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Jax thinks, sometimes, that all life is is a series of one bullshit event after the godawful other. That this whole thing is some cosmic joke; if there is a god, they’re laughing now, cackling themself into a fit as they watch Jax stride tense and coiled as a snake out of Tristan’s apartment building and back to his truck. The whole body of it rattles like a tin can when he slams the door behind him after throwing himself into the driver’s seat, and he wastes a good two minutes sitting there stewing in his rage and his worry.
Empty. Fucking- empty and wrecked to high hell, glass all over the floor that’d crunched under his boots when he’d first taken a step inside.The smell in the air had been old and stale, and he’d known the second he’d taken a whiff that he was the first person to step foot in that apartment in over a week. It ticked at him, picked away at something inside of his chest where the beast growled impatient and angry. It’d been over a goddamn week since Tristan had disappeared off of the face of the fucking planet, and Jax hadn’t done a thing about it.
He grips at his steering wheel now with harsh hands and grinds his teeth into dust- it’s flash images in his head, exhausting each and every possible scenario in vivid detail like some sadistic movie stuck on loop all just for him. It always goes back to the same thing, the same idea- he can’t stop it, hasn’t been able to for years, and he hisses silent curses at himself that that’s what his panic brain reverts to every goddamn time something happens that’s even a hint out of what he’s come to expect as normal from his surroundings.
A twitch of his nose, a curl of his lip, and he’s jerking his head with a soft growl before lifting a hand to run over his face. He holds it over his eyes and breathes- the breaths he sucks in are choppy and ragged like the jiggle of his leg, and the more he focuses on trying to keep it together the worse he gets until he’s ten seconds away from putting his whole fist through the driver’s side window.
Fucking ridiculous. This is why you don’t do this shit. He’s told himself enough. This is why you don’t let them get under your skin- your stupid ass never knows how to do anything half way, and the fear he feels curling around beneath his ribs at the prospect of losing him- again - is no exception.
There’s got to be something. There’s got to be a place he would have gone. Somewhere he would’ve disappeared to in his moment of blind rage. He couldn’t- it couldn’t-
Jax pauses. Stops everything- the bounce in his leg, the clench of his jaw, his stuttering inhales. What was- that thing Tristan had said, the day after the zoo. What was that-
His hand slowly drops into his lap, the fingers of his other coming to curl around his wrist like a vice. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking-
Jax swallows, licks his tongue over his top lip and huffs a bitter, near disbelieving noise. It’s a hunch. It’s a goddamn hunch and he prays to that bastard up above that’s enjoying the show that he’s wrong, but it’s one he can’t shake until he tests it. Because there’s a feeling in his bones, creeping along beside the lust for death. For retribution. And it’s sick and moves like sludge and chills him to his very core, an instinctual knowledge that something is wrong that he can’t let go of no matter how much he tries to push it aside. So he lets it lead him instead. Sits up with a hard sniff and yanks his duffel into the passenger’s seat beside him before he starts up the truck and swerves out onto the road.
He ends up in a fast food parking lot with his computer laid out on his lap, and he spends his time scanning his eyes over pages and pages of decrypted government files, looking, searching, until- bingo was his fucking name. Jax scrolls the mouse and clicks on the thumbnail, and it pulls up a face he’d seen only a few times before, but it was enough to burn like a brand and stick to his subconscious. It earns a bitter, huffed laugh and a shake of his head, and he does a bit more digging before he’s satisfied enough with what information he’s got to close the laptop, shove it back into his duffel bag, and continue on his way.
John Logan- Lykaion officer and part time government ass kisser, likes to prance his way around town in fancy suits with newly polished shoes like he owns the whole damn block. Jax finds him as he’s exiting a sub shop with a bag of food in his hand- like clockwork, this fucking guy-, and he tails him for a good few minutes, weaving in and out of the crowd with his hood up and his gaze locked on the fuckers back. He’s got his scent clogging up his nose like a fucked up drainpipe. Asshole isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
He steps up when Logan makes to turn right and gets an arm around his throat- Logan chokes on a gasp and flails, but Jax darts to the side and hides them both in an alley before it catches anyone’s attention.
Logan stumbles over his own feet when Jax pushes him with a rough hand deeper inside, spluttering indignantly all the while. Jax just watches, lip curled.
“What in the hell do you think you’re d-” the words die in his throat when Logan finally gains his footing and turns around, gets a good, long look at Jax’s face and goes sheet white.
“You.”
“Me,” Jax agrees, and silences him before he can speak again with a right hook to the temple.
