Hunting Party

5.

They leave the moose's head on the porch. It doesn't take long to establish that the cabin is, in fact, abandoned.

"No power," Jacob calls to her from the den.

"Yeah," she calls back, hitting the kitchen faucet. "But the water's still running."

"Good enough."

Rook gets out her Maglite to check their resources, and a quick search of the bathroom reveals a basic first aid kit. "Hey, Jacob, come here," she says. She hears the floorboards creaking under his boots as he moves, and after a moment, he stands in the doorway. She indicates the little white case with the light. "You should take care of your arm," she says. "No telling what that thing was carrying."

He comes in close, takes the case out of her hands, and sets it on the counter. The bathroom is pretty small; she'd have to edge around him to get out, so she decides to try and be helpful instead, just rises to her feet next to him and shines the light on the contents of the case. He selects a little packet of alcohol wipes, uses his teeth to rip into it, then swipes at the scratches clotting blood on his arm. He doesn't react to the sting.

"How do you think you got talon scratches if we were just fighting a hallucinogenic moose?" she asks to fill the silence.

"Hell if I know," he grumbles. "Probably a real turkey just got sucked into the fight."

"Dumbass turkey."

He huffs a little at that, a quiet sound she knows signifies a genuine laugh on his part. She loves when she manages to make him laugh, given how rare an occurrence it is, but she doesn't want to let on how much it pleases her, so she changes the subject. "Isn't alcohol bad for open wounds?"

He turns his head; she shines the light up to him to see that he's raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Yeah," she says brightly. "It kills the good bacteria along with the bad. Makes the healing take longer. Better to just wash the wounds with soap and water, I hear."

"My good bacteria will be fine," he growls, swiping the wipe along his scratches a couple more times, then he reaches for the bandages.

"If you say so," she sing-songs under her breath. He doesn't pay her any mind, just finishes up, covering the open cuts with a bandage. Then he takes an alcohol wipe, turns to her, and presses it to her split lip before she knows what's happening.

"Ow!" she yelps, and laughs, shoving his hand away. "You bastard!"

"You gotta tend to it," he insists, deadpan, trying to push the wipe back to her face.

She blocks his hand, trying hard not to laugh again. "My lip is not going to get infected, oh my god!"

"Suit yourself," he says with a shrug. He tosses the wipe into the sink, then turns and leaves the bathroom without another word. She tries without much success to wipe the smile off her face, then follows.

Further search reveals something interesting—she chuckles under her breath as she removes a small crate from a lower cabinet in the kitchen. "Fucking score."

"What you got there?"

"Looks like moonshine," she says, unscrewing the lid from one of the several mason jars she's found. She sniffs the clear liquid inside and winces. "Oh, that's moonshine all right. I knew someone had to have a still setup in this county." She takes a sip, makes a face at the distinct flavor, at the burn of it traveling down her throat and settling in her chest, and when she's able to speak again, she says, "Oh, yeah, that's legit—" coughs, and then holds the jar out to him in offering.

He shakes his head.

"You sure? Get some of that white lightnin' in you. Help you sleep."

"No thanks." His tone doesn't allow for argument. She shrugs, takes another sip, then replaces the lid and sets the jars aside. He's right, getting ripshit on moonshine is a bad idea even in normal circumstances, let alone circumstances where one might need to fight for one's life at any given second. She'll come back for it later, take it to the boys during safer times. No doubt Sharky and Hurk can make good use of it.

The upper cabinets in the kitchen yield canned goods. "Oh, hell yeah, that's what I'm talking about," Rook says when the flashlight shows her that the best-by dates on most of them are a few years into the future. She grabs a can of baked beans, then another, turning to show it to Jacob. "Hungry?"

"Not particularly," he grunts. "You go ahead."

She shrugs, puts one can back, then searches the drawers until she finds a can opener. Cold, canned baked beans are not the best food in the world, but she's pretty damn hungry, so they'll do. She hoists herself up on the counter, sitting facing Jacob, and eats daintily from the open can with a spoon.

"I'd start a fire," he says, checking the windows, "but smoke from the chimney—that'd draw attention."

