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

[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.