Chapter Text
His pet rat was named Bomber, because he had discovered that the little guy really had a penchant for flying through the air and being tossed around. It was an accidental discovery, of course, when he’d tossed his shirt off after school one day without remembering that the rat was snoozing in his pocket. Jamie had memory problems at the best of times and he’d only had the thing for a week, but he heard a small squeak from his bed and ran to it, already spitting out apologies as he pulled his new pet from the pocket.
“Shit, sorry, sorry, ya okay? Forgot you were in there, ya gotta make more noise or something…”
It ran directly onto his hand when it felt his fingers and curled against them, tiny noise pointed into the air and whiskers bouncing up and down as it sniffed the air. Even though it didn’t seem hurt, the squeal made him worried. He gently brought the rat to his face to inspect it for wounds, thumb combing through the black fur for any sign of pain or blood, wishing he had his other arm on so he could use one whole hand instead of the only finger he could maneuver with.
Instead of holding still for its examination though, the little thing turned and ran straight off his hand. The motion startled him and he flinched back, somehow afraid he’d hurt it and praying to god he hadn’t managed to kill his new rat.
Days later, Jamie swore up and down that he’d seen it jump and launch its paws far forward, like the smallest, furriest Superman imaginable. It landed on the bed and he couldn’t make himself look, sure that it had somehow killed itself to get away from how bad he smelled or something. But he felt fur against the hand that had fallen limply down to the bed, and he forced his eyes open to see Bomber waiting expectantly.
Now, it was difficult to keep the rat in his pocket. Once Bomber had found that he liked flying, it was all he wanted to do, popping his head up into the open at the most inconvenient of times. Jamie called them his ‘scouting missions’, to see if there was anything nearby he could jump to. Make called them annoying, since often his shoulder was the closest thing in the rat’s sight.
But he could tell that Mako didn’t really mean it. He let the rat run all over him when he and Jamie sat on the couch after school or on the weekends, sharing a bowl of cereal and watching old movies with the sound off so they could provide their own running commentary of events. And at the end of the night, when Jamie would have to leave because of work or some other thing that had to get done, the bigger man would give the rat his own goodbye.
Bomber was probably the best thing the teen had ever had in his room. Any of them, really. Currently, the seventeen year old occupied a tiny, one room apartment, with a plastic curtain hanging on a rod he’d put up himself to divide the bathroom from the kitchen and his bed. There was barely enough room for a little stand on which to put Bomber’s cage, but he’d managed to find the space, wedging the thing between the foot of his bed and the wall. Somehow it was nice to have something else sleeping in the room with him at night, even if it was just a little friend. Helped him stay grounded, helped remind him that there was a world outside his own head.
School helped too. Fuck if he’d admit it though, and he couldn’t wait for the day he graduated and didn’t have to deal with the teachers and the principal breathing down his neck. The routine was good for him, but compared to the agonizing torture of boring classes, lectures from disappointed adults about how he could do better, and stares from the kids around him, Jamie would gladly burn the place to the ground and go back to living the nocturnal life.
This was his last semester though. One more to get through before he could fuck on out of there, find himself a full-time job, and start living the good life.
Or, the life where people didn’t yell at him for bringing cherry bombs to school, even though he’d only forgotten to take them out before he came.
At this point, he’d take either.
The morning after winter break, Jamie woke to find Bomber nestled into his toilet paper roll, beady little eyes staring at him as he stretched, trying to blink the sleep away from his eyes. Almost the moment he lifted his arms over his head to crack his back, he realized he’d forgotten to take off his binder last night before he got in bed. That would probably mark about three straight days of wearing it.
“Whoops!” He giggled aloud to the rat, not bothered in the slightest by the familiar little ache in his chest as he literally rolled out of bed. It was so much easier for Jamie to convince himself to get up if the surface he was lying on was not his mattress.
To be fair though, he could sleep just about anywhere. Any vaguely horizontal surface was good for a nap if he really needed one.
Jamie felt like he needed one as he stumbled to his feet, looking around for where he’d left his prosthetic the night before. His backpack was thrown into the kitchen sink, which seemed like a reasonable enough place, and he saw the clothes he’d been wearing dangling from one of the shower curtain hooks, but the giant hunk of metal that passed for his right arm was suspiciously absent.
