I think it’s amazing how you fleshed out Hangman in Bad Habit, his backstory is so believable and how he’s just as fragile as the reader too. It was beautifully written 😭🥹
I’m not sure if you’re taking requests but it would be so interesting to see the reader being introduced to Jakes parents and standing up for Jake when his dad keeps making digs at him because you know she would have his back no matter what 💪🏻and Hangman just falls more in love with her ❤️
♡ pairing ; boyfriend ! hangman x female!reader
♡ wc ; 4k
♡ warnings ; angst, sappiness, toxic parents, some sexual innuendo and the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest breeding kink hint at the end (i can't believe i just typed that goodbye)
♡ note ; bad habit universe. anon, i need you to understand the way this ask made me go feral. i'm so sorry this got so long but i truly went INSANE i BLACKED OUT. goodbye.
Jake is jumpy before you even get in the car. He spends way too long picking out his pants and shirt, messing with the cufflinks, wrapping and loosening the tie around his neck a hundred times until you finally take it off him.
“It’s just your parents, Jake,” you say softly, letting the garment - dark green silk, your last Christmas present to him because it brings out his eyes - drop onto the hotel bed. “Don’t be nervous.”
It’s stupid advice, and you know it. You’re pretty sure the thought of his father has made Jake nervous his entire life.
But under the gentle pressure of your hands on his shoulders, some of the tension seems to drain out of him. He all but slumps against you with a sigh, dropping his head into the crook of your neck. Like all the fight just evaporates.
“It’s been so long,” he whispers against your skin, but what he means is: I’m scared.
You wrap your arms around him, wishing with a sudden, unfamiliar fierceness that you could shield him from anything bad in the world.
“It’ll be okay,” you whisper back, but what you mean is: I know. I’m with you.
On the drive, in a rental that smells too new, too clean, you’re the nervous one. Knee bouncing up and down, fingers drumming along to the pop songs on the radio but missing the rhythm entirely.
Jake puts a hand on your thigh, just above the knee, just below the hem of your floral sundress. Warm skin on warm skin, even with the aircon blasting. The last freckles of summer are still fading on the backs of his hands.
His touch, unfailingly, sends a shiver down your back.
“Nervous to meet the in-laws?” he asks, signals, and pulls off the highway. Outside the window, factories and strip malls make room for a residential area, for swingsets in back yards and sweet tea on front porches.
The words have heat rising to your face. You’re not even engaged, let alone married. Still, Jake’s been known to introduce you as the Missus, to carry a polaroid of you in his wallet, to talk to you about which tropical destinations you should spend your retirement benefit plans on when you’re both seventy. (You don’t tell him he’ll be seventy a good few years before you because it’ll just make him pout, and then you’ll kiss him, and then you won’t do any talking anymore.)
“Just… I’ve never met a boyfriend’s parents before,” you admit.
Jake hums, lifts his hand from your knee to tangle his fingers with yours instead, pulls them up to his mouth, and presses a kiss to your knuckles. His eyes never leave the road.
“You’ll do fine, sweetheart.” And then his smirk turns mischievous. “I love that dress on you. Will like it even more when I take it off you later, though.”
You laugh more for his benefit than because you actually find it amusing. There’s the familiar spark of desire, but it’s faint, muffled, distant.
It’s not hard to tell that Jake’s heart isn’t really in it. That’s okay. Yours isn’t either.
The house is perfect. Impeccably kept lawns, greener than the Texan heat should allow for, bushes trimmed into neat squares like somebody is exercising their personal vendetta on nature. Big windows and a car parked in a perfect parallel line to the curb. There’s something cold to it all.
On the walk up to the front door, while you’re careful not to step on any patches of that green, green grass, you take Jake’s hand, and you can’t tell if it’s for his benefit or your own. He squeezes back just once.
Jake’s mother is just like that house - so perfect it scares you.
She looks like one of those housewives in laundry detergent advertisements from the 50s. Manicured fingers, a string of pearls around her neck, lips painted a rosy shade of red.
Suddenly you’re sure your dress is too short, your hair isn’t styled carefully enough, you’re wearing too much make-up. You want to hide.
She greets you at the door, a smile on her face that seems almost a little nervous.
“Jake,” she says and kisses him on both cheeks but doesn’t hug him. They haven’t seen each other in two years.
