Chapter Text
When his head finally breaks the surface and air fills his lungs, Jake could swear on everything there’s no greater feeling he could pick to fill the time in his days. That is, until he hears it. The disappointment. The same four words that have been ringing in his ears for the last two hours, slamming him back to earth with an alarming and sobering quickness.
“Still too slow, kid”.
Ripping his goggles off in frustration, Jake rubs the remaining water from his eyes before lifting his head to make contact with the older man standing above him – stopwatch in hand, hard line of his shoulders set in stone.
“Let me go again”.
“I think we should call it a day…”
“Just time it, Alice. I’m going again”. Extending his arm outwards, the Coach obliges by yanking him up and out of the pool with a heavy sigh.
“Last run of the day, Seresin. Make it count…I got to meet Marge for dinner in thirty. She’ll kick my ass to the couch if I’m late again.”
Jake positions himself on the block, glancing over to Alice, an implicit signal in his gaze.
All clear for take-off.
3
2
1
With a deep breath in, his legs move before his mind has a moment to catch up – just the way he likes it. The familiar warmth of the community pool embraces him as his body cuts thin, neat lines through the water. Counting the stokes…three more…two more…on one…before he’s tucking and rolling – strong legs slamming off the other side of the pool, propelling him back down the lane. Muscles straining, head bobbing in and out of the water, moments of relief flood him as he snatches glimpses of the air that could be. Heat burns him from the inside out as his legs pump and push, racing against the clock. Eyes lock on the pool’s edge.
Almost there.
Thrumming fingers make contact with worn concrete. His head breaks the surface.
Remember how to breathe, Seresin.
“You’re still missing it by two seconds, Jake”.
Alice is the one who extends his arm now. Jake regards him defiantly. Adrenaline and anger practically ooze out of every pore, mixing dangerously into one another, before spilling into the unsuspecting chlorine encasing him. Gripping the concrete, Jake hoists himself out of the pool.
“I’m going again”.
Alice removes his hat to run his hands through sweaty, thinning hair before repositioning it back on his head.
“I think it’s time you hit the showers”.
Jake preps himself on the block, situating his goggles across his face. “Coach, I can get the time down…”
“I know you can, kid. You’re the one who doesn’t know that yet. The technique is there. You’ve tightened up the movements, the progress is showing, but it’s a process. You’ll get there. No use punishing yourself.”
But in this moment, punishment is fuel. The air about him thick with spite. A beating the only way to feel anything, so deep he can’t deny it’s presence. Jake’s already in the water.
The older man watching as he goes, only turning away to grab his gym bag and clip board off the bleachers behind him. Offering a small, halfhearted “Suit yourself” in place of a goodbye.
It’ll be another hour before Jake returns to earth. Air forced down in heapfuls through repentant lungs. Sat alone at the edge of the pool as the sun begins to fade, reminding himself how to breathe.
****
Burnt and blistered skin glares at Jake from where the fog is breaking across the glass of the communal bathroom mirror. A fresh coat of red heat blossoms across his cheeks and the sensitive skin of his nose, trailing down his neck, and spreading across the expanse of his chest. Even after towel drying, pools of sweat still manage to collect in the hollow of his collar bones. He pulls his face taut and sighs. The coldest shower known to mankind still somehow feels claustrophobic and dizzying on days like today. The heat of the Texas sun favors no one.
As he walks through the empty lot to his car, Jake thinks he’d be thankful for the exhaustion tugging at his body, if he had the mental capacity in this moment to be thankful for much at all. He’d run every drill in the book a million times over to get the break only beating himself into submission brings him. Seats only now slightly less scalding to the touch in the dying light of day, Jake slides down into the familiar feel of the black BMW and turns the key in the ignition. Windows down, the radio lazily tuned to the comforting drawl of his favorite country station, he tosses his bag on the passenger seat and begins the trek home.
****
The sun felt long gone by the time Jake was making it up the drive, even if the heat continued to stick to his clothes. Gravel turned to perfectly pressed concrete, as the BMW veered off to roll up next to a guard booth, a black wrought iron gate blocking the path up to the main house. The slow, easy beginnings of a smile crept up the corners of his face to tug his lips into a curl, as one hand dug around in the gym bag on the passenger seat to buy his entrance.
