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Randy Bullet doesn’t love.

He’s not like Ramee; he’s not buying cars for girls he likes and paying off all of the asset fees and the loan that was taken out to afford it in the first place on top of it. He doesn’t get into arguments with other guys over these girls, doesn’t threaten their lives because he’s jealous they’re holding their attention for even just a second.

He’s damn sure not going onto live, national television broadcasting his love triangle and humiliation to whoever will take their time to watch.

The last time Randy attempted to be in a relationship, or whatever it was, he was forced to choose between her and the gang. It’ll always be the gang, no matter what, no questions asked.

He doesn’t do the sappy shit. He’s a ruthless, hardcore criminal. He shoots cops and robs banks and has earned his reputation in the beautiful, chaotic city of Los Santos through doing so. Everyone knows Randy Bullet is the best criminal the city has ever seen, and you don’t get that kind of notoriety by worrying about love and relationships.

“What are you talking about?” She slurs into the phone. He’s not sure where she is exactly (she said something about a rave earlier?), but she’s been drinking, she admits as much in the few words he does allow her to get in. “Can you please elaborate?”

He doesn’t. “Fuck you, Ray,” He spits, ending the call without another word as she tries to ask once more what he’s talking about. No remorse.

Lexi Law gives him her approval from her spot in the passenger seat next to him, promising she would’ve done the same with a twisted laugh. It helps to know he’s not the only one who would treat and talk to someone that way.

No remorse. He wills the guilt in the pit of his stomach to go away a few moments later as he listens to his gang leader, their gang leader, drilling what he already knows into his head even further through the receiver on his phone.

“This ain’t my boy Randy! My boy Randy’s a savage! Everyone’s making it seem like you’re some fuckin’- like you’re over here sad over shit.”

Mr. K’s right. Randy Bullet doesn’t feel things like that. So, he buries the guilt deep beneath his ego. No remorse. “No, bruh! I’m me , I’m Randy fuckin’ Bullet,” He slaps the hand that isn’t holding the phone against his chest a few times. “I ain’t cryin’, I ain’t sad.”

As the night goes on, she tries calling him back a few more times, and sends a few texts begging, pleading for the clarity he refuses to give her.

She should know by now that this isn’t Randy. This heartfelt, soft, emotional shit, it’s just not him, and he’s not going to play into her games.

He’s a helper, a savior, nothing more, nothing less. And if she’s going to take advantage of his kindness and use him to get with other guys that are a little more willing, or a little more able , to be emotionally available, then that’s where he draws the line. You don’t use Randy Bullet.

Part of him knows that that’s not the type of person Ray is, though.

Of all the people in his life, she’s one of maybe two or three that hit him up just to hang out sometimes. One of the few that only want his time and attention, not a loan because it’s well known that he’s rich or for him to hack a bank because he’s one of the best hackers in the city or to get hired at his company because doing a run for Dodo Logistics is good, easy money with little effort. It does get a bit tiring only being contacted because people want something from you, but that’s just the way it is. He’s accepted it. He can’t change it.

She’s well aware of his position in the city, she doesn’t really have a choice not to be, but she also doesn’t treat him according to his reputation. He’s just Randy to her. Her best friend, the one she trusts the most, the one so like herself that they butt heads as their egos clash more often than not.

Randy has pulled rank on her before, demanding respect and for her to finally treat him like he’s the second most important and high up person in her gang, but she brushed it off. He knew while doing it that she wouldn’t care, because he’s not, cue the fanfare, Randy Bullet, Second in Command of Chang Gang , to her.

She’s seen the real Randy; the one that does a pretty good dolphin impression but sucks at accents, especially an American one unless it’s southern. The one that makes pinky promises with her, despite how juvenile and childish they may seem to everyone else around them, because those hold more weight and importance than government-issued laws and mandates do. She doesn’t care how profitable his businesses are or how many cops he’s downed in a single holdout. None of that matters to her.

He finally answers one of her calls again about an hour or so later, and the very first thing she does is ask him not to hang up on her. She sounds so exhausted, so worn, but more sober than before, and there’s a small sting somewhere in the left side of his chest just listening to her.

Randy’s become so accustomed to her usual excitement and perkiness. He enjoys teaching and spending time with her because everything is still so new despite her having lived in Los Santos for nearly a year now. It feels nice seeing everything and redoing crime progression through a fresh set of excited, awestruck eyes, it reminds Randy of how he used to be before the city got to him.

He purposely pushes her off onto Lexi, texting Ray her number so she can call and confront her about what was said. For as long as that call lasts, it’s not his problem. It’s a cop-out, cowardly move, he knows, but he can’t deal with a heartbroken and confused Ray longing for answers he doesn’t want to give her right now.

In some sick, sinister way, he kind of likes having her like this; focused on nothing but rectifying what went wrong between her and himself. The longer he draws this out, the longer he holds her attention. Just him. Did she care this much when he and Curtis instigated things with Tommy Tate and Raymond Romanov, essentially destroying what she had going with both of them?

She forgave him for that, too. Easily bought his story about doing it because he believed her to be uncomfortable with how strongly Romanov came on, which actually was the true reason to an extent, and she didn’t push or prod or question him any further. 

That’s the thing with her. She’d bring a bucket of water and a bag of sand to the beach if Randy told her she needed to. Ray is the human embodiment of ride or die and blind, unwavering trust. To Randy, at least.

Randy tucks his knowledge of all of this right next to the feeling of guilt still trying to force its way to the surface. No remorse.

She’d told him once that she was loyal to him. Not to the gang (although, she is extremely loyal to it, too), but to him . An intrigued, slightly taken aback Randy with a slightly faster beating heart had asked her in the moment to elaborate on what she meant by that, and she’d tactfully dodged the question with a smirk on her face and not given him an answer. Maybe this is all payback for that.

He has no reason not to believe Lexi… right? He’s known Ray for a long time but Lexi even longer, and what reason would she have to lie to him and guide him into ruining a friendship with someone he might, somewhat, in some capacity, care about a tiny bit or.. a lot.. maybe, sort of? Lexi knows the real Randy Bullet, too, or at least the old one. The one with the brown hair that no one in the city had the guts to cross. The one the eleventh commandment was created after. She still believes in that Randy.

The eleventh commandment; “Thou shall not fuck with Randy Bullet”. He scoffs internally just thinking about it. Everyone still respects him, even with the white hair, enough to abide by it. Everyone except Ray who doesn’t have a bone that fears Randy in her body. 

It frustrates him to no end sometimes not getting the respect from her that he thinks he deserves, but at the same time, the mere thought of her being scared of him, walking on eggshells trying not to do something that pisses him off out of fear , brings a sickly feeling to his stomach that nestles and snuggles up right next to the guilt. 

(Or the not-guilt. No remorse, or something like that, right?)

Randy doesn’t actually want that. She’s a challenge, she keeps him on his toes, he’s finally met his match. Go figure, it’s the girl he brought into his gang and has appointed his mentee. She’s Frankenstein’s monster and you can just call him Frank for short.

CJ, Autumn, Mr. K, and Garrett are in a clothing store discussing something Randy tuned out on a long time ago when his phone rings and her name shows on the screen. He couldn’t focus on what they were talking about at all, and he was fifth-wheeling anyway so the conversation wasn’t even really for him. They probably don’t even notice him exiting the store into the cool night air.

“But,” Ray continues after giving him a quick update on her talk with Lexi. Her voice still lacks the life it usually holds, the situation clearly taking a toll on her emotionally. It’s been a few hours of this now, he doesn’t blame her. “I’m.. honestly really, really disappointed that you just trusted this random girl over me.”

It’s a knee-jerk reply back. “Okay, first of all, I didn’t trust some random girl. She’s not a random girl.”

He knows what she means by it, he’d never seen Ray and Lexi together or even heard either of them talk about the other so obviously they didn’t know each other, but arguing against semantics is his last line of defense in all of this. 

The more he thinks about it, the less his accusation, the reason for everything tonight, makes sense but he can’t admit fault now. He’s in way too deep at this point. He’s going to have to take it to the grave right along with their friendship, he guesses.

“You did,” She argues back. “Because of her, you cussed me out and pretty much just.. ignored me entirely. And for what?”

“I didn’t ignore you, okay? No one ignored you. When did I ignore you?”

His mind flashes back to the way he did, indeed, decline multiple calls of hers earlier in the day. But that doesn’t count anymore because they’ve communicated since.

Ray’s in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? You left me on read !”

Oh yeah, that too.

She was right, but, in too deep and all that. He circles back to what he has the upper hand on. “Trust me, she’s not a random girl, alright? Lexi’s had my back for a long time.”

Randy takes her silence as a go-ahead to keep talking. “I get what you’re saying, but then Ramee is telling me that you said you like Tommy T, and you like some other guy, and you like this guy, and I’m like, ‘bro, what the fuck is going on, man?’”

