the wine, the beer, the whiskey are the only things that fix me

[pacificator]

Who: Wynonna Earp & you!
What: recuperating after March-April, reaping consequences, etc
When: backdated to late April-May
Where: the Saloon (the old Post Office)

Content Warnings: Alcoholism, a little light cannibalism, others to be listed as needed

Comments

cw self harm, mentioned past burn injuries, discussion of suicidal thoughts

[ployboy]

He didn't come here to look for a fight and Tim didn't know, still, what part of him is so seemingly hungry to be bled. Figuratively or otherwise. He has no color in his aura for one skipped beat but then his skin is dancing with putrid mustardyellow and goldenrod, a rotten coral and a bright red that's only real in the very back of someone's mind. He isn't warm- he's something to stay away from. Fine.

Tim doesn't say a damn thing.

He's not here for-- himself, to soothe over that desperation of wondering (forever, then, so be it) what he's missing.

He hadn't tried to murder Little. He doesn't get how she's so ridiculing when-- he--

Tim flushes red. Both with the ghost of the hatred over his trembling shoulders and through the overwhelming heat on his face. He swallows- hands fists at his sides. His eyes burn with wetness so suddenly it hurts, hurts about as much as it does when he slams that fist into the meat of his leg with all the lack of restraint he wishes he could have when he has to make his case despite a hot and wavering voice:

"You know she's not!"

Tim is something to stay away from, so be it-- it hurts-- he's on fire, he thinks, charred and with glue for skin and-

he's cyan and white and yellowgreen and redredorange and fuchsia and mournful blue and he doesn't fucking care. Not anymore. His face crumples. He'a crying and babbling, maybe, he doesn't fucking care.

(He's so scared.)

"You- you know that, right? She's not okay. She's going- she wants to kill herself. You know that. Right?"

cw: reference to accidental patricide

[pacificator]

Tim is glowing with evil, stomach-churning colors, a poisonous tree frog turned human, and she never really knows how to take him but tonight seems— worse than usual. All that anger he seems to have been carting around and shoving down boils up and out in an instant and it takes a second of him smacking his own leg and yelling at her for her to realize:

It's not just anger.

She can't remember the last time she saw a teenage boy cry, but it turns out it's a lot like seeing a teenage girl cry. His face crumples up and flushes hotly beneath his kaleidoscope colors, his eyes go shimmering and watery, his voice shakes and chokes up. It's so full of tears and snot and more emotions than she (or, apparently, the colors chasing around him) know what to do with that the words don't actually register for a minute. And then they do, and her whole body flushes shocked yellow that flicks rapidly through a range of her own colors: deep blue, a horrified chartreuse, worried violet.

No, she hadn't known that. And now that she does, she wants to smack herself for never seeing it before.

But Kate isn't here — and despite everything Tim's wailing at her, she doesn't think Kate's in danger right this moment — and Tim is, this kid that she's never really been able to click with. They keep sliding and scratching against each other like a key that keeps missing its slot. She's not good with him, she knows that. She wasn't that great with Kate to begin with, either, though, and she's somehow managed to stumble her way into something that shares a passing familiarity with a decent relationship with her.

Mostly what she thinks of is herself, twelve years old and fresh off the worst thing she had ever done or would ever do in her life, watching as the adults petted and comforted Waverly. Not one of them turned to her, opened their arms for a hug, and told her it's all right, Wynonna, we know it was an accident. Nobody wanted to touch her, the crazy girl who killed her own father. And she grew up surrounded by spikes that made sure no one else ever tried, either.

Maybe Tim's gotten more hugs in his life. She doesn't know. All she knows is she's all the poor kid's got, right now, and no matter how annoyed she gets with him, he is, in the end, a sobbing kid who can't seem to catch a break.

She's moving in the next second, a little awkward: hands come up, drop, reach out again to go around his shoulders and pull herself close. She can feel every inch of him shake.

[ployboy]

He's got blood rushing in his ears, roaring like whitewater. Everything is wrong already: his voice, the way he can't see through furious and useless blinking, how Wynonna isn't confirming that she's got it all under control and that he's just too stupid to know what's supposed to be obvious. She's not saying anything. Tim can't hear anything. He gasps and holds back a whimper-- his light shifts to a soft and wandering teal, hunting. That dies. Because Wynonna doesn't say anything.