You hang back, unsure, wishing you could go invisible, but Jake puts a hand on the small of your back, pushes you forward, smiles, and looks proud in a way you can’t explain.
“This is my girl,” he says, and there’s so much in it. Not girlfriend, because you’re more than that. Not wife, because you’re not yet. But his, always, always his, since that night he walked into you at the Hard Deck. His, even when you still swore up and down you hated him.
His mother shakes your hand, smiles not unkindly, and leads you into the house.
Jake and you sit on the couch as she hands you glasses filled with a sensible amount of iced water. An old, imposing grandfather clock ticks away the seconds.
“Your father’s in his study,” she says, eyes shifting rapidly like she can’t decide where to look. “I’ll check what’s keeping him.”
The whole house smells like the roast sizzling in the oven, like the steaming peach cobbler you saw through the open kitchen door when you walked in.
Jake is tense beside you, on guard. He sits on the edge of the sofa, palms spread on his knees like he’ll spring up at any moment and sprint out of the house, out of the state, back home to California, to the little apartment the two of you are renting. An apartment without lace curtains, without grandfather clocks, an apartment without grass or manicured bushes. But an apartment with warmth and sheets that smell like his shampoo, like your flowery body lotions, with a stain on the sofa cushion where you spilled red wine, with a burn mark on one of the kitchen counters from the one time Jake tried to cook dinner and set a pan down on the linoleum.
Not a perfect house, but a kind one. A home.
You loop your arm through his and press your cheek into his sleeve.
“You okay?” he asks softly. Even now, he’s still thinking about you, and you wonder how you could ever, for one moment, for one second, believe that he was selfish. Your chest feels tight, too narrow for all these emotions to fit inside.
You nod. “Are you?”
He’s about to answer when his mother comes back.
The man trailing behind her is unmistakeably his father. You can recognize the traces of Jake in his eyes, in the line of his mouth, but he lacks his charm, his boyish air. Lacks the flicker of kindness in the stiff smile. The hair at his temples has greyed with age, but his gaze is clear and sharp. It flicks from Jake to you, and his mouth twists downward.
Jake jumps up the moment his father enters the room, back ramrod straight. You follow slowly, choosing to hang back a little. Hiding at least partially behind Jake.
“Sir,” Jake says, voice different than you’ve ever heard, and you watch in amazement as they shake hands.
Involuntarily, you think of your own mother, smothering you in kisses after you got back from a school trip. You, pushing her away, glancing at your friends, saying, ew, stop, Mom.
Suddenly you think you might cry.
“This is her?” Jake’s father asks, waving a hand in your direction. He’s looking only at his son, you note, not at you.
“Yeah,” Jake answers and tells them your name.
You give him what you hope is a sweet smile, but his father ignores you.
“Is dinner ready?”
Jake’s mother nods. “Yes. We can go to the dining room.”
There are flags on the walls, plaques, and framed medals. Pictures of aircrafts and squadrons, men in uniforms that look dated now. There’s nothing new here, no traces of Jake apart from a framed photograph on the mantlepiece, him grinning into the camera at what you think might have been his senior prom.
It’s strange. You remember Jake telling you he sends all the mementos of his accomplishments to his parents. Maybe they keep them upstairs, you think, but somehow you doubt it.
When you get back home, you’ll ask him to hang them in your hallway instead. You didn’t even want him to put his Top Gun diploma on the sideboard near the entrance, but now you feel different about it.
All of them, you think. Everything. I’ll put out the award from the Spelling Bee he won in second grade.
In the dining room, Jake’s mother serves you roast and mashed potatoes and green beans in sensible portions on crisp white china.
“Your favorite,” she says, smiling at Jake.
You don’t say anything, but it’s on the tip of your tongue, burning there. Lasagna, you want to say, his favorite food is lasagna. One time he came home from a deployment and ate so much of it he got sick.
“Thanks, Mom,” Jake says, smiling a smile you’ve never seen. One that doesn’t reach his eyes.
Everybody makes small talk. His mother asks you a few questions about your teaching position, tentatively inquiring about your plans for the future.
“I’ll buy her a house,” Jake interjects, sounding serious and proud, and you stare at your plate to hide the smile.
He’s joking, probably. No way he means that.
His father doesn’t talk to you at all. He asks Jake increasingly aggressive questions about his last deployment, about the squadron he’s been assigned to, about when he’ll finally make the jump from Lieutenant Commander to Commander.
