cloister witte

cloister witte is a man with a dark past and a cute dog. he's happy to talk about the dog all day, but after growing up in the shadow of a missing brother, a deadbeat dad, and a criminal stepfather, he'd rather leave the past back in montana. these days he's a k-9 officer in the san diego county sheriff's department and pays a tithe to his ghosts by doing what no one was able to do for his brother--find the missing and bring them home.

sticks & stones, ta moore

name cloister witte

“So I’m just to keep calling you deputy?” Fair enough. “Cloister.” “Really?” Javi asked. “I thought that was a nickname because you were religious. I didn’t know your mother hated you.”
Cloister did a rolling stop at the exit. There weren’t enough people on the road to merit a full stop. Sometimes being a cop made you worryingly blasé about traffic laws. “It was her maiden name,” he said. “She didn’t hate me till later.”

occupation deputy, plenty police department (partnered with k9 bourneville)

appearance

A pair of faded jersey shorts hung low around his hips, and he’d slung a wrung-out T-shirt around his neck. He was tanned the color of whiskey, and his hair was wet and honey streaked, dripping onto his shoulders. Ink scrawled up over his ribs, but the pattern was shattered by a burst of pale white scar tissue.

-

Witte wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t even handsome. With that jacked nose and the harsh Dust-Bowl Germanic lines of his face, he was barely holding on to rugged with his fingertips.

-

“You’re beautiful like this,” Javi said. He stroked his hands up Cloister’s thighs to his hips and tucked his thumbs into the crease at his groin. “When you fuck and when you run, all that bone and muscle is like silk under your skin.” Cloister leaned forward until he was nearly sprawled on top of Javi. He shifted his hand from the muscle of Javi’s shoulder to the headboard and twisted his fingers around the metal rods. “And the rest of the time?” he asked. Javi smiled thinly and kissed the sweat out of the hollow of Cloister’s collarbone. “The rest of the time, you look like someone you don’t want to cross in a bar fight.” “Good,” Cloister said raggedly as he rocked his hips against Javi. He could feel the pulse of Javi’s cock inside him as he thrust back up against Cloister. “That’s what I’m going for.”

-

Cloister turned around and walked backwards. The moonlight softened the harsh lines of his face, smoothed out the broken cant of his nose. It didn’t make him pretty all of a sudden, but it made him look softer, younger. The ghost of who he might have been if people had tried harder not to hurt him. Then he smirked, an amused cant of that beautiful mouth, and Javi was reminded why he was OK with this slightly more battered Cloister.

-

Cloister looked like a biker in search of a bar room brawl, but small children and scared women trusted him. Maybe it was the dog.

personality & past

“Just try and look less like you want to punch someone.” Cloister sighed. “You ain’t playing to my strengths here.” The dust-dry flash of humor was brief, but it caught Javi off guard the same way the scar-splattered tattoo on Cloister’s ribs did. It was the hint that there was more to him than the aggressively simple presentation. Javi resented having to know that.

-

Javi had set the rules, Cloister had shrugged that he didn’t care. He didn’t either. Other people’s opinions weren’t something that Cloister bothered with, whether it was about his personal life or the fact most of his off-duty t-shirts were second-hand Disney ones. Javi admired that sometimes, but that sort of bullet-proof disregard didn’t work when you had ambitions beyond a trailer and a fridge full of cold beer.

-

Some days Javi wished that Cloister was as simple as he liked people to think. It would make sticking to Javi’s usual ‘one stand only rules’ a lot easier. Javi knew his flaws. He was arrogant, impatient, and he could be cruel...with some people it was so easy that ‘could be’ changed to ‘was’. Cloister made it easy--he was a redneck with a Montana drawl, who lived in a trailer and liked hot dogs, dogs, and bands with dog in the name--but he gave as good as he got. And he was good with people. Not like Javi. He had a knack for fault lines, the weak points in someone where just a little bit of pressure could make you do what you want. Cloister was as manipulative as a hammer. He could read people though, understand why that weak point was there.

-

The flicker of jealousy Cloister was more used to. He didn’t have any right--no promises had been made by either of them, and Javi had been clear that none would be--but Cloister had always fallen hard. The Sheriff’s Department’s psychologist had his theories about that. Cloister didn’t think it was exactly a mystery why he was like this. His family didn’t want him, and that sort of thing left a hole in you.

-

There was a whole trauma that his brain had just shucked off, a lost twelve hour hole. “You remember that you’ve forgotten something, you know? Not what it was, or if it was important, just that it’s gone. It ends up like a cavity in your head, you can’t stop poking at it."

misc insomnia & nightmares - amnesia surrounding traumatic experience of childhood abduction (he was found, his brother was not) - low sense of self-worth - falls in love easily but knows better than to expect anything to last - no ambition beyond hanging with his dog and bringing lost people home - loves his dog more than anything else in the world (especially himself) - secretly kind of a big softie