Chapter Text
The heat here. You would hate it. Blanketing and dry. Super dry. Stretches out the skin.
I’m stunned by the contrast. Days too hot to hold a pen without it slipping from my fingers. Nights so cold I can see my breath whitening the black air in my tent. I’m writing this under layers and layers of blankets.
Been a while now. Few weeks. It’s a harsh job but someone’s gotta do it. Doesn’t make the workload easier but makes it more important. Important work is the best work. You know what I mean.
You miss me?
He sits on the plane. It’s a decent plane in some ways. Flies at least. Flies safely too. But also the peanuts taste like dust and there are people fucking in the bathroom.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” he says. The wall of the bathroom shudders behind him.
“I asked you to put your tray table up.”
“Right,” he says. He puts his tray table up. When she’s turned away he puts it down again. Jake answers to no one but the government. He turns up ‘Taste’ in his headphones a moment later.
Javy would call it tacky music, white-girl fetish-y sort of stuff. He couldn’t care less. Her self-satisfied crooning drowns out the sound of moans coming from behind him and numbs his brain for the moment, allows him to forget about all the hell waiting for him on the ground.
Not physical hell mind, just emotional hell, which is somewhat worse. He’s not looking forward to it. Bruising on his soul to match the painfully purple bruises hiding underneath his clothes and the one dusting his face like makeup, tinting the white of his eye red in the process. Jake half-wishes someone, even the annoying flight attendant, would ask how he got it instead of just sneaking looks at him from their seats.
You should see the other guy, he would say. Hell of a story, he would say. It only hurts a little, he would say. He’d appreciate the chance to finally spill his guts a bit, to feel a sliver of acknowledgement for everything he’s been through in the past year and a half.
But they don’t ask, just tell him to put his tray table up again. His seat shudders slightly as moans try to wriggle their way free.
Jake puts up his tray table and this time he smiles at the flight attendant with his split lip. She looks nauseated and leaves. He feels a bit of wetness on his chin, blood beading down it. He puts the tray table down again and balances on there a stack of papers which he has firmly avoided looking at for the entirety of his flight.
The walls shake. Jake’s not sure if it’s from turbulence or from the people in the bathroom. He finds that he doesn’t care much anymore. He shuffles the papers so that they won’t rattle off the table, then gets up with a sigh and moves into the aisle and towards the bathroom to begin fiddling with the lock using his drinks stirrer.
It swings open a moment later. Child’s play. Jake pockets the stirrer.
“You’ve been in here for ten minutes,” he tells the bathroom’s occupants, “and he still hasn’t come. So either you two are going to give this little adventure up as a bad job or I’m going to finish the both of you off. Your choice.”
They stare at him, stunned. Their shirts have been torn open to the waist. The guy’s mouth is ragged and kiss-swollen with glasses half-dangling off his face. She doesn’t look much better, her curly hair tangled and wild around her head.
Jake imagines he must look a sight, bruised face and bleeding chin, but he couldn’t care less. If it gets them out of here that’s fine with him. He waits for a few moments to let their shock register, then says, “Alright, guess I’m coming in,” and moves towards the bathroom before the woman recovers enough to slam the door on him.
“Your mistake,” he calls. “I don’t think he’s into you.”
Muffled hisses come from inside and there’s the sound of fabric rustling as Jake settles himself back into his seat. The pair come out a few minutes later, staring daggers at him on their way back to their seats.
Jake gives them his biggest, sweetest smile and presses play on Sabrina Carpenter. The flight attendant has pushed his tray table back up and deposited the letters in the empty seat next to his.
He does not look at them.
…
The baggage claim is far. Jake wanders out of the gate waving at his two new friends as they scuttle away, trying not to feel too pleased with himself and failing. His suitcase rumbles along behind him over the slicked floor. He’s stuffed the letters into it and determines, not for the first time, to never write another one again.
Jake stops by a Starbucks (dear God, he hasn’t seen one in months) and gets an iced black coffee with peppermint chocolate cold foam. Holding that in his teeth, earbuds dangling around his neck and suitcase handle in his left hand, he texts Javy to say that he’s almost to baggage claim. He doesn’t get a reply, although the message reads ‘read’.
Jake has to stifle a sigh. He supposes he can’t be surprised that Javy is still angry. He’ll probably be able to expect that anger for a while.
He gets there after most of the stuff has been unloaded and, with some clever maneuvering, manages to grab his bulky black bag without dropping the coffee, plunking it onto the floor and turning to look for Javy.
Several people who had been looking at him with interest turn away. Jake spots Javy a few paces away by the door, standing there with his arms crossed. Watching him.
Sabrina Carpenter can’t save him now. Javy watches as he approaches, making no move to help him with either of his two bags or with the cup of coffee clasped in his teeth.
“Hey,” Javy says.
Jake smiles at him through a mouthful of plastic and passes a suitcase to Javy, who takes it without looking away from Jake.
“Never seen that coat before,” he says.
It’s a very nice coat. A long soot-gray trench coat to be specific, warm and soft with wear. Jake pries the coffee cup out of his teeth. “Got it a few months back.”
“Figures.” Javy walks to the exit. Jake follows and presses back all the nonsensical things he wants to ask, settling on, “Did you miss me?” to which Javy gives no reply.
Inside the car he doesn’t say anything either, just drives with his hands clenching the wheel and his glare leveled through the windshield. Jake hums to himself to fill the silence, pokes at the window and the fraying threads of his seat and slurps his coffee.
“I missed you, for the record,” he says after a good ten minutes without talking. “Been so--”
“So where were you?” Javy says, sounding as though the words are squeezed through gritted teeth.
Jake pauses. “Deployment.”
“Bullshit.”
“Operative in France,” he says, droning dutifully through the lie. “Top secret, I’m afraid.”
“Bullshit, don’t you try to lie to me Jake, not after I’ve been worrying about you--”
Jake winces. “Sorry.”
“Don’t--” He takes a breath. “You could’ve called.”
“My phone broke before I left. Had to get a new one. Lost all my contacts.”
Javy shakes his head, grinding his teeth together, his dark eyes glassy with anger. “It’s one thing to vanish for over a year and another to lie about it.”
“I’ll show you my orders when we get to my place.”
“You don’t have a place anymore,” Javy snaps. “Your stuff’s been moved out. We’re going to my house.”
Jake slouches in his seat. “Ah.” Unsurprising, though disappointing. “Alright then.” A pause. “How are the others?”
“Pissed off and worried.”
“What, even your sweetheart?” he grins. Natasha had never liked him much even after she started dating Javy.
“We broke up,” he mutters.
“Oh.”
“But she’ll be there tonight,” he adds. “Wants proof that you didn’t swim out to Point Nemo or something.”
“I knew she cared.”
“She doesn’t,” Javy promises, and the rest of the car ride passes in silence.