the pair on. “The outdoor tables at Whistling Beaver have better views of the river, anyways. We can drink th —”

“Sherri and I are gonna be staying right here,” Skylar replied with a solemn shake of her head.

“It’s over, Jessie,” Sherri added with an agreeing nod before dropping her head to rest on Skylar’s shoulder. “Just… Save yourself some embarrassment and just walk away.”

“Go on,” Mary May agreed, shrugging and holding a hand out towards the door. “Beer’s on the house, since he did have it coming. Clear out without any more fuss, and I won’t pass any of this along to Whitehorse.”

Jessie’s eyebrows shot towards her hairline, eyes bulging wide as she studied the resolute expressions of the three women — heart pumping itself an extra beat of fury at the realization somehow Mary May was more in tune with the women Jessie had been dating for half a year than she herself was.

Jestiny gulped the angry knot forming in her throat right back down with a series of small, slow nods, letting out a singular low chuckle.

“Well, I sure as shit don’t stick around where I’m not wanted,” Jessie said with a shrug.

She reached forward to swipe Sherri’s whiskey from the table, holding it up in a toast.

“Cheers, to the new relationship.” She threw back the whiskey, then flung the empty glass down — turning on her heels before it could shatter against the ground, tiny stray shards burying themselves in her calves as she marched towards the door, trailed by a half-hearted forward lunge from the bartender in final warning.

“You can add that to my fucking tab!” she shouted over her shoulder as she pushed the door open. “Doesn’t hold a candle to Kentucky bourbon, anyways!”

Her stomach only burned hotter as the chill of cool night air erupted against her skin, the heat of whiskey sloshing inside her, the glass embedded in her flesh pulsing with that same white hot, stinging numbness.

It settled just as sharply in the cracked skin of her knuckles as it pulled taut over hands clenching into fists as she continued storming towards her car.

“Hey there!”

She turned as quickly as she’d bolted off at the sound of a voice calling after her from behind, briefly entertaining the fanciful vision of Skylar and Sherri chasing after her, realizing their mistake as quickly as they made it — only to register the increasingly, annoyingly familiar breathy tone of voice that had called her, unwelcome sight of the man thrown out ahead of her greeting her from the bench beside the door.

“Have you heard the good — Ah.” His smarmy smile twisted into a sneer as she entered his sights, waving a tattooed hand as if dismissing her presence before tucking it beneath his jacket to pull a flask from the pocket of its inner lining. “It’s you.”

Before he could finish taking a drink her fists were bunched around the front of his hideous, too-tight vest, pulling him to his feet by it then slamming him against the side of the building with a heavy thud and a bruising impact of his bony chest against her knuckles.

“Yeah, it’s fucking me!” She pulled against bunched fabric to slam him against the wall again in punctuation. “And I still want to know what the fuck your problem is, John Seed,” she spat out the name she’d heard Mary May refer to him by like a curse, a growl of disgust bubbling along her tongue with it. “The shit you pulled in there just cost me my relationship!”

“Hm.” A hot huff of an amused sigh fell against her face. “You know my name now,” he laughed softly, raising his brows and lolling his head forward so that the tip of his nose touched hers. “You asked after me, didn’t you?”

She slammed him against the wall even harder the third time, frustrated to find it was not the charm, the smile never falling from his face as his skull knocked against the building.

“I hope whatever fuckin’ hellspawn you sired ain’t gonna mind growing up fatherless,” she hissed, shoving her forearm at the base of his throat. “Because you’re not gonna be around to see it born.”

“Oh, you’ve been beaten to the punch on that one, I’m afraid.” She could feel the vibration of laughter in the adam’s apple bobbing against her forearm. “My family and I apparently aren’t welcome around Baby Rye.”

The statement caused anger to quell itself with a sudden click in Jessie’s mind, like the burner of a stove being suddenly jerked off to extinguish flame. The cool blanketing of sudden calm allowed her to note with fresh clarity the puffy, swollen appearance of the lids surrounding blue eyes, the blotchy, raw texture to the blush of his cheeks, the rigid tension in the curve of his grin.

She lowered her arm with a dull grunt, shifting her glare to the ground.

“So, baby momma dumped you today, huh?” she said in a flat tone that made clear it wasn’t really a question. She gave his cheek a few sympathetic pats — just a little too closely to the open gash running down the side of his head, because she was still pissed about the beer thing.

“You still owe me a fuckin’ drink, asshole,” she grumbled as she snatched of the flask from his hand and a much lazier glare.

She blessedly heard no protests as she tossed the flask back to let its contents slide down her throat. The liquor she swallowed left a smooth, peppery burn in its wake, settling onto her taste buds like campfire smoke clinging to her hair.

Scotch. Likely top-shelf. Excellent quality. Certainly better than McHelen’s.

“And I think scotch tastes terrible, for the fucking record,” she grunted at him as she hopped up to sit atop one of the patio tables, lowering her feet into the seat of one of its chair as she took another swing from his flask. “Bourbon is the superior fuckin’ whiskey.”

John cleared his throat, smoothing a hand along the front of his vest and stiffening his posture. He took steady, measured footsteps as he walked over to the table she’d set herself atop, the adrenaline from having been shoved against a wall and nearly choked out apparently sobering him up some.

He pulled out a chair beside the one she planted the soles of her feet in, resting an arm atop the table, not yet reaching for the flask placed between them.

“You know trout really do have two hearts?” Jessie finally broke the silence to ask absentmindedly, studying him in her periphery to make out fuzzy details of his form while her eyes remained glued on the string lights hanging over the awning.

He certainly didn’t look like a fisherman.

“That’s why the beer is called that,” she said, flashing him a pointed look on the topic as she reached for the flask. “One heart up front by the gills that pumps blood out to the tail, then one at the tail that sends all that blood right back up to the first heart.” She turned the flask in her hand, its soft leather sleeve brushing her palm. “They work together, both of ’em.” She studied the weight of the flask in her hand, smoothed a thumb along the circular cutout in the sleeve and down to the engraving it opened to display carved into the metal: a set of perfectly balanced scales, plates even and symmetrical. “One fish. Two hearts.”

“Two hearts to one brain. And the latter being smaller, I would assume,” he mused with a small, stiff laugh, propping an elbow on the table and looking up at her. “Sounds like a pitiful creature.”

“The fuck you know about trout?” she spat back with a bitter scowl. “You sure don’t fucking look like a fisherman to me,” she added, looking him up and down with visible disdain. “I’ll have you fuckin’ know trout’s brains actually change size, depending on the time of year,” she informed him matter-of-factly. “They get larger during breeding season.”

“Well,” he huffed defensively, as easily annoyed as he was an annoyance. “I suppose they’re also quite the opposite of humans on that count.”

“I’ll say,” she answered snidely. “Apparently whatever poor fuckin’ soul you were with only got the brains to dump your sorry ass after the mating stage.”

His smile was overly appeasing as he reached for the flask, and despite her glare she didn’t resist this time as his fingers pulled it from her hand to take a drink. “Oh, I think the souls in question will come to realize just what a foolish mistake they’ve made very soon.”

“Yeah, pretty sure they make a pill these days for when a gal realizes she’s made that kinda mistake,” she retorted with an exaggerated batting of her eyelashes as she pulled the flask from his hand. “And if you’re the baby daddy, she really would be wising up to take it.”

“My, and how did you ever lose a significant other with charm like that!” he exclaimed just a bit too enthusiastically to actually read as unbothered. “The stab in the dark petty insults only serve to show how little you actually know about the situation.”

The increased roughness with which he jerked the flask from her hand betrayed the lingering anger he had meticulously drained from his tone.

It was quite easy to get under his skin, she decided. And fun.

Although disappointingly his anger seemed to dissipate with more earnestness as he drank from the flask, the tension in his jaw easing with his swallow.

Less fun.

“And, well, just between the two of us,” he said, his speech regaining a subtle slurred quality as he slid the bottle back towards her obligingly, polite smile plastering itself back on his face in turn. “Perhaps the circumstances are a bit more… muddled than I had suggested to the Spread Eagle crowd.”

Jestiny looked up from the fingers he drummed atop the table, taking in his expression. Fingers tapped a faster, more impatient rhythm as she drew out her pause.

As a rule (one of the few she followed quite stringently) Jestiny did not ask people personal questions.

Even in the best of scenarios it invariably meant being presented with a cavalcade of foreign emotional baggage she was expected to respond to with a personable sympathy rather contrary to her nature, and in the event she successfully muddled her way through that the inevitable, undesired reward would be a reciprocal prying into the details of her personal life.

No, thank you. Jestiny did not ask other people personal questions.

And Jestiny got the distinct sense that John Seed in particular was someone who never really should be asked personal questions. That he was the type of man to whom one should never dare to utter the phrase ‘elaborate on that.’