Jake hesitates, then he says, “Actually, Sir… I was thinking of teaching.”
The older man pauses, scotch glass halfway to his mouth, amber liquid sloshing against the rim.
“Teaching,” he repeats, a tension to the word that borders on danger.
Jake nods. “At Top Gun.”
His father sets his glass down on the tabletop with a sound softened by the silk cloth. You’ve gone quiet, frozen, as has Jake’s mother. Both of you staring like you’re watching a car crash - impossible to stop it, impossible to look away.
“Why,” Jake’s father says softly, “would you ever want to do that?”
Jake tips his chin up and answers, “Well… It’s close to home. And when we get married, when we get a house, I want to be there. Not on active duty, I want….”
And he’s mentioned it once before, but back then, you thought it was a joke. The idea of Jake torturing poor Top Gun hopefuls is a little unsettling, or at least it was, but you’re beginning to understand. You think he could be good at it, great maybe, teaching those people not to make the same mistakes he used to make.
When we get married, he’d said. Not if. When.
The thing Jake has loved most in his life - and you know this - was flying out there. Being in the midst of it all, in the thick of it, risking his life, always up in the air. The fact that he’s willing to give it all up for you…
Warmth blooms in your chest.
For the first time this night, Jake’s father turns his eyes right on you. They’re ice-cold. As cold as this house.
“Was this your idea?” he asks.
Automatically, you open your mouth to answer, but Jake is quicker.
“No,” he says. “It wasn’t her idea. It was mine. She had nothing to do with it.”
His father exhales a loud, shuddering breath, something that tears through the silence like a bull pawing at the ground.
“No,” he says finally.
“No?” Jake repeats, sounding hesitant.
“No.” Jake’s father places his cutlery delicately by his plate, smooths out the napkin in his lap. “No son of mine will give up a career to play house.”
“I…”
His father bulldozes over the interjection as if it hadn’t happened. “What, you can’t handle the pressure? Tough luck, boy. You gotta grit your teeth and get through it.”
There’s so much wrong with all of it. An emotion you can’t name rises up in your throat, makes your fingers clench into the fabric of the tablecloth.
“I don’t want to,” Jake says, trying to stand his ground. But something’s fading from him as you watch, some light dimming as his shoulders slump and his face falls.
You’ve never seen Jake like this before. All the cool melted out of him, all the bravado gone. Nothing but uncertainty left in its wake.
“You’ve always been weak,” his father says without looking at him. “Crying all the time when you were young, running to your mother. I knew it back then, and I see it now. Too weak for the Navy, too weak for this life, too weak….”
“Stop.” You can’t remember making the decision to speak, but suddenly your voice echoes through the room. Everybody’s looking at you. Your heart is in your throat.
And it’s so dumb. You can barely stand up for yourself. Last week, one of your student’s fathers yelled at you about a bad grade, and you just went home to cry into Jake’s chest for an hour. But this… it’s different. This ignites something in your chest, something violent and significant, something that demands to be felt.
You’d known their relationship was bad, but you hadn’t expected this. Nothing could have prepared you for it.
“You’re wrong,” you say, and wonder how your voice can sound so calm when on the inside you’re shaking, when the anger bubbles up into your throat like bile, when… “He’s not weak. Jake is the strongest person I know.”
Distantly, you’re aware of Jake’s head turning in your direction, but you keep your eyes on his father. Watch the twitch of his mouth, corners curling up into a smile dripping disdain.
“Oh, Jake,” he says, voice mocking as he turns to his son again. “Still need women to fight your battles for you?”
Jake’s mother says nothing, face turned down towards her plate, hands folded primly in her lap. The string of pearls around her neck shifts with every inhale, and for a moment, you ask yourself who’s worse: the one who does the hurting or the one who sits by and does nothing.
“I love him,” you say, and it’s not the first time you’ve said it, but it is the first time you say it in front of somebody else, somewhere outside the privacy of your bedroom, where you can convince yourself nobody exists in the world but him and you. It feels, somehow, significant. “He’s twice the man you’ve ever been.”
The eyes turn on you, so cold it sends a shiver down your back. And you don’t understand how you could have thought, even for a moment, that they looked alike. It’s like comparing a pencil sketch to an oil painting - night and day.
True anger courses through the words, through the voice, as he says, “You think I’m going to sit here and listen to some rude little schoolteacher my son picked up on the roadside try and tell me to….”
Jake’s palm hits the tabletop so forcefully the china jumps an inch into the air, the glasses rattle, and white wine spills into the casserole dish with the green beans.
“Don’t,” Jake hisses through clenched teeth, “ever talk to her like that again.”
Silence spreads.
His father chuckles. “What, you think that’s gonna impress me, boy? I don’t…”
“I don’t care,” Jake says. You can hear it in his voice, in the trembling of his breath - the anxiety, but the anger too. Your eyes burn. “For the first time in my life, I don’t care what impresses you. I just… I’m so tired of it. This is who I am. Either accept it or don’t.”
“Jake…” his mother whispers, but he won’t look at her. She throws a furtive glance at her husband, then at you. You can see the fear there, and you almost feel bad for her.
His father picks his cutlery back up and cuts into his roast.
“Sit back down, boy,” he says, the picture of perfect calm if it weren’t for the quiver in his hands. “Don’t cause a scene.”
You see the exact moment it happens. When the resignation finally sinks in for Jake. The acceptance of this thing he’s denied all his life.
His eyes flicker to you, and there’s something helpless in them. You think you hear the crack as your heart breaks.
And Jake is confident. Knows what he wants. Is so much clearer about it all than you with all your overthinking and spiraling and second and third and fourth guessing. Is so good at acting like he has all the answers that sometimes it makes you forget how good he is at pretending too. How sometimes, he needs you to take over.
So you get up, slot your fingers into the spaces between his, and say, looking only at his mother, “Thank you for dinner. I think it’s time we leave.”
Nobody says anything. Jake’s parents stay where they are, in their perfect, cold house, with their perfect, flavorless food and their lace curtains and grandfather clocks and no pictures of their brilliant, beautiful, warm son.
But you leave. You leave, and you take him with you.
The thought of Jake as a child, alone in this house, with that man in front of his door, almost chokes you.
You’re silent as you get into the car, silent as he pulls away from the curb, silent as the house fades smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. As it disappears from view completely.
You know you’ll never come here again. Something about it all is decidedly and vitally final.
Over the middle console, you watch Jake. It’s dark outside now, but the electronics of the dashboard illuminate him, the headlights of oncoming cars paint ghostly shadows across his features. You can’t read his expression, feel almost incapacitated by your own panic.
You don’t know what to say.
It’s impossible to tell how long you drive, but finally, Jake signals and pulls into an empty Walmart parking lot. Parks the car. Turns off the engine. And then he makes a sound you’ve never heard before.
With a start, with a jolt that zaps through you like a current, you realize he’s crying.
You’ve never seen him cry. Not when a bird strike took down his wingman last year. Not when you made him watch first Philadelphia and then Titanic in the most devastating double feature of all time.
It stumps you. Throws you for a loop. Makes tears well up in your own eyes.
“Oh, Jake,” you say, leaning across the middle console to wrap your arms around him, to press your face into his neck and hold him. Try and keep you both from falling apart.
And it’s so much pain. So much pain he’s carried with him every day, so much of it that you can feel it reverberate along your own bones as if it’s yours. And maybe that’s true. Maybe part of loving someone is feeling their pain as your own. Carrying it not for them but with them. Sharing it.
After what you just saw, you think you understand. Perhaps for the first time. All that cockiness and all that arrogance and all those things you hated about him at first. How they’re all just pieces of armor, something he’s built over the years to protect himself from that father and those expectations he could never meet and that cold, cold, cold.
You hold him until he calms, until the shaking of his sobs subsides, until he draws back and pushes himself into an upright position, says, “I’m sorry for crying.” He pushes a laugh out, but you don’t buy it. Not for a second. “That’s humiliating, huh? Bet you didn’t know you were dating such a pussy….”
“Don’t.” Your voice is firm, and it stops him in his tracks. “Don’t do that, Jake. That’s just him talking. There’s nothing wrong with crying. There’s nothing wrong with anything you did.”
His fingers flex around the steering wheel. He exhales loudly through his nose, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone so quiet you need to lean forward to hear him, “I guess some part of me just always thought… always thought that maybe, someday, he’d love me.”
And that’s it. It shatters you right there. Breaks you apart in a way you can’t explain.
