#timtams is one hell of a tough cookie

[purge-that-urge-rhackathon]

Understudy

Tim’s plastic surgeries have made him physically indistinguishable from Jack. When both are caught by bandits with a score to settle, Tim puts his acting skills to use to protect Jack, despite how much the CEO rants otherwise.

Tim is way too good at what he does, and he suffers for it.

This is Day 5′s sentence prompt fill for FebuWhump: “Take me instead”

This labeled as Understudy. Also on my ao3 here. My masterlist archive of bullshit i write can be found linked at the top of the blog or here. 

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Jack had always applauded Tim’s acting skills. The guy was talented as hell. Sometimes Jack couldn’t even remember which of them it was in his biopics that they watched together. Tim sometimes seemed like he knew him better than he knew himself, and he trusted the younger man’s judgment when he slipped into important roles that Jack himself couldn’t be there to fill.

Right now, though, Jack wanted nothing more than for the handsome idiot to shut that gorgeous mouth and stop claiming that he was Jack. But Tim wouldn’t do it; kept pushing the inbred bandit clan that had taken them, and they were taking it out on the younger man’s body.

Tim was taking a beating meant for him, and the double wouldn’t drop the act, despite how Jack yelled at him otherwise. He was bleeding already from the mouth and nose, still standing somehow, but his arms were bound behind his back, and he was kept from retaliating by two brain-dead lunks gripping him at the elbows.

Jack wasn’t scared at first-- didn’t want to accept that he was scared now- but he didn’t know how much more the double could take. There hadn’t been any demands made yet. No trying to extort cash or guns or anything that might tempt the usual Pandoran idiots; Jack didn’t know how to manipulate the situation to their advantage. It seemed like all they wanted was to lay down some hurt on Jack.

But without knowing who was who-- they’d both said they were Jack when it had come to it- the bandits had had to choose who to start with.

Apparently, Tim made a more convincing Jack than Jack did.

Tim’s left eye was swollen shut, bruising already darkening the flesh as he visibly began to sag against those flanking him; they made sure Tim stayed up while their boss laid into him.

Jack couldn’t handle not being able to do anything. Not being able to command Tim to shut up and tell them who he really was. Not being able to put a damn bullet through their thick skulls. “I told you morons, he’s a double!!” Jack raged from where he was trapped in what more or less amounted to a human birdcage in the room. “Timothy!! Goddammit, tell them who you are!”

Tim spat blood on the floor, then laughed. “...he’s good, right?” Tim boasted with a rough, cocky sort of tone, looking up. He hurt all over, and they hadn’t really even begun yet in his opinion. Right now it was still just fists laying into him. And that was something Tim knew that he could take.

But what he couldn’t take was letting them have Jack. If he could do anything, he wanted to protect the CEO while he could; buy more time while their drones must be trying to locate them.

Tim gave Jack a smile, something genuinely amused in his words even for how bloody his smile was. “I get what you’re trying to do here, kiddo, but I’m the hero of this story. Me. The real Jack.” Jack made a face, and Tim fell back on the easy speech patterns of a calm, confident CEO of Hyperion. He could see the effect it had on the older man; he knew he was good, and he knew Jack wished he wasn’t right then. “It’ll take more than these assholes to do in your pal Jack, cupc--”

The punch to Tim’s midsection knocked the wind out of the double with a painful sound, and Tim dropped to his knees and bent over himself wheezing for air as their assailants laughed.

Jack was scared that the younger man was going to get himself killed at this rate.

Not that Jack didn’t think they weren’t going to kill the both of them anyways, but there was no reason to hurry that process along. And Tim’s smart mouth-- Jack’s smart mouth- was going to get him into trouble.

“Tim!”

“...Yeah, fuck this,” their boss spoke as he finally wiped Tim’s blood off his hands and onto his pants.

Tim stayed down still trying to catch his breath. Jack hoped that meant that this was done. That they’d quit for the day-- or at very least trade Tim out for Jack. This never should’ve happened to Tim. Loyalty, love, regardless, Tim should not be experiencing this.

“Take ‘im downstairs. Put ‘im in the chair.”

Tim was hoisted up by his arms, weakly slumped forward in their grasp as blood and saliva dripped from his mouth to the floor. He couldn’t lift his head, but he’d caught his breath; he was still defiant.

“...I can... take whatever you dish out… butthead.” He grunted in pain as he was hoisted up further, and Jack absolutely rattled the cage with helpless panic. They’d kill him. They were gonna kill Tim. He was absolutely gonna be killed. And Jack couldn’t do anything.

“No! No, hey! Take me, you assholes! He’s just a liberal arts major! He’s a stupid-good actor with expensive surgery!!” Jack shouted out. He railed on, chest tight with a sudden panic that he wasn’t going to see Tim come back up alive if they took him now. He was stuck in this damn cage, helpless to stop it, and the thought of losing the other man was too much to even consider.

It had Jack scared to death.

“He’s a useless double!! I’m Handsome Jack! Me, you shit for brains! Take me instead!”

Jack could hear Tim’s cries echoing up the stairwell from where they’d taken him. He didn’t know what they were doing, but he screamed his throat raw trying to convince them who he was: gloating about smaller victories in non-publicized towns on Pandora. Of the finer details of murdering Tassiter; of things that he knew Tim could never hazard guesses at all; things which incriminated him a far deal more than Jack wanted to admit to himself

Something must have worked along the way, because one of them came up for him and took Jack below as well with utter outrage.

Both of them woke up in Hyperion medical beds several days later, whole if not worse for wear.

Jack wished he could remember what had happened once he’d been taken below. He remembered putting up a hell of a fight. That much he was certain of. He had the feeling he’d blinded one of them with just his fingers, but there was no telling for sure. The unit that had rescued them had cleaned up the whole town and murdered everyone in the compound, so he supposed it didn’t matter in the end anyways. The hero won.

Tim no longer sounded like Jack. But he didn’t sound like himself, either. Voice modulator improperly removed, and a reconstructive surgery hours later to fix it, and Tim was joking about this voice still sounding better than his original one, but already missing the sound of ‘his’ old voice.

He wasn’t going to be Jack’s double again for a long time. Not if their new menagerie of scars were any kind of indicator. The one at Tim’s throat was especially brutal; he didn’t know when he’d be able to get back on the job convincingly unless Jack took to wearing turtlenecks.

Jack had a different solution for the problem entirely.

He told Tim in a voice that left zero room for argument that Tim was retiring from the double program with a generous severance package… Or else.

Tim was frankly not keen on finding out what ‘or else’ might entail, but when he told Jack that he had a generous package for the older man as well, the CEO just smirked.

At least Tim’s good humor survived everything, and for everything else, well, the painkillers certainly helped matters.

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my kofi | ao3 main