"S'okay," she says after swallowing a mouthful. "It's not too cold yet. I think we'll be all right."

"There's one bed," he says, and turns, fixing her with a hard stare.

Yeah. She'd noticed. She's absolutely not interested in spending a bunch of time negotiating sleeping arrangements—it promises to be an awkward conversation, and she's nowhere near there yet. She swallows again, then says, "Yeah. Can I have the couch?" He raises an eyebrow. She shrugs. "I've always slept well on couches. God, couch naps got me through college. You take the bed, I'm good out here."

"All right." He stares for a moment longer, then nods. "Then I'm gonna go to sleep. It's been a long night."

She gives him a little salute with her spoon. "Sweet dreams. See you in the morning."

His jaw tenses, he nods, and then he turns and heads away, towards the bedroom.

Rook finishes her beans, tossing the can and spoon in the sink once she's done. She feels sated—her stomach must be shrinking, it's only been a few days since she'd have wolfed down another can in addition to the first, and she makes a note to try to eat more, sometimes nowadays she can see her ribs jutting out and she doesn't like that—and she retires to the couch. There's a knitted throw blanket there, left by the cabin's previous owners, and it serves to cover her up. She strips off her jacket and overshirt, removes the holster from her thigh (and tucks the pistol it holds under the couch cushions, in easy reach) but leaves her tank top and jeans on. There's a part of her that tells her she shouldn't be falling asleep at all, dressed or not dressed, with Jacob just in the next room, and she knows that's true, but he's also been with her all night and hasn't tried to kill her yet, so…

A lot's been going on, her mind is a live wire, but her body's exhaustion overpowers the urgency of her thoughts in minutes. She falls asleep fast.

She wakes up in a cage.

She looks around in a panic. No, no, no, no, no.

She hears the familiar sound of boots on gravel, and then—Jacob, arriving in front of the bars, tilting his head to look at her a little more on her level.

He smiles, just a little. His smiles are so rare. She wishes that this one didn't mean something bad.

"Did you think this was over?" he asks in his familiar soft tones. He waits for a moment, but she can't speak, and eventually he continues. "This will never be over, Dep. There's work to be done."

He pulls the music box out of his pocket. Her instinct is to recoil, but that's never helped her before, so instead, she presses forward, grasping the bars, reaching one hand out through to him. "Jacob," she says, her voice choked and breaking. "Jacob, don't—"

He opens the box.

Only you…

Rook jerks violently awake.

The music echoes in her ears, but she doesn't see the familiar red mist. Her lungs feel heavy, choked, and she sits up, trying to catch her breath.

She has no idea what time it is. It's still dark. It doesn't take long for her to notice the silhouette of Jacob, standing at the end of the couch. Rook immediately recoils, sitting up against the arm of the couch furthest from him, drawing her legs up as close to her as she can.

His shoulders are hunched. His head is down. He's dressed, mostly, but not wearing his jacket or boots. She's not sure if he's awake.

"Jacob," she says softly, shakily, the fearful sentiment of her dream still strong in her heart. Her pistol is under the cushion beneath her. She's not sure if she should go for it or not. "What's happening?"

He shakes his head, but she can't see his face. After a moment, feet shuffling heavily against the ground, he moves around the couch, sits on the end furthest from her.

After a long, breathless moment, he says, "Come here."

She doesn't move. There's a solid part of her that wants to, wants to go to him immediately to soothe her fears and remind her that for now, at least, her dream was nothing but smoke and mirrors, but she's still got a bit of dream hangover, is terrified of moving close to him. She says, softly, "I don't want to."

He sighs, a long exhale. He says, "I'm not gonna hurt you, Rook. Come here."

She's not sure she believes him, but she has a hard time disobeying him outright. Her limbs are shifting before she can stop them, and she eases herself across the couch closer to him, approaching gingerly, the way she might move around a rabid dog.

He's not content to just have her sitting beside him. In silence, he reaches sideways, plants his big hands on her waist and pulls her into his lap.

