Chapter Text
Jake meets Steven on a Friday night.
It’s an accident, really. He promises.
It’s dark, and quiet, and on top of all that like a sweet little fucking cherry it’s raining.
Jake hates the rain. Cold and wet and damp clothes you have to practically peel yourself out of. People slipping in puddles and fumbling for their umbrellas and the air always feel sticky to him after—not to mention it ruins the leather.
He knows Marc doesn’t care for it, either. He always rubs at his chest uncomfortably when it starts thundering, like he can’t get enough air, and gets downright snappy when it starts pouring.
Out of the three, Steven loves the rain, because of course he does, just to be fucking contrarian. He thinks it’s refreshing, he’s the type to walk right into it without hesitation and tip his head back to taste the sweetness of the air. Jake sees him like that once, while he’s unaware, watching him from a store windowpane. His eyes are closed blissfully and crinkled at the corners, a delighted grin scrunching his nose when the rain kisses his lashes. He’s soaked to the bone and no doubt Marc will give him shit for it when the body catches a cold the next morning, but in that moment Jake can’t help but just…watch him. The way his curls dampen and darken with moisture, the gentle curve his neck makes when he tilts it back to meet the sky. He takes such a simple pleasure in something so ordinary, makes something as boring as rain into something beautiful.
It’s childish. Playing in the rain is for children.
But watching Steven reach out to catch the droplets with his fingertips, amused enough to smile softly to himself, maybe it isn’t such a stupid thing, Jake thinks, after all. Maybe it’s fitting. He wouldn’t have picked rain to be Stevie’s thing, no. Maybe el arcoíris that comes afterwards. Soft around the edges and filled with bright colors and overall beautiful. (Not that it lasts. The good things usually don’t.) But the rain sort of works, he guesses.
Rain can be gentle, quiet pitter-patters that children fall asleep to, but it can be heavy, too. Angry, with lightning cracking and thunder booming, and, yes, Steven is just as capable of that, if he so chooses. (Even Marc knows better than to piss Steven off.) But he chooses not to be, and that’s what makes him different. He doesn’t choose to be the flood, rather, he chooses to be the little dew drops that hang on the leaves.
The next time it rains, he thinks of Steven.
Maybe that’s the very thing that starts this whole shitshow.
Jake doesn’t mean to pull Steven to the front. It starts to rain, and he thinks of Steven. He doesn’t know how to introduce himself quite yet. Long walks help him think, and since Marc has discovered his existence—and taken it actually sort of okay—he’s actually encouraged him to front a little more, when Steven is well asleep, on the promise that he won’t get them into trouble unless absolutely necessary. Which is surprising to Jake, and more than a little uncomfortable, this—this kind gesture, this trust that he’s willingly placing into Jake’s hands. It makes his mouth feel dry, the words he can’t say curling up and dying on his tongue. He doesn’t need to say it, though, because Marc already knows.
But he’ll admit he does like his night walks. He even lights a cigarette on the occasion, watching the smoke curl lazily from his lips up into the clouded sky. He doesn’t stay too long, doesn’t push it; Marc and Steven have already lost enough sleep in their lives and he won’t take more from them than he already has. Just an hour or two of watching the night sky, then turning in for the night. He’s passing by the alley when he hears it.
A muffled whimper and the sound of a gun cocking, almost inaudible under the light rain. His ears practically perk up at it, his head cocking like a bloodhound that’s caught a scent. If he could see himself, he’d be willing to bet his pupils are dilating. Jake grins darkly around the cigarette in his mouth, and takes a sharp right into the darkness.
The only light is the dull yellow street lamp that pours in from behind him, stretching his shadow out long and thin like a funhouse mirror’s reflection. His figure is outlined sharply, the only thing visible about him is the faint red glow from the end of his cigarette that bounces off his black eyes.
There’s some sort of scuffle that stops immediately at the sight of his presence, two gazes that turn to stare at him, one furious and the other hopeful. Both afraid.
Jake takes one last pull before carelessly flicking the stub away.
“B-back the fuck up, man!” The assailant sputters, swinging the gun round to point at his chest. Kneeling in front of him is a younger man with half his face busted open, practically a kid, and a wallet lying open on the ground between them with some pitiful crumpled dollar bills soaking in a puddle. The rage that lives curled up inside him thrums hot in his chest, batters away inside his ribcage and begs to be let out. But first. Jake pointedly jerks his chin at the boy, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.
“Scram.”
With a choked sob of relief, the kid stumbles to his feet unsteadily, clutching his side, and staggers away to disappear around the corner.
“Hey!” The robber barks, but the boy is long gone, and Jake doesn’t move. “Should have minded your own fucking business, asshole.” The man spits with vitriol and unearned arrogance. “Now you’re gonna take his place.”
