#jack nelson x connor hawkins

[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, 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.

~*~

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 could eat, 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 replies/reblogs are always welcome! ❤️

[silkendandelion]

My Own, Distant Home (Completed), A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout fanfiction

Chapter 2 (END), ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 16.6k Genre: Horror, humor, smut

"Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing."

Or

A romantic, 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.

Rated Explicit for sexual content, strong language, horror elements, frightening imagery and descriptions of violence.

Cross-posted to ao3, same username, here.

Cheers to rarepairs, and to all the people who had a crush on Connor during the game: I have heard you. If you like Firewatch, or Do You Copy, check out fears to fathom, you could play the entire series in a day but I liked Ironbark the best. Even if you haven't played the game, I'm sure this can be read alone for people who like horror and making love in a thunderstorm 💙

Chapter 1 (Below)

It was only a transfer.

Not usually a big deal, this other park needed to fill a lookout position urgently, and Jack was probably the best suited for it. Not only because his coworkers spoke highly of him, but because he had the RV, and relocating was as easy as driving down the road. When you’re this free, no wife, no friends, no obligations, 2 hours is nothing to go to the next job.

Yeah, he thought as his eyes wandered off the road to the side mirror, the endless blacktop behind him, the empty road in front of him. No obligations. Free.

So why did driving up to the trail-head make his stomach ache?

He blamed it on his last meal in civilization for the time being: a perfectly greasy, buttery cheeseburger, no doubt made by a certified home-cooked chef with hairy arms. He wasn’t used to eating out, eating so much, and in hindsight, the large coke was a bit of an Icarus move.

Just a bit of indigestion, nothing to worry about.

Not at all related to his walk to the gas station next door for cigarettes that was interrupted by a creepy local. The one leaning against his car and mouth-harassing his own hamburger, gossiping cryptically about big foot and missing kids like he was a Stephen King minor character. Real “you wanna watch out for that road” stuff.

The same missing kids on the poster across from the gate office. Gone without a trace, with no more search parties willing to keep looking after they lost some of their own people to what witnesses called “strange whistling in the dark”. Anyone saner, smarter, might have gotten back in their RV and not looked back. But Jack loved nature, and liked his job. Until he heard this strange whistling for himself, he had bills to pay and a guy named Billy to see for check-in.

The light to the guard shack was on, the door unlocked as he turns the handle. Worn out and road-fatigued, his brain hardly lends him the advice he should have probably called out to see if anyone was inside. His eagerness earns him a twin-barrel to the face, and a rightfully earned yell from both of them.

“You scared the piss out of me!” The ranger scolded him, and Jack fired back—

“Do you shove a gun in the face of everyone who sneaks up on you? What if I was a camper?”

“You can’t be too careful out here. There’s bobcats, bears and—wait, you say you’re not a camper? What are you doing barging in here anyway?”

“I’m Jack Nelson… Your new hire? Tower 11?”

“Well,” the mustached man regarded him with suspicion beneath his black cowboy hat. “Tower 11 is empty, but I didn’t hear about any new hire. Give me a second.”

“Oh,” Jack refrains from saying anything nasty, regardless of his fatigue, and puts up a patient, half smile. “Sure. Take all the time you need.”

He wandered out of the shack, back to the billboard with the missing poster, only half-reading the posted copy of the trail map he already owned when Billy came back out.

“You’ve been vetted. Sorry about all that, I don’t check my email as often as I should. You must be tired from driving, I’ll just take a copy of your ID and get the gate open so you can start the hike up to the tower.”

Billy was gone for only a minute before he came back, enough time for Jack to get his duffel and lock the RV. He handed back his ID, and pushed open one of the arms of the gate.

“… Hey.” He called before Jack could get passed him.

“Tower 12 is your closest neighbor, call him if you need anything. And don’t—I mean, do NOT go out further than maybe a 1/4 mile north of your tower on foot. Got it?”

“Uh, sure?” Jack gapes at him, unprepared. “Why?”

“It’s dangerous out that way. You’ve got bears, bobcats, all sorts of stuff.”

“Right… Thanks again, Billy. Goodnight.” He waved, eager to make some distance between him and this newest creepy local, and start wearing down the trail to his tower.

Did everyone in this town take etiquette lessons from a paperback horror novels? They were at least in the same book club, which actually wouldn’t be weird for such a small, quiet place.

The walk to the tower is easy, if a little cold by the time he crosses the creek. Tower 11 sits up against a nearby radio spire, lit up red and guiding him to the foot of his home for the foreseeable future. He knows to gas up the generator and crank it before he starts up the long flights of stairs to the top, and the tower cabin, small but not cramped, is a welcome sight.

The sheets on the bed are clean, free of holes and smelling of cheap detergent (ocean breeze something, he guessed), and the good burn of a wood fire seems to be baked into the panel walls and secondhand furniture. All his needed tools are haphazardly scattered but identifiable at a glance, and the fridge, beginning to kick on, is filled with old, freezer burned food.

Not rotted, there’s no unpleasant smell besides stale, and the room is otherwise well-kept, but he can’t help feel that the last occupant left in a hurry. Beside the bed lay a pair of abandoned wool slippers, and those go in the trash too.

All he needs to do is lay out his blanket and pillow to call himself moved in, and getting a fire going is even faster. He’s tying off the trash, waiting for the microwave to finish heating up a cup of coffee, when his radio, boxy and cumbersome on the little desk, clicks to life.

Static greets him before another male voice, deeper than his own.

‘I saw the lights go on. You copy, new guy?’

“Yeah, hey. I’m Jack.” He squeezes the receiver on and off as he sits in the old, steel chair in front of the desk, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.

‘Connor, Tower 12. Your new neighbor, I guess.’

A beat of silence, and then a click. “Billy mentioned you, just not by name. Nice to meet you.”

He hears Connor hum into the receiver, distantly wondering if it was a sound of irritation at him or something Jack couldn’t see. ‘Well, you got a fire started, that’s good. It’s good to see Tower 11 alive again.’

With a pause, his voice was friendly again, like whatever he was worried about suddenly resolved itself. ‘Anyway, don’t let me keep you. Oh, and don’t forget to submit your report before you go to bed.’

Jack suppresses his yawn with a wince—half headache, half ready for bed, and clicks the receiver. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

‘Get some rest, new guy, don’t let the bed bugs bite. Over and out.’

“Over and out.”

The radio dims with no open connection, and Jack forgets his coffee in the microwave when he can’t manage to avoid dozing off in the chair.

A few hours pass, midnight rolls upon the park and an unintelligible static rouses him from his sleep. He wants to investigate, his instincts whispering to him that something was wrong, something lurking in the forest beyond his tower, but an ache in his lumbar and the pressure in his bladder leaves no room for anything except the urgency to get comfortable quick. He stretches until his back gives a satisfying crack, and with a quick leak off the railing of the tower, he falls into bed without another thought.

NIGHT 2

On nights like this, Jack can imagine being a lookout forever, nipped by the last throes of winter on a chilly wind yet cradled safely between the warmth bleeding out of his tower and the hot coffee in his hands. Perched up high, nearly brushing against the clouds, the sunset seems brighter than down on the trail, all melted pinks and oranges that don’t begin to betray how in less than an hour the forest will be all but black.

The static of his radio breaks the silence.

‘New guy, this is Connor from Tower 12. Do you copy?’

He drops his empty mug among the dirty dishes from dinner when Connor speaks again. ‘Tower 11, do you copy?’

“Tower 11, I copy. What’s up, Connor?” Jack answers before he eases himself into the desk chair.

‘Son of a bitch! Nobody bothers to get a camping permit anymore. Do you have eyes on the smoke north of your position? Looks like it’s off the Lacey Trail.’

“Give me a second, I’ll check.”

He grabs his binoculars, is almost out the door when Connor’s opening the line again. ‘I need you to confirm.’