And beyond that, well…

Jestiny noted the way his eyebrows seemed to perpetually creep slightly upward for each second of silence, and she wondered just how many thin, lengthy wrinkles could crease themselves into his forehead in anticipation.

Jestiny was a fisherman, and she knew how to recognize obvious bait.

She thought of her own personal favorite fishing lure as she gazed into eyes gleaming expectantly with neon and starlight. A snappy little spinnerbait with a sky blue minnow head glossed with a glitter coat that made it dazzle all the brighter and a wide feathery skirt of sparkly silver fringe fanning out from its base to conceal the threatening steel of its hook while the sleek metal blade at its side twirled about to loudly demand attention. A conveniently compact lure that made up for what it lacked in size with flashiness, easily gaining notice from any unlucky fish sharing waters with it to entice them to their doom.

And as she trailed her eyes down along the shimmering silk of his bold blue shirt to the gaudy gold buttons scattered along the busy patterned canvass of his jacket, then back up to the strange mass of scar tissue displayed from the deep plunge of his neckline, Jestiny felt positively certain every bit of absurd flashiness was in concealment of some very serious hooks.

No, Jestiny Ellen Rook did not take obvious bait. And John Seed was very clearly someone bait should never be taken from.

But…

Her eyes were drawn to a different sparkle, the reflective grain of a piece of broken glass still lodged in her palm.

She sighed as she picked it out, rolling her eyes.

Admittedly, all of John Seed’s ostentatious dramatics also made her feel as if she weren’t someone who’d just been escorted out of a bar for ripping off her shirt and breaking a bottle over a man’s head — or that if she was, then that was a perfectly normal, rational, and mature thing for one to do.

So Jestiny took the bait.

“So what is the deal, exactly?” she pressed flatly, reaching for the now near empty flask and flinging it by the neck to spin upward a few times before catching it midair and taking a drink. “What’d you get dumped for?”

She felt an odd, warning sense of dread at how easily the dig bounced off of him this time, the sharp stretch of his smile widening with a distinctly predatory quality at the opening. Definitely some hooks.

“You’re familiar with the Rye family, I take it?”

“Can’t say that I fucking am,” she answered.

His brow seemed to tense with gentle skepticism. “Nick and Kim Rye? They’re quite prominent in the community.”

“I stay out of folks’ business,” she said plainly. “Not big on small town gossip.”

“Of Rye & Sons Aviation?”

“Don’t get too involved in the aviation industry either.”

“Well, I wouldn’t consider myself part of the industry, per se,” he replied with practiced laughter, bringing a hand to the bare portion of his chest in gesture to himself. “But I do fly.”

She gave two slow blinks of half lidded eyes to show her lack of awe at information.

“That’s how we all met, in fact,” he continued, undeterred. “Nick, Kim, and I. We were neighbors, and I visited their airstrip while the hangar on my own property was still in the process of being built.” Three blinks, slower, heavier. “We all got to know each other quite well. We would talk shop, go flying together… And, you know.” He flashed a suggestive smile. “One thing led to another.”

“‘Another’ being you fucking his wife behind his back and getting her pregnant?” She raised an eyebrow as she pieced together the information. “That’s the extra little ‘complication’ to your breakup? You’re a homewrecker?”

“We all got to know each other quite well,” he repeated in correction, leaning forward to give her a knowing look with the added emphasis. “Their home is quite intact, and nothing was behind anyone’s back,” he added. “Except, well.”

He gave a single humph of laughter under his breath, smirk widening at his own implication.

But before she could properly roll her eyes at the immaturity, renewed anger sharpened itself onto his expression just as quickly as it’d left.

“Or so things were, until today.” He undercut the statement with another laugh, but its choppy, breathy quality did little to portray amused calm. “When they sat me down to tell me they found out they were expecting a child, and it would be best if I not come around anymore.”

“And how’d you figure from that the kid was yours?”

“Well.” There was a flicker of something almost resembling shame splintering through the polished ‘anger masquerading as amusement’ expression. “Perhaps I exaggerated the biological certainty of Baby Rye’s parentage.”

“It’s not yours?”

“It’s not completely impossible that it’s mine.”

She tapped a finger against the scales of justice engraving on his flask. “I’m no fancy big city lawyer, but something tells me you’re not gonna win a custody case with that argument.”

