Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationship:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 1 of Joaquin/Kevin
Stats:
Published:
2017-06-24
Completed:
2017-06-25
Words:
2,730
Chapters:
2/2
Comments:
41
Kudos:
423
Bookmarks:
30
Hits:
4,606

hands up, it's a stick up

Summary:

The cop rolls up behind him and steps out of his car, flashlight already switched on. Joaquin holds his paperwork and waits patiently, already painting on his most respectful expression. The flashlight’s beam hits Joaquin’s face, and just as he opens his mouth to ask if there’s a problem, he recognizes the officer as none other Sherriff Keller, AKA his boyfriend’s fucking dad.

Joaquin almost shits himself.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Being a gang member and a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, you’d think Joaquin wouldn’t give a fuck that a cop pulled him over, that this would either be business as usual or a thorn in his side… But to tell the truth, Joaquin really doesn’t interact with the police much on any level, and getting a ticket isn't exactly something anyone likes to do, regardless of what their rap sheet looks like.

… It also doesn’t help that it’s late as fuck and dark as fuck, and that the cop caught Joaquin on one of the most desolate roads that lie between the Southside and the North Side. (And Joaquin’s also ninety-seven percent sure that he wasn’t even speeding or doing anything else illegal.)

He pulls to the side of the road and kills his bike, already reaching into the glove box for his insurance and registration. Unlike some of the other Serpents, Joaquin likes to keep his shit straight when it comes to stuff like his bike and insurance and shit like that. They always laugh at him when he says that he’s been at the DMV, but he doesn’t really give a shit. Swear on his life, a third of the Serpents’ arrests stem from insurance violations and driving without a license.

The cop rolls up behind him and steps out of his car, flashlight already switched on. Joaquin holds his paperwork and waits patiently, already painting on his most respectful expression. The flashlight’s beam hits Joaquin’s face, and just as he opens his mouth to ask if there’s a problem, he recognizes the officer as none other Sherriff Keller, AKA his boyfriend’s fucking dad.

Joaquin almost shits himself.

“Can I see your license and registration, son?” Sheriff Keller says, and Joaquin hands it over almost too quickly. Sheriff Keller scans the license, registration, and insurance with a keen eye, face blank and almost cold. Joaquin swallows heavily and watches him, nervous because he’s not even sure what this is about. He should ask, but he doesn’t want to make the sheriff suspicious- he’s already wearing his Serpent jacket, for fuck’s sake.

“Joaquin DeSantos,” Sheriff Keller muses, reading off of Joaquin’s driver’s license. Joaquin nods and tries to meet his eyes, but it freaks him out when he sees that Kevin and his father seem to have the same eye color. He was with Kevin not too long ago, and it brings back memories of everything they did together.

Joaquin opts to be polite instead. “Yes, sir,” and he’s proud of himself for not stuttering.

Sheriff Keller hands Joaquin his paperwork, but keeps the light trained right on Joaquin’s face. It’s so bright that Joaquin has to squint, but he tries to keep his expression neutral and even mildly apologetic anyway.

“You a Serpent?” Sheriff Keller asks suddenly, catching Joaquin off-guard.

“Sir?” Joaquin asks, even though part of him really wants to blurt out, “Haven’t you seen my jacket?”

“Are you a Southside Serpent? A gang member?” Keller repeats, Joaquin can tell by the tone in his voice and the look on his face that Kevin’s dad isn’t fucking around this time.

Joaquin couldn’t lie to the sheriff if he wanted to, not with the gang’s signature emblem and colors slapped across his back. “Yes, sir, I am.”

“If I run the plates and the VIN on his bike, are either the bike itself or the plates going to come back stolen?”

“No, sir,” Joaquin says immediately, almost offended until he remember what he’s got stitched onto his jacket, “I own the bike outright, and my plates are registered to me and me alone.”

Keller appraises Joaquin for a moment, and then Joaquin’s motorcycle. When he looks at Joaquin again, his expression is completely unreadable.

“You know my son?” is Sheriff Keller’s questions this time, and for the second time in the last ten minutes, Joaquin nearly passes the fuck out. He flicks a glance down to the sheriff’s holstered gun and has an idle, scary thought about just how far in the middle of nowhere they are, about just how alone Joaquin is right now.

Joaquin could lie, but he’s not that stupid. None of what’s happening here was an accident. Shit, Keller was probably watching Joaquin when he left Kevin’s place a half-hour ago, probably tailing him even as he dropped by the library and left some books in the return bin outside. If Joaquin lies, it could very well get him killed. These days in Riverdale, a dead body stuffed in a Southside Serpent jacket may not even make the paper.