She lets him settle her onto him—the words exposure therapy flashing through her mind even as her heart races—one leg on either side of his, and rather than sit facing him like that, she folds her arms around his neck and leans forward to bury her face in the crook of her elbow, admittedly hiding.

It's a little easier this way. Despite how close they are, their bodies flush against one another, she doesn't have to look at him, and she can feel between her legs—he's not hard; this doesn't seem to be a sex thing, which is a relief, because despite the fact that she's harboring some powerful feelings of want, she's not quite mentally or emotionally there yet, especially not right now. He puts his arms around her, and she just breathes against him, trying to calm down.

Jacob's not much of a talker, and if she waits for him to say something, she might be waiting all night. So she says, softly, "Are you awake right now?" She's still not entirely sure—he seems lucid, but her brother used to sleepwalk, could pass as awake until he tried to have a conversation and just started spouting nonsense. Certainly Jacob Seed coming to her in the middle of the night and pulling her into his arms for no apparent reason counts as nonsensical.

"I'm awake," he says, his voice low and familiar.

She's not convinced. "Why are you awake?"

He takes a long time to answer. She actually thinks he's not going to bother, or that he's fallen back asleep—his breathing is slow and regular, she can feel it in the rise and fall of his chest against hers—then he says, "Same reason as you, I reckon." She shakes her head a little. He can't just say nightmares. It makes sense—she's read Joseph's book, has inferred that he has a healthy dose of PTSD. She imagines his nights don't pass easily, most of the time.

She settles a little closer against him, feeling some of the tension bleeding out of her as she really starts to believe what he'd said, I won't hurt you. His arms tighten around her a little more, and she turns her head so that her face is pressed into his neck, feeling the scratch of his beard against her cheek.

She wants to tell him about her dream, but she's too afraid, too worried that he'll tell her outright that it's accurate, what she can expect in the future. She takes an oblique approach to the issue instead and asks, "How many times tonight did you want to kill me?"

"Just once," he replies easily, without hesitation.

She laughs at that, a low, surprised little snicker, turning her face away again so he won't be able to feel her smiling against his skin. She's a little too late. He says, "Your sense of humor is kinda fucked up sometimes, you know that?" The question sounds almost fond, and she's not sure she's comfortable with how much she likes that tone coming from him.

"Yeah, well, if it's between laughing or crying…" She trails off, and he grunts, a quiet sound that she thinks signifies understanding.

Both of them are silent for a long time after that. Rook doesn't know what Jacob's thinking or feeling—she rarely does—but for her part, exposure therapy seems to have been spot on. The dread and terror that had followed her out of her dream have faded, soothed away by time and the fact that Jacob's arms are tight around her and feel comforting and secure, even though her logical brain knows that is far from the case. Right now she's getting sleepy again and the air in the cabin is cold but Jacob is very warm, and she's almost positive that if he was planning to do harm to her he wouldn't have pulled her into his lap like this, so she doesn't really give a shit what her logical brain has to say.

Maybe she's dozed off a little bit, because when he speaks, even though his voice is as quiet as ever, it startles her.

He asks, "You ever seen someone drown, Deputy?"

It takes her a second to wrap her head around the question, as out of the blue as it is. Once she processes it, she shakes her head, slowly, no.

"Yeah," he says, as though he'd anticipated that answer. "I have."

She'd gathered, otherwise he wouldn't have brought it up, but she stays silent, curious as to where he's going with this.

He shifts beneath her. Thinking he's getting uncomfortable, she moves as if to climb off him, but he tightens his grip almost in warning, one of his hands sliding up into her hair. Okay, then. She settles back against him, rests her face against his neck again, I'm not going anywhere.

"I was just a kid. I must've been twelve or so." The words come easily, more easily than she's used to from him, and she realizes it's because he's shifted into that mode she's seen from him only a couple of times, always when he's got her at the Center, the lecturer mode. She shivers; possibly interpreting it as a reaction to cold, he runs a warm, mollifying hand slowly down her back, which doesn't help.