Crap. He kinda didn’t feel like going without it today, but there wasn’t enough time to conduct a thorough search of the incredibly small, one room apartment. Jamie had skills in hiding things when he needed to, and sometimes it came back to bite him in the ass.
Settling for throwing the least dirty tank top on over his binder and then covering it with a flannel jacket that had the right sleeve pre-tied off, he pulled his backpack from the sink, scooped Bomber into the pocket on his jacket, and slouched out the door towards high school.
He had to come back inside fairly quickly when he realized that his underwear and pants had neglected to also make it on his body. That old guy living a few doors down had definitely gotten an eyeful, and while normally Jamie wouldn’t care, he was pretty sure there was some law that said you had to wear pants in public or something.
Goddamn government, trying to control everything people did.
The closest pair of pants he could find were oil-stained cargo shorts, and he pulled them on without bothering to go digging in his dirty clothes pile for a pair of underwear. It occurred to him that shoes might also be a good idea, just as he was about to cross the threshold, and he sighed, glaring at his feet as though they’d betrayed him by not already being in socks and boots.
When he’d finally managed to get himself dressed for school, he stepped back out into the hallway, noting with a snicker that his neighbor’s door was firmly closed and the welcome mat outside was out of place. Guy must have scrambled to get back inside before his weird teenage neighbor came back out, sans a shirt.
Stairs creaked underneath his feet as Jamie strolled to the first floor of his apartment building. The shoes had delayed him long enough that there was no way he was going to be able to get to school on time, so there was no need to rush anymore. There was a coffee place on his way that he might stop in, if it didn’t look too busy- it felt like a morning to treat himself. He could already taste the espresso on his tongue, burning his taste buds.
Too wrapped up in planning his excuse for his homeroom teacher, he smacked into the glass doors of his building with a loud ‘thump’. He wheeled backwards, hand flying up to cup the pocket Bomber rested in, stumbling over his own feet.
How Jamie managed to remain upright was a mystery, considering how clumsy the kid could be when he tried. His nose hurt from the impact and he rubbed at it a little when he realized that Bomber was okay. Ecstatic, in fact, at the sensation of whirling through the air. It made sense that he’d get the weirdest rat.
Jamie moved to leave again, and found someone standing on the other side of the doors, blocking his way. Not his own reflection, like that time he was high as shit and thought someone else was trying to keep him out of the shower.
An actual person. A woman, with long blonde hair piled high on top of her head and sharp, piercing brown eyes. Wrinkles cut into the corners of her mouth and crow’s feet pulled at the edges of her eyes, making her appear much older than she really was. With the paleness of her blonde hair, she could almost pass for being in her sixties, never mind her late-thirties.
His mother had been like that ever since he could remember. She’d had him when she was nineteen, and although he’d never seen a photo of her from back then, he would put down money on her having her frown lines and worry wrinkles since the day the devil decided to let his daughter walk among the humans.
Oops. He meant her birthday.
It’d been three years since he’d seen her, and the sight was not a pleasant one. On instinct he stepped back from the glass, happy that the door hadn’t opened from him running up against it. His apartment building was shit, but the reason he refused to move was that it was the only place in his price range that required a code to enter the building. She couldn’t get in as long as no one opened the door.
“Tha’ fuck are you doin’ here?” He asked, hefting his backpack up higher on his shoulder. The paperwork for the restraining order was somewhere in his room, and he knew that he should have had it on him, but there had been neither hide nor hair of her for three years. Long enough for him to feel safe without the paper in his pocket. Idiotic.
At least he still had his pocketknives and cherry bombs. He would have no qualms about throwing one in her face if she managed to get through that door.
Hell, he was still considering it.
“I came to see you, honey.”
Though the door between them muffled her voice, he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the pet name coming from her lips. Ever trying to be the patient, perfect mother; Kind and caring and all of the things mothers were supposed to be. It wasn’t her fault if her kid had never lived up to the ideal family life she wanted for herself. No, not her fault at all that she’d had to bend and twist him to make him fit into the neat little hole prepared for him. He knew she’d rather lower him into his grave than see him disgrace her or her happy, peaceful world.
“S’illegal. Get the fuck outta my way or I’ll call the cops.”
She pulled hard on her lip with her teeth and he could almost hear the sucking noise he knew she made when she was thinking hard, could hear it loud and clear in his ears.