“I know Kevin,” and Joaquin’s voice is so quiet as he says it. He and Sheriff Keller stare at each other for what feels like a solid minute, Keller’s cool expression never once breaking as he looks into Joaquin’s eyes (or really, his fucking soul, seriously, this man’s glare is on a whole other level).

“I looked you up,” Sheriff Keller begins, and Joaquin is swept with a mild but still very consuming wave of nausea. “You only have two arrests on your record, just vandalism and underaged drinking. Teenaged shit, really, but still, they’re arrests. You’re a Serpent for fuck’s sake.” And now Keller sounds a little more pissed, and his expression shifts to something that reminds Joaquin of both anger and some shade of sadness at the same time.

“Sheriff Keller,” Joaquin begins, and he’s trying to think about the weight of each and every word he’s about to say, “I know-”

Kevin’s dad barrels right over him. “But you also volunteer twice a week at Southside Elementary in exchange for extra credit on your English tests. One of the teachers there smiles when she talks about you, and she says that you’re patient with the kids. You read library books, and you even return them on time. You mostly make B’s and C’s, but you have an A in your math class and auto shop. The principle of Southside High says that he only hauls your ass in his office for the occasional fight, but even so, he swears that you don’t like to start trouble. Understandable in a school like that, if you ask me.” His volume drops down to something soft, not unlike a whisper: “You’re from the Southside and you’re a Serpent, and you like to read, and you’re my son’s boyfriend.”

Keller’s face is softer now, and Joaquin’s not so afraid to meet his eye anymore. They look at each other for a while again, neither of them speaking, but this time, there’s no malice in the silence. Joaquin glances back in the direction of the main road, headlights just barely visible through the thicket of trees that runs along most of the roads out this way, thinking of what he could possibly say to Kevin’s father at this point. But it ends up that Joaquin doesn’t have to speak, because once again, the sheriff is hellbent on doing all the talking.

“If you want to date my son, you do it the right way,” he begins, squaring up his shoulders and setting his posture in a way that reminds Joaquin so much of the way Kevin settles himself when he’s saying something he thinks is important. “You don’t park down the block and make him walk to be picked up, you don’t have him lie and tell me that he and Betty are going to get milkshakes for the eighth time in a week and that he’ll just walk to the diner- you come to the front door and you look me in the eyes and you shake my hand like a man, got it?”

Joaquin is absolutely flabbergasted, but fuck, yeah, he’s definitely got it.

“Y-Yes, sir,” Joaquin stutters, wide-eyed and nodding stupidly. Keller nods back, just once, and then sets his jaw again. His expression is hard, but Joaquin can see some softness hiding in his eyes.

“Good. I’m glad we had this talk.” The ice melts just as fast as it froze, and Kevin’s dad looks every bit the gentle giant that Kevin makes him out to be when he tells Joaquin stories about his family. “Now get home safe, and make sure you tell Kevin goodnight before you go to bed. He likes shit like that, even if he doesn’t say it.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, softly, almost like an afterthought, “My boy’s tough, but he’s sensitive too. I want to see him treated right.”

“Of course,” Joaquin says, smiling in spite of himself this time, because yeah, Kevin really does like stuff like that. He always smiles all sloppy and stupid, especially if they’ve been up way too late whispering on Skype. “I always do, and I always will.”

Keller nods, and Joaquin would like to think that the sheriff smiles at him just the smallest bit before he starts walking off back to his cruiser.

Joaquin's got his hand on his keys when Keller calls to him over his shoulder.

“Joaquin,” he says, and Joaquin looks at him. “Kevin and I always make a point of having dinner at the house together on Sunday. I expect to see you there tomorrow, six p.m. sharp. Don’t be late.”

There’s no doubt about whether or not Sheriff Keller is smiling this time.

Chapter 2

Summary:

Maybe that’s what’s making Joaquin feel like muddy footprints on a white rug: all of the home-ness of the whole place.

Notes:

essentially, joaquin is sitting in the kellers' dining room thinking about kevin's house, how different their lives are, and what he wants for his future.

Chapter Text

It’s strange for Joaquin, sitting there at the Kellers’ too-big dining room table, a bowl of homemade beef stew steaming in front of him with a basket of buttered rolls within grasping distance. He feels out of place in his dark t-shirt and jeans, almost like a stain. There’s nothing spectacular about the Keller residence, so he’s having trouble understanding what’s got him so bothered about being here. Don’t get Joaquin wrong, it’s a beautiful house, and bigger than anything Joaquin’s ever lived in- it’s just… a man and his teenaged son live here alone. There’s no table cloths or even any cloth napkins for their “nice” Sunday dinner, and all of the furniture looks clean, but well-loved and lived-on, too. Any decorating that’s present was obviously done a long time ago, back when there was a woman’s touch present in the house, and Joaquin knows this because Sheriff Keller definitely doesn’t strike him as the type that likes to spend his free time shopping in Home Goods and picking out drapes at the fabric store.