“It’s not about that, anyways,” he snapped with an angry hiss he no longer made an effort to temper. “It’s about waking them up to how blind they’re being! To how easily the small-minded, heartless, faithless flocks of this town will turn on them in a moment of need! How quickly they’ll be abandoned because of a bit of petty gossip! The opportunity they’re throwing away to build a family that can endure —”

“Yeah,” she cut off his rant with a drawn out sigh. “You talkin’ shit about them is really gonna make ’em fuckin’ regret letting you wind up as the one that got away,” she said with a teasing sarcastic lilt. “What’s the plan when the results are in and you are not the father?”

“Oh, it’s not like we’ll ever even be able to prove anything with any amount of certainty,” he huffed with a flourish of his hand to wave off the notion. “This sinful world will be consumed by holy fire in a glorious meting out of righteous punishment before we could even come close to settling a paternity suit.”

She snorted, bringing the spout of the flask to rest against her bottom lip as she paused to reply before taking another sip. “You really don’t handle breakups well, do you?”

A bark of offense caught in his throat. “I suppose I should take tips from you?” He pointed to the mess of blood crusting to dark maroon on his temple.

She shrugged, leaning forward to rest her forearms on her thighs. “Bet I would have a better chance at winning over your exes from giving you that little boo-boo that you would with your brilliant cuck rumor plan.” She pointed a finger up to the sky and clicked a tongue against her teeth. “Don’t be surprised if a week from now you see me up in that fucking plane on a mile-high rebound with your old flames.”

“Ha!” He tossed his head back to let the laugh shoot up as if following the point of her finger to the skies. “You’d hardly have the room for it in the cramped little excuse for a Kimberlite — calling that a ‘two person rear seat’ should be actionable as false advertising. You could fit the whole of that in one wing of my Affirmation —”

“It was a fuckin’ joke, John,” she spat with a shake of her head. “Not a gauntlet throw for a dick measuring contest.”

“Well, I just find it strange they have such a reputation for impressive aircraft when —”

“I do not give a fuck about planes,” she said bluntly. “If anything, I’m more of a boat girl.”

“— wouldn’t trust them with the maintenance of a children’s RC toy, let alone something that —”

Well, it was good liquor and a good distraction, while it lasted.

Jestiny dusted off the front of her shorts as she hopped down from the tabletop, allowing John’s undeterred ranting to fade into the background as she chugged the last of his scotch and prepared to take her leave.

“— not to mention that horrendous paint job he’s covered it in —”

But then, suddenly, a thought occurred to Jestiny.

“You own planes?”

The question managed to disrupt his tirade, his mouth hanging open with a pause that would have looked almost thoughtful on anyone else. “Did I fail to mention that?” he responded. “Yes. I do.”

She hummed in consideration. “You don’t by any chance happen to be into boats too, do you?”

“I dabble.”

“Do you own any?”

He smiled. “I do.” She swore he practically fluttered his eyelashes at her as he answered. “In fact, I have a private boat launch of my own, on my property.”

She gave him the obligatory roll of her eyes, but she felt the corners of her mouth tickle with the desire to tick upward into a grin.

Skylar had been saving up to buy a boat. And Sherri thought she was so cool for having that shitty little public boat ramp at her store.

“Just off the river,” he added. “Can access practically any body of water in the County from it, if you’re willing to drive long enough.”

Not Snowshoe Lake, or Rattlesnake Lake, or any of the better isolated lakes in the Whitetails that had the best summer fishing. But it’s not like he would know that, anyways. And it wasn’t like it mattered when she was beginning to see the contours of a brilliant plan as clearly as the topographic lines on a depth finder.

Yes, a very interesting idea occurred to Jessie. The kind of inspiringly simplistic idea that —

“— and I said that would hardly be a fair market price for buying bait over the counter at the damn Bass Pro Shop, let alone wholesale to stock —”

She heard a creak of the door to the bar swinging open for the distinct sound of Sherri’s voice to carry through its threshold, and her fingers hurried to find the leather straps hanging at John’s collar.

“Follow my lead,” she rasped low and heavy with commanding as she tugged him by the straps like a horse by its reins and swung a leg over his chair to straddle his lap as if she were settling into a saddle. “I just got a really good idea.”

“Excuse —”

She muffled the question with a quick unhinging of her jaw to completely cover his mouth with hers, swallowing down his bratty demand so that it sounded like nothing more than a needy moan spilling into the cool summer breeze.

And to her relief he did catch on and play along with relative quickness, allowing the protest to fade into a pleased sounding sigh as he obediently melted against her, his spine going slack so that she could lean him back against the table with ease as she pressed her tongue into his mouth.

