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For the first nineteen years of his life, Jet Star believes that he is destined to be lonely.
All that changes when he finds the boy.
It’s a dreary, dreary day. The sky is cloudy and rain drizzles lazily from scattered clouds. He’s lucky to pass through Zone Five when he does; the worst of a thunderstorm is drifting the other direction. All that’s left are the gloomy residual splotches of gray in the sky.
The motorbike he took from a fallen exterminator three years ago is still serving him well. The paint may be chipped and the tires may be worn, but it still drives, and that’s all he can ask for nowadays. When he passes a shell of a house, something that looks more like a wooden shack than anything, he parks by the side of the road and dismounts.
He’s not sure what makes him stop. Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the fatigue etched behind his eyes from years alone, or maybe it’s nothing at all.
Whatever that little inkling is, it soon changes everything.
He goes inside without expecting anything. The rooms are empty, picked clean years ago, and even the walls are stripped past the drywall. It’s eerily quiet inside, but so are most places he visits these days, so why does it seem so strange?
Then there’s the sound of ragged breathing a room or two away. He’s not sure whether to investigate or hightail it out of there, but against better judgment he decides to stay and check it out.
“Hello?” he calls. His right hand hovers above his blaster in its holster.
“Help me,” a voice answers, almost too faint and strained to be heard. Tears and half-conscious panic are mixed in with the plea, and it stirs something in Jet. He’s heard that combination far too many times in this life.
It could be a trap, the smartest part of him says, to kill. To loot. You never know what they’re coming up with .
Shut up, the rest of him says.
He hunts for the voice now, checking the remnants of a kitchen. Only a stove with no burners and a chair with no legs. Nothing there.
A bathroom with a smashed toilet and a missing sink. Nobody.
After, he checks a sitting room. There’s a lamp missing its shade in the middle and a curtain rod propped against the wall, and that’s it.
But then he reaches the empty bedroom, and before he even steps foot in the doorway he sees the boy.
“Please help me,” the boy pleads, curled up on the ground in the middle of the room. He looks eleven or twelve, young. Too young for the terror in his voice. Long dark hair. Clothes a few sizes too big. Jet can’t tell if the boy’s eyes are open, if he even knows that someone else is there or not. “I don’t wanna die.”
Then he sees the blood.
He’s never been good at choosing between empathy and logic, but this time, the decision is clear. He’s kneeling by the boy’s side in four long strides.
“It’s okay,” he says, and now that he’s up close, he can see the terror in the eyes of the boy. It’s a wild look, a wounded animal’s fear. “I’m here. I’m going to help you.”
“It hurts,” the boy hiccups, and he’s near hysteria, clutching at Jet’s wrist with a frantic hand like he’s afraid Jet’s going to rise and leave him here. “I’m scared.”
Calming him down is at the forefront of Jet’s mind, because he can’t do anything for the wound until the boy stops flailing.
“It’s okay,” Jet repeats, and he lays a palm across the boy’s forehead and strokes his hair with his other hand. The difference the touch makes is instant; the panic disappears immediately and the boy’s distress seems to lessen within seconds. “You’re safe. You’re gonna be okay.”
When the boy’s eyes slip shut a moment later, Jet’s spurred into action. The wound is bad, an X sliced across the boy’s stomach. Everything becomes a blur for a long time as he treats the injury, and when it’s over, he can’t tell how long it’s been. It feels like hours and seconds all at the same time.
He'll have scars there for the rest of his life, but there’s no chance of dying anymore. Things were looking a little rocky at first, but the boy will live. Jet’s sure of it.
A dark red stains his hands, but he doesn’t leave to wash it off. There’s something inside of him, deeper than he cares to examine, that tells him to stay here until the boy wakes up again. It’s like he’s keeping an unspoken promise that was sealed the instant he walked through the doorway.
Before he’s even conscious of it, Jet Star is reaching for his own blanket to tuck around the boy and for his own pillow to place underneath his head. The blanket is so large it nearly swallows him, but there’ll be no freezing tonight for him, not if Jet has anything to do about it. Because he’s already decided that this is the place for him to be tonight, and tomorrow morning, and for as long as it takes for this boy to start to heal. Leaving him stopped being an option as soon as he heard those pleas.
Time moves like molasses for the next few hours. The boy is asleep, Jet can tell. Jet Star himself is starting to drift off as the moon and stars climb steadily to their full height, but he’s startled back awake when he hears whimpering.
“Mama,” the boy calls out. When Jet moves closer with a dim flashlight, tears running down his cheeks are illuminated. His eyes are open, but Jet can tell he’s not all there. Not really.
“Shh,” Jet tells him.