The door to the booth slid open with a thwack – a stream of cold air hitting jake’s forearms as he put the car into park and leaned on the windowsill, making the hair there stand on end. A middle-aged man sat before him clad in his typical guard uniform, black tight fit polo and slacks, fingers interlocked behind his head as he bent lazily back in a rolling chair, eyes dancing with mirth as he fought to keep a straight face before asking…
“Can I help you, sir? You look a little turned around there…I’m almost positive the lobster shack is back down that’a way” …leaning up playfully to point towards the way Jake just came.
Shaking his head ruefully, Jake gives the man an unimpressed smirk. “Lobster shack? Not your best work, Hondo”.
Hondo sits up fully now in his chair and exasperatedly claps his hands together, “Oh c’mon man – this is the worst burn I’ve seen yet. You’d think your pasty white ass would remember to throw some sunblock on after all these years.” Like he can’t help himself, Hondo reaches over and pokes at Jake’s still reddening skin, provoking Jake to jolt slightly under the touch, as if proving the older man’s point. He should know better by now.
“You been spending some extra time with Grace I don’t know about?”, Jake presses. “Starting to sound exactly like my mother, man”.
Even in jest, Hondo always straightens up a little at the mention of Mrs. Seresin. Almost like twenty years of friendship will do that to a man. “You mind your mother now, Seresin. She’s a smart woman, that lady. You’d be wise to listen to her a bit more than you does”.
The biggest smile Jake can muster up suddenly paints his face, “Yeah, Bern, uh…speaking of things that would be upsetting to my mother” …Jake has the audacity to look somewhat sheepish as he produces a small styrofoam take out box, popping the top off to reveal a single slice of key lime pie, boasted to be the best one can find this side of the Mississippi.
“I’m gonna need a little cover tonight, if you would be so kind”. Jake pushes the box and its contents into the gap of space between his car and the booth, prompting Hondo to accept his peace offering. “A little something for your troubles”.
Just like always, it doesn’t take Hondo long to fold completely…looking from Jake to the pie, and back again, before gluing his eyes to the floor and begrudgingly sticking his hand out – an invitation for the younger man to hand the pie over. One, with which, Jake happily complies. Still shaking his head, Hondo grumbles as he snatches the box from between them and searches his desk for a spare set of utensils left over from pies of sneak outs past.
“Sneaking out again…really, Jake? That’s the second time this week, man. You ever gonna tell me where you get off to anyway?” For all of Hondo’s patronizing, Jake has always known the older man to be more bark than bite. They both know he loves Jake far too much to ever not keep his secrets, bribery sweets or not, and Hondo knows all too well Jake’s hardly ever in a position to give him a straight answer to a perfectly rational question.
“Bern, you know how it is around here,” Jake grand gestures up at the splendor of the main house, “I could tell ya, but then I’d have to kill ya”. If he were cooler, he might even be embarrassed about miming a finger gun at the man, blowing the metaphorical smoke out of the barrel, as if to prove his point. Good thing he gave up looking cool a long time ago.
It at least drags a chuckle from Hondo, saddled with another long shake of his head. “Dammit boy, you’re gonna get my ass fired one of these days”.
The smile on Jake now bordering on sickly sweet. Voice pitched up an octave for good measure. “You know you love me”.
Hondo waves him off as Jake shifts the car into drive. The gate before them whirring to life and beginning to swing open. “You’re lucky I love this pie…” comes the grumble from inside the guard booth as the door starts to slide shut.
“Love you too, buddy” the youngest Seresin yelled over his shoulder and out the car window.
****
Tired eyes begin to glaze over as Jake watches his meal prepped chicken and broccoli swirl around the pristine, glass tray bottom of the microwave. 1200 watts of heat, cooking the lean meat and scarce amount of vegetables from the inside out, moving it round and round for another two minutes. Jake leans back against the marble island countertop and rests his body weight on his forearms, feeling anywhere but there as he waits for his food, body finally deflating in on itself as he reflects on the days leading up to now.
Still two seconds too slow, kid. That familiar surge of anger bubbles deep in his gut, bile rising in his throat and threatening to push past his lips. Jake grinds his teeth and swallows what little disappointment he feels capable of back down into his stomach.
As long as he can remember, the water has been home to him. Like most things in his life, he had stumbled into it – a sort of trial by fire, as four-year-old Jake pestered his father for what seemed like a small lifetime to show him how to swim, before one day his old man gathered his small body up in his arms, fully clothed, and threw him in the eight-foot-deep end of their backyard lap pool.
