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Biker watches from afar as Jacket leans over the bathroom sink, gripping his head like it's going to burst open and spill his brains all over the floor of the shitty motel they're staying in some 350 odd miles outside of Miami. He's been standing there for over an hour, and Biker's a little annoyed because he's had to piss for the last 15 minutes now, but he can't bring himself to make him move.
The man had gotten a bullet removed from his brain a few weeks ago, after all. The stitches had only barely healed over, making him look even more like Frankenstein's monster than he did previously, sans bolts coming out of his neck. Biker had been through his fair share of injury but biased as he was, he was fairly certain even the busted lip and broken cheek bone he'd gotten from Jacket swinging a golf club at his head two months ago wasn't as bad as whatever the fuck he had going on right now.
So there he sat, flipping through television channels while trying to find something watchable, scratching absentmindedly at the track marks on his arms (as he tended to do when he was fuck all bored out of his mind).
Eventually he lands on some shitty horror flick, deciding rolling his eyes at laughably bad visual effects was better than whatever other garbage was playing that night. He barely even notices when Jacket joins him on the world's most uncomfortable couch, clutching onto the front his shirt with a grimace on his normally deadpan face.
Biker wordlessly moves to go use the bathroom, noticing the speckles of blood at the bottom of the sink as he washes his hands and dries them off on his pants. When he returns to the couch, Jacket is practically in the same exact position as he'd left him, knuckles white with what has to be either anxiety or pain. Maybe both, for all he knows.
Though Jacket's eyes stay fully focused on the TV screen, Biker watches him at half glance, forgetting all about the movie he's put on in favor of the deeply weird and unsettling individual he'd suddenly decided was the person he wanted to run away with.
Biker hates him. Like, a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Like this man is so fucking annoying in how he never fucking talks and always takes things too literally and stares at him like he's trying to blow him up into a million pieces with his mind even if all he did was tell him that he's going to take the couch tonight so he can take the bed. He is sometimes so dull that Biker wants to start chewing his own hand off and hitting shit, wondering how on Earth this was the man who singlehandedly wiped out at least 50% of the Russian mafia population in Miami.
But something about him compels him. Biker may constantly want to put a meat cleaver through his trachea, but Jacket fascinates him in more ways than he thinks he can express, and he doesn't exactly know how to feel about that.
What he knows about Jacket is limited; the dude says fuck all about anything, let alone himself, but there are things he can tell from what context he's got.
He has a girl. Or at least... had. He hears him mutter her name sometimes in his nightmares, some of them he sleeps through and others of them leave him gasping for air, like he's just been strangled (which he hasn't, stop looking at him like that).
He's ex military. He's seen and heard the tags that jingle beneath his shirt, never close enough to read what's on them but he knows they exist. There's some guilt there, too, he can tell from the way he rubs them between his fingers when he worries (like he's doing now), as if he's remembering something (or someone) that he wants to stop thinking about but can't.
He's got some sort of chronic pain. Even without the bullet to the forehead, he's always rubbing at his lower back, as if trying to iron out some sort of crinkle there. He takes 4 ibuprofens instead of the recommended 2 every day, both when he wakes up and before he goes to bed. Biker's done much, much worse but when he does it, it's to have fun, not to attempt to bring himself just shy of functional.
There's a... sadness to him, as well. The kind you only see in those pretty windows at churches, something Biker only vaguely remembers considering he hasn't stepped foot in one in at least two decades. Efficient of a killer as he is, Jacket doesn't seem all that proud of his work, and Biker wonders just what is it that made him want to join 50 Blessings in the first place. He knows why he personally did it; house parties on ecstasy get a little old the hundredth or so time you've done it, and he'd been itching for some action (which he got– for a while, at least. he tended to get bored of things very, very quickly). But after being around him for a week straight now, he couldn't fathom an actual reason as to why Jacket signed up to kill Russians in the first place, having chalked it up to merely him having residual angers from his time in the Hawai'ian Conflict Era (but even then, that still didn't really feel all that in character for him).
He's momentarily brought out of his thoughts by a particularly loud scream from both of the characters on the screen, seemingly after they'd been caught by whatever it was that had been chasing them. He honestly can't bring himself to care, though, slipping back into his own head.
He almost wonders if Jacket thinks about him the same way that he thinks about Jacket. He did agree to run away with him, after all, even though their last encounter ended in both of them beating the ever loving shit out of each other. Surely there had to be something Jacket saw in him to make him want to stick around this long instead of ditching the moment Biker's back was turned to him, though honestly he wasn't entirely sure what that something would be either.
That wasn't info Biker would be getting from him any time soon, though. He could barely get Jacket to communicate what he wanted for dinner, let alone get anything remotely sensitive out of him.
...His answer was pizza, for the record. Every time he's asked. He'll eat anything Biker offers, but if given the opportunity, he always chooses pizza. Biker can't tell if he's fucking with him, or if he's just that into it, but he doesn't bother to ask, always getting different types every time and always watching in mild amusement as Jacket picks off any and all bell pepper pieces before he even considers putting it in his mouth.
"...Th's movie's really bad," Jacket suddenly says, eyes not moving from the screen whatsoever as he continues to grip his shirt with one hand and rub his dog tags with the other. "Blood d'sn't jus ooze like that when you decapitate some'n."
