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Jack Russel ([personal profile] wereperrito) wrote in [community profile] route666rp2025-02-26 12:00 pm

Roommates [Closed]

Who: Jack, John, and Serph
What: Just some softness before the next event.
When: Three days after the moon warp, evening
Where: John's room in the Convoy
Warnings: Just three men ignoring, or unaware of, social norms. A bit of blood smell on somebody.


For the three nights after spending a big chunk of the post-warp day sharing John's bed, Jack goes back to his van. It had been nice, but John doesn't explicitly invite him to stay, and he hasn't kept himself alive this long by overstaying his welcome places.

And the he sleeps terribly each night. The first night he assumes it's because he slept most of the day. The second night that excuse is wearing a little thin. The third night, he resigns himself to his brain having decided he needs a warm body next to him again. And, well, it's not like John seemed to mind. He'd woken up to being half sprawled across the man and having his hair petted. That's not usually the reaction of someone who is put out by having a bedmate, platonic or otherwise. Maybe he won't mind again.

Only way to find out is to ask.

So he locks up the van and heads into the convoy once the sun sets, has his dinner, and then finds his way to John's room and knocks. He wonders if there will be rusty shears in his future again.
thetatters: human/ (sunlight sunlight)

early march, before the wings

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-16 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Then comes the night John slinks in, embarrassed, reeking of fear and sweat and blood.

He'd hoped to join Jack and Serph once they were already asleep, and thus avoid notice or questions. He has changed into clean clothing— another faded, oversized T-shirt and threadbare athletic shorts— except for the yellow cowl. It's... a mess. Badly bloodstained, then washed inexpertly in a Convoy shower, scrubbed with their sad industrial hand soap. John clearly has no idea how to get blood out of clothing, because the result is a still-damp, still-stained wrap that hides his head and neck.

He doesn't take it off to sleep, as he normally might. Instead John sets down his bag in the corner, struggles out of his shoes, and resolutely pretends nothing is wrong.
thetatters: human/ (sunlight sunlight)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-17 04:30 am (UTC)(link)
John does not startle: he tightens, instead, head ducked and gaze turned away. There is a clumsy, ginger quality to his movements, as though he's off-balance and trying to compensate for it. His next breath shudders with exhaustion.

But he does not move away from the touch, should Jack set a hand on him. Instead, John leans in to that warm point of contact.

"Nothing. Just... a brief encounter with a monster." There are other scents beneath the blood: mud, motor oil, the acrid tang of gunpowder. And Blake, where she'd licked the blood up from his throat. "I'm alright. Go back to sleep, Jack."
thetatters: human= (share in evening's)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-17 05:26 am (UTC)(link)
"Worried?" John blinks up at him then, startled into eye contact. Openly touched.

The movement reveals bandages beneath his damp and bloodsoaked cowl. He struggled into a fresh shirt and shorts, but he hasn't bathed since the attack. John knows their body well enough to know they'd certainly pass out in the shower. The wrappings are smeared and spotted with blood. He has been wounded at carotid and jugular: it's frankly impossible that he is standing upright.

Even these few seconds of standing unsupported have pressed those limits. He sways more heavily into Jack, listing against his arm and onto his shoulder.

"I..." He clasps Jack on the shoulder for stability and tries stubbornly to regain his feet. John hesitates, then confesses: "It was one of us. She had gone mad. Like what happens to you."
thetatters: human= (I would not change it each time)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-19 05:53 am (UTC)(link)
John has never been carried like this before. Nor has Arthur, except perhaps that one blurry, terrible evening of the coma— John's first night alone, thinking he was to be trapped in a corpse. He grips weakly at Jack, then finds the rhythm of walking together, and lets that tension drop.

"It's perfectly clean." He's grumbling, defensive. "You try bandaging something when you've lost all your goddamn blood."
thetatters: human+ (heaven is not fit)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-20 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
John gives a long-suffering sigh and bows his head to allow Jack access to his cowl. With it unwound, he looks particularly rumpled and pathetic. There is no resistance to Jack's gentle spot-cleaning: he holds himself patiently, carefully still, as though practiced at this.

It's how he spent the first month of life, after all. Lilly cared for them while Arthur slept.

"She was alright by the end. She... returned to herself." He gives Jack a careful, sidelong look: there's something hopeful to it, almost shy. "She survived."

That outcome was far from certain. Lowering the gun went against his every instinct, except those he willfully decided to practice. He is quietly, fiercely proud.
thetatters: human=+ (that hum of night)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-24 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
John remains pliant and polite, head tipped away to bare his throat. He smiles at the question before he means to, and before he meets Jack's eyes.

"She... Yes. She, uh." He hesitates, caught between embarrassment and pride, and then says all in a rush: "Do you know Evanescence? The music. We listened to a C-D." He says CD with the careful precision of someone who has no idea what it means. And, immediately defensive: "It's very good music."

Perhaps it's foolish that he keeps treating new and violent monsters as friends. Were Arthur the one making these choices, John would certainly have words of caution for him, and more likely words of reproach. But... well, Jack is sometimes a monster, yet he touches John as gently as Lilly ever did.
thetatters: human+= (with the fire long ago)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-28 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
John grumbles something noncommittal: he doesn't know what the singer looks like. But at least they agree her voice is powerful, which is obviously a good trait for any singer to have.

"The music came on while we were fighting." Defensive again, but it's all bluster. There is no real bite to his voice. "But yes, I suppose we took a moment in the aftermath to listen. Would you rather I'd shot her?"

Shot her again. He'll neglect to mention that part.
thetatters: human+ (a love)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-03-29 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well, it wasn't your fault." John sounds deeply pleased, all the same. For a man who seems to have no concept of 'appropriate levels of eye contact,' he actually casts his gaze away and smiles at the blank wall.

At that, he gives a huff of amusement. A bit wry, a bit embarrassed, but there's no sign he takes the joke as anything but literal.

"Jack, if I were to offer my bed to everyone who has tried to kill me, we would quickly lose sight of the bed."
thetatters: human= (share in evening's)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-04-10 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah. Regret immediately crosses John's face: he'd never meant to raise the topic of Jayce, or Faith, or that uneasy standoff with Viktor.

"I meant back home! I have had a few... tense moments, perhaps, with those among our number. But nothing like this." He gestures to his bandaged neck. "But I suppose more is to be expected, if we all continue to... ah..."

He has no delicate way to say turn into monsters.
thetatters: human=+ (that hum of night)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-04-12 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"Change," he agrees. It's a remarkably neutral word for what has been happening to them, but he is not in the mood to argue with a scrap of comfort.

Especially not when it wins him statements like that one. The sort of thing Arthur might have said to him, or he to Arthur, after surviving something particularly dire. John cannot help but smile.

"Thank you, Jack." He says it with utterly genuine warmth. "Yes. I'm okay."
thetatters: human+= (with the fire long ago)

[personal profile] thetatters 2025-04-13 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"Right. Of course." Humans can last a reasonably long time without water, he wants to tell Jack. He and Arthur have lost blood like this before. He'll be fine, just as every time before. But that would sound rather too much like arguing when he is trying to be gracious.

Even if he isn't on death's door, the fussing feels... nice.

He folds down onto the bed with the finality of a tree going over. John curls down to pluck blearily at his shoelaces, cheek pressed to the comforter with a sigh of relief.

"I'll sleep."