"There were a pair of older kids, lived a few neighborhoods away. Ricky… and Daryl; those were their names. Just a couple of dumb rednecks. Bullies. They didn't bother me much after the first time—they were thirteen and fifteen, thereabouts, but I was big for my age, and mean. They liked to corner Joseph, though. He never paid the attention he should've. Always lost in his own head. If I wasn't around, they'd beat him up, rip his shirts, throw rocks at him, things like that." He chuckles, a wry little laugh. "As if he didn't get enough of that at home, right?"

Rook interprets the question as rhetorical and remains silent, just listening.

He draws a breath and continues. "Anyway. There was an old quarry not too far from our house. Couple of miles, an easy trip to make for active kids who hated being at home. We used to swim there—summer in Georgia gets pretty damn hot, and we didn't have air conditioning, so we were there just about every day. It was kind of a no man's land for the kids in the area, cause we all used it, so if someone you didn't like showed up…" She feels him shrug beneath her arms. "You just moved to the other side of the lake.

"One day I headed out there. I was by myself; I don't remember what Joseph was up to that he wasn't with me."

He's silent for a long time, nearly a minute. Rook has gathered by now that he's not going to leave this unfinished, so she imagines he's just reliving the memory again, possibly for the first time in a long time.

Finally, he says, "Ricky was already drowning when I got there. Darryl was swimming out to try and save him. Now, I don't know if you know this, but drowning? It's a quiet thing. Subtle. There's no flailing, no screaming for help. The person drowning is so focused on trying to keep their head above water, they forget about anything else. Unless something comes in reach that they can grab onto.

"You probably see where this is going. Daryl reached his brother, Ricky latched onto him. Pulled him down. He didn't mean to, it's just how dying works. You stop thinking about anything but survival. I watched 'em bobbing up and down for maybe a minute, then their heads went under, and they just… didn't come back up."

He stops talking after that. Rook thinks, but doesn't speak, doesn't want to risk pissing him off, messing this up, doesn't want him to push her off of him when he's so warm and she's so drowsy and comfortable. She wonders why he decided to tell her about this, what he's trying to say, or if he's trying to say anything at all. She wonders if she's supposed to be the drowning one, or if he is. She wonders if he has nightmares about it—or if it even counts as a bad memory to him. Certainly he's said nothing to indicate that he lifted a finger to intervene; maybe even as a boy Jacob's mentality was ruthless and he saw it as a convenient solution to a persistent problem.

She wonders if he's ever planning to let her go. He certainly doesn't seem eager to loosen his grip on her, and it's late enough and the nightmare is far enough from her mind now that she's actually starting to fall asleep again, right there on top of him.

And then she does. Just drifts off pressed against him, her tired brain lulled into a false sense of security by his arms tight around her. She wakes, briefly, when he moves them—he's lying down on the couch and pulling her with him, and she panics for a second, forgetting who's got her, but his grip on her doesn't loosen enough to give her the space to really start fighting, and he just says, "Shh," a few times, dismissively enough for her to remember who he is. She relaxes a little then, lets him arrange them, his back to the couch, her back to his, and it's a wide couch but he's a broad man and the only thing keeping her off the edge are his arms, one slung over her hip and the other curled around her neck, the hand resting on her shoulder.

After a second, he lifts the arm that's on her hip and leans over her, squishing her some as he roots around under the couch cushion beneath them and pulls out the gun. She hears him sigh—probably disapproves of her stashing it directly under her head—and his weight presses into her a little more as he reaches down to the floor and carefully sets the gun down. Then he settles back and replaces his arm and exhales slowly, relaxing.

It's been a long set of days. She passes out again pretty quickly.

When she wakes up again, it's to bright sunlight streaming in through the cabin windows. She squints through a screen of rumpled hair for a few seconds, her consciousness slowly catching up to her, remembering where she is and who she's with. His arms are still around her. He's still warm, pressed close against her back. And further down, she feels—

Ah.

"Relax, Deputy," he says into her ear—she hadn't even known he was awake. "S'just morning wood."

