Kinktober Fic Challenge Day 18: Primal (hunter/prey)
Overwatch, Reaper76 (but not in a healthy way), cop/serial killer AU
Yes, day 18, so y’all know how far behind I am. Those of you who’ve followed me for long enough to know what Cross Wired is know what’s in store here. For the rest of you: warnings for blood, violence, sexualized violence, stalking, threats, possessiveness.
Also, no promises that the pacing is any good. I’m posting this basically in draft form. I need to get this off my plate and move on for now. But I’ll be coming back to it later, oh yes I will.
This one is a gift for @daddyjackass and @sourbluefreezy, who created this AU and talked me into writing it for them, because they’re terribeautiful people who deserve wonderterrible things.
***
”My dear Jack”
“Jaaaaack.” Gabriel’s voice echoes through the barn. He’s got to be somewhere up in the rafters. The corrugated tin roof distorts his voice to an inhuman rasp, makes him sound like he’s everywhere. “Oh, Jack. This has been a long time coming.”
The last time Jack heard that voice in person was in Zurich. He puts one hand over his mouth and tries to keep his breaths steady. His other hand keeps his gun at the ready.
”I want you understand what’s going to happen next, and why. You and I are going to meet again soon. There’s a little place just outside of Bloomington on Route 45. I think you know it. Nice family. The lady of the house makes a mean apple pie.”
“Having trouble breathing?” Gabriel asks from somewhere with mocking sweetness.
The barn on the Morrison family farm is big, open to the roof in some places, and the shadows and sounds that fill the big structure at night are confusing. The animals are mostly bedded down, but they rustle around uneasily at the intrusion of unfamiliar humans. Their stirrings keep Jack from being able to narrow down Gabriel’s movements.
”I know what you’re thinking now, cariño. Relax. As long as I have you, your family has nothing to fear from me. You can take them off the premises for all I care. Might be for the best, honestly. Your mother’s a lovely woman, and I’d hate to see her caught in the crossfire. If you don’t show, I can always find them again.”
A board creaks in the hayloft. Jack spins in time to see straw dust sifting down, glinting in the light filtering in from the barnyard’s floodlights.
He takes a few steps toward the hayloft stairs, then pauses. The only ways up or down are those stairs or a ten foot drop either from the open end of the loft or the exterior loft doors. He’s seen Gabriel pull less likely stunts. He steps into a shadow to one side of the stairs and listens for the thump of feet on a hard landing.
“Are you remembering the knife?” Gabriel’s voice drops in pitch, rolling through the space like an entity of its own. In the dark, with no other noise but the living silence of a sleeping farm, Jack shudders at the sense-memory of it purring against his ear.
”But you’re the one I care about, Jack. You and I, we’ve been connected ever since I drove that knife into you in Zurich. I want you to understand why I do this, mi amor. You see death and you see an ending. The truth is that it’s a passage to whatever lies after. A change.”
”You changed, didn’t you, when I killed you? Wouldn’t you say you’re a different man these days? The old Jack is dead. The new one belongs to me.”
“Remember the way your body parted for the blade as it sank in? That little gasp you made as your legs crumpled under you?”
Jack half-closes his eyes and reaches out with his senses, searching the inky dark for any sign of Gabriel’s location. He remembers, god help him. He’s lived with those memories for so long that he’s gotten good at pretending he doesn’t feel Gabriel’s arms wrapped around his shoulders every time he closes his eyes.
It’s a lot harder to pretend with Gabriel’s voice in his ears. “Do you remember how I caught you and held you as you shuddered for me? You were so beautiful, Jack. The helpless expression on your face. The way your eyelashes fluttered when I kissed the blood off your lips.”
”I like to think you understand that you showed me a new reason for doing what I do. I used to kill stagnant people. You know the ones. Going nowhere. Wasting their lives and the resources that were spent on them. Prison costs money; why waste it?”
It’s an old barn. Light from the barnyard glimmers through knotholes and gaps between the slats. It’s been longer than Jack likes to admit since he was a kid helping his dad work the farm, but once upon a time he knew every beam of this building.
“Do you ever think about the fact that you’re the only one who’s ever survived me?”
He still can’t track the origin of Gabriel’s voice, but a few of those flickers of light up in the vault blink out. He takes aim at the darkness between those spots, waits.
”And then there was you. You were something entirely different. But it became increasingly obvious I’d have to kill you to stop you, and I felt so fucking bad about that, Jack. You were a light in the damn darkness. I should have just shot you, I suppose, if I had any sense, but you deserved something more personal. And then when I did the deed, felt your life draining through my fingers…I realized how it made you mine.”
“You felt it too, didn’t you, Jack? When my knife went into you. That’s what’s got you hyperventilating now. You’re mine from the inside out, starting with those scars I left you with. Can you feel the way they wrap around you inside? The way they burrow between your ribs and pull at your chest walls? Do you ever feel them tug at you when you move and think of them as my fingers inside you?”
The barrel of the gun wavers as Jack’s hands shake. The glimmers of light haven’t come back. He draws in three slow, counted breaths as Gabriel talks.
He pulls the trigger three times.
The animals all go nuts at once. Screaming, banging and flapping fill the air, along with the scent of hay and manure. If a man screams or a body falls, it’s too much pandemonium to tell for certain.
Jack stays where he is by the stairs, gun up and aimed out at the darkness. He waits, eyes narrowed and senses stretched as well as he can manage, as the minutes tick by and the animals begin to calm down. They’re still a lot more alert and rambunctious than they were. He watches their heads and ears turning nervously in silhouette.
Just on the edge of hearing, something hisses and whispers down the stairs.
Jack spins. There’s no one there, but on one of the lower steps there’s a familiarly shaped little clump that stands out in a glint of red. Slowly, Jack crouches for a closer look, and then takes one hand off his gun to pick it up.
A spider lily. Gabriel’s calling card.
He shouts as something cracks him across the back of the head. He loses track of everything for a while.
(to be continued)
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/2eziSCU