“Why-,” She starts, raising her voice. He’s not making much sense and he’s aware of it. “Why does that matter? You don’t even like me!”

Why does it matter? They don’t have anything romantic, because Randy Bullet doesn’t love. He’s supported Ray throughout all of her dating endeavors over the past month in an attempt to play supportive friend.

Just earlier that day, he and Tommy had talked one on one about both stepping back if the other wanted her. It was more for his and Tommy’s benefit than hers, they just didn’t want to let her get in between them because their friendship is valuable to them both, but he’d been telling himself he didn’t want to get in between her and Tommy’s budding whatever either.

“I thought we were close.”

“Yeah, but you don’t use me to get other guys,” He repeats for what feels like the five-hundreth time tonight. “Even Tommy T told me.”

“What the- what are you talking about, Randy?”

“And actually, Yuno told me the same thing as well,” It comes out matter-of-factly, his chin raising upward a bit, he just knows this is the real ‘gotcha’ for all of this. He has solid basis and reasoning for thinking what he does if her own brother is saying it, he’s sure of it.

Ray speaks slowly, as if she’s conversing with a small toddler and not a grown man. “How is it ‘using you’? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“‘Cause you- uh, you’re using me to make other guys jealous.. I guess, maybe?” He curses himself mentally for faltering and stuttering over his words. It shouldn’t have come out as a question.

Even in a moment like this, Ray still doesn’t jump on a weakness of his to get the upper hand like she could. “No! I just like spending time with you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Right, right,” She sighs on the other side of the line as he jumps to continue. “And that’s why you’re always flirting with other people in front of me.”

“Why does that matter?” echoes in his mind. He needs to quickly save face for his own sanity.

“End of the day, you can date whoever the fuck you want. Just don’t use me to get some other guys because that’s fucked up,” He repeats himself for the five-hundred-and-first time. “Whether you want Tommy T, whether you want fuckin’..” He trails off. “If Ramee and Yuno are both saying it, then there’s probably some truth behind it.”

Ray’s back to sounding defeated again the next time she speaks. She’d gotten loud with him and probably exhausted the little bit of energy she’d mustered back up. It’s funny, her yelling at him had felt like they were them again for a second.

“I’m not using you to make other people jealous,” She deadpans, voice void of all emotion. “Like, I feel like-.”

“Even Tommy T was thinking he doesn’t want it to get between me and him,” Maybe he can drill it into her head that he’s not the only one that thinks this way. It makes him feel better not being the only one to potentially hurt her. If he can split the blame and fault.

The silence stretches for a moment longer than he can take and he checks his phone to make sure she didn’t hang up before putting it back to his ear just as she speaks. “Well, there is nothing between us so.. there was nothing to get in between.”

“I mean, I don’t know, man, a lot of different people are saying different things.”

“Yeah? Well, what are you saying, Randy?” Ray pauses, and Randy’s heart speeds up a bit at the question. Feels a lot like she’s trying to directly make him answer the exact thing he’d been dancing around. “What are you saying?”

He knows what she’s asking him, and it stuns him a bit. He doesn’t know what to say. “What am I saying?” It’s a lame reply, he knows, but it’s all he can get out without tipping her off to the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. How doesn’t she hear it with his phone pressed flush to one? “I’m saying, you know, don’t use me, I guess.”

It comes out a bit shaky. Another cop-out move unusual for his character, but it’s safe. He’s safe in who he is and in his ways and he can’t let Ray take him out of his haven.

“Alright, this is going in circles,” Randy can tell she’s getting mad at his unwillingness to step out of said safe haven. “You’re just fucking with me at this point. You don’t give a fuck. Whatever.”

“Oh, that’s me , I’m fucking with you ,” He rolls his eyes again. Taking it to the grave, and all that. 

He can only imagine the look on her face. In fact, he’s surprised she actually hasn’t hung up by now. “Yes. I’m trying to fix this, and I’m trying to make sense of what the fuck you’re talking about and you’re giving me nothing.”

It’s almost like he’s become a broken record. He knows he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on, but he doesn’t give in to Ray easily. Never has, and never will.

“I’m telling you, bruh, don’t use me to get other guys-.”

“I’m not,” She bellows, rapidly reaching her wits’ end having one too many buttons pushed and her patience tested. “But I guess it doesn’t matter what I say because you don’t believe me, so whatever.”

That gets him. He finds himself with no response yet again, but it’s a bit different this time.

Trusting and standing with each other had been an unspoken promise but a promise between them nonetheless. They didn’t need to say it, they just knew. Randy and Ray against the world . 

Randy realized early on that in a city like this, you need that one person that has your back through any- and everything and it hits him right then and there that he’d fucked up with that very person. 

Sure, he and Ramee are the “real Double R”, the original, but as his free hand reaches under his shirt and vest up to his shoulder to graze over the spot the bullet Ramee had shot at him in an attempt to protect April landed at, his mouth runs dry as he winces.

It’s been a while since it happened, so the physical wound is healed. The emotional one, he’s not too sure about.

“I’m telling you I’m not using you to get other guys, or whatever the fuck you’re saying, and you don’t believe me when I say that, so what’s the point? There’s no point in talking about this, then.”

In a last-ditch attempt to find some credibility in this situation, he finds his voice again, swallowing roughly. “I mean, why would your own brother say you’re using me, huh?”

“Do you not know how much of an instigator that man is?” She questions, exasperated. “Do you not know how much of an instigator Taco- this whole city is?”

He shrugs, though she can’t see him. “Yeah, I guess,” It’s dismissive, he still has some of his cool. “Taco as well, he said the same shit.”

“Alright, well, I guess fuck me, then, Randy.”

“Okay.. no..”

“Yeah, I guess-,” She scoffs. “You know, just believe the whole damn city over me. Whatever.”

His wound starts to ache again.

“Look, I’m tired.”

“Listen,” Randy chuckles nervously. This is all becoming a little too much for him. It was never supposed to go this far. “I don’t get into drama like this, a’ight? So, I don’t know what the fuck to do or say, I’ll be real,” He admits. It’s the most honest he’s been with her all night.

It feels like it pays off, her voice teasing. “Yeah, I know, I can tell,” Then, it seems like she snaps out of it. “But I’ll take what you’ve given me and that’ll be that.”

“So, now what happens?” It scares him a little, the thought of ending the night on bad terms with her. They’ve never done it before. 

Granted, they’ve never really fought before, either. They’d gotten really annoyed with each other once while getting ready to do a bank with Romanov and Lang Buddha, which resulted in a lot of awkward silence and some uncomfortable tension, but by the time they’d started to actually rob it, they were okay again. And that was probably the worst they’d ever gotten.

Uncertainty is terrifying.

“I don’t know. It sucks when the person you’re closest to believes the whole damn city over you, you know?” She pauses, then continues, bitterly. “Well, I guess you don’t know that,” A bitter laugh. “I’ve always been on your side and you’re not on mine.”

That touches something in him. “How have I not been on your side?” 

“I’m not gonna repeat myself.”

“I’ve always been on your side, I’ve always had your back, I’ve always helped you whenever you needed it,” He lists off. It’s his savior complex speaking for him now, and it’s a bit upset she’d had the audacity to even so much as suggest he hadn’t done his job. “I helped you with racin’, you fuckin’.. did good shit today in a race. Like, what do you mean? I’ve always had your fucking back.”

Everyone else in Randy’s life has always been perfectly okay with only getting help from him, only reaching out when they’re in dire need of a pickup as they evade the cops or they need a good person on the squad for a job, so he doesn’t understand what more Ray could possibly want. That’s just who Randy Bullet is; he’s the reliable one. All he has to offer is his driving, hacking, and shooting skills.

The silence is deafening between the two, beating on and on.

“I’m gonna go, Randy.”

“I mean, if you don’t think I have your back, then it is what it is, I guess,” Neither of them have much fight left in them, it’s obvious, but he hopes he can keep her on the phone a little longer. He doesn’t want to end things like this. He’d rather hear all the reasons she has for why she (stupidly) thinks her loyalty is one-sided.

“If you’re telling me the way you acted today when you called me after you talked to Lexi, saying that I’m using you, believing this random ass girl, is being on my-.”

He wouldn’t even call it a line of defense anymore. Maybe, like, a brick is left of the initial wall he’d built to protect himself from that frightening thing called logic. “She’s not a random ass girl,” He tries anyway. It’s all he has left.

Ray’s sigh is so heavy he can picture exactly how her shoulders drop. She chuckles sadly, no humor to be found. “Well, neither was I.”

“You’re not a random ass girl, either,” He agrees.

“Yeah.. well, you didn’t act like it, so...”

Randy knows she’s right, he really does. “What? I’ve always had your back, alright?”

“You don’t show it.”

“We’ll figure this out, we’ll sort this out,” He promises, more for himself than for her.

“I-,” Ray starts before cutting herself off, exhausted with it all. “Whatever, Randy. Bye.”