Jake still remembers his screams, gurgled and escaping him as the water rushed into his mouth, head bobbing below the surface and back up again, tiny arms flailing in search of anything that would help him. Visions of his father standing at the edge, towering above his struggling form, beer in hand. How it felt when he finally kicked his feet and soothed himself enough to stop reaching towards help that would never come and forced his limbs through the water enough to get to the edge and grab on. He clung there for what felt like hours, breathing ragged as he tried his best not to cough up a lung, tiny chest moving up and down in rapid succession. Tears had sprung to his eyes, and he watched his father through bleary vision and heavy lids as he stared back down at his son. Deeming him safe enough, and clearly satisfied with his work, Jake watched on as the older man’s staggering figure retreated back up the lawn and into the house.
One of his earliest childhood memories, and it was one of terror, and struggle, and resilience. A lesson, now deeply engrained in him, of self-reliance. Of trusting himself to reach inside before reaching out, to help that would never come. The water didn’t drown him that day…it accepted him. It pushed him to his limits, forced him to prove what he was made of, to save himself. It demanded from him, and it took, and then it gave back in spades every time the gift of air was allowed back into his lungs.
It lit a fire within him – a power he could harness and use...and dammit if he didn’t take advantage of it. His parents put him in lessons almost immediately after that. Like stepping into a second skin, he grew accustomed to the protection excelling at something of this caliber afforded him, both internally and external alike. He had made the local varsity swim team by the time he was in the eighth grade, despite the commotion caused because of it, due to his ineligibility to compete because of his age. He was a twice over national champion by sixteen and already officially committed to The University of Texas at Austin, signing his letter of intent prior to starting his junior year. His father credited himself for all of it of course, citing his preferred method of teaching all those years ago as the catalyst for his prodigy son’s continued success. This had been a story the older man enjoyed telling at many business dinners and social events over the years, Jake always in forced attendance, being paraded around like some show horse at auction.
Jake had learned early on to grin and bear it. Even use it, at times…to figure out the buy in, how to play the game. As a young man, he was thoughtful and diplomatic – even downright amenable when he needed to be. Tuning into the words people weren’t actually saying to get a gauge on, at the heart of it, what they really wanted and how he could make himself the only one that could provide it to them. It didn’t hurt the situation that the youngest of the Seresin clan wasn’t half bad in the looks department either. He could charm the pants off of just about anyone.
In his family, schmoozing was a way of life…a sixth love language even. Outside of that, their house was one of silence and expectation and falling in line. Duty, as his father put it, whatever the fuck that meant. To Jake, it was about overcoming, excelling…survival. So, he allowed himself to become someone else. To be whoever he needed to be, to whomever he needed to be it to, whenever the situation called for it – which, in his life, was almost always. Just another one of the perks of being the now Governor’s son…
On days like today, there were parts of him that felt like he had only made it this far out of spite. His engine constantly running off a deep-rooted hatred. A need to best everyone and everything in his way, all the while saying, to hell with duty and honor and love and all that other bullshit. There weren’t many examples Jake had where any of those things actually ever wrung true…
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
The timer, signaling the end of his food cooking, blared noisily…breaking Jake from his reverie. He suddenly felt frozen to the spot, waiting for the microwave oven to tire itself out as he stood there, glaring down at the steaming glass container of food inside. That’s exactly how his mother found him as she rounded the corner and entered the elegant, fully stocked chef’s kitchen, struggling to drop a day’s worth of shopping bags onto the island behind him along with her car keys.
“JJ, will you help me with this?” she chided, as he hadn’t spun around to face her yet, despite her rather noisy entrance.
“Jake…” the stern intonation in her voice waking something inside Jake’s brain, forcing him to liven up.
“Yes, ma’am” he said, moving to help her unload every Chanel and Burberry bag littering her arms onto the counter space. He gives her a small kiss on the top of her head as they finished in lieu of a welcome, one of her hands coming up to catch the side of his face, giving it a small pat in return. Despite his overall feelings towards his family dynamic and the way in which it had raised him, his experience remained his and his alone. There was no changing it. He knew the rules he needed to abide by, and he accepted it – the only normal he ever really knew.