“If you do, I’ll tell them about the bombs you like to build. I’m sure not all of your supplies are legal, are they?”
Jamie snorted.
“Fine. But, ya know, if you wanna play the mother card, you’re gonna have to call me in sick. M’not going to school today.”
Ignoring whatever she said next, he turned and stomped back up the stairs as fast as he could. He took them two at a time, hardly feeling the strain on his bony legs, mind racing with other ways he could get out of the building. He’d meant what he said about not going to school, but that didn’t mean he wanted to sit in his shitty apartment until someone was kind enough to let the nice older lady in. There was a back entrance, but then he’d just have to sneak back around to the sidewalk, and there was a good chance he’d run into her there. There wasn’t exactly a way for him to check if she’d been let back in or not, and he wasn’t going to just pop down to the doors every now and then, to give her a wave.
Roof it was, then.
It was convenient that he’d forgotten to lock his apartment door, as he didn’t have to fish the key out of his jacket’s other pocket and the pile of gum wrappers that lived there. Jamie entered the room like a whirlwind, throwing his backpack onto the bed before he spun, trying to see what the essentials were without having to stop moving. He snatched up a few shirts and pants from the floor and tossed them into the bottom of his pack, leaving the underwear lying forgotten. Wasn’t that important anyway.
Since he never kept any school supplies in his backpack, it was easy to fill it with odds and ends from around the apartment. He stuck a pack of rat’s food and a few of the little guy’s toys in there too, before coving it with a thick layer of graph paper and pencil sketches. He didn’t really think his mom was going to make good on her threat, given the fact that she was also breaking the law by being anywhere near him, but Jamie wasn’t going to risk coming back to the building for a few days, at least. He’d go crazy if he didn’t have his designs to work on. This time he remembered to add the restraining order to the top of the pile, just in case he needed to grab it quickly.
A few sandwiches dropped into the only Tupperware container he could find, and Jamie winced at the sound of their impact. He couldn’t remember how long they’d been in the fridge, but maybe he could still eat them later, once they defrosted. If nothing else, they’d be good to throw at the bitch if she got too close.
Last of all, he dipped into his pocket to grab Bomber and set him on the blanket of his bed. The blonde winked at the little animal before dropping to flatten himself against the floorboards, shimmying his way under the bed. There was a thick layer of dust down here and he wanted to sneeze as it all rushed up his nose the second he inhaled. Instead, he reached out to carefully pry away a section of the wall’s baseboard, revealing a carefully hidden collection of containers and vials. Some of it was stolen from an industrial plant nearby, some of it was just everyday bleach, and some of them were mixtures of his own creation. All of it together, even if some of the parts were innocent, was definitely illegal.
There was a messenger bag lying casually against the wall and he carefully filled the padded inside with his hidden treasures, each one slotting into a specially made compartment so they wouldn’t move around too much while he moved.
Mako had helped him sew it, back when he realized Jamie was moving around highly dangerous materials by wrapping them in newspaper and dropping them in the bottom of his backpack. He hadn’t really seen what the big deal was, but it was kinda convenient to be able to hold a lot more stuff when he had to move quickly.
Like just then, for instance.
When he was sure he’d completely emptied the little cavern, he turned his head to the side to nod at the spider that had taken up residence underneath his bed before wiggling back out of the small space. Bomber was replaced inside his pocket and he set the strap of the messenger bag over his shoulder before pulling on his backpack, counting on the weight of it to help the other bag stay in place. Didn’t want some of those chemicals breaking in the bag and mixing together- would be like lighting a beacon to tell his mother where he was, not to mention be a good way to lose another perfectly good limb.
Again, as he was racing out the door, Jamie realized he was forgetting something important. He hadn’t seen his prosthetic arm during his frenzied search of the apartment. Turning around, the boy cast another glance around the room to confirm that he really didn’t see the hunk of metal. Unconsciously, his teeth bit down on his lower lip, sucking his cheeks in as he thought about what to do.
Odds were good that it wasn’t inside his house, if he hadn’t found it yet. But the teen wasn’t forgetful enough to just leave his entire fucking arm somewhere and not remember it.
Well. Maybe.
There wasn’t time to think about it any further though. Giving it up for a lost cause, Jamie ran back to the staircase for the third time that day, this time climbing up instead of down. He’d figured out how to get to the roof his first day living here, and since then it had been a good place to sit and test a few of his chemicals together. Nothing that explosive, of course, but stuff that was likely to make a lot of smoke or fumes. Stuff that you needed good ventilation for.
