Chapter Text
Three For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down drabbles. All PG or so.
Prompt: counting chickens before they're hatched.
Length: 100 words.
The cot Willie sleeps on was Jerry's for years and years, and still is when Willie isn't here, and was somebody's before him. Jerry sits next to it and looks at Willie sleeping, at him breathing, and his small, sturdy body, and all he's going to be someday.
If Jerry was a different person, he'd touch Willie's fine hair and tug the blanket up where his shoulder is exposed to the cold. He's not, so he sits and smokes and cracks his knuckles, and he thinks about Willie growing up, and keeping him safe, and about being a good father.
Prompt: mime.
Length: 100 words.
Willie remembers, always. He forgets everything else, doesn't remember the bad or the good or anything but what people tell him when it's all over and he doesn't have a dad anymore. But the way Jerry smiled at him with red teeth, and how he waved his hand goodbye, that sticks with him.
When he was little, it was mixed up with Jesus and angels, Jerry dying so he could live. But then he grew up and lost his faith, and these days he thinks that if he wasn't so stupid, he'd have figured out what it means by now.
Prompt: Everyone's got their breaking point
With me it's spiders, with you it's me
The Tragically Hip, "Thugs"
Length: 100 words.
Jerry wasn't Loretta's first, but he was the first she enjoyed, too, and he was her last for years, until she wasn't young no more. Later, there was Frank, and later still, Jim, and when it was good with them she thanked God and wasn't ashamed for it. She'd thought it was just Jerry; it had made sense for him to have a sin that was worth it, and for her to carry the guilt of wanting.
And if it turned out Frank was a bully, and Jim drank, neither scared her half as much as Jerry when he smiled.
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