Randy returns to the store where his friends are just exiting, piling into Ramee’s G-Wagon they’re borrowing. They seem so happy, so carefree. Must be nice. 

He switches to his Lexus once they’re back at the compound, opting for riding alone rather than continuing being the odd one out in the group. He briefly wonders where Ramee is, if he’s still awake. Probably somewhere with April, knowing him. Of course he is.

Lexi calls him asking him to set up a race for her and their other friends, and it’s only after she has to repeat herself for the third time just for it to still not click for him that he realizes how out of it he truly is. His mind wanders back to the mess he’d created, wondering if Ray was able to go right to sleep in Ramee’s place where she’s currently staying while saving up for her own. Probably not.. right? Hopefully not. If she’s tossing and turning then she still cares, and Randy can work with that.

They can just fix things tomorrow and then they’ll be back to normal like nothing ever happened. Their bond and connection has to be strong enough to withstand this. Randy doesn’t know what he’ll do if it isn’t.

Randy doesn’t see Ray at all the next day. He tries to be subtle, looking behind Ramee as he exits his place like he’d somehow be able to see her as she walks around even though there’s stairs leading up to the main level. 

When April comes outside a little while later, he does the same thing again. If the boys notice him paying more attention than usual to that area of the cubby every time the door opens, they don’t say anything. He’s grateful for that.

Ramee tells him later while they’re at the gas station that she’d been in good spirits when he saw her, didn’t seem too upset about the previous night’s events but for sure is hungover. 

“Bro, she was wasted,” Ramee informs him with a giggle. At least someone can laugh about it. “She knocked April out, too.”

Randy giggles too. That’s what he’s supposed to do, right? “Wait, why?” 

Ramee heads to the back where the ATM is with a shrug. “She said some shit to Ray, I guess. I don’t know, bruh, the whole night was wild,” He walks down an aisle grabbing some stuff before walking up to the cashier. “I almost had to shoot her for it but I couldn’t let April see me defending her, you know?”

Randy blinks at that, unimpressed. Guess Ray would’ve joined the club, they could’ve had matching bullet holes from their boy like all true friends do.

There’s a weird energy radiating around Little Seoul the following day. It feels like everyone’s in on something that Randy isn’t. Like the boys are all whispering around him about him instead of to him.

It puts him on edge, like he needs to be anticipating something happening.

Hutch is back in town after being in Russia for a while, and Randy sees him, K, and Ramee talking in hushed whispers to some cops which sets off warning bells in his mind. It annoys him to be left out of the loop about whatever they’re doing or planning.

He finds out later from Garrett that it’s some ‘for the boys’ plan, and he gets irritated all over again because it’s supposedly being done to combat all of the relationship drama within the gang, but Ramee, a key member of the plan, got a whole TV show run by Mr. K, another key member, for his.

Randy breaks off to do his own thing for a good majority of the day. Most of the gang isn’t very into racing, so he still has that scene to himself for the most part and it’s a good way to get away sometimes.

The boys’ plan still weighs heavy on his mind even as he races. It bothers him that they didn’t think to include him in it, not only as Second In Command but also just as one of the very boys the idea is supposed to be for. 

It’s moments like this where he realizes he’s a bit of an outsider when it comes to non-crime things. He’s the first to be thought of when they need a good all-arounder, but not for anything else. It’s not even like he would’ve participated with Ray being targeted when they don’t even have anything going on, but he still would’ve liked to be considered.

Stopping back by the cubby, he takes notice of Ray’s white G-Wagon not being parked in Ramee’s garage. She’s actually out and about instead of hiding from the world in the apartment. He doesn’t know whether or not to be glad about that.

Randy’s in a chase when his phone starts going off. First, a call from Lexi, then a few texts from her when he doesn’t answer.

When he’s free, after he’s successfully evaded the cops alongside Taco, the last thing he expects to read is Lexi saying something about not getting in between him and Ray.

His brows furrow, how has her tune changed that much in the last couple of days? She, of all people, should know there’s nothing going on with the two of them. She was part of the reason there wasn’t.

Randy tries calling her but she doesn’t answer. He calls Claire, then, who informs him of what had happened. Ray and some of the boys had kidnapped Lexi and knocked her out.

His blood starts to boil hearing about it. Logically, he should be mad that she’d hurt another close friend of his but all he can think about is the fact that she’d talked to other members of the gang and done something big without even saying a word to him. Again, logically, he has no real reason to be her first choice for anything since he’s not the only one teaching her things anymore and the other night had happened, but it’s the most upset he’s been in a while.

It reminds him of the time he and Ray made plans to get revenge on Selena Mendoza together for arresting Ray and bruising her ego, just for her to build a squad made up of Ramee, Mr. K, and fucking Big D, who she didn’t even know at the time, and not make sure there was a spot for him. He tried to not show he was upset then, too, but Ramee had noticed his voice taking on an unusual quality of somber and bitterness and called him out for it. He’d expertly deflected, because that’s what he does, and just brushed it off and said he’d be fine and Big D could stay.

He assures Claire that he’s on their side and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with that girl , calling K once they’re off the phone to find out what happened from his point of view. He almost laughs out loud getting a text from Ray right at that moment asking him to talk because she “doesn’t want to keep dragging things out”. 

‘ Now you wanna talk? after you talk to the whole city first :o ’, Randy replies. It’s a slight shot at her after their situation the other night, she was disappointed he supposedly believed the whole city over her but now she was making drastic decisions without even speaking to him . What happened to holding each other to higher standards than other people? 

The other members of their gang are hardly the whole city, he knows, but it’s the only way he can get his frustration across. She should’ve come to him. Not K, or Ramee, or Taco, or whoever the hell was with her.

After a short meeting with K, he calls Ray asking if she’s ready to meet up but, upon finding out she’s busy with Eugene, he bites his tongue and hangs up before he says something he regrets. Tells her to hit him back up when she’s free. It’s not even just their boys anymore, she’s really giving her time and attention to everyone except for him. 

“Randy, chill,” Ray had said, hearing his tone of voice. He was audibly not in the mood for anything. “It’s a new day, remember?”

Randy hummed. “I thought it was a new day until you went to everyone else apart from me, but it’s a’ight.”

It genuinely shouldn’t bother him so much but he’s not used to this. Selfishly, he’d liked always knowing what she was doing and having her essentially always waiting at his beck and call. If he called, she’d answer. If he wanted to hang, she’d drop everything to do so. Now, he was getting a taste of what it felt like to be on the opposite side of things, to be one of the people she was making second choice for him , and it doesn’t sit right with him.

He should want this. He should want his protégé making new connections and forging new bonds other than the one she has with him. But now that he’s actually seeing it happen firsthand, he’s not too certain this is what he wants. 

If it meant he was able to continue to be her number one, he’d happily deal with her calling him fifty times a day. Calling him any time she had a question or a concern or was simply just bored, completely disregarding how he might be busy himself because, albeit a bit conceited of her, she knew (maybe subconsciously) that she came first over a lot of people. None of that ever bothered him.

Ray’s finally free to meet up with him a little while later, and Randy finds himself becoming anxious while he waits for her to come to the place he’d chosen. He can’t help but feel like there’s a lot riding on this conversation. After everyone else in Los Santos had had their fun, stirring and instigating and poking their nose in their relationship not caring about the potential complications, they’d finally get to talk one on one.

The air around them has some tenseness to it, not at all usual for the two of them. Randy misses the bickering and the yelling and the fighting more than he’d like to admit.

“I had a talk with a few people and-.”

Randy cuts her off, unable to help himself. “Oh, trust me, I know, I know. And not a few people, a lot of people.”

“-I’m clear-headed, I feel pretty clear,” She finishes anyway. Them talking over each other feels fitting. “Not ‘a lot’!” She defends.

“I’m glad you feel clear in the head, man,” Randy says sarcastically.

They’re both silent for a few moments, then Ray sighs. “We need to talk, Randy.”

Randy bites back another sarcastic comment, wanting to ask her why she thought they were here in the first place but knowing he needs to choose his words smarter this time. They need to fix things, not make them worse. Even if he’s annoyed by what she’d done.

“Alright, you know what? I’ll start us off with a clean slate,” Randy begins. Maybe he can get extra points if he’s the bigger person here. “I’ll be real, alright? When I called you that one day when you were in the car or whatever, wherever you were, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have fuckin’ said ‘fuck you, Ray’ and I shouldn’t have, uh, told you to go fuck yourself and shit.”

Him not only apologizing first but also not being combative towards her has to be, like, ten points minimum on the High Road scoreboard. He just has to be winning.

“‘Cause at the end of the day, I mean, I do believe you have my back. I don’t think you would use me to get another guy,” Randy continues, and he actually does mean it. Despite whatever bullshit is going on, whatever they’re going through or where Ray’s head is, the thought of her doing something that selfish and fucked up to him is almost laughable.

“I-,” She stumbles a bit over her words, probably thrown off by Randy’s actions and words. He mentally adds another two points just for that. “I’m gonna be honest, Randy, if anything, I was using other guys to get to you.. okay?”

She loses two points herself for that. How is she going to start by saying she’s being honest and then lie? “That’s fuckin’ bullshit, but okay,” Randy says immediately. Is he really supposed to believe she wants him like that?

“It’s not bullshit, and you fucking know it! You actually know.”

He hums again. He doesn’t know shit.

“You really hurt me that day, like, really hurt me. Really, really hurt me,” Randy stays silent letting her talk. “And I realized something; you were my day one-.”

“Yeah..” He urges when she pauses.

“-and I realized, just because you’re my day one, doesn’t mean it’s vice versa. You have so many other connections in the city, like this Lexi girl, right? I just-,” Another pause. “I think I’m too dependent on you. Like you’re- I don’t know. You’re too important to me, I don’t wanna lose you, and I especially don’t want to be on different pages about.. you know, whatever the fuck this has been.”

It’s interesting to him, because it’s true. He hasn’t even known Ray a year yet and he’s been living in Los Santos for nearly half a decade, of course he has longer relationships. He’s also the first person to bring up knowing other people longer than they’ve known Ray, mostly the boys when they have to choose sides, but part of him knows the length of time doesn’t really matter.

The first day they met, she was riding for him over her own brother. Her own twin brother. It’d come to light that Yuno had snitched on him to police over something he didn’t even do and Ray was fully ready to cut him off, declaring that he and Autumn were her new family instead of Yuno because she couldn’t trust him anymore. She’d been more upset over it than Randy himself was. 

That was when he realized he wanted to keep her around, had to keep her close, though he’d never tell her that. Day one and her loyalty towards him was running through her veins overpowering her literal blood. 

“The thing is; today, you obviously had a problem with me and I know technically I didn’t do the same shit and I should’ve came to you and talked to you about the whole Lexi situation but you gotta understand that you beat down Lexi with a hammer-.”

Ray interrupts him. “First of all, she- it’s not even about anything to do with you or whatever, it’s the principle of her talking shit not to just fuck around but to hurt me. I don’t even know this girl!”

“No, no,” Randy shakes his head. “That’s not true, what you’re saying is not true.”

“It is true because you believed her,” She argues back immediately.

Randy rolls his eyes. He should’ve expected a fight. “How about you ask me for my side?”

“I heard your side when you called me cussing me out that night!” She yells.

“You didn’t hear my side,” He says, actively trying to remain calm and not raise his voice back. It proves to be a feat but is working so far. He’s more hurt than angry, and he understands that she’s probably the opposite since she already went through her sad stage a few nights ago. “What happened was, Lexi-.”

Her tone is accusatory. “Don’t gaslight me, you fuck.”

“I’m not gaslighting anyone, this is actually the truth,” Randy fires back, a bit of a bite in his voice. Cool, calm, and collected, he reminds himself. “You don’t even come talk to me and you say I’m gaslighting you?”

Randy knows there’s no real connection there but that’s still his biggest problem with everything happening today. Why didn’t she talk to him?

“First of all, you ain’t gonna talk to me like that, alright? So relax,” He warns. “Number two, I fucked up because I went off emotion rather than, you know, actually sitting down and thinking about it and talking to you, that’s where I fucked up. It is my fault. This whole situation is my fault ‘cause I came at you sideways and I shouldn’t have.”

It’s probably the most accountability he’s ever taken for anything in his life. 

Normally, Randy Bullet can do no wrong. He’s a good-looking, successful guy with a voice nice enough that he can use it to smoothly talk his way out of just about anything. He doesn’t have to admit fault because people just accept whatever he does or says to them. Ray won’t, though.

He keeps talking hoping to calm her down and stop things from almost escalating again. “You are a close friend to me, you do mean a lot to me, and I care about you.”

He can visibly see her relaxing and chilling back out the longer he talks. He explains what actually happened with him and Lexi the night everything went down, then told her about what the boys had said about the current situation. Full transparency and honesty, something he knows she deserved a couple nights ago when she was begging for it even in her drunken state.

“Why would you not come to me before you went to them?” He questions. “Like, it makes no fucking sense. If you had a problem with what Lexi did, at least find out the full story rather than reacting on what you know so far,” Before she can, he quickly adds, “And I did the same thing, don’t get me wrong.”

“Randy, I talked to you and Lexi on the phone, I got my full story.”

“No, you didn’t. You didn’t even sound fuckin’ straight.”

“Yeah, I was a little drunk,” She admits. “But I also talked to Tommy and the stories are just not lining up.”

His blood runs hot. Now he has to add another person to the list of people she’s putting on higher priority than him? “So you spoke to Tommy, you spoke to fuckin’ Lexi, you spoke to CG, before you spoke to me?”

She can’t know that he’s this irked, though, so before she can point out that he keeps bringing it up despite doing it to her himself, and doing it first at that, he quickly keeps talking. He changes the subject to his history with The Angels, and it’s the first time he’s really talked to her about his relationship with them. It’s really not her fault she didn’t know how close they were. Hell, she’d only just found out about his whatever with Violet a few days ago.

“Lexi, I fuck with her, I have her back, but it’s nothing like what you think it is,” He assures her. “It’s not like I’m fuckin’ in love with her.”

Ray looks down, kicking a random rock across the dirt. “I mean, it’s fine if you are. It’s not like that, Randy,” She stresses.

“No, I know, but I’m just giving you backstory on who Lexi is and why I would go to her about this sort of situation,” Randy explains. “‘Cause, I mean, end of the day, can I be real with you? Relationships end friendships.”

‘ And I don’t want to lose you either .’ He wants to add on, but doesn’t. The last thing he’d ever want is for them to date or become intimate or anything like that and then next you know, something shifts between them and it’s not the same anymore; they can’t bicker and fight and try to out-petty each other all for the sake of just having a secret one-up for no one but themselves. She’d become far too important to him to risk it.

“And.. I don’t know. The fact that you went to all of them and you fucked her up and you still didn’t even tell me..” He can hear the hurt in his own voice which alarms him a little but he just can’t get over it. He genuinely thought they were better than that, that she knew she could and therefore would come to him when she had an issue no matter what it was. But he was proven wrong.

“I tried calling you and you didn’t answer, multiple times,” She defends. He knows she can tell he’s hurt too but he knows her ego as well. “It literally took me ‘til now to get your attention.”

It’s rich coming from her, especially on a day like today. “That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is, Randy!”

“I picked up and you were busy with Eugene so I said to do your thing,” Randy reminds her, still keeping his cool despite her raising her voice again. This has to be a new record on the High Road leaderboards, he’s sure of it. He could probably go to the league.

She doesn’t have anything to say in response knowing he was right, the only sound around them the crickets and the cicadas in the bushes and the faint sound of some car honking in the distance.

Ray looks down again, picking at her jacket zipper this time. He eyes her movement, neither of them really wanting to make eye contact at the moment. 

“Randy, I- I was trying- like-,” She stutters, and he fights against the urge to reach forward to place a hand on her arm or shoulder to reassure her it’s okay and it’s just him and she can relax. “That was one of my priorities today, to talk to you.”

“Clearly not ‘cause you spoke to like twenty different people before.”

She looks up at him. “You don’t understand! Like, I literally- I got arrested first thing when I woke up.”

“Yeah, you know why you got arrested? It was a setup by Mr. K. It’s his ‘Operation FTB: For The Boys’ where they’re going after everyone’s, quote unquote, significant other, and I guess you’re-,” He lets out a mix between a scoff and a chuckle. “You’re mine, and the plan was to get the Randy Bullet body pillow, distance us, and then we’re back to normal. Like, how we were a few weeks ago.”

The second the words are out of his mouth he regrets them, the look on her face so incredulous and betrayed he starts to think maybe she was better off not knowing. But she deserved to know the truth, that she’d essentially chosen people that were secretly plotting against her over him.

He can feel her retreating into her shell again, her face slowly losing all emotion as she processes what she’d been told. 

She’d never explicitly told him, but he knew better than anyone how much she struggled to feel like she deserved to be in the gang. Like she had earned her place. It was the reason he personally made sure she got a chain the second she stepped back into the city after going on a long vacation, solidifying her spot in the family even though she’d been in it since the moment the two of them stabbed a cop together. 

Since he warned her he’d get her into crazy shit and instead of running for the hills given the out he was purposely giving her as a test of sorts, she continued buying her bandages and water from the convenience store cashier and bounded back out to his lime green Penumbra, ready to go wherever he’d take her. That blind, unwavering trust.

“This is how CG treats their family, huh?” She mumbles. He can see the hurt swirling in her eyes. “I don’t really know how to take that, honestly. It feels really.. scummy.”

“Well, I don’t think K’s intentions were to, like-,” He starts but then stops himself, shaking his head. Why is he defending them? They hadn’t even thought to include him. “You know what else it is? I feel like more people talk about me and you than me and you talk about this shit.”