Jake twitches his head to his shoulder and cracks his neck.
Then the first shot rings out.
He slams the guy against the dumpster behind him with enough force to nearly send the thing sliding, having ducked under the first shot.
“You wanna put someone down right, pedazo de mierda?” Jake sneers in his face, watching the color drain from his face with no small amount of satisfaction. “Don’t stop the gun here,” he drives a gloved fist into his sternum, pulling out a pained cry, “you aim it between their eyes,” he grabs the wrist with the gun in his hand and slams it into his face, “and you make them stare down the barrel.” And again. Red spurts from the guy’s nose. Blood drips into the rainwater under their feet.
“Not that you’ll get the chance to try again,” he promises darkly.
The assailant roars and lunges with his free arm around Jake’s waist to send them toppling to the ground and another shot rings out in the darkness.
He can feel it, the moment Marc awakens, shooting upright from the dark space he’d been curled up in and shaking the bleariness from the edges of his consciousness, mind sharpening in an instant. For a second it’s blazingly hot, and there’s sand under his boots—Jake roughly shakes the half-formed memory away.
Not now, Marine. He fits a foot under the man on top of him and shoves him off, sending him sprawling.
What the hell are you doing? Marc barks at him.
Little busy here. He rolls away from another bullet that makes a hole right where he’d been lying two seconds ago.
Give me the body, Jake, his alter demands, and tugs at him, out of habit it must be, since that shit doesn’t fly with Jake but he’s sure Marc has probably said it to Steven on multiple occasions.
Piss off, he snaps, and sweeps his leg around to kick the gun from the asshole’s hand. The tug grows more insistent.
We need to get the fuck out of here!
“And let this little malparido get away?” Jake spits to empty air, darting forward when the guy scrambles for the gun.
It starts to pour.
The droplets soak into his hat first, then his hair.
The ground rocks violently underneath him as he struggles for control and tries to keep the man from killing them as they wrestle for the gun, gun over head over heels.
FUCK OFF. He gives a hard shove, but Marc grabs on and yanks and—
—warm rain drips from the leaves onto his face and—
(—a delighted grin scrunching his nose when the rain kisses his lashes—)
—no it’s his buddy’s blood when the IED blew the—
(—it starts to rain and he thinks of—)
—damp curls hang in his eyes.
Jake loses his footing.
Steven pours into the gap left from the chaos, stunned from the switch and blinking away the fuzzy edges of where he’d been tucked away, present just long enough to catch the gun across his cheek. His head snaps to the side, pain exploding in the side of his face and vertigo making his head spin and a minute ago he’d been sleeping and now it’s wet and cold and what the bloody hell is going right now!? Marc? Who is that!?
They both feel it, the jolt of Steven’s sudden awareness, the sickening feeling of his painshockfearconfusion and their eyes catch the glint of the gun coming back around and they work in tandem to yank Steven back into the safety of their head and take their place in front of him. Marc catches the man’s arm, and Jake goes in for the swing, resulting in a very satisfying crunch under his knuckles.
A stray hand gnarls in the collar of his jacket and pulls them along with the momentum from the blow to crash the side of their head against the damp brick wall. Marc is in charge on that side of the body so the impact knocks him off his feet and sends him reeling into the back of their head, smarting from the sharp crack on their skull. Jake slips into that side, too, with the ease of pulling on a glove, and grabs the man with both hands and sends a knee into his gut.
The gun clatters to the ground when he twists the man’s wrist with a vengeance, after kicking his kneecap in, he scoops it up and shoves it into the soft part of flesh under his jaw. He hobbles away, Jake presses forward, and he corners him with the wall behind him, the dumpster to his right, and Jake in front of him so there’s nowhere left to go.
His cheek stings and his head is buzzing and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding from both. The hits throb in time with his heartbeat, twin pulses; it’s a strike against Marc and Steven both, which is more than unforgivable.
“Open your mouth, hijueputa,” he spits through bared teeth, and when the miserable piece of shit doesn’t listen, he forces his mouth open with one hand, his grip slippery and rain-slick, and shoves the gun in between his teeth with the other. His finger settles firmly on the trigger and suddenly—
—there’s a desperate probing behind his eyes. (dew drops and summer puddles and damp curls) Jake peers at the broken window just next to the man’s head, a jagged piece of glass just long enough for his reflection to sit unmarred by cracks around it.
“Please don’t.” It’s barely above a whisper. Steven’s eyes are wide and red-rimmed and pleading and he’s got both hands against the glass. He looks pained and pale and a thin line of red runs down the side of his face like blood rain, like a tear.
“Jake.” He says softly.
Jake looks him in the eye, calm like the eye of a hurricane.
Then he blows the guy’s brains out the back of his head.