Logan stays out cold, slumped in the back seat the whole drive; Jax eventually pulls around a decrepit, abandoned apartment complex and parks the truck, twists around in his seat to shoot Logan a look and scoffs to himself. The fucker isn’t heavy to hoist over one shoulder, and Jax drags him out of the car and carries him inside, down down down a set of stairs he finds that lead into a basement that hasn’t yet collapsed in on itself, where no one can hear a scream deep inside belly of the beast.
Logan gets dumped unceremoniously on the floor against the wall, and it takes a good fifteen extra minutes until he finally comes to enough to be coherent. He’s a blabbering, blinking mess in the beginning, and Jax does nothing but stand and watch with an impassive face, hood down around his shoulders and baring his head like a threat. The shadows cut his features into sharp, angry angles and lines, and Logan looks up at him and blanches once again before he tries to reign himself in like he isn’t isn’t near to pissing himself, pushing up against the wall in an effort to get upright.
“You,” he forces out, paws at the wall a little harder and stumbles to his feet. Jax, this time around, says nothing.
“All this time,” Logan continues. “You were right here. We- the searching and the digging we did, we’ve been doing , and you-” He cuts himself off with an incredulous laugh, more wheeze than anything. “Oh, you son of a bitch.”
“Where is he,” Jax bypasses- isn’t here to play games. Logan squints his eyes at him and furrows his brows.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about-”
“Don’t,” Jax says, halfway to a snarl, and looks at him with wild, glassy eyes full of rage. “Don’t do that shit with me. Where is he.”
He can see the gears turning in Logan’s head, parses out the exact moment everything clicks into place, and Logan’s eyes widen a fraction. He knows. But still he doesn’t cave. Just shakes his head, slow and steady like an adult denying their child their favorite toy.
Jax’s nose twitches.
“Listen,” he says, glances away at the opposite wall. “You know you’re not walking out of this. You can make this easy for yourself, give me what I want and I’ll make it quick, okay, or you can make it hard,” he turns to look back at Logan, “And I promise you you will be begging me to put a bullet in your head before the hour is up.”
Logan scoffs like the mere notion is ridiculous, like he hasn’t seen exactly what Jax is capable of first hand, and shakes his head again, a tiny hint of a thing.
“You program soldiers,” he says, and Jax clocks the way his hand slips every so slowly towards his back. “Always were so damn full of yourselves.”
Jax is moving before he’s even got the gun aimed enough to squeeze the trigger, darts forward, gets Logan’s arm with both hands, and snaps . The whole thing breaks in one swift motion without any extra effort, and Logan is left screaming out with the pain and stumbling backwards into the wall. Jax snatches the gun before it falls from his limp hand and watches as he sinks down to the floor, staring with wide eyes at his forearm where the front half of it dangles like a loose thread, bone exposed and wiry muscle dripping out from under strips of torn flesh. Jax takes a step in his direction and transfers the gun into his right hand, tilting his head to the side.
“Where is he.”
“I d- don’t-”
A bullet blows a hole in his thigh. Jax’s finger twitches hungrily on the trigger. His teeth ache for blood.
“Where.”
“Fuck. Fuck you , man-”
Jax stares at him long and hard and flicks the safety on, moves his hands around to lift up his shirt and tuck the gun into the back of his jeans. He takes another step closer, and then another, until he’s crouching down at Logan’s side and leaning into nice and close to the side of his head. He can smell the blood curdling terror radiating off of him like a shitty cologne, mixed in with the sweat that’s dripping off of his forehead into his eyes and the piss soaking into his expensive suit pants.
“I know you think you’ve got this all figured out, yeah,” Jax breathes against the shell of his ear, looking past his head at the wall with unseeing eyes full of all the images of what he could do to him. “That you can take the pain. That’s what you were trained for, big tough guy like you- torture doesn’t work, right? You’ll take the pain until you die from it and you get out clean without saying a word. But the thing is, see-” Jax lifts a hand to Logan’s broken arm; his fingers slide against the dripping blood and gore, and they give the bone a few light taps that has Logan gagging on the vomit caught in his throat and a cry. Jax’s fingers creep deeper into the mess until they find the nerve, and Logan shrieks . His whole body jerks and spasms, and Jax makes it last until just before he blacks out before he pulls his hand back and reaches up to grasp ahold of Logan’s jaw with blood stained fingers instead, turning his head so he can look him in the eye.
“I’m good at keeping men alive past things they shouldn’t be able to live through.”
Logan, hazy and near delirious, stares back at him with drool and stomach acid dripping down his chin, and Jax sees the exact moment when he realizes he’s well and truly done for.
“ Easy ,” he coughs out, gags again. Jax moves his hand away before the vomit flows down his chin. He’s made his choice.
“Good boy,” Jax tells him and shifts in place, leaning in a little more. His skin feels like it’s on fire, vibrating with a fury he usually fights to keep chained. Logan will not, after all, die easy today.
“Now, you tell me where Tristan is.”