“Yeah,” Ray agrees.

“And the problem is, everyone- even like, I fuck with Taco, but Taco, Garrett, Claire, like they’re all instigating the fuck out of it and it’s turning into something it shouldn’t have even turned into.”

She nods, face still solemn. “Yeah, I just talked to Taco and I asked him, the day when you were mad at me, why he was only there for you and not me and he said that he wasn’t on anyone’s side, he was just instigating.”

“He wasn’t there for me. You know what he was telling me? ‘ Your girl got yoinked, bruh. Your girl got yoinked. You look dumb as fuck, your girl got yoinked by Tommy T ,’” He gets irritated again just thinking about it. He’s really starting to realize these people really aren’t on either of their sides, just their own. “Which honestly pissed me the fuck off even more. That’s the only thing he would tell me, and the only thing he would text me.”

“Everything hurts,” Ray rings at her jacket’s sleeves, looking up towards the sky and squeezing her eyes shut. She tries to laugh it off. “Holy shit. I did not expect that whole PD thing to be a- to be a- just a- a setup,” She stutters. She blinks back the tears that spring to her eyes as quickly as they’d pooled there. Randy wouldn’t have even noticed if he wasn’t looking at her so closely, concerned.

He doesn’t want to defend them, but clearly she cares about them and what they do. “I don’t think K’s intentions were to disrespect you or anything,” He tries.

“He literally- they all looked me in the eyes and were all gassing me up to hit Lexi.”

“K said he doesn’t think you should’ve hit her.”

She breaks then, not even fighting the tears this time. “I don’t understand why they’re telling me to my face I should!” She quickly turns around, likely not wanting him to see her cry if he knows her like he thinks he does.

This is by far the most upset Randy has ever seen Ray and it causes his heart to ache. Suddenly, he’s very glad everything that happened the other night was over the phone and through text so he didn’t have to see her face to face. He knows how she feels, this same family had once put their own agendas over his potential love life as well, not caring how he felt or how it could affect him. This wasn’t the first time they’d enacted a plan to stop him from getting a girlfriend. It seems like it’s always him when Mr. K finally draws the line.

“And now Claire called me and she’s so mad, and I don’t even have the boys backing me up, this is so fucked,” She laughs humorlessly, wiping at her eyes. “I just wanted- I was so hyped up, they were literally there, and I did what they said and I was- I thought- this is so fucked. I don’t even know what to do with Claire. She was so emotional about it, she hung up on me, I couldn’t even explain.”

Randy sees an opportunity at the mention of Claire. “Did you tell Claire that you have a crush on me? What did Claire tell you?”

There’s a flash of alarm in her eyes that she quickly tries to mask. “I don’t know, I don’t remember talking to Claire about that.”

“Are you lying?” He asks after studying her face for a second. “That’s what Claire told me, that you told her you like me.”

Ray avoids eye contact, though there hadn’t been very much this entire conversation anyway. “Does it matter now?”

“I mean, wouldn’t it always matter?”

She still can’t look at him, which makes him want to grab her shoulders and literally force her to, but he resists. He wants her to remember that he’s still him. “I don’t know... I don’t know, Randy.”

He’s silent, letting her work through whatever’s going through her mind. 

“I don’t want to lose you and I trust you, you’re one of the people I trust most in this city, but I feel like I’m too dependent on you.”

Too dependent . He doesn’t like that. There’s no such thing as being too dependent on Randy, or at least no one else is worried about it so why is she? Maybe he’d let his own walls down too far with her, made her think she had too much control and say in their relationship. Why does she get to decide she’s had enough and she needs more time with other people, not even considering how he’d feel with her absence?

So, he does what he does best: deflect. She hasn’t even accused him of anything but he has to get the upper hand, immediately.

“Can I be honest with you? I feel like every time I’ve been with you and we’ve hung out and shit.. I mean, I don’t think I’ve hinted that I want to date you or anything, I feel like we’ve just been doing our thing.”

Ray shifts her weight from one leg to the other, finally daring to look at him again and it makes Randy want to be the one avoiding it now, especially with the topic at hand.

“Listen, Randy, okay. If I’m gonna be honest, yeah, I did start developing feelings for you,” She admits, tripping over the word ‘feelings’, like it was hard for her to get out. “But I’m aware that, you know, if something bad were to happen I think it would hurt more losing you. So, I guess that’s kind of why we’ve been fucking with each other in that way.”

She takes a step forward. “I don’t want to lose you, you’re important to me, and that’s more valuable to me than.. I don’t know,” And takes that same step back. 

He doesn’t know why it’s so hard to believe that she likes him like that. It’s jarring because he knows it’s not like Violet, or Bunny, or any of the other girls that are “into” him just because they think he’s hot and they like his voice. They just want to get in his pants, and he’s sure of that, and he’s okay with that. Around five minutes ago and before, he would’ve testified on the stand in court that Ray would gag at the mere thought of so much as even being in Randy’s bedroom, let alone his actual bed, especially with him.

Ray had seen the real Randy and had still fallen for him. Hardly even respects who he is as a criminal so he knew that wasn’t the selling point that hooked her. Somehow, she likes the stupid accents and the constant talk about the Queen and the way he isn’t that big, tough guy the streets fear when they’re alone. She isn’t attracted to the way he could save her from just about any situation or would die trying, it’s just him .

That wasn’t going to work, though. She deserves better than him. Someone like Tommy who isn’t too much of a coward around his boys to treat her how she really deserves out of fear of being ridiculed and being looked at as soft by them. 

The lengths their gang leader had gone to to break them up when they weren’t even together was too much for him, and he wasn’t going to put her through anything like that again. He wouldn’t survive another Mount Chiliad type situation himself. Not with Ray on the other side of his gun.

“I fuck with you heavy, a’ight?” And he does. He really, really does. “I’m just not a good guy, like, a good enough guy to date, you know what I mean? And I don’t think you should ever look at me as like a boyfriend or someone like that, more of like a mentor.”

He’d tried to let her down easy, for her own safety though she’d never know that, but he can tell she’d taken some offense. “I definitely don’t want to date you. You’re a fuckboy, you smell, you’re an asshole, you’re literally so immature, and I know I can do better. I just- you know.”

That hit a nerve in him. He’d done it to protect her and her first mind was to start to insult him and put him down.

“See, you say dumb shit like that while we’re being serious but if you actually mean that, I will leave right now.”

“I’m being serious!”

He stares at her for a second before turning to walk towards his car. “Alright, then you can go fuck yourself. What the fuck are you saying?”

“You can’t get mad at me for telling the truth, what the fuck?” She grabs his arm to stop him, pulling back immediately at the burning look he gives her. But he turns back around despite it, face softening. “You literally just said I deserve better and you’re right.”

Randy hadn’t expected her to agree with him. He hadn’t expected her to start stroking his ego or anything either because that’s not her, but he’d expected some kind of reassurance. Some kind of sign from her that maybe he could be enough for her despite everything he’d been telling himself, but she’d agreed. And, for some reason, that’s the one thing that hurts him the most out of everything that’s happened.

“Go get better then, like, what the fuck are you on about?”

She laughs a little then, right in his face. It’s all just a joke to her. “Oh, you’re mad at me? You’re trying to end things like that and I agree with you, and you’re mad, huh?”

“I’m just sayin’, bruh, I ain’t a good guy in terms of, fuckin’ like, emotions and shit.”

“Yeah, bruh . I’m aware of it, bruh . I’m aware, bruh ,” She mocks and it almost makes him laugh this time. She’s so ridiculous. “Listen, alright? You’re my favorite person in this whole damn city, okay?”

Randy rolls his eyes so hard he’s afraid they might get stuck. “Buuullshit. Fuck off, man,” He looks away from her with another eyeroll. “You can’t tell me all that shit, saying I’m a fuckboy, I smell, all this shit, I’m immature, and then go to that. Like, what?”

“I was fucking with you, like how we always do-.”

“Nah,” Randy stops her. “Don’t fuck around right now. Of all times, I’ll be honest, just don’t fuck around now.”

Ray’s face drops again at that. “You know, maybe humor is what is helping me cope.”

“Don’t disrespect me like that, especially now.”

He should be sympathetic, he really should, but she doesn’t seem to care that this might be hurting him too. Normally, stuff like that wouldn’t phase him but he doesn’t feel at all like the normal Randy if the pain in his heart is anything to go by.

He sighs. “The boys are waiting for us at the meeting at Little Seoul,” He informs her, getting off the topic. There’s not going to be any common ground there, it seems, so might as well move on.

“About what?” 

“The gang, I guess,” He unlocks his phone and looks at all the missed texts and calls he had. K had really called the meeting at the worst time possible but he wouldn’t put it past him to have done it on purpose.

She picks at a fingernail. “I don’t know if I really wanna go.”

He drops the hand holding his phone and looks at her. “Why not?”

