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mishasminion360 · 2 months

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How Do You Do It?

Jack Daniels x fem!reader

Warnings: Mild language; words said in anger; stress-induced anxiety; mild angst; self-doubt; but lots of fluff, I swear.

Summary: Being a new mother and a homemaker are two difficult jobs to juggle at the same time, and even more of a challenge when your husband is constantly away. When Jack returns from his latest assignment to find you overtaxed and irritable, he decides to make it up to you by spending a day in your shoes.

A/N: What a busy summer/early fall. So much has changed in such a short time. Change is weird sometimes and brings a lot of stress. Had my first-ever panic attack. Zero stars; do not recommend. But even the stressful, scary parts of our lives can be inspiring. This fic is proof of that 😝

P.S. As you can see I began this fic in the fall of 2023 and look how late I’m posting it! I’m sorry for the long hiatus, folks, but believe me when I say it was necessary.

How is it that your husband is the secret agent, but the weight of the world always feels like it’s been thrust upon your shoulders?

The day you found out you were expecting was one of the happiest of your life. You and Jack had been over the moon and spent the entire adventure of pregnancy fantasizing about all the joys of parenthood that would arrive along with your bundle of joy. You weren’t kidding yourselves; you knew that a baby brought big changes and more than a few challenges. You just weren’t aware of just how high those hurdles would be until you were thrown into the race.

The roles of wife, homemaker, and now mother all seem to merge into one monstrous, never-ending task; and your duties seemed all the more daunting when you were left to fulfill them alone.

Jack is nothing short of attentive and dedicated when he’s at home. The problem is that “home” is usually the last place one will find him. As of late, his job with the Statesmen pulls and pushes him this way and that into parts unknown where he’s embroiled in espionage for some indeterminate period, leaving you with a house to maintain, meals to prepare, clothes to launder, and a colicky infant to soothe.

You’re trapped inside a pressure cooker and the temperature is nearing critical.

***

“Baby Shark” is on its 25th iteration, every “doo doo doo” is like a bat to the back of your head. You dance topless in the living room with your wailing son clutched to your naked chest. You’d tossed your t-shirt into the wash twenty minutes ago, covered—like the two before it—in your baby boy’s milky vomit.

Your sanity is a mere thread, frayed, delicate, and seconds away from completely unraveling. Your head is pounding and back aching, and you’re trying to convince yourself that the flush of heat you feel just beneath your skin is not a fever. You can’t afford to be sick now. Not when you are all your son has; when you are all you have.

“Daddy’s home, darlin’!”

The sound of his voice, the familiar clip-clop of his boots on the hardwood floor, should fill you with after hardly having heard it for a solid week. Instead, it has your already tepid body simmering with frustration.

“Hey there, Mama Mare.” The affectionate term oozes from between his grinning lips with all the smooth, sweet ease of honey. “Give this ol’ cowboy some sugar. He missed you.”

His lips are on yours and then detaching themselves before your mouth can even register it’d just been in contact with another; far quicker and more careless than the long overdue reunion kiss you’d been anticipating. The brief little smooch held about as much passion as a handshake.

“There’s my little cowpoke!”

Jack lifts his squalling son from your arms and little John’s cries instantly cease. Of course they do. Of freaking course.

“Well, now, you didn’t have to get all dressed up on my account, honeybee.”

You snap to attention after possibly having fallen asleep on your feet for a split second to see that Jack’s devilish gaze has zeroed in on your bared tits.

“You certainly know how to welcome a fella home.”

While he’s busy ogling your non-seductive nudity, your own eyes have locked onto the trail of muddy prints stretching from the front door, each filthy footfall a perfect imprint of the sole of Jack’s boots. Yet another mess you’ll have to clean up; another chore added to the already heavy burden you’re shouldering.

“How’s about after dinner we mosey on upstairs, put this little buckaroo to bed, then I show you just how much I missed you?”

You don’t even know how to respond to him right now, so you don’t. You simply turn your back and walk away, seething in a silent rage as you stomp your way upstairs to put on the thickest, ugliest sweatshirt you can find that leaves everything up to the imagination.

John starts to wail once again, but that’s Jack’s problem now. You have about a million other tasks to accomplish—make that a million and one, thanks to his filthy freaking boots.

You slip into the master bath and toss back a couple of Advil for your pounding headache and by the time you re-emerge, Jack is pacing around your bed, hands on his hips and a pensive scowl on his face.

You take a deep breath through your nose and the words tumble from your lips in a sigh. “I haven’t started dinner yet. Give me just a few minutes and I can—“

“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” he blurts. “‘Cause you gave me a look back there that reminded me of an angry steer about to trample a rodeo clown.”

“Just forget it,” you mutter, brushing past him toward the door. His hand wraps around your wrist before you can cross the threshold.

“I ain’t forgettin’ nothin’,” he drawls as he turns you to face him. “Sugar, what’s wrong? No use lyin’ because I can tell somethin’s stuck in your craw.”

Oh, it’s stuck alright. Like a bug in a windshield.

“Jesus, Jack,” you sigh. “Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve had a total of five non-consecutive hours of sleep this week. Or it could be the fact that the house is a mess or that I’m down to my last pair of clean underwear. All the chores have been put on hold so I could tend to our son while you’ve been off playing ‘secret agent man’ in God only knows where.”

His mustache twitches and his jaw ticks.

“Honeybee, why didn’t you tell me you’ve been strugglin’? I would have—“

“Because I shouldn’t have to tell you!” you snap. “You should know me well enough by now to tell when I’m not okay! You should already have some inkling of how hard it is to raise a child and that the process usually goes much smoother when both parents are involved. But I guess I’m just a fool for assuming. Getting shot at is far less hazardous to your health than changing a dirty diaper after all.”

When the red finally clears from your vision you see that Jack’s has become clouded with a look you’d only bore witness to once and concluded that you never wanted to see again. His mirthful brown eyes dulled by a deeply rooted pain planted long ago by a cruel twist of fate. He’d been robbed of his first chance to be a husband and father and you’d just accused him of squandering his second.

“Sugar, I’m….I’m sorry.”

Shit. It’s not fair. You have been miserable for an entire week and you can’t stand to see him miserable for even a millisecond.

“No, I’m sorry,” you insist, voice and legs quivering. You lower yourself to the bed before exhaustion and gravity get the better of you. “I’m just so tired. Tired and frustrated.”

He drops to the bed beside you and pulls you into one of his signature hugs you’ve missed so much. The tightest of embraces that only he can give.

“I know you’re working hard to provide for our family,” you sob. “I know that but still I….I feel so alone, Jack.”

Before even a single southern-drenched syllable can leave his mouth, a sharp wail blasts from the baby monitor and your body reacts instinctively and urgently. You shoot up and out of Jack’s arms like a rocket.

“Let me check on him and then I’ll start dinner,” you say with a sniffle.

“I’ll get him, darlin’,” Jack insists, gently grasping you by the wrist and halting your minimal progress toward the door.

“But he probably needs—“

“I will get him.”

His hands are on your shoulders now—firm yet gentle—and grounding, comforting.

“Please, let me take care of my boy so you can take care of you, honeybee. And then, later, I’d like to take care of you, too. If you’ll let me.”

You can only muster a nod before he’s striding out of the room. Taking advantage of the first minute you’ve had to yourself in a week, you slip into the shower and let the warm spray unclench every muscle coiled tight with stress.

By the time you emerge, John is sleeping peacefully and a pizza’s been ordered. Jack dotes on you the entire evening, giving your aching feet a rub down with his skillful hands and cuddling you close as you both zone out to some ridiculous reality TV. His mere presence is a balm to your weary soul.

Whenever the baby cries in the middle of the night and your body moves on instinct Jack stills you, urges you back to the mattress, and takes on the challenge himself. It’s the best night’s sleep you’ve had in you can’t remember how long.

***

And surprisingly enough, you don’t manage to sleep any later than 9 a.m. The smell of extra greasy bacon lures you from bed, a siren’s call to your stomach.