“You can hang on, it won’t kill you,” says Jack to himself while peering off the railing. Exactly as Connor described it, north of his tower, and near enough to likely be off the Lacey trail—a closed area—he spies the telltale white smoke of a campfire.

‘Do you see that smoke up north?’, comes the radio again and Jack answers with what he hopes passes for patience.

“I see it.”

‘Shit. People like that don’t clean up after themselves either, and fire risks are high this season. Do you mind checking it out?’

“I’ll head up there, and report back anything I find.” He rises to get his coat and boots.

‘Stay safe out there, new guy. Don’t forget to carry your bear spray. Over and out.’

Jack thinks him a good guy, Connor, despite what others probably thought. He wasn’t particularly friendly, a bit of a short fuse, but he took his job seriously, and didn’t forget to wish Jack well, even among his rush for a solution. Some people would call that dedication. Jack decided, as he tied his boot laces, that it was endearing.

Lacey Trail was several miles away on foot, no matter how close the smoke had seemed in the binoculars, and he pocketed both his bear mace and his flashlight before leaving the tower.

~*~

Unseasonably cold air nips through his fleece jacket, fingers already red around the knuckles as he fumbles to zip himself up. The beam of the flashlight bobs about over the dark trail, “3.2 miles” the optimistic sign had declared back near his tower. Only, the longer he walked, surrounded only by the icy wind biting on his ears and a deafening chorus of insects, the more it felt like “ETA unknown”.

A campfire lights the path around a bend in the trail, a match flame at the end of the path.

Whatever he wanted to call out, “hello”, or “get lost”, was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a man’s scream.

He makes no attempt to call back, taking off in a sprint towards the glowing campsite. The campfire in the center of a couple picnic tables and a tent illuminates the entire clearing between the trees, fresh wood popping, what must have been tossed in only minutes ago. But the campsite is empty. The tent’s open flap reveals a rumpled sleeping bag, the tables are crowded with an oil lantern, a battery-powered radio, and heaps of fresh food—but completely empty.

“Hello? Where are you?” He shouts into the dark with no answer. On the side of the clearing closest to the creek, a closed gate and red sign read ‘No camping allowed’.

“Are you hurt? Where—oh!” Jack coughs out a startled grunt, nearly tripping into the dirt over what he discovers is an abandoned flashlight.

His blood chills, colder than the unseasonable weather. Beyond the cautionary signs, where the darkness swallows the unkempt trail, drifts up the sound of a whistle. A human whistle, devoid of any recognizable melody.

It’s all he can do to stagger back, swipe an empty dinner pot from the picnic table and douse the fire with cold water from the creek. He tosses an unseeing glance over his shoulder, and is hoofing it out of the campsite and up the trail before the campfire has even stopped sizzling.

The cold air stings his lungs as he runs most of the trail back, hot blood thrumming into his ears and all but drowning out the insects. Were he less panicked, he would have heard over the sound of his own breathing that the insects had actually stopped, startled to silence by the looming shape in the treeline.

~*~

The glow of his tower beckons him home, and he scrambles his faculties to remember to grab firewood before climbing the steps, as well as relieve himself in the portable toilet beside the stairs. With what he witnessed, too vivid to not want to trust his own eyes but too strange to possibly be real, he wasn’t sure he would have the nerve to walk back down before dawn.

His radio flashes with an open channel, presumably Tower 12, and he sits heavy down in the metal chair. “Tower 12, do you copy?”

Beats of silence remind him his blood has yet to warm up.

‘Loud and clear, new guy. Sorry for delay, I was just cooking up some hot—’ Connor pauses, too much like Jack did when he thought he was being boring.

‘Nevermind that. What did you find out there?’

“The campsite was abandoned. Not a soul around,” Jack said, pushing down his nausea and the phantom sound of an eerie whistle.

‘Are you—’ A loud clang in the receiver, like a fork dropped in a bowl. ‘Kidding me? Son of a bitch. People like them are part of the problem, and on top of everything they run off.’

Jack fingers the sleeve on his jacket, realizing suddenly he had been too worked up to shrug off his fleece or his boots when he came inside. “I put out the fire, but there’s nothing else we can do tonight.”

‘No no, I get it… Thanks for checking it out, Jack. Tomorrow morning, I’ll report it to the authorities and they can take care of it.’

The words are out of Jack’s mouth before he can scold himself for being frightened in front of someone else. “I heard a scream. Honestly, I feel kind of bad for not sticking around to look harder.”

‘A scream? Probably just a red fox, they sound almost like a screaming lady when the rest of the forest is buzzing.’

Jack clamps down on a protest that it was a man’s scream, clearly no fox, then Connor is speaking again.

‘This is the third time this month. Ever since those kid’s went missing, there’s all sorts of rumors about the area being haunted, and we just can’t keep people out. Well, maybe I could, but not from this tower. I’ve got a job to do.’

The whistle is back in his mind, as vivid as Connor’s voice over the radio but, again, Jack keeps that to himself.

‘Well.’ Connor breaks him from his thoughts. ‘I’ll let you get to dinner, or whatever it is you do after you log off. Goodnight. Over and out.’

“Goodnight, Connor.”

2:27AM

He can’t explain what wakes him.

Nothing immediately seems wrong but he can’t begin to trust his senses, not with the greasy film that smudged his eyes no matter how hard he blinked, the heaviness of his limbs, and a sluggish mind at the helm, ripped from the deepest parts of his sleep cycle.

But even blind, dumb, and lame—he knew he was being watched.

Weak hands scrubbed at his face, trying to clear the sleep, until the room came into some kind of focus. Moonlight drifted in the one open panel behind his computer desk, casting the upright shadow of a—

His heart all but stopped. He squinted, unbelieving, blinking more at the peculiar silhouette painted across his front door. Unclear if it was man or beast, the sloped shoulders suggested humanoid but the shape of the head, wide with points that could be horns or ears in the dark made him unable to do anything more than stare.

Struck by a sudden wave of courage, he leapt up from the bed, throwing the blanket aside without certainty his legs would support him, and dashed to the light switch.

The shadow vanished with the incandescent bulb over head, banished by the light but lending no evidence as to whether it was some paranormal, hungry entity vulnerable to light, or something more secular afraid to be caught. Jack didn’t know which was worse, and standing alone in the center of his floor, he could finally hear how fast his heart was racing.

Whether by insanity or curiosity, though they hardly seemed different from where he stood, one of his shaking hands grabbed his bear mace while the other went for the door. The abrupt quietness of the night lent him courage where it shouldn’t, and upon venturing outside he was horrified to realize he was truly, tragically alone.

Or he was now.

Against the railing, and almost disturbed by the bear mace that clattered to the ground, was a skull.

Goat, from what limited knowledge he had, flanked by a few, worn, lit candles, and smeared across the ivory forehead with a red symbol he refused to get closer to identify either it’s shape or composition. He resigned to shove the door shut, slamming the lock’s hammer in place with no regard for the bear mace he abandoned.

“Tower 12, come in.” He tries the radio receiver, met with static. “Tower 12, can you hear me?”

More static and another beat of silence makes his stomach ache. “Connor, I need you to wake up.”

He’s never been so happy to hear the quiet click of another radio opening the line.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’

“This is an emergency.”

‘Are you okay? What’s happened?’ Connor immediately sounds more awake, like he’s sat up straight.

“Someone’s been on my tower, I woke to—I heard footsteps, it woke me up.”

‘Are you kidding me?’ Less composed now, angry but not nearly as when he vented about the campers earlier that evening. Though it was easily explained by the remnants of sleep clinging to him.

“I think they’re gone now.”

‘Did you see what they looked like?’

Jack’s mind raced back to the shadow, the beastly silhouette, and the footsteps that seemed to vanish when they passed by his door.