His voice is sleep-rough, unforgivably gravelly, and honestly, it's too fucking early in the morning for that low part of her stomach to swoop like that at the sound of it. As if acting on its own, her palm glides slowly over the forearm he's got pressed against her stomach, and for a split second, her mind still a little hazy with sleep, she considers pushing back against that waiting hardness—it's starting to look like it'll happen eventually, I have the implant and I doubt he's carrying anything, why not right now if we both want it?—but it's such a foolish, half-formed thought that she doesn't act on it, then he's letting her go, pushing politely at her, and she's not sure if she's relieved or not when she slides off the couch onto the floor, giving him some room.

She sits up cross-legged, lifts her arms above her head to stretch muscles cramped from sleeping for so long in the same position, and she yawns. Jacob's feet hit the floor, then he's leaving, heading for the bedroom.

Rook picks up her pistol from beside her, gets up, goes to the kitchen, rinses her mouth out and then drinks for a while directly from the faucet. She should probably eat something before she forgets for another whole day, but truthfully, she has absolutely no appetite—it's been chased away by nerves. Last night, half-asleep and in the dark, it had seemed easy to fold herself into him, to talk to him, to listen to him talk to her, to sleep with him. In the light of day, it feels… different. Like the night before had been nothing but a few ill-advised fever dreams, like none of it had ever happened.

Jacob's back after just a short while. His boots, jacket, and holster are all back on. There's no trace of awkwardness on him, of course not—he comes to a stop just inside the kitchen, a few feet away from her, meets her eye, and says, "I'm gonna go find a truck."

Well, if he doesn't feel awkward, then neither the hell do I. Faking it is as valid a strategy as any. She raises an eyebrow and says, "Want backup?"

He grunts, gives her a half-shrug. It's not a no, which is about the closest thing to a yes she ever gets from him. She nods, says, "Let me use the bathroom and suit up. I'll be ready in just a second."

Not long after, they're back in the woods again. The morning is still brisk, but they're moving fast, and Rook's blood warms in no time. Jacob leads the way, doesn't bother to look back at her to make sure she's following. She's not sure whether to be flattered or insulted that he seems perfectly fine keeping his back to her.

Less than a mile from the cabin, they find one of the dozens of Peggy trucks that run though the county, on the side of the road, presumably abandoned. They eye it from the tree line for a second before Jacob says, "I'm gonna take a look at it."

"Okay. I'll keep an eye out for Resistance," she says. She hadn't made the time to gather up her arrows the night before, but she's still got several mags for her pistol, and she pulls it, holding it with the barrel pointed to the ground, keeping to the trees, watching the road and watching Jacob as he approaches the truck.

He prowls around, checking out the truck. After a moment, she hears him say, "Goddamn idiots."

"What is it?" she calls.

"Flat tire. The stuff to change it is right here. Some of these people, I don't know how they manage to put pants on in the morning."

She snickers, but cuts herself off abruptly when she hears a motor in the distance.

She whistles, sharp, warning. Jacob hunches down, crouching next to the tire furthest from the road as a bright red sedan tops the ridge above them. Resistance, not Cult coming back for the truck, and Rook holds her breath as she watches Jacob put a hand on his knife. Just drive by, she wills them. Don't give him a reason to kill you.

Fortunately, they don't seem interested in the Peggy truck, and she and Jacob are both out of easy view of the road. They drive on past, and she waits till they disappear around a bend before calling, "Okay. Clear."

He straightens up again and pulls a jack and a lug wrench out of the truck. She asks, "You want some help?"

"Nope. You just enjoy the view."

That gets an immediate, startled bark of laughter out of her. She shades her eyes against the glare of the morning sun and doesn't comment—doesn't want to incriminate herself—but she does indeed watch closely as he jacks the car up, then takes the wrench to the lug nuts. It doesn't take her long to realize he's talking to himself, a running stream of bad-tempered muttering, that, if she concentrates, she can make out in fragments.

"—talk to John—little shits, too dumb or too lazy to take care of their equipment—doesn't know how to change a tire?"