But he sees right through Jet. The boy calls out for his mother again, then his father, and then someone named Ollie. All Jet can think to do is stroke his hair again and whisper that everything will be okay. It takes longer this time, and each tear that rolls down his face feels like a strike to Jet’s heart. It’s only been a few hours and he’s attached again. It always happens this way.
But what else was he supposed to do?
~~~
Two days later, the boy starts to open up.
For the first few mornings, he doesn’t speak at all. When Jet Star heats up a can of soup and places it beside the boy, he snatches it up the moment Jet moves back. He eats like he’s worried someone is going to take it away from him.
Most of the time, he just watches. Anything Jet does is with the shadow of the boy’s stare on his back. Whether he’s folding clothes or sorting through the few bags he brought in from his bike, the boy is tracking his every move. He doesn’t talk, at least, not while he’s awake, but Jet knows he’s watching carefully from under that long dark hair.
His hair; it’s so tangled. Jet’s hands, the hands of a hairdresser, ache to brush it out for him. But he doesn’t dare do it without asking, and he knows the boy won’t answer even if Jet does make the offer. He only sits there, content to observe every action of Jet’s.
All of this is strange to Jet, especially after what he’d sworn so many years ago. For the longest time it seemed like he was bad luck for other people. Now it’s almost feeling like he’s the only thing looking out for the boy. Like he was his good luck.
Then all of a sudden, one night, another storm starts. Jet’s been sleeping near the boy, close enough to calm him from the night terrors that frequent his sleep, and this night is no different in that respect. What does change, however, is that with the first boom of thunder, the boy lunges toward Jet and clings to him like he’s the last thing on earth.
Jet’s only half-awake when it happens and he nearly shoves the boy away until he realizes what’s going on. Through the dark, it’s hard to process what’s happening, but in the glow of the next lightning strike he sees the boy’s face and it makes sense.
“Hey,” he says gently, trying to get the boy to look at him again, “It’s okay. You’re safe in here.”
But the boy is too busy crying with his face buried in Jet’s blanket to hear him. It makes Jet’s heart hurt again; he wraps an arm around the boy and pulls him close. There’s no word to describe the protective urge Jet feels now, but there’s a strong feeling in his chest that tells him it’s very unlikely he’ll be able to summon the resolve to part ways with the boy.
He knows that if he did, every thunderstorm would conjure up memories of that look on his face just as strongly as it would bring the guilt of leaving him to the forefront of Jet’s mind.
"It's okay," Jet promises, the boy sobbing against his chest, "It's not here. You're safe." It's all he can think to say.
The boy doesn't calm down until the storm lessens, and even then, he doesn't move more than an inch away from Jet. He holds a hand against the bandages over his stomach and curls up, almost with his head to his knees, and Jet thinks that his wounds are hurting him. Or maybe it's the memories that the thunder brings back, whatever horrors they are.
He doesn’t ask. He knows what it feels like for something like that to be prompted back fresh.
The next morning, he’s clingy. For the first hour after waking, he doesn’t let Jet out of his sight. Even when Jet wants to go outside and take a piss in private, he has to promise the boy he’ll be right back.
It goes on like this for a few more days. If there’s any semblance of a storm in the air, the boy won’t leave the room. Even standing up if there’s so much as a light drizzle takes copious amounts of coaxing from Jet.
Staying in one place for this long is strange to him; he hasn’t had a stationary home since he was six years old. Anyone else in his situation would have left the boy behind days ago, but he knows that’s not an option anymore, or maybe it never was in the first place. He’s always had a hard time choosing his mind over his heart, and now is just another example.
But this boy needs him.
Things begin to change one evening after a silent dinner of chicken soup. When Jet returns to the room after depositing the trash outside, the boy is sitting cross-legged on his bedroll with a comb in hand. He doesn’t say anything, but Jet’s gotten better at reading him the past few days, and he can tell what the boy means.
“You want me to comb it out for you?”
The boy nods.
So Jet complies. It takes more than two hours, working out all the knots and snarls accumulated since the last time it was brushed. The whole time, even as he tugs on stubborn tangles, the boy doesn’t say a word. Jet wonders if anyone’s ever taken the time to brush his hair before.
When the job is finished, the difference is immeasurable. The hair that was once matted and unkempt is now sleek and shiny, reaching all the way past the middle of his back. The change is visible immediately.
“Do you me to leave it down or braid it?” he asks.
The boy nods.
“Braid it?”
He nods again.
The resulting braid is thick and it takes two hair ribbons to tie it off. When he’s finished, Jet digs through his bag and finds a mirror for the boy to look in.
“Here,” he says, handing it off, and watching as the boy takes his reflection in. “Do you like it?”
The boy directs his gaze away from the mirror and looks at Jet. At first, it looks as if all he can do is nod his head again, but when tears gather across his bottom lashes, he pulls the end of the braid over his shoulder and smiles.
“Thank you,” the boy whispers.