Fic: Snake In The Grass (1/1)
Title: Snake In The Grass
Rating: R
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 534
Summary: He despises fish. For toestastegood, who requested “Jacob/Esau” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Spoilers through 5.16 - The Incident, Parts 1 & 2; Speculative Spoilers for Season 6.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: Just a few observations from our friend Esau's point of view. I tend to think he's an exceptionally bitter, conniving little bastard.
Snake In The Grass
It’s amazing, how small the world is, how big an Island can be.
Esau doesn’t see things like he used to; there used to be shades of grey, used to be places in between that made sense, that were filled with variables.
What they do is black; they come together once in a million blinks, for less than that - they touch and they suck and they move like two people who hate each other enough to know what loves feels like, who know each other enough to forget; they’ve lived long enough to realize that they will crumble, self-destruct without release.
He doesn’t move, when Jacob does; doesn’t let the sand sink between his toes, nor the the rain fall thick and slow through the leaves, wash the rest away.
“Long time, no see,” he says slowly, punctuating deliberately with wicked, vicious sarcasm dripping from every syllable, every letter in time; it’s like an imperative, when they cross paths - there’s always a reason to keep them from killing one another.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Jacob answers softly, the smile curling his lips as good as a sneer, and his spits hard against the ground, cheeks pinched, as if to rid himself of some foul taste.
Some foul taste from some foul source.
__________________________
He knows before he sees him that Jacob is already there. Always, he is already there.
They watch the horizon like an old married couple, the kind that wonders how much strychnine they can slip in the water before someone notices, before someone dies.
He despises fish.
The ship comes, goes, leaves its mark enduring on the way things are; eventually the ship turns into a sub, turns into a plane, and every time - every fucking time - Jacob is already there, ready to scour the damage, ready to recruit his army of the worthy, of the not-quite-so-damned.
And those lists - always with the goddamned lists.
Every time, he holds a leaf in his hands, a half-fillet of some half-baked sea creature limp against the veins, eating with his hands like a savage, like what’s happening is a fucking display for his perusal, and he’s brought refreshments for the show.
It drives Esau mad.
__________________________
It comes down to the fact that they’ve two halves of the same whole; what he does to one, he does to both - to scar the other is to scar himself.
So the answer, he finds, is to become something other than himself - to split the halves into fourths, and survive splintered, or not at all.
The pain, though, when it comes, is cathartic; and it only pales in comparison to the sheer satisfaction of watching the bastard burn through eyes that aren’t his own.
“Until we meet again,” he hisses against strange, foreign teeth; the poison in the words, though, that’s something familiar - something he knows.
The ashes - they smell of fish. And Esau knows that even now, he will never escape him. Death, that fleeting whore, hates him just as much as Jacob ever did; never did.
The pain, as it fades into nothing, is something he misses, something he laments.
Rating: R
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 534
Summary: He despises fish. For toestastegood, who requested “Jacob/Esau” at my Winter Gift-Fic Extravaganza. Spoilers through 5.16 - The Incident, Parts 1 & 2; Speculative Spoilers for Season 6.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For toestastegood: Just a few observations from our friend Esau's point of view. I tend to think he's an exceptionally bitter, conniving little bastard.
Snake In The Grass
It’s amazing, how small the world is, how big an Island can be.
Esau doesn’t see things like he used to; there used to be shades of grey, used to be places in between that made sense, that were filled with variables.
What they do is black; they come together once in a million blinks, for less than that - they touch and they suck and they move like two people who hate each other enough to know what loves feels like, who know each other enough to forget; they’ve lived long enough to realize that they will crumble, self-destruct without release.
He doesn’t move, when Jacob does; doesn’t let the sand sink between his toes, nor the the rain fall thick and slow through the leaves, wash the rest away.
“Long time, no see,” he says slowly, punctuating deliberately with wicked, vicious sarcasm dripping from every syllable, every letter in time; it’s like an imperative, when they cross paths - there’s always a reason to keep them from killing one another.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Jacob answers softly, the smile curling his lips as good as a sneer, and his spits hard against the ground, cheeks pinched, as if to rid himself of some foul taste.
Some foul taste from some foul source.
__________________________
He knows before he sees him that Jacob is already there. Always, he is already there.
They watch the horizon like an old married couple, the kind that wonders how much strychnine they can slip in the water before someone notices, before someone dies.
He despises fish.
The ship comes, goes, leaves its mark enduring on the way things are; eventually the ship turns into a sub, turns into a plane, and every time - every fucking time - Jacob is already there, ready to scour the damage, ready to recruit his army of the worthy, of the not-quite-so-damned.
And those lists - always with the goddamned lists.
Every time, he holds a leaf in his hands, a half-fillet of some half-baked sea creature limp against the veins, eating with his hands like a savage, like what’s happening is a fucking display for his perusal, and he’s brought refreshments for the show.
It drives Esau mad.
__________________________
It comes down to the fact that they’ve two halves of the same whole; what he does to one, he does to both - to scar the other is to scar himself.
So the answer, he finds, is to become something other than himself - to split the halves into fourths, and survive splintered, or not at all.
The pain, though, when it comes, is cathartic; and it only pales in comparison to the sheer satisfaction of watching the bastard burn through eyes that aren’t his own.
“Until we meet again,” he hisses against strange, foreign teeth; the poison in the words, though, that’s something familiar - something he knows.
The ashes - they smell of fish. And Esau knows that even now, he will never escape him. Death, that fleeting whore, hates him just as much as Jacob ever did; never did.
The pain, as it fades into nothing, is something he misses, something he laments.