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spending all my nights alone waiting for you to call me
you're the only one I want by my side when I fall asleep
tell me what I'm waiting for, tell me what I'm waiting for
I know it's hard but we need each other
know it's hard but we need each other
Faith was dead and the Deputy was exhausted.
It had been almost a full 24 hours, sure, but her radio was still crackling with congratulatory messages, especially after Joseph's grief-stricken broadcast across the county. The bunker was destroyed, and the last traces of Bliss were still leaving her system, giving her a hangover-like headache. Even when she tried to take a breather, escape to the ramshackle cabin she found hidden in the Whitetails, Jacob's helicopters swept down from the sky the second her stolen Peggie truck crossed the bridge.
No peace and quiet, until now. After all, it was still a Friday.
~
Rook glanced back and forth as she crept down to the rocky shore. Her boat was where she left it, bobbing in the gentle current, tied to the remnants of an old dock. The display on her watch read 11:00PM - perfect timing.
She sighed in relief and climbed in, letting the boat drift into the river. Digging through her backpack with one hand, she turned the radio dial with the other to their secret frequency - which, they knew, wasn't entirely secret, and anyone could listen in at any time, which is why-
"Inbound," she said quietly. "Inbound."
"Range?" he responded almost immediately, and she smiled.
"About a football field away."
Which didn't mean shit.
"Copy."
Except between the two of them.
"Finally," she huffed in satisfaction, pulling out a handful of mini vodka bottles she had traded a couple of wolf skins for. The cap cracked as she opened one and finished it with a few easy gulps. She tossed the empty bottle along the floor of the boat and twisted the dial on her radio. "Sharky? Sharky, do you copy?"
It took a minute before he chimed in. "Deputy! Did ya find your present?!"
"Present? No-"
"Oh! Forget I said anything!" A loud BOOM went off in the background, and Rook swore she could hear it the echo from her boat.
"Sharky, what- Never mind. I'm going off the grid for the night, okay? See you tomorrow."
"Take care of yourself, compadre. Oh, hey, Hurk says hi!"
She smiled to herself as she could indeed hear Hurk yelling. "You boys be careful."
"We always are, compadre. You too."
~
As her boat floated up to the small dock hidden at the side of Seed Ranch, John emerged from the tiny boathouse, hidden in the shadows thanks to his black coat. He crouched and reached out, helping Rook get her balance.
"You smell like alcohol," he observed.
"Yeah, you know. Disinfectant. I'm wounded."
"That's not what I meant." He scanned their surroundings and picked up her bag.
"No one knows where I am."
"Good." He stopped her, gently tugging on her arm. "Hello, by the way."
She gave him a tiny, tired smile. "Hello."
~
She tries not to think about the guards when she visits - which isn't remarkably difficult, considering they tend to magically vanish when she shows up at the ranch.
Instead, she thinks about how hard it is to get her boots off once they climb the stairs to John's suite, and how she didn't realize she was freezing until she stood in front of the fireplace, and that she's been in the same pair of jeans for the past week. She sheds her clothes, one piece after another, tossing them on the floor beside her.
He coughed, uncomfortably, as he shut the door behind him. "Can you wait until I close the door at least?"
She turned to face him, and watched with satisfaction as his eyes glazed over at the sight of her naked body. "You and I both know no one is here. And I feel disgusting."
He coughed again. "You don't look..."
She strode towards the bathroom, making a beeline for the massive shower. She cranked the temperature up as he followed her in, tossing his own shirt and jeans to the side.
"Do you want to talk?"
She thought for a moment, and shook her head. "No."
"Okay."
"Not for a while."
I said okay," he whispered, suddenly at her shoulder, his teeth nibbling at her ear. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer, and she could feel his erection pressing against the curve of her ass.
She shivered and lay her head back as he kissed down her jaw to her neck, tongue circling the spot that made her heart race. She squirmed out of his grasp and stepped in the shower, sticking her head under the water.
John followed her in and swept his hand over her face, wiping the water out of her eyes. "You look like you're about to faint."
"I really might."
"Have you slept?"
She shrugged and tilted her head back under the water again. "Napped."
His strong fingers crept up the back of her neck, before sliding into her hair and rubbing her scalp in slow, deep circles.
"Fuck, John," she gasped in pleasure.
"I haven't even gotten started."
~
The worst part of showering together, of course, is the showering part.
Rook lazily swatted John's wandering hands away as she washed her hair, quickly weaving it into a thick braid. She pushed him down onto the tiled bench in the shower, swaying her hips as she scrubbed herself with his expensive-smelling body wash.
He reached out as she rinsed, pulling her close with one hand on her waist and the other slipping between her legs. She hummed with pleasure as two of his fingers started lazily swirling around her clit.
"You loved making me wait," he said hoarsely.
"Not as much as I loved getting clean," she teased, her sentence trailing off into a moan as he dipped the same fingers into her cunt, already slick with her own wetness, and his thumb replaced the slow strokes.
"Fuck," he whispered, his own hand absent-mindedly stroking his cock as he watched her tremble. He slipped in a third finger, watched her shudder and felt her tighten around his hand. She rubbed against his thumb, dug her nails into his upper arm as she came, a slow orgasm that made every muscle in her body tighten up. When he looked up, she had bitten her lip so hard it bled.
Before she could open her eyes, he stood up and bent her over. She reached out and rested her hands against the glass, hissing as John slapped her ass with a satisfying sting. "You like that?" he growled, her beard tickling her ear.
"God yes," she moaned, arching her back. "John, please-"
He adjusted himself at her entrance and, with one hard thrust, slid his cock inside her until he bottomed out. Rook cried out, her fingers slipping against the glass as she tried to hold on. "Fucking hell!"
John slowly pulled back and thrust forward, his hips slapping against her as he built up a steady rhythm. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure and she struggled to stay upright, balancing herself against the shower wall. He brought his hand down with another sharp slap and tugged on the end of her hair.
"You like when I fuck you like this?"
"Y-Yes John!"
"Again!"
"Yes, John, yes!" She gasped and thrust her hips back against his as he fucked her, hard and fast. He cursed under his breath as he held her still and sped up his pace. "Tell me how much you like it-"
"I love it, I love it, I-"
With a loud grunt he came, his cock buried deep inside her. She cried out at the sensation, tightening around him so hard his eyes almost popped out of his head. They stood there, panting, until she finally remembered the shower was still running and reached over to shut it off.
~
He carried her to bed - she made a half-hearted fuss, but fell asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow.
~
She woke up just before dawn, the room pitch black except for the small glow from John’s alarm clock. They were face to face, his arms wrapped around her and holding her to his chest in the middle of the obscenely fluffy duvet and pillows. His face was completely relaxed - the most vulnerable she had ever seen him. The sight of it made her chest ache, deep in an empty cavity she had ignored for years. Keeping people at arm’s length - for what? What good had it done for anyone she knew?
Maybe she could close her eyes and wake up in Atlanta, in a high rise in the arms of John Duncan. A world where they could cross paths at a party, in college, even in a courtroom - but before Joseph Seed could come into his life and twist his trauma for his own purposes. A different world without blood on their hands and the constant echo of gunfire across the county, where they could live without looking over their shoulders.
Already she saw the grim conclusion play out in her head. She had read the Book of Joseph, of course - know thy enemy and all that. She knew John’s life before the Project was filled with sin, his own ruthless machine filled with booze and pills and women to keep the demons at bay - and, in this hypothetical world, she might even be the same way. He would accuse her of making him her project. She would resent him for refusing to change. They would fight and make up, fight and make up, until - what?
Rook wasn’t proud of the blows they had swapped before, the brief violent fight when John chased her down in the woods, where he slammed her against a tree and she sunk a fist into his cheek. And she knew he was the only person she could ever trust like that - to fight without fear, for the sheer need to explode. He tried to drown her, for fuck’s sake. And she had put a bullet in his arm, plus many more in his various vehicles.
But he understood what it was like to be tiny and wrong, so afraid and ashamed of a mistake as a parent you were supposed to trust beat their twisted discipline into them. To hide resentment deep in your chest, where it boiled and bubbled like thick hot lava. He knew how to lie to save your life.
She squeezed her eyes shut, furious with the rapid spiral of thoughts in her brain, praying for sleep to return. But they kept going, and going, and going-
Sharky's present.
She exhaled slowly, carefully sliding down and out of John's arms. He grunted in his sleep and rolled over, giving her the chance she needed to scramble out of bed. She pulled on one of John's t-shirts from the open laundry basket and wrapped herself in the quilt hanging off one of his armchairs.
She crept across the room to her bag, and reached in, hesitantly feeling around, until she found a plastic baggie she was pretty sure wasn't hers. As she tiptoed to the balcony, she confirmed it - 4 tiny and tightly rolled joints. Thank God for Sharky Boshaw.
~
She leaned back, lit up, and let the smoke drift away in the gentle breeze on John's balcony. The moon was a tiny sliver, the edges of the property disappearing into the darkness.
She thought fondly, of her first weekend as a Junior Deputy, after a six month sobriety break to make sure she passed her drug test. Pratt and Hudson had showed up at the tiny bungalow she was renting, on the edge of Fall's End, with booze and joints in hand. They snuck out to a barn where no one could smell the smoke or hear the laughter-
She cringed, at the thought of Pratt and Hudson. Joey was safe, recuperating with Mary May Fairgrave, but Staci was still up in the Whitetails, under Jacob's thumb-
Rook shook her head and took another long pull off her joint. "No use," she mumbled to herself. "No use getting sad about that right now."
Whitehorse was safe, but Burke was another failure. Dead, arguably by his own hand, but really by Faith's.
Out here, in the quiet, her ears started ringing. Loudly. The sound of gunshots, the smell of blood, the look on Faith's face-
"Enough," she said, louder. She took another hit, so long it made her eyes water, and muffled her coughs underneath the quilt.
The look on Rachel's face-
Rook dug the heels of her palms into her eyes.
"It was always going to happen this way."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up," she hissed.
~
Before she crawled back in bed, she stood by his side, watching him sleep. He looked peaceful, and safe.
~
When she woke up again, to sunlight just filtering through the windows, John was watching her with the same intensity she had been watching him. The corner of his lips twitched into a smile as her eyes fluttered open. “Did you know you complain in your sleep?”
She laughed and burrowed into his chest. “Good morning to you too.”
“I was wondering what you were dreaming about. Something unpleasant, I’m sure.”
“I don’t remember,” she said, muffled against his skin.
He laughed to himself and kissed the top of her head, prompting her to tilt her face up. “On my lips, please.”
He leaned in and pressed his face to hers, kissing her - the kind where she had to take deep breaths in between. When she would reflect on this later, she would realize - he was kissing her goodbye.
They laid in the comfortable silence for a few minutes, before he spoke up, his voice thick with early morning hoarseness. “I’m going to say something, and all I ask is that you don’t interrupt me.”
She held her breath, felt her body tense up - and she knew he felt it too.
“Please. I care about you-“
“John-“
“-and we can’t do this forever-“
“Stop-“
“-as much as I want to, but it’s not realistic. Not with your most recent actions.”
“Goddamnit,” she hissed, as she tried to untangle herself from his embrace, but his arms stayed firm.
“We’re reaching the point of no return. My own people are suspicious, and Joseph is asking questions I can’t answer.“
“Aren’t you a big fancy lawyer? Just lie.”
“He’s my brother, I can’t put him off forever. Or Jacob. It made sense while you were in the Henbane, but you’ve been spotted in the Valley and they’re breathing down my neck as to why I haven’t…”
The silence hung in the air.
Rook fixated on a freckle in the middle of John’s chest. A tiny natural speck among all those tattoos.
“Maria.”
A jolt went down her spine at the sound of her name. She looked up at him, and the emotion swimming in his eyes filled her with a jolt of rage.
“Fuck, John. God fucking damnit.” She wrenched herself from his arms and scrambled to her feet.
“Oh, what, you’re getting mad at me because I care about you?” He was sitting up now, his hair messy and his eyes shining and wide awake.
“No, I’m getting mad because you’re acting like this is a completely fucking normal situation!” The door was closed, and the thick walls muffled her yells from the rest of the chalet, but she didn’t care either way. “I can’t have this talk with you, John. Do you know how crazy we sound?”
“Nothing is normal! I know how you feel about the Project, but you know, deep down, Joseph is right.”
She snorted. “Please.”
“Yes you do. I know you’re just as scared as we are of what’s coming, whatever it may be.”
“Even if you're right, this isn’t the way to do it.” She yanked her sweatshirt over her head. “Okay? You and I are fucking bonkers. We live in a war zone, and we’re responsible for most of the damage. So don’t talk like you care about me.”
“Maria, I do care about you. I know you care about me. But you are leaving us with no choice. I am begging you-“ His voice cracked, and he took a moment to compose himself, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to throw herself back into his arms.
But she didn’t.
“I am begging you to consider peace. If you and your friends continue to wage warfare against us, then I have no choice but to escalate my efforts.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Do you hear yourself?”
He finally stood up, in a pair of sweatpants she didn’t realize he had put on. Again, the most vulnerable and relaxed she had ever seen him, and that tender ache from earlier radiated through her chest.
“We’ve gone too far. This is going to end, one way or the other.” His gaze held hers, and her fingers twitched as she thought of reaching out to him. "Please don't go."
"I'm not going," she snapped. "I didn't want to go, until you brought this up."
He took a deep breath. "Please. I won't ask again. A ceasefire. A truce. Anything."
"Or what?"
Her words hung in the silence.
"Or I can't see you anymore. I will treat you like the active hostile you are. I..." He faltered as she stepped towards him.
"John, I like what we're doing because I don't have to think about any of the bullshit going on out there. You promised me when we did this that this was our safe space. We can... we can keep it. I'll stay out of your way and you'll stay out of mine."
"It's not that easy."
"It can be! It can be." She took a deep breath, gulping down her tears. "You want me to join your side. I don't even want you to join mine. I want us to stay in the middle. Please."
"So do I," he said sadly. "But we can't."
~
His words are still echoing in her ears as she marches down the hill and climbs back into her boat. The tremble in his voice, the sadness in his puppy-dog eyes - it plays over and over in her head as she floats down the Henbane.
It's all she can think about when she walks into the Fall's End church, decorated like a wedding from hell. It's all she can think about when she wakes up from unconsciousness to the tattoo needle dragging across her chest. It's all she can think about when the surprise in his eyes falls away, hidden behind a cold and cruel mask of his own making.
It's all she can think about, when it all ends.