You don’t know what to say. Maybe there is nothing to say. No words to make this better, to make him think the opposite. Not after what you’ve just seen.
“I guess…” His throat moves as he swallows. It’s so dark in this parking lot you can barely see more than the outline of him, shadowed by the darkness, but it’s enough. You know him so well, you could draw his face blind. “I guess that’s it, then. I guess I no longer have a family.”
It’s instantaneous. No, you think. I won’t let him believe that. Not for a second.
“Do you think I don’t have a family?“ you ask him.
Jake’s brows furrow, obviously confused by your question. “What?”
“Because my mom is gone, and my dad doesn’t care, and I don’t have any siblings or aunts or uncles. Do you think I don’t have a family?”
“No,” he says immediately, frowning. “You’ve got me. And you’ve got Penny and Phoenix and….”
“Then why would you ever think that about yourself?”
That shuts him up. He just sits there for a while.
“Jake,” you say, voice more gentle than it’s ever been. “It doesn’t change a thing. Not about the way I feel about you or the man that you are.”
He’s biting his lips, glancing at you from the corner of his eye and then away just as quickly.
“You don’t…” He clears his throat. “You don’t believe what he’s saying? That I’m… weak, or…”
You’re shaking your head before he’s halfway through the question.
“I meant what I said back there,” you reassure, reaching for his hands again. “Jake, you’re the best person I know. You can be an asshole, and a dumbass, and arrogant, and….”
“Aren’t you supposed to be making me feel better?” he interrupts, but there’s amusement in his voice, and relief floods your chest in answer.
You say, “What I mean is… I think you’re remarkable.”
“Remarkable?” he repeats, and you can hear the frown in his voice.
“Remarkable. Because even with someone like him raising you, putting you down all the time, telling you all that bullshit… you still turned out so good. You still turned into the best man I’ve ever known.” You take a deep, deep breath. “The only man I’ve ever really loved.”
And when he turns to look at you, you can see the tears sparkling in his eyes.
You’re climbing over the middle console before you know it, settling into his lap with your arms around his neck and your knees pressing into the seat bis hips. Jake slots clumsy kisses over your eyebrow, your cheekbone, your nose, until he finds your mouth.
He tastes like salt and gravy and home.
“It shouldn’t be like that,” you tell him, drawing back to card your fingers through his hair. “With my mom, it was never like that. She was so warm and kind, and she was so happy to see me, always. Even if I showed up unannounced and drunk at three am. And she just wanted me to be happy, no matter in what capacity. That’s how it should be, Jake, that’s what you deserved. Someone who loves you unconditionally.”
“I do have that,” he whispers, voice husky. “I have you.”
And it’s like this: being with Jake is like drifting on a blow-up mattress through a pool. Being with Jake is like reaching the top of a mountain after hours of hiking. Being with Jake is like the first taste of ice cream on the hottest day of the year. Being with Jake is like the first winter snow, early in the morning when everything is still untouched and quiet. Being with Jake is like listening to the rain from beneath your blankets, warm and safe and cozy.
Being with Jake is everything you’ve ever wanted.
“Yes,” you agree, head spinning, chest tight, “you do. You’ll always have me, Jake. We’re our own family already. And when we have kids, I know you’ll be the most perfect father, and you’ll never, ever treat them the way your dad treated you. You’ll be so kind and so loving and….”
“When we have kids,” he interrupts you.
In his lap, your face inches from his, you freeze.
Suddenly you can’t look at him. Your cheeks feel like they’re burning. “I… I’m sorry, we never talked about this, I just….”
You move to climb off him, but he pulls you closer instead, holds you to him with hands grasping the backs of your thighs.
“Is that what you want?” he asks softly. “You want to have my kids?”
The way he phrases the question almost makes you scoff. But then you think about it for a second, this thing you haven’t even been brave enough to voice in the privacy of your own mind. This thing that perhaps, in your heart of hearts, you’ve always dreamed of.
“Yeah,” you breathe. “I do. I do, Jake.”
And he groans, pushes his face against your cheek, and you can’t see him, but you can feel the tears.
“I’ll give it to you,” Jake whispers. “I'll give you anything you want. A ring and a house with a blue door and a baby. I’ll give you a baby, sweetheart. My girl. My gorgeous, brave, brave girl.”
In the silence of the night, in the warmth of that car, it sounds like a promise.
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