Tim shakes his head and steps back-- and tries to step back, but he's up against the wall. And so he knocks the flat of his hands against the wood in a panicked and rough way, and he feels so impossibly stupid.

He knows. He knows he did wrong.

But he had tried to... help. And. "I thought you..." he doesn't hear himself whine, "I thought you knew she... that you knew what happened."

His legs want to give.

Tim feels a whole lot of nothing new. It's repulsive, the lukewarm hatred of everything that's kept him alive to live this moment. His eyes are screwed shut and all he sees is red-black as he throws himself at her. Wynonna's reach is hesitant. Tim's isn't.

He's dying, feeling as dead as dead can be, and he's holding on to her as he stammers out what he can, voice raw and hard. He doesn't fucking care he doesn't care he doesn't care, but oh my god it's hard to breathe when nobody's going to catch Kate when she falls.

"She wants to- to-"

Nobody's going to catch Kate when she falls.

Except, maybe, Wynonna.

Tim won't let go until he hears something.

"She was hurt. She was hurt! She already tried- wanted to die, to kill herself. And she still does. She told me she still does."

So because she wants to die, he was supposed to let Edward Little kill her-? Tim sobs, and one would think he'd never trained for situations such as--

"I don't know who else to tell," he sobs, like a kid, his voice is barely there though high, and Tim is the color of something sick and yellow and tiresome, green and nauseous and white like the vast nothing that's the garrote around the Territories.

"And I don't know who else to tell."

[pacificator]

...So here she is with her arms full of wet, sobbing, teenage boy. His hair is spiky and strange against her neck and his face is flushed and messy and he's clinging to her so hard it almost hurts. Actually does kind of hurt, since she has to brace against his weight and her leg is still fucked up from the last thing that lunged at her here in this building like this and hung on grimly, though with slightly different intent.

She doesn't let go. If anything, she tightens her awkward arms and lets Tim fall apart on her, a sloppy, whimpering mess that's honestly the most relatable she's ever seen him, and tries not to think about all the opportunities Kate's had here to try and end it all. His words come out in a rush, pitched so high she thinks a dog might have a hard time hearing them, and he might be forgiven for startling when she raises her right hand up toward the back of his neck — she's scruffed him twice already, maybe third time's the charm — but all that happens is that her palm settles on the back of his head, fingers curving there, and yes: Wynonna can be gentle, sometimes. "Okay."

Her own voice is low but steady. She can't fall apart; what would happen then? Little comes back here to investigate and finds them both shattered and sobbing on the floor?

So she's calm, and she lets him curl against her, and her voice stays steady. "Okay, Tim. You told me. Okay? I can help."

Can she? She'd better, if she's going to make this promise, otherwise the next throat Tim comes for if Kate gets hurt will be hers. "I'm gonna help, all right?"

[ployboy]

"Please," he says. Begs. Because yes, he did register her hand moving- not because of the violence that her hand on him normally predicts but because of where her hand now rests. Tim starts, and gasps, and he flinches grass-green and maroon and every important shade of gold that he's seen in palaces and catacombs, and he's settled, finally, into that off-white, bone-white, of skeletons.

He cannot- will not- think about it.

He can't stop trembling, his shoulders pitched forward and painfully rigid and his hands grip at the back of Wynonna's shirt with the uninhibited despair of a drowning man. He's already begged Kate. He thinks--

he should have killed Little, how dare he--

"Please, not her too," he whimpers, and he hates that he says it because he's selfish and wrong and he's asking for help for all the wrong reasons. His head is splitting in half; Tim feels too hot, like he had in the fur coat with a mouth of red.

Now he needs to wait for the shoe to drop and the dread always eats at him, always leaves him humiliated and bleeding.

Tim remembers another blonde girl he'd loved, who had wanted to die, and

he can't breathe and so he shakes his head, and it's not fair that he's thinking of catacombs and dark-haired women with hands in his hair, so Tim steps back in a blind stumble, arms shooting up nearly immediately to wipe and scrub and pull at his face. He's grimy and disgusting and wet and--

and--

stay away!

"She t-trusts you," he reasons through his own irrational fear of green and gold and purple and heirs. (He's so angry.) "She trusted him too!" (He's no good at this.) "I'll do anything. Please. Please. I don't know what else to do. I had to do something. I don't know what." His head is going to split in half.