“N-No, but they left a skull on my doorstep. An animal skull, goat or—something, with candles, what looked like blood. Sick shit, Connor, I don’t—know—”

‘Take a deep breath, new guy. Let’s think about this rationally. You went and investigated a fire tonight, right?’

“… Yeah.”

‘So we know there’s unregistered campers in the area who don’t care about rules or regulations, probably bratty kids or college students. Suppose they wanted to get back at the fire watcher who doused their evening, it wouldn’t be that far of a walk. It’s just kids, Jack, don’t let it bother you.’

“You—” He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “You’re right.”

‘Did you happen to get a photo of the thing?’

“I didn’t think about it.”

‘No shame in that. It’s all right to be riled up, but it’s not okay to panic. Lock your door, try to get some rest. Take a photo in the morning, and we can file a report with the authorities.’

But no sooner was Jack beginning to calm down, the hairs on the back of his neck began to rise, his stomach tightening with the idea that Connor was only coming to the conclusion of what limited information he had.

“Connor?”

Sleepier now, the other man’s voice came back a bothered rumble. ‘Yeah, Jack?’

“What if it’s related to the disappearances? At the campsite tonight, sure, it was empty but I heard… I heard whistling beyond the barriers for the closed trails. It’s a heck of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

For all his neighbor’s frustration at being woken so suddenly, there was no doubt that he was fully awake now, deliberately staying quiet on the other end of the line as Jack waited for any kind of answer.

‘New guy… You don’t believe all those rumors, do you?’

Behind his ribs, Jack’s heart is back to hammering. “Nah. No, I mean. You’re right, it’s gotta be kids.”

Connor didn’t seem convinced, even for a disembodied voice. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll send someone to check on you tomorrow. For now, try to get some sleep, new guy. There’s nothing we can do in the dark.’

“Yeah… Thanks. Of course.” He rakes his hand through his hair like if it might knock his anxiety loose. “Goodnight, Connor.”

‘Goodnight, Jack.’

~*~

The skull was gone when he awoke the next morning. Nothing ever came of the report, and for a short time, the forest was quiet.

He’s gotten quite used to this little routine: submit his report, have dinner, say goodnight to Connor, bed.

Check the weather, put dinner in the oven, submit his report while talking to Connor, bed.

So they continued for days, falling into the comfort of predictability and looking forward to their goodnight radio checks.

‘Honestly, I envy you a little bit,’ said Connor one night while Jack posted himself up beside the radio, blanket around his shoulders and holding a hot mug of coffee. Probably not the best idea before lights out, but the warmth in his core more than made up for what his little wood stove lacked in power.

“Envy me? Why?” Jack sipped quietly.

‘You’ve got the RV, you can literally just pick up and go wherever you want. Hell, you did it once already when you relocated out here.’

“It’s… lonelier than I like to admit.”

Down in his cup, Jack could see the undissolved granules of his coffee lying along the bottom. With a quick swish, they’re gone and Connor speaks again.

‘While Tower 11 was empty, I forgot how nice it was to have someone to talk to.’

“You must really be desperate if you’re enjoying my company that much.” Jack found himself smiling, a bittersweet thing.

‘I should be the one saying that to you. Every day I call you to vent about these fucking campers, leaving their trash and shit. And you answer for me every time.’

He chuckled, unaware Connor was also smiling on the other line. “It’s kind of my job.”

‘Ouch.’ They laughed together this time. ‘You’re not supposed to agree with me.’

“Then maybe you should be nicer to yourself.”

‘You first, Jack.’

A comfortable silence falls over both sides of the radio transmission, twin smiles and the warmth of more than quick and dirty coffee between them.

‘You still with me? Sounds like you’re about to go any minute now.’ Connor said, soft and slow. If Jack kept his eyes closed, he could have imagined he said those words beside his ear.

“I think that’s all I’ve got, Connor.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “You get some rest too. Goodnight.”

‘Night, Jack.’

BETWEEN 2 AND 3 AM

A hand over Jack’s mouth bolts him awake, his entire body tensing as he grabs at the arm that holds him.

“Shh! Shh, Jack. It’s me… Its Connor.” He hears a familiar voice somewhere above him, and the blonde man comes into focus as Jack blinks away the last of the sleep. Moonlight shines through the open paneling, illuminating the side of his handsome, worried face, the width of his broad shoulders in a thin t-shirt.

“There’s something outside.” He looks briefly to the window. “Scoot over, Jack.”

He hardly has time to obey, let alone time for rational thoughts like What’s outside? and How is us both getting under the blanket supposed to help? before the other man is climbing into the single bed and pressing against him from the shoulder down.

“What are you doing?” Jack half demands, half pleads.

“Shh.” Connor hushes him, and he wants to relent—almost does—under such dark eyes, close enough to see they were brown in the dim light. “We have to be quiet, or they’ll hear us.”

“Who will hear us? Connor? What’s happ—mmf! M-mm,” Jack moans, startled, when their lips meet, smooth and wet like Connor had licked them before he leaned in.

His belly twinges, toes curling from only a kiss, and he might have been embarrassed if it weren’t for the hot outline of an erection digging into his hip. Connor’s tongue tastes of instant coffee, no doubt he himself tastes like cigarettes, but Connor doesn’t seem bothered. Not with how hard he is and the firm grip of his palm on Jack’s ribs through his old shirt, the way his thumb flicks at his nipple with little regard for how it makes him shake.

Teeth rake his bottom lip when their kiss turns deeper, hungry, panting hot into each other’s mouths as they work together to yank their sleep pants down to their thighs. A whimper jumps up between them as Connor’s hand clasps around them both, and Jack realizes it must have been him because when his thumb slips in the pre leaking from his tip—he makes it again.

The hand retreats long enough for Connor to lick his palm, but Jack knows he’s getting wet enough for the both them, so long as those capable hands keep pulling needy noises from his lips, pulling on his cock like that. Just like that, just how he likes.

“They’re gonna hear you, baby, you gotta be—quiet,” Connor pants against his wet lips. Jack wants to kiss him back, needs it, but he can do little more than leave fervid little moans against his tongue, joined by the spit-slick sound of Connor’s hand, warm and tight around them.

“I’m—s-sorry, Connor,” Jack fusses when the tightness in his belly finds the next gear, and for all his warnings, Connor is doing nothing to help him make less noise when he leans down to suckle at the side of his neck.

“Come on, baby, you’re almost there. Say it again,” he whispers warmly into his shirt collar. The rumble of him speaks to control, all whiskey and smoke, but Jack can feel how the rhythm of his forearm waivers, how the leg he has threaded under Jack’s begins to shake.

“C-Connor, get something to—Connor—”

Jack’s eyes throw themselves open on a gasp when he wakes, startled from the dream by the warm wetness seeping into the front of his underwear. He tries to sit up as best he can but his stomach quivers, heart thumping, as wave after wave of pleasant ache widens the stain on his sleep pants and steals his breath.

“For fucks sake,” he sighs, letting his body flop back to the bed when the feeling in his hands returns.

Awareness follows right behind his mess, and he flips the blanket away to hopefully spare himself the further embarrassment of taking the damned thing to the laundromat. But, even that was better than doing a spot wash in the sink, and having to tell Connor it was an Italian food incident when he sees it draped over the railing to dry.

First his waking hours, now his dreams. Connor filled his mind with thoughts of normalcy, the lingering ache of loneliness, and the insane idea of enjoying another person’s company. Such a luxury eluded him most days, a comfort he hardly believed could be found in these ominous woods.

Between distracting daydreams, some salacious, some sweet, and his immersion in his work, he almost forgot to be afraid.

