Work Text:
Jesse sat in the driver's seat of his car, letting the engine run idly as he gazed out at the dilapidated building across the street. The murky shadows drenched all his surroundings with a dark haze as midnight started to approach. The warm night air drifted in through the rolled down window, tainted with the starchy scent of dust.
Come on, where is he?
Jesse watched the building intently, eyes set on the innocuous back door located at the further end. The building itself looked like all the others on the street: abandoned and left for the elements to reclaim, occasionally inhabited by bums and junkies. But there was a much greater threat hiding in those walls. More dangerous than anything he had been willing to get involved in throughout all his years working in the field. Perhaps more dangerous than danger could describe. If this plan went wrong, it was a death sentence.
One of the rival drug gangs had taken this strip of street for themselves. They were stronger and much more equipped than any of the low-level dealing Jesse dealt with. Nobody messed with them, unless they were on a suicide mission.
Well, looking how things were going, he might as well be.
Jesse glanced at his wristwatch. 12:08. They had agreed to meet at midnight, sharp. They should have been here by now, unless… He forced the thought away. Maybe he should leave while he still had the chance to, before he was too far up to his neck in this.
“Come on, come on…” Jesse murmured beneath his breath, anxiously tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in a rapid, unorganized beat. He kept his gaze locked on the backdoor, fighting the nerves that were starting to swell in his chest.
There was only a short window of time before someone noticed the unfamiliar car waiting on their street. If they didn’t get here in the next few minutes, there would be no choice but to drive away from the mission. But still, Jesse kept waiting. His heart hammered with growing fear as the seconds droned on and on.
Finally, the door pushed open.
Jesse sat upright, eyes locking on the shadowed figure as a flare of hope and relief rippled through him. Still, he reached for the small gun tucked into the side of the car door, just in case this wasn’t who he was looking for.
The figure silently stepped out of the building, quietly closing the door behind him and turning to the street. He hastily dashed across the road, features becoming clearer as he approached the car. The noticeable form of a gun was tucked against the inside of his pant waists. A thick hoodie was pulled over his head, obscuring most of his face, but Jesse could recognise him with ease. He felt a smile pull at the corner of his mouth, but forced it back. They weren’t out of danger yet.
The man rushed to the passengers side and fluidly ducked into the car. The door had barely closed behind him before Jesse was hitting the gas and speeding down the empty street.
“I thought you’d never come,” Jesse smirked, hiding the anxiety which had been coiling through him.
Nacho sighed, slouching back into the seat.
It usually wasn’t safe to make friends when working in a field like this. Not unless you were prepared to watch them die. And Jesse had followed those constraints through all his years, treating the people around him as acquaintances rather than friends.
That had been until he met Nacho.
Despite the barriers he had put up around himself, willing himself not to get too close with anyone, he just couldn’t act like that with Nacho. He couldn’t just be shuffled into a list of people whose names he didn’t bother to remember. He couldn’t just be seen as another expendable tool to utilise in some way. Jesse had tried to fight against it, knowing that it would only hurt him in the end, but that pull was too strong to resist.
As the car speeded through the midnight streets and the barren territory of the cartel drifted into the rearview mirror, Jesse glanced over at Nacho. He was staring at the road in front, his eyes hazed with thought. He flickered his gaze towards Jesse where their eyes met, before they both quickly looked away in embarrassment.
“...Thanks for getting me,” Nacho grumbled quietly.
Jesse shuffled in the driver’s seat. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
They lapsed into a rich silence, the only sound being the steady rumble of the car's engine as they drove through the night.
“Did those guys do anything to you?” Jesse broke the quiet.
Nacho flickered a hasty glance towards him. “Nothing too… extreme. Yet. But it was starting to get dangerous. They were gonna get rid of me as soon as they realised I wasn’t being any use.”
Jesse tensed slightly, his grip firming over the steering wheel. He wasn’t used to feeling like this for anybody. He didn’t want to admit that he would have been much more than affected if anything had happened to Nacho while he was in that gang's hands.
“Good thing you got out of there. I don’t know what I would have done if they had hurt you…” He added quietly, the words escaping his lips before he could stop his trail of thought.
Nacho turned his head, cocking it slightly. “What?”
Jesse kept his eyes fixed on the road, fighting the embarrassed flush in his face as he stammered for a substitution. “Oh- uh- just glad that they didn’t hurt you.”
Nacho hummed skeptically in response before an awkward silence filled the air between them. Jesse stayed acutely focussed on the road, slowing the car as they made a turn off the main road towards a more urban area. The warm night air felt a little too stuffy as it pressed against him.
Nacho was the first to pierce the uncomfortable silence. “Where are you taking us?”
“Back to my place.”
“Oh, really?” His voice betrayed a tone of pleasant surprise that he quickly tried to snuff down.
“Yeah. I thought it would be better to lay low for a while, at least until we can find someplace safer to stay.”
A moment of speechlessness passed. Nacho turned to face Jesse directly.
“We?”
Jesse risked a fleeting glance to his passenger. He twitched his foot nervously, feeling his body tense up while he tried to look for an excuse that wouldn’t make him seem like an overbearing pervert.
It’s not like anyone had sent him to rescue Nacho. Nobody even knew about their relations, not even Mike. They certainly would have stopped him if he had told them his plans. Jesse had carefully arranged it all on his own account.
“I just thought it would be safer to stick together for a while, you know. I’m not just gonna ditch you on the side of the street so those dickheads can find you again.”
“I don’t need to be treated like a child. I can take care of myself,” Nacho defended gruffly.
“I’m not saying that you can’t,” Jesse explained. “Just that I think it would be safer if we stayed together for a bit.”
The two lapsed into another silence. Jesse bit the inside of his tongue, mentally chastising himself for being so naive about how he obviously felt for Nacho. If there was any hope of his rescue actually wanting to stay with him, it would only be out of a desperation for protection. Nothing regarding how he felt in return.
“You really didn’t have to do this, you know,” Nacho told him softly.
Jesse shook it off. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s not like I could have just left you there like that.”
Nacho fixed his warm gaze on him. “But you could have.”
Jesse looked away from the road, which he had refused to break contact with for the majority of the drive. As he met with Nacho’s steady brown eyes, it was like a weight had been lifted off his chest. He had never felt like this for anyone else, not like this. It was so foreign, so different, yet it felt natural. Like they were meant to be together.
“No, I don’t think I could have.”