“I mean, why would I after they treated me like that?”

He understands where she’s coming from but the last thing he wants is the boys on his back when they see her not there. Things had been fine the last time they saw her, he’d have to tell them he told her about the plan or make something up as to the reason why and he couldn’t be bothered either way. It hits him then just how exhausted he is.

“They didn’t talk shit, alright? From my point of view, from what they told me, I got that Ramee instigated a little bit, obvi- I told you all of this. I don’t know.”

She crosses her arms. “So, I should just pretend like that whole thing never happened?”

“Do what you want, end of the day,” He says. He’s not trying to be cold or act like he doesn’t care but he’s just so, so tired. “You’re your own person, do your own thing. If you wanna, you know, go separate ways then do it, bruh. What do you want me to do? I helped you out and now you can go blossom, I guess.”

He doesn’t even know how he brought the conversation back to that but it must’ve been weighing heavier on him than he thought. He’d done what he thought to be everything she needed, showing her the ropes and protecting her and saving her from cops and she was still talking about needing other people and that cut deep. 

Randy had thought a lot about what it’d be like to be more than just his criminal abilities, and now he was finally experiencing it with Ray and he just wishes she was like everyone else. 

Maybe things would be less complicated and less painful if the only time she talked to him was when she wanted to hit a bank and Ramee wasn’t around to hack because in that perfect alternate universe, maybe she was closer to him and hit him up for everything. Maybe he shouldn’t have insisted on Ray earning her own money instead of him just giving it to her, because sugar daddy/sugar baby relationships typically don’t have this pain involved.

“You confuse me, man,” She squints up at him. 

“How do I confuse you?”

“I don’t know, you just seem so heartless.”

“You’re the one coming here telling me, ‘oh, I rely on you too much’, ‘I’m too dependent on you’, this, that, and the third. What am I supposed to do from that?”

This whole thing feels like they’ve taken five steps forward and ten steps back. Has any progress even been made?

Ray shuts her eyes, shoulders slumping. “I mean… nothing.”

“That, to me, just seems like you’ve had enough of me. So, do your ting , you know?”

She sighs loudly. Once again, she’d been left with zero fight in her. “You can go to the meeting.”

“I’ll see you there, alright?” Randy urges. He wasn’t letting her run from this.

“I’m not gonna go.”

“Why?”

Ray picks at her zipper again. They’re definitely back to square one. “I don’t know. You just seem different. The way you’re talking to me, you’ve never talked to me like this before. You’re just so.. you feel so distant, even though you’re right here, it’s weird.”

He doesn’t really know what to say to that, he’d thought he was being the bigger person here and making it better. His phone rings then, and even without seeing the screen, she knows it’s one of the boys.

“You should go to the meeting.”

Randy shakes his head. “ You should go to the meeting, and go clear things up with them as well. Stand up for yourself. At the end of the day, you are still you, alright? Let’s go to that meeting, you stand up for yourself, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you either. No one’s gonna hurt you or anything.”

He knew that would get her, a little reassurance that she still had him behind her. That he actually did have her back, even against the boys. All of this shit had happened and proved nothing to him except that even in all of their dysfunction and chaos and toxicity, it was still them against the world. They’d both been done so, so wrong.

“Okay?” Randy asks, wanting solid confirmation as Ray walks toward her car that she was going to go to the compound instead of running away.

“Okay,” She agrees. “I’ll see you there.”

She does, indeed, show up, much to Randy’s (and Garrett’s) relief.

The meeting goes on. People joke around and laugh, none the wiser of all the turmoil he and Ray had been through today alone. Randy jokes, too, though, because that’s what he does. He can’t stay serious for too long.

Ray doesn’t say a word for a good ten minutes straight, and he texts her asking if she wants him to bring the plan up or if she’ll do it. She speaks up then, voice loud but he can hear the shakiness to it. She’s nervous, as he’d expect her to be.

He’s proud of her, listening to her confront two of the strongest members of their gang in front of everyone, not letting her nerves get the best of her. He wants to mentally give himself a pat on the back but he knows it’s not his doing, this was all her. 

He’d seen this strong side of her long ago and had experienced it many times himself. That same energy she’d always had with him, that feistiness, that unwillingness to be intimidated, was finally being seen by other people. He could never admit it to her but he was even proud of what she’d done to Lexi, as it was exactly what he would’ve done, too. She was right, you can’t let people talk about you like that, especially when you’re Chang Gang. There’s a level of respect expected to be given to you just for owning that chain.

K explains the plan again in response, like she didn’t already know all about it. The others, feeling the tenseness in the circle, try to lighten the mood by joking around about Gunner and the pillow and Randy joins in for a second, too, before looking over at Ray and seeing her not at all amused.

No one else is taking this as seriously as she is except April, who says family shouldn’t do what they did to her, and Garrett who looks and sounds sympathetic, probably knowing as well about Ray’s struggles with finding her footing in the gang.

Randy notices her shutting down at some point amongst the chaos and kidding around, and she stops trying to get an apology, or whatever, out of K and Ramee and just tells them she wants to fix things with the Angels and that’s all she cares about. Some of the boys offer to go with her but she declines. Randy would go with her, she’d already asked him to when they had their one-on-one talk. A little part of him feels triumphant in that.

Immediately after the meeting, the boys start pulling her to the side to plead their cases. It’s apparent to everyone that she‘s upset and, in their own fucked up ways, they all do care about her and don’t want any hard feelings. 

She’s going through the motions, essentially just nodding and smiling where appropriate. Randy can tell she doesn’t care about this right now, she’s tunnel-visioned on Claire and Lexi and rectifying things there. The boys could wait.

Randy explains the basics of the situation to Flippy as the two of them wait for Ray so they can head to meet with Claire and Lexi. He’s grateful to have a completely neutral ear, Flippy had no idea about anything that was going on and had had no parts in anything that happened. Plus, he’d be real with Randy and tell him like it is if he felt he was wrong. 

Ray comes out a minute or so later, and he quickly finishes up the story. “I just wanna shoot some cops up and fuckin’ robs banks,” He whines. Hopefully this will be over soon.

“You know what sucks the most, Ray? I feel like,” He begins and then stops to process his next words. “I mean, I guess it’s on us, but.. I don’t know, man, you still look at me the same, or no?”

At this point, it’s better to lay everything out on the table and whatever happens, happens. Clearly, he and Ray need to talk more instead of letting everyone else talk for them. If he’d learned nothing else throughout all of this, he’d learned exactly that.

“I don’t know, I’m just tired,” She admits. He waits for her to continue but she doesn’t.

“I feel like, uh,” A wave of sadness washes over him. “Everyone’s good apart from us, to be honest, but.. fuck it.”

Randy knows things are different and it’s such a huge disappointment it makes him want to scream. They were supposed to always be okay. He’d stressed so much when she returned to the city how they were nothing like Ramee and April, and he’d mostly meant she wasn’t seeing a dime of his money unless she earned it but he’d also meant all the drama and bullshit and the rest of the city was never supposed to touch their friendship.

“I meant what I said, remember?”

Randy’s heart drops even further. “Yeah, I mean, fair enough, then, if you wanna do that then do it.” 

He can feel her look at him from the passenger seat but he doesn’t look back, using setting the GPS for the location Claire told him as a distraction. “Wait, what? I meant what I said!”

“You wanna go your own way, right?”

She giggles and he has to bite back a smile at the sound, clenching his jaw. “No, that you’re my favorite person in the city. I trust you. I meant that!”

Randy doesn’t know why he’d assumed the worst case scenario. They’d been through so much of the worst of it all that it’s basically just second nature now. He wants to believe her, he does, but all he can think about is all the things wrong with him that proved she deserved better that she had listed off with zero hesitation like she’d thought about it in depth before. It shouldn’t be sitting with him the way it is but he’d just never expected it from her.

They pull up to the location, which is a church because Claire had decided they need to “find God”. It’s so absurd it’s right on brand for her. 

Once inside, they walk to the front where Claire and Lexi are and when everyone’s settled, Ray immediately begins to apologize. There’s no preamble or small talk, she just jumps right in and it almost gives him whiplash. 

He stays quiet, letting her say her piece and get whatever she needs off her chest. Imagine his surprise when she suddenly points at him. “Honestly, this fucker, he got in my head.”

There she goes again. Throwing him under the bus and disregarding how she’s supposed to have his back too. He’d had a sneaking suspicion that this would happen, that the girls would work their shit out and he’d end up taking all the blame.

“What?” He asks, blindsided by the sudden accusation. “How did I get in your fuckin’ head? Why are you telling them bullshit?”

“And you took it out on me, that’s the thing,” Lexi chimes in. “You didn’t take it out on Randy, you took it out on me.”

Randy disregards her, continuing with his full focus on Ray. “What did I do? What are you- what are you saying right now?”