~*~

The days that follow are easy but hardly quiet, not with Jack’s brain torn and oscillating between the paranoia of the encroaching forest—and his growing crush on his neighbor. His heart struggled under the stress of peering over his shoulder in the dark woods at every broken twig, just to be riled again by his nightly check-in. He began to sympathize with the rabbit his sister had when they were kids, perfectly still for all their fervent affection, until their veterinarian explained it’s early health problems were stress-related: poor creature was unable to distinguish their childish, heavy-handed petting from the musings of a predator biding it’s time to feast.

People had already disappeared. How long did he have until he was eaten too? Swallowed by the woods until all that remained were the tenets of skeptics and a ghostly whistle.

He busied himself with maintaining the tower, hammering down loose boards and checking the horizon repeatedly until the sun was long gone and the eerie quiet had settled it’s blanket across the forest.

“24.4 knots…” He murmured to fill the silence, as a flare lights up the north. Before he can go for his binoculars, the radio flicks on with an unfamiliar man’s voice.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

“This is Tower 11.”

‘Oh! Oh, thank god.’ The voice, a young man, shaking and unsure, comes over the line. ‘I’m lost and—I’m really starting to freak out.’

“Take a deep breath,” said Jack, his free hand opening the trail map on his computer. “Can you tell me where you are?”

‘I don’t even know where to start. I went out exploring and lost track of time. Everything looks different at night. The uh, the last trail marker I saw was by a stream, but I couldn’t read it from where I was. I’m walking west because I remember walking east to get here but… I’m definitely lost.’

“What equipment do you have?”

The hiker ignored his question, excited to finally be somewhere familiar. ‘Oh, man. I found the fork in the trail. But, I don’t remember if I’m supposed to go right or left to get back to the trail-head.’

“I have a map, let me take a look.”

‘Thank you.’ He says, but only lets Jack look for a few seconds before trying again. ‘Hello? Are you still there?’

“One more second, it’s all right.”

‘Oh. Oh, I see you!’

Jack looks to the radio, shocked to silence while phantoms of a predator’s fingers slip up the back of his neck, loosing shivers in his warm tower.

“What? What do you see?”

‘I hear you. You’re whistling to me. I’m right here!’ The hiker shouts, surely waving his hands above his head to welcome the unknown danger, and Jack’s thumb nearly cracks the receiver.

“Hey, HEY! That’s not me, I’m—”

‘What do you mean? You’re starting to freak me out—’ The transmission ends early, no crackling, no screams. Only silence, save for Jack’s breathing, his pounding heart.

Fuck.

He shoves the desk chair away, jumping up to grab his flashlight, and was two hastened footsteps from the door when a knock startles him almost to shout. Whatever possessed him to wrench open the door without a second thought, he hoped a well-aimed flashlight is enough to take them down.

“The hell are you doing in there? I’ve been out here knocking for awhile.”

His heart jerks, relieved, having never thought Billy would be the cause. “S-sorry. Was helping a lost hiker.”

“At this hour? Lord have mercy,” he drawled, his perpetually rumpled mustache shifting across his troubled frown. “Anyway—here’s your supplies. Just the essentials.”

“Thanks.” Jack turned away to set the box on the counter, when Billy spoke again. “I hear you been a little stressed lately. Everything all right?”

He never considered himself a liar, but Jack liked to think he knew how to pretend well enough to avoid suspicion about most things. Especially in regards to his own well-being. The smile that slips over his face is practiced, appropriately tired for the time of night. “It’s taken me a little longer to adjust to the new environment than I thought, but I’m getting there. Thanks for asking.”

Address the question logically, formulate a response from a half-truth. Acknowledge their concern. Easy.

Billy is so willing to not push the subject, it’s almost too easy. “That’s the spirit. Well, I won’t keep you. Get some sleep, Jack. Don’t forget to submit your report.”

He leaves as fast as he can without falling down the stairs, and Jack is happy to clap the door shut behind him. In the back of his mind, routine called to him, rubbing on his shoulders and offering him a cigarette after an exhausting day.

“Firewood, dinner, Connor in bed—THEN bed. Firewood, dinner, talk to Connor, respectfully, professionally, finish my report. Then bed.” He waved the flashlight back and forth anxiously as he wandered down the stairs, single-handedly determined to not have anything scary happen for the rest of the night.

If only he hadn’t gone for firewood.

The pile in the shack isn’t dwindling as fast as he anticipated with the weather warming up, and he makes a mental note to skip chopping more wood tomorrow. He balances the wood under one arm, flashlight tottering in the other as he leaves the shack—straight into another man.

“AH—damn! You nearly gave me a heart attack,” he pants when the bald man in clean coveralls doesn’t immediately move to disembowel him.

“No need to be afraid, son… I’m a worker, here for some routine maintenance on the radio tower over there.” The man’s flat, almost drowsy cadence is anything but comforting, too close to Jack’s liking of what he imagined a wax figure or mannequin to sound like, speaking slowly and quietly to not arouse suspicion of their sentience.

“Thought I would say hi to the new guy everyone’s been talking about.”

“… What’s your name?” Jack said as his hands flexed on the firewood, itching to run.

“Names can be deceiving. Call me Silas.”

“Do you always work so late?”

“Every Sunday.” A strange thing to admit, rather than lie about being up on the mountain so late for something so menial. “Just trying to keep the communication lines open. We must ensure the right messages meet the right people, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right,” Jack said without hesitation, though he doubted he and Silas were talking with the same subject in mind.

“Absolutely. You watch for fires, but some fires are meant to burn. And no amount of prevention can stop them.”

His fingernails ache from holding the firewood throughout their conversation, and he can feel his heart beginning to thump against his ribs. “… It’s late. I should be going back. Goodnight, Silas.”

“Nature has plans,” he called after him, the intonation of his voice carrying without having to shout: an orator’s calm, suffocating inflection. “Ones even you can’t control. It will be cleansed.”

Upstairs, Jack shoved the firewood into the stove, both to relieve his stinging arms and to burn away the creeping dread that prickles at the back of his skull. Something is wrong with these woods, wrong with the people, from the supervisor who seems to have had his tongue stapled to the roof of his mouth, to the radio repairmen who spouted doctrine with the affect of a puppeteered corpse.

When had the woods he found such comfort in become so grim, promising only death to those who didn’t know when to run?

‘I can see the smoke coming from your tower. Don’t tell me you’re not in there?’ Connor’s voice, unbothered and probably craving his evening small talk, laid a calm over the quickly warming cabin.

‘Jack? Come in, new guy.’

“Here, Connor.” He lowered himself into the metal chair, pulling his jacket over chilled fingers.

‘Finally. Where you been?’ If Jack concentrated hard enough, perhaps he could sponge his blissful ignorance, or at least pretend to take refuge in the wrap of his arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he hugged anyone besides his sister, and most recently was still months before he left for the middle of nowhere.

“I went downstairs for some firewood and ran into Silas.”

‘Who?’ He says, half-muffled like he’s sat at the radio with his dinner.

“The guy who maintains the radio tower. Creepy as hell, spoke in riddles—I don’t think I actually saw him blink.”

The silence over the channel lasts long enough Jack reaches to flip the receiver on and off, hands skimming the metal casing for any sign the call had been disconnected, then Connor scoffs with some one-sided realization.

‘Is this about the other night? Tryin’ to yank my chain?’

Jack has to bite down on his lip next to bleeding to not fire back “I am not nearly funny enough to yank anyone’s chain, and if I was going to pull on anything of yours it would be your—”

‘That radio tower’s been out of service for ages now.’

His heart drops into his stomach. When he doesn’t answer, Connor continues to explain as if Jack wasn’t reeling, two seconds from puking into the receiver. ‘It was closed down right after I got here because a lightning strike fried it’s systems. Mitch said he would get it fixed next time there was room in the budget, but—well, you know how that’s going.’

“Then who did I just talk to?!” Jack shouts, too frightened to be embarrassed for his volume, and only hoping it didn’t hurt Connor’s ears or break their speaker.