She wouldn't have predicted this morning that Jacob would be ornery and bitching about proper car maintenance within the hour, but now that it's happening, it's funny as hell. She should've known this was the sort of thing that would bother him, enough to rouse him from his usual taciturn default into complaining out loud. (She imagines it's even worse that she's there to see the carelessness firsthand.)

She has to stop him once more, when more Resistance drives past, but she gathers it's still pretty early, and the roads are mostly quiet. She thinks he might even be a little annoyed that no Peggies come by so he can read them the riot act over the abandoned truck—or maybe she's just projecting, because that's something she would definitely enjoy seeing.

In short order, he's done. He tosses the wrench into the back of the truck and calls out, "Come on. Let's go."

Rook leaves the tree line and asks, "We going back for the moose head?"

"Yep," he says, slinging himself into the driver's seat easily.

"Oh, swag," she says, jogging around the front of the truck, sneaking a glance through the windshield to see that he's watching her with a narrow frown, like he's not entirely sure what she just said but strongly suspects it's intended to get a rise out of him. She plays it as innocent as she can, hopping into the passenger seat and meeting his suspicious scowl with big eyes, what, what'd I say?

He apparently doesn't want to deal with it, because he just orders, "Put your seatbelt on," as he turns the keys in the ignition.

"What, are you planning to get into a wreck during the one mile drive back to the cabin?"

"Don't be an idiot, Dep. You can't tell what's going to happen out here and I don't want to have to scrape you off the asphalt. We're not moving an inch till that seatbelt's in place."

"Stickler," she complains. She thinks about telling him about that time she ran Getaway into a concrete bollard—she hadn't seen it, there was blood in her eyes at the time, she was fleeing from Angels—and flew out through the already-busted windshield, over the bollard and into the adjoining grassy field, and had somehow gotten away with just cuts and bruises, but she thinks that might hurt her case more than help it. He's watching her with no indication that he's prepared to yield, so, with an exaggerated sigh, suppressing the fear that he's insisting because he intends on taking her somewhere other than the cabin—let's be real, if he wants to do that, he'll find some way to manage, with or without my cooperation—she puts on her seatbelt.

True to his word, once she's complied, he takes off, pulling a sharp u-turn and setting them on the course for the cabin. No sooner do they get up to speed than he slams on the brakes, and she gives him a quick, alarmed look, but he's just growling under his breath and shaking his head—in response, she realizes, to the screeching whine from the tires. "Needs new brake pads, too," he mutters, and she hastily swallows a laugh. Unbelievable.

He speeds up again after that. He's a careful driver, fast but attentive. After a few dozen seconds, she switches on the radio, and he immediately reaches forward and turns it off again.

"Oh, come on, that was your guys's music," she protests.

He doesn't say anything, just clears his throat. She looks at him with sudden, slightly too-cheerful suspicion.

"Maybe… okay, maybe I could see how you might be tired of hearing the same ten songs all day, every day."

Nothing. She might as well be looking at stone.

"I mean, even with the different versions, that's gotta get old."

A muscle twitches in his cheek.

"Maybe every moment you're not listening to them, you count as a blessing."

"We're back," he announces abruptly as he pulls into the little driveway leading to the cabin.

"That was fast," she remarks, ditching the seatbelt immediately and climbing from the truck.

"You said it. Less than a mile," he says as he gets out. "Come on. Help me with this thing."

Together, they wrangle the moose head—now smelling a lot less like Bliss and a little more like rot—into the truck bed. "This is the best idea," she says. "I'm so glad you had this idea."

He can't exactly look serious and disapproving at that, the whole thing is petty as hell and it was his idea and he knows it, but he does ignore her input, heading back to the cabin without a word. She follows, because her bow is still in there and she wants to wash the dead moose off her hands.

With Jacob in the back room, giving her some breathing space, she has to admit to herself that this whole thing is coming to a rapid end.

She's annoyed when the thought prompts a little bit of tightness in her chest. This was never supposed to be this, anyway—she was just popping into John's ranch for a quick hi, how are you, definitely hadn't planned on spending the whole night with him. She can't just hang around with Jacob Seed for days on end, pretending he's not the enemy. She's got to get back to the Sisyphean work of figuring out how to simultaneously rout the cult, keep him alive, and avoid losing any more of her people.