Biker blinks, utterly fucking floored because this is the first fucking time Jacket's ever said anything to him unprompted (and what he's pretty sure is the first time he's talked today, period) and it's because of a stupid fucking movie he put on and isn't even watching because how could he when he's got the world's most fascinating fucking specimen sitting on the couch with him?
"Didn't put it it on because it was good. Toddlers with chainsaws could do better than this," Biker retorts, vaguely gesturing to the TV as the murderer or whatever kills the other person by slitting their throat, and suddenly he unfortunately can't help but agree when he realizes the blood's just dripping down the poor sap's neck when the cut that was made clearly would've gone through their jugular.
Jacket merely shrugs, an action that seems to make him miraculously even more miserable than before. Biker wonders if he's gone through his ritualistic Advil intake yet, getting up again to go to the bathroom and get the bottle. But when he picks it up, he immediately realizes it's empty, and he feels a blossom of pity start to form in the chasm of shitty alcohol and methamphetamines he calls a soul.
"Hey, I'll be back. I'm gonna get something to drink," he calls out as he moves to grab both his helmet and his keys, Jacket throwing up a thumbs up from where he was sitting on the couch.
It isn't a complete lie, because when he came back from the 24 hour drug store way further down the road, he was nursing a bottle of the cheapest vodka available for purchase (which ended up being green apple flavored and on sale for 33% off. score.). But he also placed a bottle of generic brand ibuprofen in Jacket's lap as he sat back down on the couch, the biggest bottle they had in stock.
"...Th'nx," Jacket mumbles out, immediately moving to pop the top off and remove the tamper proof seal before pouring 4 of them into his hand.
"Sure. You uh. Need water?" Biker asked, raising an eyebrow as he took another sip out of his bottle. Jacket merely shook his head, putting the pills in his mouth two at a time and swallowing them dry.
Biker couldn't help but cringe at that, letting out a soft 'eugh' as Jacket closes the bottle and put it on the small side table next to him. The effects weren't immediate, but he at least seemed less agonized by the time the movie they were watching had ended, opting to keep the channel on to watch the sequel to it that had inexplicably been made.
The effects for this one were just as awful, and Biker is starting to think that might have been the ""appeal"" from the very start. Jacket at least seems mildly amused by it, quietly pointing out inaccuracies as he sees fit while Biker either nods along or backs him up. He's normally annoyed by people talking during movies (which is why despite his plethora of fellow dirtbags he called 'friends', he always went to the movie theater alone), but he guesses he wants to humor Jacket just this once.
At some point, he starts getting lost in his thoughts again. It's been about a week since they ditched Miami, ping ponging around different cities while trying to make sure neither the cops nor 50 Blessings can catch their trail. Jacket's loaded from all the cash he stole from that mafia boss he killed, but that money won't last them forever, and he's trying to think of a more permanent solution to their whole fucking mess.
First order of business was going to be getting out of Florida, which wouldn't be all that difficult. Last he checked, they were approaching the border of Georgia anyhow, and he figures if they keep going as they have been, they won't draw too much attention to themselves. He wasn't really sure where they'd stop, though. Major cities were definitely out of the question, but he doesn't think he could stand to live in the middle of fuck all nowhere, either, considering how much of a party animal he is.
Eh, they'd burn that bridge when they got to it.
He figures he can get into dealing for money again. It wouldn't be the first time, and he wouldn't have any real qualms against doing it. Only issue would be having to make new connections in a new state, but he figures that if he could manage once, he could manage again.
He ends up capping his bottle once he's just over a third through with it, deciding that he doesn't actually want to spend all of tomorrow morning hungover. Jacket's mutterings have ceased some time since he started swimming with the sharks he calls thoughts. Biker hates to admit it, but he was kind of enjoying having him talk for a while, even if it was just him complaining about how arms don't have that much blood or how a bat to the head would have been more efficient than one to the torso.
"You heading to bed?" Biker asks him when he sees that Jacket's eyes are only half-lidded now, Jacket himself taking a moment to consider before nodding.
"I'm keeping the TV on, I'm not tired yet," Biker said, more as a statement than a warning. Jacket gives him another thumbs up as he gets off the couch, not particularly caring anyhow; he could sleep through most things that weren't The Terrors.
They would probably stay another night here before they made their way northward. Maybe get themselves some new clothes while they're at it; they've really only got the ones on their backs at the moment and Biker's starting to feel like more and more of a rat as the days go by despite the fact that he's still (attempting) to take care of himself despite their usually abysmal conditions.
...which definitely wasn't helped by the fact that he'd willingly given up the bed for the remainder of their time here. But Jacket probably needs more than he does right now anyways, pulling the spare blanket over himself as he watches Jacket don his war-torn letterman over his shoulders, opting to grab onto that instead now as he climbs into bed.
Jacket's asleep in minutes, and Biker sort of envies him as he resigns to flipping through channels again. The shitty horror movies honestly weren't nearly as entertaining without Jacket's absolutely riveting commentary and the other dredge that was on that night was bordering being so boring it was practically torturous.
He isn't phased by the tossing and turning he hears, nor the incoherent sounds Jacket makes that he both cannot and does not want to decipher. He merely stares at the TV blearily, his brain refusing to shut off as time slowly goes by.
And if Jacket once again wakes up gasping for air and ends up joining him on the couch, huddled in his own blanket and resting his head on Biker's shoulder?
...Well, that's just between the two of them.