John bounces in his high chair, babbling around a mouthful of mashed banana, most of which appears to have ended up on his face, shirt, and chubby little fists. Jack is an even more astonishing sight than your messy son, strutting about the kitchen in your frilly apron topping his off-white Henley and faded Wranglers.

“Well, good mornin’, sugar,” he cries, grabbing your hips to tug you in for a kiss. “Though I wasn’t expectin’ to see you up so soon.”

“How did you expect me to stay asleep when something smells incredible?”

“That would be my famous chocolate chip, peanut butter, and banana flapjacks.”

In true Southern gentlemanly fashion, he pulls out a chair and eases you into it before setting a towering stack of syrup-soaked pancakes before you, coffee and bacon following suit.

“Better eat quick now, darlin’,” Jack urges as he takes a seat with his plate. “You’ve got a busy day ahead of you.”

As if you could forget. That laundry is begging for attention, the house hasn’t had a good dusting in you can’t recall how long, and Johnny already needs a bath—

“I made you an appointment for noon.”

Your train of thought instantly stalls on the tracks.

“Appointment?”

Jack grins over the brim of his steaming mug.

“Honey, you need a break. Figured you might enjoy yourself a little spa day.”

You can hardly believe your ears.

“Spa day?”

“Yes, ma’am. Massage, mud baths, whatever the heck they do with seaweed, the whole nine yards,” he explains proudly. “I even called up your buddy from work and asked if she’d like to join you. And it’s all on me.”

“But Jack, what about John? And the house, the laundry, the cooking?”

“Gimme some credit, sugar,” he chuckles. “I think I can keep the homestead standin’ and our baby boy breathin’ for a day. Besides, it’s high time I start puttin’ in my fair share of help around here, isn’t it?”

You’re not sure if you want to thank him or burst into tears. Maybe both.

“You do so much, honeybee,” he says warmly, voice as smooth, rich, and sweet as the syrup sluiced atop your pancakes. “You move mountains every day to make this house a home. How’s about lettin’ someone do somethin’ for you for a change?”

You scarf down the rest of your pancakes before kissing him with sticky lips and racing up the stairs to get ready for your big day out.

***

You feel rejuvenated and refreshed. Brand fucking new. A far cry from the husk of a woman who’d left the house this morning. Wrapped in seaweed and slathered with mud you’d been returned to the earth and reborn at full strength, like a phoenix risen from the ash.

You'd been reunited with an inner strength and power you'd all but forgotten. And thank God for that, because you're going to need every bit of it to face the chaos you come walking back into upon your return home.

You can hear John’s piercing wails before you’ve cut the engine and opened the driver’s side door. You can smell the smoke before you've even reached the front steps.

Inside all hell has broken loose. Gray tendrils of smoke slither through the air, teasing the detector into screaming its warning. Your baby boy is giving it some stiff competition with his own cries as Jack struggles to bounce him on one arm while he tries to fan away the smoke with the other. Both gestures prove futile.

“It’s okay, buckeroo. You’re okay. Don’t cry. Please, please don’t cry.”

Jack looks so frazzled. The situation is far from funny so the last thing you should do is laugh at his expense. But dammit if you don’t anyway.

“Do you need some help there, cowboy?”

His frantic eyes find you through the haze and pierce you with a desperate, wordless plea. You take the inconsolable infant from your husband’s arm and soothe him into silence as Jack does the same to the smoke alarm.

“There now, Johnny. See? Everything’s okay. Daddy made the bad sound stop.”

“He just stopped cryin’ for you. Just like that.”

Something in his eyes burns. Something in his voice cracks.

“I couldn't bring him any kind of comfort. He didn't….want nothin’ to do with me.”

Your weary cowpoke sags into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and buries his face in his hands with an exasperated sigh.

“You were right, darlin’. I'm useless.”

You settle John into his high chair with a teething ring to distract him before turning your attention to your distressed husband.

“To be fair, I never said you were useless.”