"Clock's ticking." She's getting better at not jumping when Jacob sneaks up on her, so when she hears his voice nearby, she just turns to look at him. He stands just inside the kitchen again, and he's got his rifle on his back, is clearly preparing to leave.

He must see something of what she's thinking on her face. He just stares at her for a moment, nodding in silence, then raises an eyebrow, challenging her, and says, "You ready to come home yet?"

As always, when he broaches that subject, she has a hard time meeting his eye with any honesty. She hides behind a practiced, sly smile and counters: "Ready to let Pratt go yet?"

"Hmmph." It's almost a laugh. She wishes he didn't automatically consider that question a joke.

She glances past him towards the door, then back at his face. "You should probably go. I'll make my own way. Don't exactly want to come with you back to John's, as much as I'd love to see the look on his face when he sees that thing. The temptation might prove too much for him."

She's talking in a relaxed, almost playful tone, but in truth, she's tense as hell, because this all comes down to if Jacob is planning on letting her go or not. He doesn't seem married to the idea of keeping her caged up there in the mountains, has let her go over and over, but she can't help but feel that someday her luck is going to run out.

He just folds his arms and looks at her for a while. Abruptly, after he's been staring for just a second too long and she's getting squirrely enough that she's starting to consider making a break for it, he says, "Things are about to get bad."

She tilts her head, pretending she doesn't feel the little thump of fear in her heart at those words. "They're not already bad?"

He smiles at her—not with his mouth, but with his eyes—and it chills her. He says, "You have no idea."

He says, "Remember when I told you… this little crush of yours had an expiration date?" She nods; he nods back, raises his eyebrows, and says, "It's coming up fast."

Her feelings upon hearing that are… complicated. Part of her is petrified, doesn't even want to think about whatever he's got planned. Part of her knows those plans were always in play, that nothing about Jacob has changed between the first time she kissed him and right now, and that this could very well be a manipulation tactic, reverse psychology, you're not strong enough to stick around as a means of goading her to stick around.

She's suddenly annoyed—at all of it, at everything, and if her smile of response is a little too sudden, a little too mocking, she can't really bring herself to care. She tilts her head and asks, "Are you breaking up with me?"

"Rook." Apparently he doesn't think that's funny, though which part bugs him most—the implication that they're going steady now, or her general refusal to take him seriously—she'd be hard-pressed to say.

"Jacob," she says, matching his sharp, stern tone, and she opens up her arms, palms out, aggressive and confused all at once. "What, are you trying to scare me off? Warn me? Threaten me? I know you've got some nasty shit planned for me. I've known it from the first time I saw you, Red."

He doesn't answer her. He just looks at her with that neutral, alien expression he gets sometimes, an expression that makes her feel like all he really wants is to cut her open and see what makes her tick. She drops her hands to her legs, still watching him, and shakes her head. "You know what? You do what you've gotta do and we'll leave it at that, okay? I'll be sure to let you know if it gets to be too much."

She's still a little afraid of his energy right now, afraid that if she gets too close, he'll grab her and just won't let go, but mostly, she's mad, enough to ignore caution, so she heads right past him towards the door.

He doesn't touch her. He stays put, feet planted, arms crossed, staring distantly at the window that had been behind her. Before she can think twice or talk herself out of it, she impulsively doubles back, drawing his attentive eye again.

"You know," she says, quietly, as if there's any chance at all of them being overheard, "just so it's out there: I really liked spending last night with you." He stares at her, that weird look in his eye just getting more intense, and she has to drop her gaze to his dogtags again so she doesn't chicken out on saying what she wants to say. "Y'know, I'm not going to waste time or energy… wishing things were different, that we were on the same side or whatever. But even if you're right and we're just done with each other as soon as someone makes another big move—fine. It is what it is, but last night was good either way. I won't regret it."

She has just enough time to register that his breathing has picked up before his hand closes around her jaw. She squeaks a little in surprise, reflexively recoiling, but his grip is tight and he guides her back, back until she bumps into the kitchen counter, and when he keeps pushing, she chooses the option that means she doesn't get throttled and eases back and up onto the counter.