It was thirteen flights of stairs up from his apartment and he was breathing hard by the time he made it, having sprinted the whole way.
Coming to the roof was anticlimactic- with the way his heart hammered in his chest, he felt like he should have been standing on the tallest structure in the world, a parachute strapped to his back and important government secrets clutched in his hands. Sirens should have been blaring in his ears as the wind rushed through his hair, carrying freedom and the scent of the ocean. For a crazy second, he had the urge to run to the edge and jump over, his arms spread, certain that his parachute would catch him before he hit the concrete.
But no- there was garbage and ash in the air, and he couldn’t see further than a few buildings away with everything that towered over her apartment building. Only the sun shining in the sky fit with his mental picture, and even that was beginning to be obscured by clouds. Jamie had to stop himself from staring over the edge of the roof all the same.
He’d done this before, but it sent a thrill through his stomach every time. Cupping his hand around Bomber to make sure the rat stayed in his pocket the whole time, the blonde took a few steps back, stopped, and took a running start. Long legs helped him vault up onto the lip of the building next door, and then he was momentarily soaring through the air. Jamie couldn’t stop himself from laughing as the smell of gas and urban decay fell away for half a second, leaving only rushing wind. In another life, maybe he’d have been one of those track jocks, running around the course and jumping over vaults. He loved it enough.
He landed on his feet without too much trouble, skidding across the roof slightly with a grunt. Jamie knew he was supposed to roll, but he was worried that doing so would be too much for Bomber, no matter how much the little guy liked flying around. Even jumping between buildings got to be too much for him sometimes, and Jamie knew it. Better to destroy his knees than give his pet a heart attack.
Instead of making the leap onto the next roof and continuing as far away from the horror that awaited him on the sidewalk below, the teen made his way into the new building, navigating through the familiar halls and to the back stairwell. He’d spent a lot of time exploring the buildings next to his late at night, when he couldn’t sleep and he’d already learned all of his own residence’s secrets. Always the paranoid one. It made him feel better to have multiple escape routes.
This building’s back stairwell didn’t dump you out into an alley whose only outlet was the sidewalk he was trying to avoid. It opened out onto the next street over, which was always bustling with traffic and cars. Easy to blend into the crowd here, especially since the one he was running from probably didn’t know he had even left his apartment yet.
He’d catch a bus and ride it out to Mako’s place. It was easy to jimmy the lock on his window, and his parents would have already left for work, so he’d have the place to himself. Somewhere he was absolutely positive his mother wasn’t going to find him, so he could work out what he was going to do.
Jamie barely noticed the motion of the bus beneath him, nor was he aware of when exactly he’d boarded. Inside his head, his thoughts were consumed of the crows feet and frown lines that decorated his mom’s face, testaments to both her patience and her misery.
“She’s a little defective, but that’s alright. I love her anyway.”
Overheard from the stairs when he was five and he had long, shimmering blonde hair that his mother put into a braid every night. She would have taught him how to do it, except he’d been born with only the one hand. Birth defect, the doctors said- he was alright, otherwise. A healthy, little baby girl.
They’d been wrong on more than one of those.
Because in his mother’s eyes, he’d never be nothing but a mistake. That was alright- he’d stopped wanting her love around the time he began to wear baggier and baggier clothing, hiding in oversized hoodies and sweats so that no one would see him. The night he’d cut his hair with the kitchen scissors had been the last straw, for both of them.
A courtroom, a public advocate, an agreement put into place. They called Jamie an emancipated minor and said he had all the privileges an adult had. He’d immediately used them to file a restraining order and then move out of the state, far from the rural place he’d been born into the biggest city he could find.
But he was starting to come to the conclusion that the judge, the restraining order, and the miles between them, weren’t enough.
Maybe his first instinct had been correct. Maybe when he’d fantasized about throwing a cherry bomb into her face, he shouldn’t have held himself back.
Something about imagining her head blowing apart, ripping at the seams the wrinkles carved into her face and splattering in all directions, gave him a profound sense of satisfaction. A simple cherry bomb would never do though, not for her. He’d make something special for her.
In the back of the bus, Jamie started to giggle to himself. None of the strangers turned to stare.