‘Easy, Jack,’ replies Connor, too cool for the pounding in his ears. ‘Hey, you’re okay. Listen to me. This isn’t our first run-in with pranksters, is it? They got you again, but that’s all they can do. They’re not gonna hurt you.’

“He called me Jack.”

‘He knew your name? Do you think he’s been listening?’

“I don’t know, maybe?” He ran his hands through his hair, hoping to dispel some of the compounding anxiety of an imminent death.

‘Either way, we need to report this. Next time you see him, get a photo or his ID and anything else we can use to identify him. We’ll figure it out, Jack. Don’t worry.’

“Thanks, Connor.” His hands scrub down his face, he can not keep up this pace of being frightened and then having to convince himself nothing’s wrong just to keep from running into the woods and not stopping until he sees the road.

‘Call me if you have a nightmare, all right? I’ll put you back to sleep.’

“You asshole.” He can’t help the chuckle that sputters from his suddenly warm chest, hearing Connor’s smile through his cheeky tone.

‘Got you to laugh, didn’t I?’

Jack’s face is hot, he knows he’s blushing hard, and he summons the strength to not say anything too embarrassing (like “come over”) with a shuddering sigh. “Goodnight, Connor. Thank you… for everything.”

‘So sentimental. I like that. Night, Jack.’

The line clicks closed before Jack can chase him through the line, demanding to know what he meant, why his voice had to drop into the register that made his stomach flutter before disappearing from the face of his very, very small world. His suffering sigh rattles from his chest.

“I need to go to sleep.”

2 DAYS LATER

If it rains any more, his tower might flood.

All day, all evening, Jack had spent the majority of the day watching the shower soak the forest, ignoring the chores he tended to avoid anyway, and drinking far too much instant coffee because it was his only alternative to water. Although, he did get the spray duster out from under the counter, just to say he did.

“Maybe I’ll ask Billy to put some teabags in my next resupply,” he said, pouring out the last of his cup into the sink and picking up his cigarettes to take with him outside.

The forest below should look half-drowned after drinking all day, but it only sways elegantly in the gentle wind, not strong enough to push rainwater over the railing where it might disturb his smoke break. Tower 12 stands in the distance over the treeline, the soft, golden lights in the window suggesting Connor was taking a lazy day too.

Was he reading a well-loved, dog-eared novel? Cooking something warm and spicy? Maybe he fell asleep, belly full of warm food and blanket curled around his legs as the novel slips forgotten to the floor. Down into a deep sleep, the kind of rest what leaves him too warm when he wakes, hair rumpled and shirt risen over his middle to bear birthmarks or a secret tattoo.

“Jack, come back to bed.”

“Ah,” he grunted, sudden static from the radio ripping him out of his daydream. He presses out his cigarette, kicking over the ash tray as he hurries to his feet.

“This is Tower 11.” Silently, he congratulated himself for sounding perfectly professional and not guilty in the slightest.

‘This—does it—damn.’ Connor’s voice over the radio is smothered with screeching electronic snow, laced with intermittent words of increasing urgency.

‘Can’t—need h—Jack—can you hear—’

He whipped around to the window. The lights of Tower 12 hadn’t dimmed, but the persistent static and ominous, disconnected message chilled his blood. He gave no further thought to logical explanations, common sense could hike up the mountain with him if it really cared that much—and ran from the tower without changing his jacket to something waterproof and only his flashlight to protect them.

Above him, the rain pounds down harder, deafening as it pushed through the treeline to soak him, splattering over his trousers with every puddle he stomped across to get to Tower 12 as soon as he was physically capable, or sooner, even if it wounded him.

He reached the bottom of the tower not long after nightfall, expecting to be met with some sign of a struggle, but found nothing. Apart from the generator flashing a yellow warning light and the stack of firewood down nearly to nothing, there was no ripped grass, no gashes in the mud to suggest there had been anything unsavory in the woods that night. He tore up the metal steps anyway, two at a time, not convinced and not bothering to knock before he threw open the door—

And found Connor at the sink, half-dressed, the last dregs of shaving cream on his cheeks in thin stripes, steaming rag in hand.

He just stared at him.

Jack stared back.

“Can I help you?” Connor broke the silence, wiping his face clean and grabbing the henley draped over the back of his chair.

“You’re alive.”

“Jack?” He gaped at him, blonde head popping from his shirt’s neck hole to piece together the voice he knew with the grainy, black and white photo he had glimpsed on the staff directory website.

“Yeah that’s… that’s me.” Jack’s voice muddled down to a tiny murmur as the embarrassment threatened to melt him into two humiliated puddles inside his boots.

He really ran here, never-mind the several miles, ran here in the rain, dragging in water and mud like he was going to self-promote from fire lookout to ghost-buster with just a flashlight and some home-grown, grass-fed nerve. Death would have been kinder, he thought.

“God, you’re soaked. Here.” The towel that flies across the room to slap gently against his face smells like their cheap, provided laundry soap, with a thin vein of cologne, sharp and clean, a smell Jack suspected was baked into most everything fabric Connor owned.

“Sorry about your floor.”

“If I actually cared, I’d make you clean it,” Connor smirked at him, rummaging through his open duffel on the counter to hand over a sweater, boxers, and a pair of sweatpants of the same brand as the ones he wore himself. “Put these on, I’ll hang up your clothes by the stove.”

Jack changed obediently, careful not to spread his mess any further than his little corner by the door, and sheepishly offered his wet clothes for Connor to thread over hangers.

“You’re a mess.”

He thought to protest, finding he could only continue to rub the towel over his hair, a little like a nervous tick. “Feels like it.”

“So. You gonna tell me why you tore across the mountainside and threw yourself into my lap half-drowned?” Connor said as he leaned against the counter, arms—nice arms—focus Jack—crossed over his chest. But, for all his posture and words that spoke to some degree of scolding, he could only find warmth in his gaze, patient enough to hear every word of his reply with grace and an open mind.

“The radio…”

“The radio?” Connor went to flip it on, demonstrate how it crackled and sputtered before coming online, green light ready.

“My generator started giving me crap a couple hours ago, I thought the power surge might have killed it so I tried to call you. You didn’t answer, I thought you just couldn’t hear me.”

The embarrassment releases him in an instant, he’s suddenly back where he had been an hour ago, disoriented and tearing down the trail. “It was terrifying, you sounded like—you weren’t making sense from the words that did get through. I didn’t know if you were being murdered up here and calling for help.”

He scoffs, then turns away from him, towards the window. “Is this about the missing campers again? Because I’m not willing to entertain all of your theories right now, all right—”

“I was worried, Connor. Scared the shit out of me.” His words left him in a rush, hanging between them, the only sound among the hum of the fridge against the wall.

“… You came all the way up here—in a storm—because you were worried?”

Jack couldn’t bear to look up to see the extent of the confusion he heard in his voice. “It’s—just a shower, really. It’ll stop soon and I’ll get out of your way,” he mumbled and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Weatherman says it’s gonna get bad. You should stay.”

The timber of his voice, softer, almost nervous, had Jack raising his head to meet his eyes.

“I’d like you to stay.” He offered, and the nervousness turned out to be more uncertainty, testing a boundary he wasn’t sure would welcome him on the other side. “I’ll feed you. There’s soup, a couple beers left in my stash. What do you say?”

Jack’s hands tightened in the damp towel, suddenly he struggled to breathe.

“I’d like that.”

Chapter 2 (END)

[silkendandelion]

The Real Thing (original version)

A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout drabble, related to My Own, Distant Home

We reached 100 hits on My Own, Distant Home while I wasn't looking, that's so exciting! Thank you all for your support, and have this as a gift. I'm working on another long fic for Ironbark, a proper sequel to this one, so this should line up as a teaser. Something soft and sweet, with just enough dread

UPDATE: This is the original version. A new, longer version is posted to the masterlist and ao3, which is considered the canon version in this AU.