Once she's off her feet, he stops pushing and leans in close instead; she hears his breath hitch in her ear, and he says, "You really are a goddamn fool," but his tone carries that weird affection it held the night before, rather than the harshness she expects.

His thumb pushes at her jaw, tilting her head back to expose her neck, and a split second later, she feels the wetness of his sharp teeth closing over her pulse point. She gasps at the flare of pain, flashing suddenly back to her dream from a few nights ago, to Miller, and clutches at the front of his shirt, his dogtags digging into her palm as she tightens her fist, but before she can shove him back—before she can even decide if she wants to—he gentles to an extent, relaxing his jaw and sucking at the bitten skin instead.

What the hell set him off, she wonders vaguely as he crowds closer, between her knees, and with his free hand he grips her lower back, dragging her towards him, almost off the edge, until she's flush against him, can feel the hardness of him right there between her legs. The sudden spike of heat she feels in her gut makes her groan, and then his mouth is on hers.

She loosens her fist, slides the hand trapped between their chests up until she manages to curl it around his neck. Her other hand, she winds into the thick hair atop his head, and when she closes her fingers into a fist, pulling lightly on it, he growls at her.

She laughs low in her throat, then he grinds into her and it turns into a whimper, and Jacob swallows up the sound. He releases her jaw and puts his hand high on her leg instead, warm and heavy, fingertips pressing electric little bruises into the inside of her thigh. She sucks in a sharp breath through her nose at the pain and the stimulation of his touch, kisses him that much harder as he drags his palm up her leg—

—and stops. He lifts his hand from her leg, removes the other from her back, planting them instead on either side of her, and as he pulls away from her mouth, he bows his head—she lets his hair slip through her fingers; now it tickles at the crook of her neck instead—and he breathes. It's a long, slow exhale, like he's gathering control of himself.

Rook makes a soft sound of protest. She's nowhere near done, but, rough-voiced, Jacob says, "Knock it off."

"Jacob—" she tries to argue, but he jerks back against her arms and glares at her with eyes that look darker than usual.

"Rook," he says, a little louder, in a tone that says he expects to be obeyed (and doesn't do much to cool her off). "This is done. Otherwise, I'm just not—" He pauses, closes his eyes for a second, then shakes his head, ruefully, like he's already regretting his words before he says them. "I'm not gonna let you leave," he finishes after a beat, quiet again.

Oh.

Even swimming in hormones, she recognizes terms when they're offered, and she could agree to these now. She could have Jacob, none of this expiration date bullshit, save herself the fear of the apocalypse, save herself the work of protecting a county that might already be doomed.

It's tempting, as it always is—more so this time, in the heat of things—but Rook still just… can't.

He's giving her a chance to escape him, maybe the last one he's willing to offer, and although there's an increasingly-growing part of herself that doesn't want to escape him, she takes him up on it. She removes her arms from his neck, one at a time, and he takes a step back, his hands sliding off the counter and uncaging her, immediately tightening into fists at his sides. She makes the mistake of meeting his eye. With his hair rumpled by her hand and pupils blown like they are, he looks half-wild; she wonders if she looks anything like that and immediately lowers her gaze, because if she does and she keeps looking at him, they probably won't have much luck making this separation stick.

He takes another step back. She takes advantage of the space offered to her, hopping off the counter and quickly edging around him, careful not to touch him.

She walks at as steady a clip as she can manage towards the door, doesn't check to see if he's following, certain in some deep low part of her that if she does, he'll scent uncertainty and come prowling after her. She pushes the door open, steps up to the threshold, and only then does she pause. She turns her head, slightly, enough to see his shape out of the corner of her eye, and, unwilling to let that heavy, complicated note be the one she leaves on, she says, "Good first date. You do look good changing a tire."

She doesn't stick around for a response. She moves quick into the trees, and she doesn't stop moving again until there are miles between them.

A/N - One more chapter for this little arc, a short one. I should have it up in a few days. Thanks for reading!