She smiled into the kiss as she felt his arm wrap around her waist and fingers weave beneath her braid in an effort to bury themselves in her hair, followed right on cue by the sound of boots squeaking to a sudden standstill against the hardwood of the patio.

Perfect.

“Is that —” she heard Sherri ask, followed by rustling of clothing as they shifted against each other.

“Just don’t even pay her any fucking mind, Sher,” Skylar replied, the padding of footsteps against the floorboards resuming. “We’re done with that.”

Jessie growled out in a defeated frustration she hoped could be easily mistaken for desire, baring teeth to give anger some small outlet in the form of biting down into the bottom lip of the man beneath her.

In the back of her mind she realized the air had grown chilly enough to spread goosebumps along her skin as his hands shot to clutch at the back of her shoulders and pull her closer in response.

Although perhaps only wearing a bra had something to do with that, she thought as she drew out the embrace a bit longer, giving him a few more deep, lazy kisses before flicking her eyes towards the distance to ensure her ex-girlfriends were truly gone and slowly pulling away.

She grew even more aware of the cold as he panted short, warm breaths against her lips, her skin prickling and pulling tight at the sensation.

“Thanks for going along with that,” she muttered under her breath with a soft sincerity, smoothing a thumb along his bottom lip to sell to any onlookers that the end their passionate make out came to was entirely natural. “I, uh —”

She cleared her throat, slid her thumb from its place pulling down his bottom lip to tease at its slick underside and then clapped her hands together, dusting them against each other as she shuffled back to seat herself at the opposite side of the table.

She stiffened her posture; scooted her chair forward and folded her hands together with elbows propped against the table to signal she now meant all business.

She rested her chin against laced fingers, looking down at him over her nose for a few seconds before tilting her head to the side sweetly and flashing him a grin. “I have a proposition for ya.”

He drew in a deep breath, pulling the lining of his jacket inward at the waist as he shifted in his seat. “Do tell.”

“You and I…” She scrunched her mouth back and forth to each side, dipped her shoulders in a shrug. “Pretend to date for a little while.” She raised a palm before he could speak, hunkering her shoulders lower with defensiveness. “Now, hear me out —”

“I’m all ears.”

“Obviously the reality of the situation is we can’t fucking stand each other,” she granted with a wave of her hand. “I’ve known you for one hour and I think you’re an obnoxious, pretentious creep.”

“I find you repulsively vulgar and needlessly combative.”

“You don’t gotta butter me up, John,” she snorted, batting her eyelashes. “Because what I’m proposing is a…” she bobbed her head from side to side. “A symbiotic relationship.” She splayed her fingers out in offering, then refolded them. “Like some bigger species of fish have with the, uh — the weird little parasite fish that hang off the side of ’em and eat all the gross stuff off of ’em.”

“And am I the big fish or the ‘weird little parasite’ in this scenario?”

“Ah, don’t get too bogged down on details,” she dismissed. “The point is: you want to make your exes think they made a big mistake so they come crawling back,” she said, tapping a finger against the table. “Parading around town with me on your arm acting all lovey-dovey is gonna do that a lot more fuckin’ effectively than making up rumors about them will.” She rocked back in her chair. “Show ’em that you’ve moved on. New girlfriend, new hobbies. Who even cares about them and their dumbass planes when you’re zipping around the water in your boat with a hot piece of tail catching every fish in sight.” She jabbed a thumb towards herself. “Trick them into thinking there really is something they’re missing. Get ’em jealous enough to want you back.”

“Hm.” He stroked his beard in consideration, brushing fingers up his jaw to his sideburns until they reached the place the hair became matted with blood. “And is acting ‘lovey-dovey’ something you’re actually capable of?”

“When properly motivated.”

“And your motivation?” he pressed. “What will you be gaining from my sucking you clean of pond scum?”

It was a little strange he chose to self-identify as the parasite, she thought.

“I get to see the look on those bitches’ faces when I pull up to our old fishing spots with a new piece of arm candy who has a nice, shiny, fancy boat. I’ll fuckin’ fish circles around their sorry asses with a boat! Show them just how fuckin’ much they were holding my angling game back!”

He smirked, raising his brows. “Perhaps also hoping to inspire some ‘crawling back?’”