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 1.3k Genre: Fluff (too sweet maybe), horror elements

~*~

Tall, bright green trees lined the winding blacktop road, obscuring the path around the upcoming curves, but not able to block out the sun on such a clear, summer day. The RV navigated the road with ease at the hands of it’s owner and operator, most recently passing a green interstate sign, “You are now leaving Idaho”, and the doubly large sign after it where a cowboy on his horse declared “Welcome to Wyoming: Forever West.”

“I think you were more excited to get your CD collection back than your truck,” said Jack, as Connor flipped happily through his shoe-box of albums, the edges worn down to the cardboard where it had been slid out and back under the bench seat over and over for years.

“The joy is split, for sure. I let the kids keep all the Journey and Alice Cooper. They were vocal about wanting those.”

Jack took his eyes off the road long enough to smile at him, admire the childish joy on his face as he hunched over the box, thumbing over the track lists like he was a teenager again, in a music store for the first time. Behind their RV, they towed along said truck, a 2000 Toyota Tacoma in what Connor affectionately called “Stacy’s favorite green”, bought brand new for cash the year he left the army. The truck he only drove for a few months before he became a fire lookout at Ironbark, and since then had been driven almost exclusively by Stacy: Connor’s older sister, another deceptively charming blonde with two children under 10 and no one to rely on besides her brother.

“That was an incredible thing you did, Connor,” Jack said seriously. “To buy Stacy a car in exchange for getting the truck back. When it was yours to begin with, and she wasn’t going to fight you on wanting to keep it with us.”

“Nah.” He shooed away Jack’s admiration, flipping over the CD in his hand. “I wasn’t gonna leave her with nothing. And it wasn’t like I got her a Mercedes, just a little something for her to get back and forth to work and the kids to school. I should be thanking you, actually, you’re the one who looked over the engine and told the guy to change the oxygen sensors before we would pay for it.”

Jack offered a shrug, managing a shy smile when Connor reached over to nudge his cheek, unable to kiss him with his seat-belt on.

“What kind of albums do you have, Jack? I think we’ve listened to nothing but the radio since we left Washington.”

“I like the radio. It’s got NPR, weather, rock, every—THING! Connor, no.” He yelled (squeaked) in alarm when Connor began rummaging through the glove compartment, looking for evidence to the contrary. Curse the RV for being so wide, he risked swerving if he reached far enough to slam the lid closed. Meanwhile, smiling and completely unbothered, Connor continued to snoop.

“What do we have here? Oh, Jack. Jackie, baby, what are these?” He grinned in triumph to hold up a handful of CDs: his partner’s most private feelings in rhythm and prose. “Is this what you listened to before you picked me up? Toto, Tracy Chapman, Annie Lennox, BOBBY Caldwell—Jackie? Blue-eyed soul?”

Jack’s face was red enough to pass for a farmer’s market tomato, hands tight on the steering wheel. If Connor squinted, he might see steam rising from his collar beneath the tight line of his lips. “Don’t make fun of me, Connor, please.”

“I would never, Jack,” he replied earnestly, all whiskey and warmth as he popped open one of the cases and began to decipher the RV’s stereo system. Static seemed to be the most common channel in their current neck of the woods, among a brief news transmission: ‘—ark state park in Washington, where the body count is up to 9—’, lost to both their ears with Connor’s searching for the right button.

With a slip of the disc in the slot, a sensual piano filled the cabin, only worsening Jack’s embarrassment when a sultry saxophone joined the singer, the iconic croon of a soulful ballad. He burned, resisting the urge to enjoy himself, and chanced a quick look at Connor.

To the tune of his fluttering heart, he only found him smiling, no longer looking through his box or reading the billboards. Smiling at him, all warm brown eyes as he began to sing along, as if to say that between them, everything was sacred because nothing could be wrong.

“I want the real thing, or nothing at all. I need someone that I can be sure will catch me if I should fall. Someone who’ll be there when I call, then I’ll know that it’s the real thing.”

“How… do you know all the words?” Jack mumbled, and Connor cut off his amateur singing.

“Why do you think?” He reached across the console to touch his hand where it loosened it’s grip on the wheel. “You never have to be embarrassed, Jack, not with me.”

Easy for him to say, when he’s the one playing with both the tempo of the poor man’s heart and the temperature in the room. They came to a stop under a light, and Jack busied his hands tapping his thumb on the wheel until he heard Connor’s seat-belt click, saw him rise to walk towards the back of the RV.

“Where are you going?” As long as he was out of sight, he would miss him.

“Use your imagination, Jack, I can’t exactly wander far. Although, I suggest you find a place to park soon, or you might miss the good part.”

“The wh—” He kept his foot on the brake, turning away from the red light to look for him, only to bite down on his words as Connor slowly slipped his belt free, let it fall to the rug with a quiet thump. Next came his shirt, pulled off by the hand on the back of his collar. Among the slow reveal of his toned back, the moles on his spine, the song urged Jack onward, a different one, something about “Come to me” and “Let me love you, honey”.

“The light’s green, Jack.” Connor smirked at him, tossing his shirt in the vague direction of the driver’s seat.

He snapped his eyes back to the road, pressing the gas a little too hard and hearing Connor’s laugh drift up from where he grabbed the kitchen counter to steady himself. If Jack didn’t find a place to park in the next 3 miles, he vowed, he would pull them onto the damn shoulder and hope this road was as rarely traveled as the map had suggested.

From the bedroom, a quiet moan piqued his hot ears, among the sound of what might have been his name if the CD player wasn’t still going in the speaker beside his feet.

Shit. All right, 1 mile.

By the grace of somebody, otherworldly or other, the parking lot to a campsite appeared on his right, empty too, all thanks to the heat advisory that was meant to last for the rest of the week. Jack was probably the only person in the county grateful for it, if only because it meant leaving the key in the ignition to keep the AC running left the music on too.

They deserved their break.

Neither of them knew the winter was going to be a hard one. That before the end of the year, they would be in danger again. Better to grab some comfort while they can, hold each other close, before the leviathan resident of those Ironbark woods extends itself from the trees and begins to seek out the only survivors who know it’s name.

They couldn’t know it was already awake.

[silkendandelion]

The Real Thing (Final Version)

A Fears to Fathom: Ironbark Lookout Fanfiction

ao3 link

Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins Words: 2.2k Genre: Fluff, humor, horror elements Summary: A short one-shot to look at Jack and Connor's lives after the events of My Own, Distant Home, and is a short prologue/teaser to the in-progress sequel. Alternative title: Two fools in love have no idea what genre they're in.

Rated: Teen and Up Audiences for sexually suggestive content and mild language, and horror elements.

Tall, bright green trees lined the blacktop road, obscuring the path around the upcoming curves but not able to block out the sun on such a clear, summer day. The RV navigated the winding road with ease in Jack’s hands, most recently passing a green interstate sign, “You are now leaving Idaho”, and then the doubly large sign after it where a cowboy on his horse declared “Welcome to Wyoming: Forever West.”

“I think you were more excited to get your CD collection back than your truck,” said Jack as Connor flipped happily through his shoe-box of albums, whose edges were worn down to the cardboard where it had been slid out and back under the bench seat for years.

“The joy is split, for sure. I let the kids keep all the ones they wanted.”

Jack took his eyes off the road long enough to smile back at him, admiring the childish joy on his face as he hunched over the box, thumbing over track lists like he was a teenager again, in a music store for the first time.