“You may as well have,” he sighs. “And if you weren’t thinkin’ it before you’ll be thinkin’ it now.”

You smirk. “Rough day?”

“Oh darlin’, you don’t even know the half of it.”

He begins to recount the day’s challenges, his voice raising in pitch as goes from describing one hurdle to the next. He almost seems on the verge of tears.

“And I got so distracted while tryin’ to get our fussy boy to eat his dinner that I failed to hear the timer and let ours burn. Hence the fiasco you came home to. And when John started bellowing for his supper I was in the middle of the laundry and I forgot to separate the colorful items from the rest, so my new red jockeys turned our bathroom towels pink and….and I just failed so miserably today, sugar. I’m so sorry.”

You laugh, unable to help it. It’s all you can do at this point. “Welcome to my world, sweetheart.”

“How on Earth do you do it, sugar?”

If you’re being honest, you ask yourself that question at least once a day, and not always with the same emotional connotation behind it.

“There’s just something inside of me that encourages me to power through the difficulties. A force, a reminder.”

“An iron will for damn sure,” he scoffs.

“No, that’s not it,” you chuckle. “It’s love, Jack. For you and our boy. That’s what keeps me going.”

He looks at your have cradling his own, a gesture of both dominance and comfort. In this moment he believes that he is made of inferiority.

“I love you both to the moon and back, yet I can’t even do a load of laundry.”

“Jack you do enough. I have not, do not, and never will doubt your love for me and John,” you reassure him. “Acts of service just happen to be my particular love language, not yours.”

“Then what is mine?”

You lift his hands and kiss both sets of his knuckles. “Words of affirmation.”

His acts of service are for the world, but his words are just for you.

“But ain’t actions supposed to speak louder?”

“For others, maybe,” you shrug. “But that’s only because no one else speaks as loudly as you.”

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#pedro pascal #jack whiskey daniels #kingsman the golden circle #fluff #fem!reader #domestic fluff #Jack trying his best #stress #adulting #parenthood

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mishasminion360 · 5 months

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This fic, y’all 😍 O-M-Goodness! The writing is just hauntingly beautiful (no pun intended. Or is it?? 👀) The melancholia of both Joel and the house he inhabits is palpable, and even though their relationship (be it romantic, platonic, or reluctant housemates) is still in its infancy, there is a strong sense of hope layered beneath their interactions. I need part two!!!!!!!

Ghost!Joel Miller x gn!reader

summary: Things have been the same for Joel for a long, long time, until he receives a new roommate.

word count: ~1.9k unbeta'd. Just a sampling. A tease, if you will.

warnings: Just like ao3, “creator chooses not to use warnings.” If you click Keep Reading, that means you agree that you’re the age to handle mature themes. Also by clicking Keep Reading, you understand warnings may not be complete in order to avoid spoilers for the story.

Many thanks to @ezrasbirdie @prolix-yuy and @wheresarizona who have all heard my jumbled thoughts about ghost!Joel for ages. You guys are the best! ❤️

Masterlist // Ao3

There’s an old house in Jackson nobody goes into anymore.

Joel doesn’t mind the lack of visitors. He stays in these days watching sunsets and sunrises, and all the people pass.

There is a funny feeling at the center of his chest, that dissipates when he wanders from room to room, catching snippets of figures outside the windows, the passerbyers whose footsteps quicken when he stands at the window. They keep their heads down, eyes averted, practically racing as they go by.

Joel huffs—good. Let him be alone.

He has no more aches and pains. He’s never tired. Never wanting for anything.

Yet—

There is a name he cannot speak. Whenever he tries to, it dries up, drifts away, remains ceaselessly unspoken. A fog.

Days float in and out. He thinks it's days—his routines around the house never waver. Each room requires his attention, but for what purpose he cannot know. He has no hunger, no thirst. Except for a certain yearning itch that chafes the edges of his forethought; memory is not what it used to be, and so he goes back to the sunsets, the moonrise, and watching the leaves change color, the dust collect and the snowfall turn to spring in the blink of an eye.

That little prickling is always worse at the end of summer.