Ray visibly deflates a little and he’d feel bad about the way he was talking to her, yet again, if he wasn’t so sick of her using him as an easy target because she knows he has a soft spot for her. He’d stood by her against his own boys that he’s known for over four years despite everything just for her to get in front of these girls and immediately sail him up the river.

Just as he’d told her in the car, everyone’s fine except for them. And maybe they’re okay on Ray’s side but on his, that couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s pretty sure he’s the personification of frustration at this point because he can feel it coursing through his entire body like molten lava.

“Honestly, people should’ve spoke with Randy first instead of coming at me,” Lexi’s face is totally emotionless.

At least someone feels him on that. This was why he went to her in the first place. “That’s what I’m saying, no one came to me,” He agrees. “Thank you!”

“I tried calling you, you fuck,” Ray defends. 

“No, you didn’t, don’t lie to me like that.”

“Yes, I- why would I lie?!” 

Randy’s initial annoyance is coming back now. She’d really gone to so many people before he so much as got to hear her voice today, it’s insane to him.

He fully turns to face her, not caring much at all about Lexi and Claire anymore. “Okay, okay, so tell me, tell me,” He has to talk over her to get a word in, at least that hasn't changed. “When you woke up today, who were the first people you spoke to? Me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, I tried calling you. I remember trying to call you, it was my priority.”

“You’re lying,” He accuses again. “Why are you lying?”

If looks could kill, he’d be six feet under. “I’m. Not. Lying.”

“Who did you speak to first about this whole situation? Vinny, and Ramee, and K, right? If I was your priority like you’re saying I was, then you would’ve just been like, ‘Okay, I’m not gonna bring it up to the boys.’”

A lightbulb goes off in her head. “Oh, when I first woke up, I got arrested and then the whole body pillow thing happened.”

“Still, you should’ve spoke to me.”

It’s kind of unfair to expect that even amidst getting pulled over for no reason, she was going to think to call him but maybe he could’ve saved her. He didn’t know about the plan then, and even if he did, getting her out of there still would’ve been his priority, especially knowing her anxiety with cops. They’d just gotten into a fight a couple days ago over him letting an officer cuff her, he wouldn’t have let it happen again.

He has to bite his tongue as he listens to Ray blaming him again , letting out a chuckle as he begrudgingly agrees with her that, yup, it’s totally his fault. He’s so tired of arguing with her over the same things over and over that he’s learning it’s best to just let it go sometimes.

“To be honest, I don’t think Claire and Lexi are one hundred percent free, it’s not like they’re innocent,” He brings up. “They also were involved in it, I’m just gonna say it straight up.”

There is absolutely no shot he’s going to be the only one taking full responsibility for his part in this and not shifting the blame to the others. If they can do it, so can he. Everyone needs to own up to their actions.

“The whole city was involved in it, pretty much,” Ray replies. He’s not sure she even realizes she’s trying to give them a free pass while actively throwing him under the bus, repeatedly. 

But he’ll bite his tongue. “The point being; Claire, you instigated the whole Violet shit with her. When she told you some shit about her liking me, you still told her to go after me even though you know the Violet situation so not only did you fuck over Ray but you kinda fucked over Violet. And on top of that, Lexi, I mean, you did also talk shit about Ray after as well.”

He listens to all three of them trying to argue against what he’s said, but he knows he’s right. If he would’ve known this was actually going to be a three versus one, he would’ve made Ray settle this on her own instead of trying to be supportive and have her back. Why she isn’t on his side is truly so far beyond his realm of understanding.

Despite her staggering lack of loyalty for the first time ever, she still had taken responsibility in her own ridiculous way. Among the fingers she was pointing at Randy was also one pointing at herself, so his focus was on getting the Angels to admit their fault instead of acting like they were victims at the hands of Ray.

“I’m just saying, you guys are blaming Ray, and I did fuck up, but you guys aren’t as innocent as you’re making it seem out to be.”

“I already said before, I did stir the pot,” Claire admits. “I’m not saying that I’m innocent or that I didn’t do anything.”

He looks between them. “All I’m saying is you all should be apologizing to each other.”

“I’m sorry I gave you advice…?” Lexi questions, acting like she doesn’t know what he means. He’d stuck his neck out for her against his own gang just for her to do this.

“Why you being dumb? Why you saying dumb shit now?”

Ray nods, finally standing with him on something. “Yeah, that’s a dumb thing to say sorry for.”

“You did talk shit about Ray, you literally fuckin’ talked shit about her as well when she came to you,” Randy fumes at the redhead. “It goes both ways, Lexi. I get it, she hit you around the head, but you did also talk shit about her to me as well. So, like, don’t play these games telling me, ‘oh, I’m sorry that I gave you advice’. I get it, I fucked up, but also show her some respect as well. You too, Claire, like, come on.”

If Ray wasn’t going to stand up for herself against these girls, he would. No matter how mad at or upset with her he is, that doesn’t give other people, especially outsiders that she doesn’t know, the right to take advantage of her passiveness and get away scot-free with saying whatever they want about her. 

It doesn’t work like that and he’s mad at himself for even letting Lexi talk shit in the first place the night everything went down. Clearly, it had given her false confidence that he was going to let her get away with continuing to not give Ray the basic respect she deserved. Not even just as a Chang Gang member, or his best friend, but as her . She hadn’t done anything to anyone until she was provoked into it.

Even after it all, they still don’t take fault and he can’t fathom why Ray isn’t annoyed by it like he is. They’d both gotten fucked over, she should be on the same page as him.

“Randy, you good?” Flippy asks, reading him like a book after he’s been quiet for a while.

“I don’t know, bro, I can’t deal with this fucking bullshit, to be honest. I’m done,” He rushes out of the church and into his car, Flippy hopping in alongside him. They don’t even bother to wait for Ray to come out even though she’d come with them. She can get a ride from her new besties. “Let’s just dip, bruh, fuck all this shit.”

“I’mma be honest,” Flippy gets it. He knows he does. “You just gotta try not to let it get to you, bro.”

“Hey,” She says into the phone.

Randy doesn’t bother with a greeting back. He’s so irked by how that meeting had gone that he has no energy for pleasantries and pretending everything’s fine. All Flippy had done was rile him up more by validating everything he’d thought and said and he’d spoken to some of the other boys, too, but they didn’t get it. He didn’t expect them to, it’s the exact reason they shouldn’t have been in their business in the first place.

He runs his free hand through his white hair, exasperated. “I ain’t gonna lie, I am just triggered and, like, that meeting was absolute dogshit to me but it is what it is.”

“Yeah, honestly, I just wanted to say whatever to just make it end,” Her voice comes through the receiver loud and clear and he can already feel some of the anger dissipating from his body. “It was better to be on good terms than not with them.”

She’s still far too good of a person because he disagrees. “Nah, I don’t fuck with them anymore, to be honest, fuck that,” The anger bubbles back up again. “Lexi tellin’ me, ‘oh, sorry for saying good advice’, that triggered me. And then, number two, Claire- I get what Claire was doing, but you gotta realize, end of the day, Claire knows everything-.”

“I know.”

 “-and she knows about the whole Violet situation but she still pushed you to come after me, and then she acts all innocent saying, ‘I was just trolling, I was just fucking around’. Like, just fuckin’ admit to what you’ve done wrong.”

“I know, I know.”

“And they’re making you look like a dickhead as well, which triggers the fuck out of me,” And, truth be told, that’d probably been the biggest trigger of them all for him. He feels guilty for having been on their side.

“I know. Randy-.”

“It’s like, be mature, fuckin’ apologize and we move on.”

“I know, Randy. I know, trust me.”

He’s very aware he’s venting but that was why he’d called her in the first place. He knew she’d just listen and wouldn’t downplay his feelings or even amp them up because she knew that, in either case, he’d end up pulling up to their mansion and doing something that would probably start this whole situation all over again. 

“Nah, you gotta stick up for yourself as well, like, what the fuck are they doing?”

Randy can hear the way she throws her head back in exasperation. “I know, but I’m fucking tired of the drama! These kinds of people, you just can’t talk to them. When Claire called me about Lexi, she was just screaming at me, not letting me talk once, and then she hung up on me. They’re just emotional and there’s just no winning, it’s better just to end it how it is.”

She’s right, he’d tried so hard to get Lexi and Claire to admit their faults in the situation, to give not only himself but also Ray that small, but necessary, victory after a couple days of nothing but losses for both of them. They both deserved that. But you don’t always get what you deserve and you can’t get angry about it, you just have to accept it and move on.

It’s fitting that the first thing Ray’s ever taught Randy was something to do with emotions and feelings. It makes perfect sense. He teaches her about crime and how the city functions because that’s where his expertise is, and she teaches him about feeling and how a normal human being functions. Randy had never gotten a mentor in emotional regulation before, or anything for that matter.

