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

[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.