September, September, what a time to remember?

But remember what—?

It’s winter again when the prickling leaves him. A memory is stored at the bottom of the well, where it is too dark to see.

There’s never any intruders into his house. Joel sees to that. For that he is grateful—there was a time when he wouldn’t be left alone.

But when?

These days his companions are the occasional dog who are the only ones brave enough to prance up to his porch and can look him in the eye. Their ears twitch and tails wag hurriedly, much to the confusion of their owners—what do you see, girl? Huh? What’s that?

It makes Joel chuckle.

A few nights a year the neighborhood kids break into his house late at night, spurring each other on with dares. They never take anything when they enter.

Joel sees to that.

He swoops in from seemingly nowhere. The doors banging around behind him, and he doesn’t have to say anything, his glare is enough to send chills down the spines of the troublemakers, and they go screaming and running after one look.

He’s left alone for a long time after that.

One spring—and he knows it is spring because though he cannot feel the warm air, he can tell the days are getting longer—he has an unusual visitor.

It’s important because you are not afraid of him like the others.

You come in the morning, holding a bag under your shoulder and step up the porch. The front door’s hinges have long since rusted and it is a small struggle to get the door open. Joel is there to greet you when you stride into the hallway, noting the cobwebs and the dust. You move swiftly about his space, for who dwells in such a lonely home but a lonely creature of course.

You begin to dust the corner and open the window shutters to let the sunlight stream in. Then you light a candle and place it in the window.

You return everyday for a week, humming to yourself while you clean, flooding his home with sunlight and music and the stale air begins to stir, and it stirs in Joel too.

At first, he is tolerant of it. You are harmless enough; he evades when you step close to him unknowingly. Once you brush close, your figure shudders as if a draft had just come through. But you throw open another window to banish the sensation, welcoming more of that warm springtime air he wishes he could feel upon his skin once more.

You always light a candle before you leave.

Once Joel closes his finger over the orange flame, pinching the wick between his fingers and dousing the light, you merely huff to yourself in the midst of your departure and relight it.

There’s something about you that reminds him of a person from long ago. From another life. This stubbornness you exude. This intrusion into the hollow he’s made for himself, wriggling to let a part of him free.

He only makes it difficult for you when, by the end of the week, you reach the attic. Your fingers are just brushing a layer of dust off one of the many boxes stacked there when a sternness rises up in him.

“Don’t touch that,” he says.

Your hands pause midair, glancing not at where he stands, but through him. Searching.

“Who said that?”

He steps into the room. The floorboards creak.

“Who’s there?” You say, louder.

And he forgets what his purpose is. That he is no different than the decay around him.

A liminal being in a liminal space.

A life, interrupted; he, the hanging final note.

The em dash at the end of a sentence.

Attempting to conjure what came next—

What comes next—

“Who’s there?”

For the third time, Joel does not respond, only steps further into the room. He can make the air colder, can frost the windows with his presence and stir the silence; he is the reason the dogs bark as they pass, that others feel the hairs on their neck rise.

But not you.

You open the box, sneezing as a bit of dust gets in your nose.

It is full of clothing. Shirts for men, a green striped flannel and shearling jacket and a thick pair of winter gloves. There are more in the next boxes, jeans and socks. The third reveals a sturdy pair of boots, someone thoughtfully polished before packing them away.

In the back of the attic, you find a rifle.

His rifle.

Joel feels a tug at the center of his abdomen as your fingers wrap around the barrel. It draws him sharply into clarity.

“Don’t touch that,” he growls.

Startled, your eyes lift, but instead of gazing through him (as so many gazes do), this time they fall precisely upon him. The rifle clatters upon the floorboards as it drops from your hand, further placing confusion into the mix.

“Sorry!” you exclaim, still staring at him. “I didn’t know.”

It in turn startles Joel. Because you can see him.

“What are you doing here?” He grimaces.

“I—I was…” You bend to retrieve the rifle, placing it carefully back, propped against the attic wall where you found it, turning sheepish at the mess of opened boxes you’ve made in his space.

“It is you,” you say, rather breathless.

“You know me?”

“Well, no, but I’ve heard a lot about you. I wondered when you’d turn up.” You cannot stop staring.

“Is there something on my face?” he quips, grumpily.

A mild shake of your head. The smallest of grins. “No.”

Joel harrumphs, shifts weight between his feet. “What are you doing here? Lighting candles, cleanin’ up my house. What’s it all about?”

Turns out, you’re moving in, or so you explain. Your old shared place was getting too crowded, what with the families growing, and so you thought you’d come clean up this one—”a perfectly good house”— and set it up for yourself. There was little resistance from the others.

“And the candles?”

“They’re supposed to be soothing,” you say with a shrug. “I make them myself.”

He considers for a long moment the possibility of having you share the house with him. You’ve already done plenty—cleaned up enough to make it livable again. It’s been a long, long time since he’s had steady company. The thought of you in his house makes the back of his throat itch, that strange prickling returns in his chest.

“Would it be alright with you?” you ask expectantly.

Joel cannot help but feel that something is missing. There is a blankness in the center of it all. An ellipses going on forever, one he wishes to fill with something that is just out of his grasp.

“Just don’t touch my stuff,” Joel sniffs.

“Of course, I’m sorry,” you say, and hastily put the items back into their boxes, leaving them exactly as you found them.

“There’s a spare room downstairs, behind the kitchen. You can use that one,” he tells you.

Having retrieved his blessing, you leave shortly after that. The following day you return, with a box of your own and a backpack. It’s almost sad how little you own. You take the room he requested, find linens in the spare closet and hang them outside on the line to air dry. He watches you from the back window, steady and sure in your movements, not an ounce of fear or uncertainty.

You seem kind.

Kinder than others. You’re humming again, and when you disappear in the afternoon, it’s to return with one final box which Joel realizes is full of supplies for your candle-making business.

And with that, you’re moved in.

Here’s the thing Joel learns about having a roommate at that house in Jackson.

He’s never felt more intrusive in his own space; he’s become a stranger in his own home.

You make a lot of noise in the kitchen, cooking dishes Joel’s never heard of every night, of which he cannot partake. Maybe you don’t even realize it, but cabinet doors are left open, shoes clog the front hall. You leave books and papers lying around, handwritten poems or idle doodles, notes for your recipes. Your steps are a lot louder on the steps when you have your Walkman in and play whatever CD has caught your eye that day while you do the laundry.

Your passion is in the candle making business, which you sell at the local market. The operations expanded, tentacle-like, into the basement. The wax you collect from Jackson’s beekeepers, the wicks from spools of yarn made by the commune’s sheep. Strange smells permeate the space.

The most confounding of all is coffee.

Joel appears at your side in a blink. One second he’s not there, the next he is, scaring you at the kitchen counter when you turn, nearly barreling into his broad chest.

“What is that?” He’s eying the ground dust you store in a tin. There’s water boiling on the stove and there's French press you’ve surely traded for something valuable.

“Chicory coffee,” you say, once your heart rate returns to normal after his sudden appearance. “You like coffee?”

“I…” He suffers a confusion of turmoil. “I did.”

He can remember its taste. The smell of it alone sets him off into despair.

“I like it too,” you say. “Can’t get the real beans though.”

“I can’t tell you the things I did once just to get a real set of coffee beans here in Jackson.”

Your smile is tender. “Like what things?”

But the memory is lost, he grasps at it—coffee boiling over an open flame, a warm jug in his hands, and an open road before him; a brown-haired girl who sticks her tongue out at him, wrinkling her nose at the pungent smell; a suspended moment while he holds in a laugh. You don’t like coffee? He asks her.

But before—before that.

Before what?

Even longer ago, he remembers drinking it every morning, and another girl, a different one with big curly hair and the sweetest smile, handing him orange juice instead. Can’t survive on coffee alone, dad, she teases him.

The rest is already over the horizon.

“I don’t remember,” he finally says.

“It’ll come back,” you reply optimistically.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell you they never do.

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