“You’re my boy, I trust you, okay?” Randy smiles to himself. Hearing her explanation now for how she’d been acting at the church had lifted such a huge weight off of his shoulders. She hadn’t been against him, she’d been trying to appease those girls for his sake as well as her own, make them feel like they were right so everyone could just get over all of this. “I’m sorry, honestly, it got to this point but this is a huge lesson learned. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Honestly, let’s just keep shit between us. Like, you know, anything,” He requests. Things were perfect with them until other people started getting involved. “Not against the gang or anything but..”

Ray was on the same page as him. “No, seriously. You and me- I don’t want the fucking city involved like that ever again, it fucking sucked.”

It’s kind of crazy for Randy to even think about. They’d gone nearly an entire year just being them and being okay with it and the second everyone else saw an opening and started trying to stir things up between them for their own amusement, it all blew up. Maybe he and Ray did lack in communication but there were also a lot of things they didn’t need to say explicitly to one another to understand, they just knew.

Randy's never been one for much talking anyway. People can find weakness in your words, but there’s not much room to find it in the bullets flying from your gun. He’s willing to make an effort for Ray, though, to ensure he’d never come this close to losing her ever again. This has been the most strenuous few days he’s experienced in so long and all he cared about the entire time was making sure he and Ray would be okay.

“Listen,” He starts. He would make an effort for her, no matter how hard he can feel himself cringing at even bringing this topic up. He really doesn’t do this. “This is something awkward to talk about and I get, you know… obviously, you know, you have feelings for me and shit.. or whatever.”

She huffs. “Randy, admit you had feelings for me, too, you fucker.”

Now, hold on.

“Huh?”

“Admit it,” She demands, but he can hear the smile in her voice. They’re getting back to normal. “You had feelings for me.”

Cute, but he’s not going to admit something like that. Randy Bullet doesn’t love, or like, or whatever the fuck it is.

“Listen, listen. The point being-.”

Ray can read him like a book, she knows exactly what he’s doing. “Nah, nah, nah, nah. Nah. Adm-,” She cuts herself off. “Randy, okay, it’s not going to turn into anything, I understand where we lie and shit but.. I don’t wanna come off as the crazy one, okay?”

He knows what she means, she doesn’t want to look like this was all one-sided and she had gone this hard, gotten this upset over someone that didn’t like her back. It’s only the two of them and she’s still worried about it. She doesn’t want him to look at her differently, either, he realizes.

“You’re not crazy,” He answers before he can stop himself. “Everyone knows-.”

“Then fucking admit it!” 

Randy giggles in nervousness to himself, hopefully too quiet for her to even hear it. Big man like Randy Bullet admitting to a crush? Never.

He thinks quickly trying to find a way out of it, but he knows her and he knows she’s not letting him until she gets an answer. His brain feels jumbled and his heart is beating faster and it got warmer outside or something because his hands suddenly feel a little clammy.

“N-,” He wipes his free hand on a pants leg. Weird how it suddenly jumped about ten degrees in temperature. “Just relax.”

“I’m not continuing until you admit it, you fuck. I’m not crazy.”

He’s at a loss for words, nervously shuffling his feet and pacing back and forth a little bit. Does he even like her? Just earlier today he’d told both her and Mr. K that he didn’t, so why can’t he say it again now that she’s directly asking?

“Listen, let’s just move- you’re not crazy!”

He knows she’s smiling. Smug asshole. “I’m not?”

“No, you’re not. Let’s just move on, a’ight? We go back to just being friends, doing our thing, fucking around, just having a good time making money. Just doing fuckin’ crime and having fun and that’s it,” He actually really does miss it, he’d been wanting for a while to start training her again. Getaway driving, hacking, thermiting, she still had so much more to learn and perfect. “None of this fuckin’ relationship shit, none of this crush shit, none of that.”

“Alright, alright. Well, just keep choking it down, I get it.”

It’s times like this when he hates that she’s just like him because he feels like he’s looking in a mirror (or listening to one?). She’s so cocky, so certain that she’s right on this and it’s annoying Randy because he knows she is, too. “What?” He asks, putting on his best incredulous voice.

He can hear the smirk. ”Oh, no no no. It’s fine. It’s okay, you don’t have to admit it, it’s fine. You kind of indirectly admitted it but it’s all good.” 

“I don’t,” Randy tries. He can’t bring himself to say the full sentence. “No, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”

A weak attempt to convince both her and himself, and it’s pointless because Randy Bullet Jr. on the other side of the phone knows the truth and, just like the senior, there’s no convincing her otherwise.

“You did. You said I wasn’t crazy which pretty much means that- yeah, it’s okay, I understand.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” That’s exactly what he meant but he made the mistake of forgetting who he was talking to. He can’t stop himself from laughing again. “Stop!”

Ray continues, eating this right up. “I know, you know, I know,” She trails. “Ray Mond and all, I get it.”

 “I don’t,” Randy giggles again, a bit airy in his fluster. “Stop. No. I’m saying no.”

He really should’ve taken April under his wing instead. He can deal with another Ramee, not another version of himself. 

God, he really has to rethink how he acts towards other people. “Yeah, nooo,” She teases. “I get it, alright.”

“No, like actually,” He says as seriously as he can muster. “Just listen to me.. alright? I like you and like, I think we just- you know.”

Wait, no.

“Not like you like that but I like h- like, you know-,” He stutters, realizing he might have caught himself up. She’s not even saying anything because he’d asked her to just listen but she’s still in his head. The silence is making it worse, he thinks. “Fuck! Man, this shit is so-.”

He takes a breath, collecting himself quickly. This isn’t fucking Randy Bullet, Ray is so goddamn annoying. “I like you as a friend and we should just stick to friends and just having a good time fucking around and just that. That’s it.”

“Alright,” She finally speaks again, and he’s grateful for it because he desperately needed to stop talking. “We’re friends that flirt with each other and hit on each other all the time and get jealous, got it, got it.”

Ray’s entirely way too amused with this whole thing. If he would’ve known it was going to turn on him like this, he wouldn’t have brought it up. He just wanted to hear her say she liked him again, needed the reassurance after all of his flaws in her eyes were plastered on the jumbotron earlier. He needed to know all of this hadn't caused her to lose those feelings.

“Yeah, let’s just keep it that way, Randy.”

He pulls his phone away from his ear and looks at it, making sure this was really happening. “What? We can’t just be friends?”

She laughs. Way. Too. Amused. She’s getting too much enjoyment out of fucking with him, he can tell. “Yeah, we can be friends.”

“ Just friends?”

“We can be just friends but don’t get jealous.”

He doesn’t know why she keeps saying that. Yeah, some part of him might care about her more than he does other people and a little differently at that but that doesn’t mean he gets jealous of the other guys she dates and shit. They’re no long-term threat to him, he knows that for a fact. 

After everything is said and done, it’s him she’s coming home to. Literally since they both live in the cubby because she’s in his gang because of his doing but also figuratively because he knows he means more to her than anyone else. The others can’t even get more than one date out of her before she finds a huge flaw in them and has to cut things off. He doesn’t have to deal with that.

“I’m just making sure we’re good,” And that’s all that really matters to him. “You know, no beef, no sourness.”  

“At the end of the day, you’re my ride or die, alright?” Ray says with finality because it’s really just that simple. “End of the day, you’re my day one.”

Randy nods even though she can’t see him. “Yeah, one hundred percent. You know I got your back and you got mine.”

There’s probably nothing he’s more certain of than that. They’ve dealt with so much bullshit and this likely wouldn’t be the last time, just hopefully it’s not as dramatic if they’re ever tested again. 

Honestly, he’s not sure how they managed to come out of this with their friendship still intact and actually even stronger than before. It just goes to show how much they care for one another because, genuinely, if this were just about anyone else, Randy doesn’t think he would’ve gone through all of this. 

He’d told her before but he doesn’t usually do this, doesn’t get into drama and talk through what’s wrong because he’d gone four years being invalidated, if he’s being honest. Easier to bottle things up until the cap can’t handle the pressure anymore, pops off, and everything that was being shoved inside overflows than to be a big boy and be vocal about what’s bothering you. 

Especially with people like K and Ramee who don’t really want to know when they’re wrong and also don’t like to communicate because it seems a little too soft for them.

Randy had gone so long thinking you couldn’t simultaneously be the best criminal and have a working, fully functional heart. That feeling equals weakness. But Ray was helping him to understand that it’s okay to love and care and it doesn’t make you less to do so, it makes you human. It doesn’t threaten his toughness. 

She didn’t look down on him hearing him struggle to come to terms with.. things that she had put him on the spot about. He had felt exposed and somewhat vulnerable and she had laughed at him, but it wasn’t malicious or mean, she was just amused. Fond. Endeared. And that brought Randy more comfort than he’d like to admit.

“We’re all good, we move on,” Randy declares.

“We’re all good,” Ray echoes. “You feel better?”

Randy had forgotten he was absolutely fuming when he called her. Just talking to her for five minutes had rid him of everything that was plaguing him, he wasn’t angry anymore. He felt relaxed and at ease.

“Yeah,” He answers, completely honestly.