Maybe that’s what’s making Joaquin feel like muddy footprints on a white rug: all of the home-ness of the whole place. When Joaquin was a little boy, he bounced around from trailer to trailer with his unreliable mother and (somewhat) more reliable older brother. He never lived in an actual house, never had his own bedroom like Kevin does, never sat on the same couch night after night for years on end. There are actual pictures displayed on the tables and shelves at the Keller house, candid snapshots of Kevin as a little boy, grinning ear to ear with missing teeth and a funny little haircut; professional photographs of a much younger Sheriff Keller, his chest puffed out with pride after being named Riverdale’s new sheriff decades ago… portraits of Kevin’s mother, someone Kevin can’t even talk about without getting choked up in the process. Joaquin has maybe five pictures of himself from when he was young, and they sure as fuck aren’t tacked up on a wall somewhere in the Southside.

When they were setting the table, Joaquin went to put his glass down at the seat directly to the right of the chair at the head of the table. Kevin scolded him softly, switching his glass to the opposite chair across the table as he said that he’d been sitting at the seat Joaquin had originally tried to take since he was a little boy. Joaquin has vivid memories of where he took his meals as a child: in the backseat of a car, a carton of French fries wedged between his knees; on various couches, a bowl of some sort of canned soup or sugary cereal balanced carefully in his lap so as not to spill anything and potentially piss off Boyfriend Number Twenty-Whatever that his mom had them living with at the time; one time, even on a bench in the sheriff’s office as they waited for their mom to come pick him up after a deputy had found Joaquin and his brother trying to run off from Pop’s with burgers and sodas without paying first. (To this day, he’s pretty sure that Pop Tate didn’t have him and his brother picked up because he was pissed. Joaquin would have called the police too if he found a couple of dirty, skinny elementary school kids trying to steal food with no parents in sight at fucking midnight.)

(To this day, Joaquin can also remember how Pop Tate pulled he and his brother aside after they decided to come into the diner again a few weeks after the incident and told the both of them that if they were hungry but didn’t have the money to pay for whatever they ate, he’d be more than willing to work something out with them.)

Joaquin didn’t want to be bitter, wasn’t bitter about the fact that Kevin had grown up in the same house all of his life. It just… amazed him that people can live like that. That people can put down roots so early in life. Joaquin had just recently gotten his own trailer, and while not all of the money he used to pay the rent on it was gained through legal means, he was still incredibly proud of himself for having a place that was his, a place that no one else could call the shots in. Some of the Serpents lived like slobs, empty beer bottles on every surface, dirty dishes always piled in the sink, but not Joaquin; Joaquin kept his place clean and nice, inside and out. He mows the lawn when the grass gets long, and he patched the rusty spots on the sides of the trailer to make it look less trashy, and every week, Joaquin wipes down the counters and vacuums the floor and changes the sheets on his bed, all by himself. Growing up, there was never any normalcy or any stability in the places that he lived- but now, in his home, he wants everything to be presentable twenty-four-seven.

Really, in his heart of hearts, Joaquin hopes that Kevin will come to his little trailer one day and see what Joaquin has already made for himself. He’d never say it out loud, but God, Joaquin wants Kevin to be proud of him so bad that it hurts. Kevin makes good grades, and he’s in clubs and activities, and he’s got friends that do incredible things to boot… It’s hard for Joaquin to contend for even just an inch of Kevin’s pride and approval, competing amongst such a talented pool, but Joaquin’s really trying. He studies so hard to turn his C’s into B’s, and even though Shakespeare and The Grapes of Wrath and all of that shit is so boring and hard to understand, Joaquin reads it and tries to pick out all the symbolism anyway, because English is his worst class and he wants Kevin to see that he can improve and work through problems on all on his own. Every time that Joaquin even so much as thinks about Kevin’s eyes lighting up and him saying that he’s proud, his chest hurts.

So maybe, for now, Joaquin is muddy footprints on a white rug. But he’s trying to clean up his shoes, and bleach out the stains that he left behind in the first place, even if Kevin and Kevin’s dad and the Serpents don’t know it yet. He wants to be better, and he wants to get his act together, for real, and not just by the shitty Southside standards. Joaquin’s not exactly college material, and he could never work an office job, but… but he could be good at something, he’s sure of that.

He’s also sure that he wants Kevin to be standing next to him when he finally is good at something. In fact, Joaquin’s been beginning to think that he wants Kevin to stand beside him then and before that, and even after.

Because he loves Kevin.

Notes:

joaquin and kevin are my babies, and i have this idea in my head that kevin's dad would want kevin to be happy with joaquin after he figures out that joaquin hasn't committed any felonies.

Series this work belongs to: