Chapter Text
Jesse, for all intents and purposes, was not a fan of violence. Odd, considering his current company of gang members and criminals, but they were a horse he didn’t feel too keen on looking in the mouth. He could admire their (albeit shaky)sense of loyalty, and he admired the love lost for their old families, of which they were entirely disallowed to speak of. He liked that too.
They kept him fed, and housed, and healthier than he would have been alone on a street corner. They let him do what he wanted with his money. They gave him a gun and taught him how to shoot it. A woman in her sixties with “FUCK” and “SHIT” tattooed on her knuckles gave him his first cigar and taught him how not to choke on it. A woman with glittery eyelids and painted black nails set him up with a contact for his meds, and he brought her beard oils in return. It was a gang run on favors; returned kindnesses that were truly payments for actions that were never quite free.
Jesse didn’t like violence. Didn’t mean he hadn’t fired submachine guns at the windows of tagged pickup trucks. Didn’t mean there wasn’t dead men’s blood on his hands. It only meant that he disliked seeing good friends with far too many holes in them.
So when a stray gunman, toting a shotgun in either hand, wearing a pair of kevlar yoga pants and a goddamn black hoodie like some kind of 2000-era band reject, came marching into one of their safehouses, Jesse didn’t hesitate to start shooting. He fired every bullet he had, then he fired every bullet he saw, then he threw every explosive he had, and then he threw anything he could get his hands on. The shotgun shells kept coming, bouncing off the ground like bells to the sound of some unlucky bastard’s screaming. Jesse yanked the empty gun off the dead woman next to him, and pitched for the stadium seating. He would not be afraid.
He dropped back down to his stomach and clawed his way across the floor, ignoring the broken glass that stuck through his shirt and cut at his hands. He needed a phone, and he needed it yesterday. Gunshots kept popping off next to him, and stray bullets punched holes in the old metal walls, letting in dusty sunlight. One broke a beer bottle above his head, covering him in bad booze,shrapnel, and the remains of someone’s arm.
The safehouse was less a house, and more a once-empty warehouse now equipped with a shitty kitchenette and too-few crunchy mattresses. Old, painted over plywood made walls where there needed to be and covered holes there needed not to be. Jesse threw himself around the corner of a piece of said plywood and under a shaky countertop drilled into the wall. The kitchenette had both a drawer full of ammunition, which had already been spoken for, and a drawer full of burner phones which had not. The gunfire stopped.
He risked half-standing to reach into the drawer before throwing his back to the wall again, three phones now stuck between his fingers. He frantically jammed buttons in an attempt to get one to turn on, but for the moment they only stared back up at him with peacefully logoed startup screens. The house was more or less silent now, the only sounds being pained groans and a single set of nearing footsteps. A rusty steak knife lay forgotten to his right, and Jesse fisted it in his one hand and pulled a bandanna over his face with the other. He would not be afraid.
He stood just enough to throw a phone over the counter, and heard it hit the floor. The footsteps continued, accompanied now by the sound of shotguns shells being loaded into the chamber. He threw the second phone. It did not hit the floor.
“Good arm,” said a low, gravelly voice. Jesse did not respond, adjusting his grip on the steak knife and glaring at the third phone, now serenely playing an ugly loading animation. “I’ll even let you pick your last words.”
“Fuck you,” Jesse replied. The footsteps stopped.
“You gonna stand up, or do I have to come back there myself?” the voice asked him. Jesse didn’t move. He took deep breath and steadied the shaking from his hand. “Disappointing,” it sighed. The footsteps began again.
A broken bottle dripped whiskey on his shoes from atop the counter, and Jesse wrapped the neck of it in his left hand. The burner phone chirped. One of the shotguns exploded off above his head, and Jesse scrabbled back into the corner as the spray reduced the phone to scrap. His heart slammed against his chest, almost painfully as he fought to stay quiet.The gunman’s boot rounded the corner, and Jesse threw himself out from under the counter, swinging the broken bottle as he went. The gunman made a startled grunt, but ducked away, leaving the whiskey nightmare to meet empty air. He then stabbed the steak knife forward, gouging a line across the middle of the hoodie, but missing his mark in the gunman’s gut. He tried to pull his now empty left hand back to throw a punch, but the butt of a shotgun connected with his cheek before he got the chance.
Jesse went down, hard, knocking the knife from his grip and sending him sprawling on his side on the dusty cement. He backed himself up just as fast, scrabbling upright on his ass with his back to the sinks and his face to the twin barrels of the shotguns. He would not be afraid to die. Jesse pulled a grin from behind his bandanna and looked the gunner in the eyes.
“I’ll see you in Hell,” he snarled, and waited for nothingness.
The gunman raised an eyebrow from behind its mask, stretching over the rest of its face, save for its eyes. A grey beanie hugged the top if its head and covered its ears.
“Sound a little young to be in this business,” it commented. “Takes balls-- not that they’ve dropped yet.” Jesse leaned forward and dropped the smile from his face as fast as it came. The warehouse remained eerily silent aside his own heaving breaths.
“What are you, fourteen?” It tilted its head then, shifting a gun at him like gesturing a hand.
“Twenty-three,”Jesse lied evenly. The gunman narrowed its eyes.
“Yeah?” it asked again, more a threat than a question.
“Yep.” he replied. It rolled a shoulder back, moving it to rest squarely in between Jesse’s eyes.
“Deadlock’s gone,” it growled. “With the shit you all pulled, anyone left alive is going to prison, probably for life.”
“You gonna make a point, or can ya just shoot me already? Ain’t that like a mercy killing?” Jesse tilted his head as he spoke, trying to let the tension from his shoulders. The gunman wrinkled its nose, just above where the mask rested on its bridge.
“My point is, you have two options: you go to jail separate from your friends out there with folks a whole lot bigger and stronger than you, and learn to be wallpaper at best, or you spill your guts in an interrogation chamber and you might get out of a cell before you die.”
Jesse took a moment to process. On one hand, he very much disliked the idea of prison. On the other, offers made by shadowy murderous gunmen were also far less than ideal. Why him? Was it because he was so young? They could have some kind of moral issue with it. They could also be looking to pawn off his organs on the black market. Did they make the same offer to his other gang members? Would he be the only one to defect? He swallowed, feeling a bead of sweat itch across his forehead from under the shotgun.
“You make this offer to all your hostages, or am I just real special?” Jesse beamed as he said it, raising an eyebrow. His charm worked sometimes when he asked for stale donuts, and this was, essentially, the same. Almost. The gunner only glared, pressing the barrel more squarely into his forehead.
“Plan on making a decision?” they growled.
“Is dyin’ an option? Because that’s beginning to sound alright.”
“No.”
“Damn.”
Jesse looked over his shoulder to the stained wall behind him, and leaned to his side to see past the figure standing before him. He took in the sight of his fellows sprawled out on the floor, some moving, some not. He wondered if he could scale a prison wall.
“Well now, it seems I ain’t got much choice,” he sighed, shrugging his shoulders and leaning back on his arms. “Unless you’ve changed your mind on the ‘death’ option.”
“Good choice,” the gunman said, but did not remove the gun from his head. Instead they used a free hand to grab what looked like a silver flare gun from their equipment belt. Jesse opened his mouth to ask, but before he could do so, they aimed it at his chest and pulled the trigger, sending a shiny dart to land in the meat of his shoulder. He choked out a small sound as he felt the stony pull of sedatives drag him under.