Behind their RV, they towed along said truck, a 2000 Toyota Tacoma in what Connor affectionately called “Stacy’s favorite green”, bought brand new for cash the year he left the army. The truck he only drove for a few months before he became a fire lookout at Ironbark, and since then had been driven almost exclusively by Stacy: Connor’s older sister, another deceptively charming blonde with two children under 10 and no one to rely on besides her brother. Twin fuzzy dice in lucky red bounced beneath the rear-view mirror, bleached almost pink from summers at the lake and catching Jack’s eye in the side mirror.

“That was an incredible thing you did, Connor,” he said. “To buy Stacy a car in exchange for getting the truck back, when it was yours to begin with, and I don’t think she would have fought you on wanting to keep it with us.”

“Nah.” He shooed away Jack’s admiration, flipping over the CD in his hand. “I wasn’t gonna leave her with nothing. And it wasn’t like I got her a Mercedes, just a little something for her to get back and forth to the plant and the kids to school. I should be thanking you actually, you’re the one who looked over the engine and told the guy to change the oxygen sensors before we would paid for it.”

Jack just offered a shrug, though he smiled when Connor reached over to nudge his cheek gently with his knuckles.

“What kind of albums do you have, Jack? I think we’ve listened to nothing but the radio since we left Washington.”

“I like the radio,” he said matter-of-factually. “It’s got NPR, weather, every—THING! Connor, no.” He yelled (squeaked) in alarm when Connor began rummaging through the glove compartment, searching for evidence that he was fibbing. Curse the RV for being so wide, he risked swerving if he reached far enough to slam the lid closed. Meanwhile, smiling and completely unbothered, Connor continued to snoop.

“What do we have here? Oh, Jack. Jackie, baby, what are these?” He grinned in triumph to hold up a handful of CDs: his partner’s most private feelings in rhythm and prose. “Is this what you listened to before you picked me up? Tracy Chapman, Bobby Caldwell—Jackie? Blue-eyed soul?”

Jack’s red cheeks approached their smoking point, hands tight on the steering wheel. If Connor squinted, he might see steam rising from his collar beneath the tight line of his lips. “Don’t make fun of me, Connor, please.”

“I would never, Jack,” he said earnestly, all whiskey and warmth as he popped open one of the cases and began to decipher the RV’s stereo system. Static seemed to be the most common channel in their current neck of the woods, among a brief news transmission: ‘—ark state park in Washington, where the body count is up to 9—’

Stop. Go back.

“What?” He mumbled, so quietly Jack only hummed his vague acknowledgment as Connor flipped the channels back and forth, desperate to return to that station.

“It… it was this one, I’m sure of it,” he said, met with only snowy static from the stereo, and Jack took his eyes off the road for less than a moment.

“What was? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

His blood chilled, too much like that night when he had descended from the tower to work on his generator in the middle of the night, believing they were safe and leaving Jack to sleep off his episode alone—until he heard the crickets go quiet in the bushes behind him.

Jack had been the one to save him then, and he would not be caught unaware again. Nor would he let himself be weak when Jack trusted him enough to need him.

“It’s not important, I can’t even find the station again.”

The awkward tilt of Jack’s half-smile was reassuring, even as his heart pounded too hard. He reached to press a button with a circular graphic, one Connor hadn’t assumed was supposed to be a CD, and the little orange display flashed ‘INSERT DISC’.

“… Ah.” It was Connor’s turn to blush, though Jack couldn’t hold himself back from a good-natured chuckle.

“Under 30 and still bested by technology.”

“Hey, I spent four years falling behind on the curve. Do you think the army gave us anything more advanced than ping pong paddles and sun dials? It did make me excellent at smoke signals, though.”

Jack’s laugh warmed him, the only thing he had found that could chase away the unease lately. “You’re an old soul even without living mostly analog all that time.”

“We couldn’t even afford all those letters, they just gave us ANAM,” Connor said with his most comically raised eyebrows, just to hear him laugh again.

As he slipped the disc in the slot, a sensual piano filled the cabin, renewing Jack’s embarrassment when a sultry saxophone joined the singer, the iconic croon of a soulful ballad. He burned, resisting the urge to show how much he was enjoy himself, and chanced a quick look at Connor.

To the tune of his fluttering heart, he only found him smiling, no longer looking through his shoe-box or reading the billboards. Smiling at him, all warm brown eyes as he whispered along with the words, as if to say that between them, everything was sacred because nothing could be wrong.

“I want the real thing, or nothing at all. I need someone that I can be sure will catch me if I should fall. Someone who’ll be there when I call, then I’ll know that it’s the real thing.”

“How… do you know all the words?” Jack said, more to himself than aloud.

“Why do you think?” He reached across the console to touch his hand where it loosened it’s grip on the wheel. “You never have to be embarrassed, Jack, not with me. We’re in this together.”

Easy for him to say, when he’s the one playing with the tempo of the poor man’s heart and the temperature in the room. They came to a stop under a light, and Jack busied his hands tapping his thumb on the wheel until he heard Connor’s seat-belt click, saw him rise to walk towards the back of the RV.

“Where are you going?”

“Use your imagination, Jack, I can’t exactly wander far. Although, I suggest you find a place to park soon, or you might miss the good part.”

“The wh—” He kept his foot on the brake, turning to look for him, just to bite down on his words as Connor slowly threaded his belt free, letting it fall to the rug with a quiet thump. Next came his shirt, pulled off by his hand on the back of his collar. Among the slow reveal of his toned back, the moles on his spine, the song urged Jack onward, a different one, something about “Come to me” and “Let me love you, honey”.

“The light’s green, Jack.” Connor smirked at him, and tossed his shirt in the vague direction of the driver’s seat.

Jack snapped his eyes back to the road, pressing the gas a little too hard and hearing Connor’s laugh drift up from where he grabbed the kitchen counter to steady himself. Quietly, lest he be seen through even more than he already was, he vowed that if he didn’t find a place to park in the next few miles, he would pull over to the shoulder and lock the door.

From the bedroom, a quiet moan piqued his hot ears, among the sound of what might have been his name if he could hear better over the stereo.

Shit. All right, 1 mile.

By the grace of somebody, otherworldly or other, the parking lot to a campsite appeared on his right, empty too, all thanks to the heat advisory that was said to last for the rest of the week. Jack was probably the only person in the county grateful for it, if only because it meant leaving the key in the ignition to keep the AC running left the music on too.

He found Connor already splayed across the bed, distracted from his intentions by the toy bear on the windowsill, the little “Get Well Soon” card in his arms beginning to fade from all the sunbathing he did while his dads drove from state to state. His fingertip nudged the bear’s plastic nose, and Jack began to press kisses along the slope of his shoulder, over the old ink of his tattoo.

“Are we staying here for the night? Adrian’s expecting you Monday morning,” he said.

“I won’t be late, I promise.” Connor turned to steal a kiss from his lips, several actually as he coaxed him to lie back against the pillows. “But whether we get there the day before or the morning of—depends on how much you’ll let me do to you.”

He bared his neck in a plain invitation despite his protests, allowing Connor to seek out his favorite places to kiss while Jack ran encouraging hands into his hair, shorter now after his interview, as well as smoothing his palms over the scratch of the day-old stubble on his chin. It had been a telephone interview, of which Jack reminded him he didn’t have to shave, but Connor insisted it was the right thing to do.

“You’ve always been the needier one, but this—,” Jack’s breath hitched when teeth grazed the skin behind his ear. “You’ve been really affectionate lately.”

“It might be awhile before we get the chance again.”

Light and teasing just a moment ago, the quiet melancholy of Connor’s voice against his neck made Jack’s eyes flutter back open. He cupped his face in his palms, warm in the cheeks where his body was still wound up despite himself, and beckoned him to look up.

“Hey.” From so close, he could see all the barely-there freckles across his nose and cheeks, too light to be anything more than a secret to the rest of the world who didn’t get to hold him the way Jack did. He placed another kiss on his lips. “You’re so good to me. Remember that.”