She curled her upper lip into a snarl. “I’m not that desperate.” She shoved her chin up in the air proudly. “But if they do, we’ll see how generous and forgiving I feel.” She turned her eyes back towards him. “Same goes for your old ball and chain. They ask you to come back, we’ll have ourselves an ‘amicable breakup’ and move on. And Dolly willing and Orville Creek don’t rise, we’ll never have to see each other again.”

“Well,” he mused with a heavy pause, blue eyes trailing along her form with a hungry excitement she couldn’t name. “I think you could clean up nicely enough to inspire some jealousy,” he laughed. “In fact, with any amount of effort, I think you might look lovely, physically.”

She caught his tongue briefly darting out to lick his lip at the statement. There was an undeniable parasitic bottom-feeder air to him, indeed.

“I mean, just look at this hair.” He leaned forward and reached a hand behind her braid, a shiver crawling down her spine as he allowed the weight of it to rest in his palm as he ran it down the length of the pleats. “It would be quite beautiful, if you wore it loose.”

She clasped a hand around his wrist to jerk it away, disappointed to find that neither the sharp curve of his smile nor the electric tingle burrowing along her neck faded.

“Do we have a fuckin’ deal or not?”

He shifted his reach to break from the grip of her fingers and instead press their palms together in a handshake. “We do.”

“Good.” She shot up from her seat, pulling her hand from his. “Meet me tomorrow morning at Drubman Marina. 8 AM sharp. Park the boat in a slip.” She grinned, leaning in to place a parting kiss against his cheek for the sake of any nosey eyes that might be peering through the windows of the Spread Eagle. “We’re going on our first official date — and working on getting you into shape as someone who can pass as a proper fisherman.”

She knocked her shoulder against his as she brushed past him to take her leave.

“And I suppose we’ll work on getting you to pass as a member of civilized society afterwards!” he called after her. “And if you will, wear your hair down tomorrow!”

She answered with an extension of the middle finger on the hand she swung back and forth in a wave goodbye as she rounded the corner.

And once she felt safely out of sight she reached for her braid, running fingers anxiously along its length as if to brush away the lingering electric charge of his touch. She looked down at the hair she fiddled with.

A fishtail braid. Skylar’s work.

Jessie never had the patience for such careful weaving, never learning more than a simple three-strand herself. But Skylar’s deft fingers would dutifully do the work of winding copper locks together anytime she complained about her hair being in the way as she fished. All while Sherri watched, chiding her for never keeping up with the hats she let her take free of charge from Can of Worms to keep her hair back.

Jestiny frowned as she arrived at her parking spot, a strand of hair falling loose from the braid as her fingers clawed restlessly at it.

She would never be able to recreate Skylar’s meticulous work.

Pain throbbed behind her eyes and tensed in her jaw at the thought, her arm tensing in turn as she forcefully swung open the door to the backseat. She threw open the lid to the tacklebox stashed there, digging through its contents until she found her fishing knife — holding it up triumphantly to the pink glow of neon lights when she did, a few stray fish scales still clinging stubbornly to the steel of its blade.

She pulled her braid taut as she brought the sharp edge of the knife to it and began sawing vigorously at the mass of hair — as if she could saw off everything it contained, saw off the creeping sensation of the touch of tattooed hands, saw off the memories of Skylar carefully braiding it and Sherri running her fingers appreciatively along the finished product, saw off the past seven months.

She threw the knife to the ground in defeat upon finding none of the weight really vanished with the braid fully severed from her head.

She tightened her fist around the hair in that same winding tension of anger that had failed to quell, turning on her heels in search of the one source of relief she’d found all night.

“Hey, asshole!” she shouted in his face as darted around the corner to practically crash into the man making his own way to the parking lot. She shoved the detached braid into his palm, pushing the hand back until it was pressed against his chest and guiding the fingers closed around the hair. “You’re welcome — I’m fuckin’ wearing it down now.”

She spun back around to resume marching towards her car without stopping to look at his expression, the fists balled at her sides now empty.

“Tomorrow at 8 AM, then,” he acknowledged without missing a beat, and Jestiny had to admit there was a devastating source of relief in hearing the unphased flatness of his tone.

In the safety of the darkened cabin of her car, a small smile painted itself onto her face at the thought as she turned the key in the ignition.

It only occurred to her as she drove away what an embarrassingly cliché break up move chopping her hair off was.

#fic: hook‚ line‚ and sinker #writies and wordies #oc: deputy jestiny ellen #otp: stop bothering these nice folks #this has been such a fun little silly distraction from writing wildfire!!

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