Connor’s brow scrunched, worried still as he let their foreheads touch. “I want to live up to the version of me that’s in your head.”

“He’s real, I’m holding him. I can feel his dick on my leg.”

The sudden sputter of Connor’s laugh puffed warm across both their faces, and Jack grinned back at him with what he hoped was all the adoration he felt in his chest, the swell of his heart when Connor smiled so bright.

“Okay, Jack… You say you’re not funny, but I like funny men.”

“Eh, logical fallacies, something something, cognitive bias.”

“You lost me.”

“No I didn’t, I can still feel—”

Connor shut him up with a deep kiss, coaxing his mouth open with his thumb so he could slide their tongues together until their lungs burned. With a wet sound, he finally relinquished his lips, admiring the daze in his hazel eyes and the berry-red of his mouth until his voice broke the spell.

“Who are you?” Jack quipped.

“Someone who loves you very much.”

The softness of his face disarmed any playfulness left in the air, replaced only by earnest devotion and the looming ache of starting over, bittersweet no matter how wonderful the company is.

They deserved a break.

Neither of them knew the winter was going to be a hard one. That before the end of the year, they would be in danger again. To take comfort now was a gift, to hold each other close before the leviathan resident of those Ironbark woods emerges from the trees and begins to seek out the only survivors who know it’s name.

They couldn’t know it was

was already awake

.

They cannot know my name.

[silkendandelion]

Happy WIP Wednesday (Whatever Day It Is)

Snippets Below:

Pretty Woman (Croc x OC), long-fic

From the moment he had stepped off the curb, Crocodile knew exactly what kind of man he was, into what part of the city he had wandered. He was a man, after all, and not one who could refuse such an inviting offer, when their violet eyes shone in the lights of his dashboard, and were polite enough to offer curbside service.

“Has anyone ever told you not to honk your horn? It’s rude,” said the beauty, lips pursing to hold back a smirk until Crocodile continued to smoke, unbothered by his snark.

“Yet here you are.”

Ironbark Lookout (Jack x Connor), long-fic

A bell dinged above. For all the kitschy decor of the lobby, speaking to some kind of nostalgic comfort, including a shiny, faux granite counter-top, colorful tourist brochures on a wire rack—the stuffed grizzly in the corner was by far the worst. Tall enough to brush the ceiling timbers, with beady, soulless black eyes that followed me wherever I walked. Daring me to leave.

I'm so tired of running.

Christmas (Law x OC), long-fic

To the thumping of his pounding headache, Law awoke mercifully in his own bed, roused by the smell of breakfast: toast and—

“There’s no smoking in my house,” he growled out, materializing in the kitchen behind his dad, of which Cora’s startled shout worsened his hangover to something between early morning construction and brain surgery.

“Stop yelling!”

“You scared the SHIT out of me!” Cora shouted back as he rushed to stub out his cigarette, completely unaware of the flames on his apron strings. Not that it was a big deal, not when Law was mad enough to snuff the fire out with a smack of a cookie sheet to his back.

NSFW Below:

Pretty Woman (Croc x OC), long-fic

Crocodile’s hand squeezed the arm of the chair to resist touching without permission, or he might do something foolish like press his thumb to the silvery whisper of a scar on the soft plane of his hip, cut by the tight line of his panties, black, silk and little more than a string on the sides.

The cool blue light from the television slipped into all the rivers and valleys of his toned body, carving him out for the sweep of Crocodile’s dark eyes as they roved over every endless inch. If either of them heard the stitches of the arm chair creaking when River lowered himself to the carpet to crawl to him, well, they didn’t mention it.

Ironbark Lookout (Jack x Connor), long-fic

Sex with Connor was everything he ever hoped, so squarely living within his need to be wanted so completely. Connor fucked liked he loved him, and Jack would lie in his own ashes if that was what it took to give as good as he got. Tonight felt like one of those nights, burning him from the inside out, and it was all he could do to hang on, clamp his muscles and relax his lungs to last as long as Connor needed him.

Because I'm the only one who can, is what he said.

Christmas (Law x OC), long-fic

It’s how they ended up nesting on the couch, the former having stripped River down to nothing while he refused to do more than roll up the sleeves on his hoodie, no matter how hard his cock pressed to the front of his jeans.

River’s moan rasped from glossy lips, wet with the spit of their kisses and chewed red while he allowed Law to have his way. Above his head, his hands kneaded the throw pillow, obediently keeping his hands where he had been instructed to, even as his knuckles creaked.

“You’re doing so good,” said Law, deep in his chest and beginning to pant.

[silkendandelion]

Thoughts…

The sequel to My Own, Distant Home has become a huge, complicated project, and I wanted to ramble a little bit about some things to expect

- a lot more horror, considerably less smut (mostly due to the POV changes, I’m experimenting with first person, and first person smut makes me go 😵‍💫), but that may change if I can get the hang of it

- surprise minor characters (including a cat that is actually plot relevant)

- more Jack being pathetic, overly neurodivergent, and unintentionally funny

- heavy backstory stuff for Connor

- I don’t care if the game’s UI has an iPhone, that’s just for the player’s convenience as far as I’m concerned. I’ve written it to take place in 2006 bc the technology works best for my purposes

- also the analog romance is too good

- “I won’t make you relive Ironbark—I can’t.”

Im mostly nervous about how this project is almost completely original

I want to find the right balance of bringing elements back from the first fic, paying homage to the source material, and justifying the sequel by expanding on the world and its characters in a way that feels organic

No pressure

I just want it to be finished already, and be done well, so then I can frame it above my desk for when I’m feeling bad about my writing

“Look, you took an indie horror video game with 2 hours of content and 5 named characters and wrote thousands of words about it—and it didn’t suck”

Coming to you from the writer’s desk, dehydrated and wrists hurt—but I love it

Anyway, here’s wonderwall:

[silkendandelion]

For anyone looking for fanfic writing music, this is what I listened to while making My Own, Distant Home.

Use it as you please 🙏🏼💜

[silkendandelion]

Master List

Meet the author!

Silken, long-time fanfic writer and book lover, ex-artist, scientist.

Rules for asks/submissions: here.

Been writing since my teens for a bunch of fandoms (LOTR, X-Men, Supernatural, Star Trek etc), most are lost to time, but I’m organized now! Ao3 and Tumblr are my only actives.

This is a safe space for all LGBTQIA+, as well as original characters and reader fics. Creating characters and adding to stories you love is something special and part of your growth as an artist, even if you only share it with strangers on the internet. ❤️

A lot of the work posted here is for mature audiences only (18+), please read tags and warnings carefully.

Note: Shorter pieces, headcanons, and ramblings may not be on the masterlist, but are tagged under silkenspeaks

ONE PIECE

Mirage In The Desert (Sir Crocodile x OC River), completed long fic, ao3 link

All This For A Coin (Sir Crocodile x OC River, Trafalgar Law x OC River), completed one-shot, ao3 link

Say My Name (This Time I Will Answer) (Sir Crocodile x OC River), completed one-shot, ao3 link

Don't Waste My Time (Please) (Trafalgar Law x OC River), completed one-shot, ao3 link

Million Dollar Baby (Sir Crocodile x OC River), ongoing long fic, ao3 link

STARDEW VALLEY

Pomegranates (Lance x OC Farmer Max), completed one-shot, ao3 link

BALDUR’S GATE

The House of the High One, Tav (Dayedan) Backstory, completed one-shot, ao3 link

Two Drow From Sembia, Tav (Dayedan) and Tav (Badril), ongoing long-fic, ao3 link

Chapter 1

FEARS TO FATHOM

My Own, Distant Home (Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins), completed two-shot fic, ao3 link

The Real Thing (Final Version) (Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins), completed drabble, ao3 link

The Real Thing (original version) (Jack Nelson x Connor Hawkins), completed drabble, not posted to ao3