One of those key rules being – as was in any good southern, Christian household – that you always, without a doubt, kiss your mother hello. Above everything else, that was not a formality to be trifled with…and neither was his mother for that matter. Grace Seresin was a tall, slender, mighty gust of a woman…all blonde hair, green eyes, and tan skin. Jake liked to think he received most all of his genetic makeup from her, especially given his father’s propensity for manipulation and male pattern baldness.
“How was your day, baby?” she asked, finally turning to get a good look at him. “Oh, Jake…you’re burnt! How many times have I told you…”
“I know, momma. Rest assured, Hondo already gave me a dressing down earlier…Grace Seresin style, so I’m covered”.
“Oh!” Waving her hands around slightly, she continued to fret softly to herself. Jake did his best to placate her with a few repeated apologies murmured in her direction as he rounded the island again, stomach grumbling, finally in search of the food he had forgotten...surely on the verge of being cold. His back was turned to her as he opened the microwave oven, grabbing the now room temperature chicken and broccoli mix, as she started in on him.
“I don’t know why you insist on practicing at that damn community pool anyway. The pool at U.T. is much closer and it’s indoors” She throws her hands up a bit dramatically… “and don’t even get me started on that Rodney Alice!”. Jake shakes his head and digs a fork out of a nearby drawer as he does so.
“Momma, we’ve been over this. I’ve been swimming at that pool all my life almost and Coach Alice and I go way back. He’s a solid guy. You know I train with the U.T. coaches during season but I’m slated to be heading to worlds this year and…”
Grace interjects before he can finish… “Which is why you should’ve gone with that other coach your father found to work with you!”.
Jake, verging on annoyed and in desperate proximity to losing his waning appetite, stabs at a piece of chicken before shoving it into his mouth.
“I don’t need another coach to work with me. I trust Coach Alice”. Another piece of broccoli is popped in alongside the chicken. Grace is wise enough to know when to pick her battles, and that she’d be smart to let her now adult son think he’d won this one. However, she is a Seresin at the end of the day. Needing to have the last word is like needing oxygen to breathe.
“Clearly not enough to tell you to put on some damn suntan lotion” … “which you wouldn’t even have to do if you were practicing at U.T. anyways…”. The heels have been dug in and Jake watches as his mother crosses her arms over her chest to hold his gaze. Jake peers down at his dish and considers another bite, before conceding his mother’s win in the form of placing his half eaten, makeshift dinner down onto the counter and deciding to change the subject.
“So how was your day today, Mom?...You talk to Jenny at all?”. His mother’s demeaner eases slightly at the mention of his older sister. She returns her answer with a little sigh. “My day was fine, baby. Just stressed is all”…she gestures at the island covered in luxury clothing bags…“Your father’s re-election breakfast is tomorrow and I didn’t have anything suitable to wear so I was anxious purchasing”. She hides her face in her hands momentarily before continuing. “I called your sister to remind her…Lord knows she never remembers”. Grace laughs momentarily at her daughter’s perceived forgetfulness and then catches herself, suddenly veering her full attention back in Jake’s direction.
“You didn’t forget about tomorrow, did you?” she inquires.
He definitely did. “I did not” Jake answers quickly. Grace regards him with a scowl. “And” …Jake picks his food up off the counter and rounds the island to find the trash, dumping his leftovers and discarding his dish in the sink… “I’ll do you one better…I know exactly what I’m going to wear”. Pointing in his mother’s direction, he chides her in jest, before maneuvering his way up and out of the kitchen towards a winding staircase. As he climbs the first couple steps towards his room, he hears her yell after him…
“11 a.m., Jake Anthony Seresin! I mean it. Be ready!” she remarks like he’s a child and not a twenty-three-year-old grad student.
“There will be NO outfit repeating in this house!”
****
He may not be a child anymore but it’s moments like these, as he’s scaling the garden trellis on the side of the house, praying he doesn’t split his favorite pair of jeans on the way down, where he sure as hell feels like one. Some of the house lights are still on and it’s just easier to avoid his parents or any potential lingering staff, to go out his window…like a goddamned angst-ridden teenager.
It hadn’t been his plan to go out at all originally. He didn’t even fully have the thought formed before he found himself swinging by Bartlett’s on his way home from training. Once the pie was bought, there was really no going back. Since getting home, the thoughts had only gotten worse. Jake could feel his hackles rising…the anxiety buzzing around in his skull, beginning to take root in his stomach. A weight on his shoulders that, more and more recently, wouldn’t lift. A distraction would do him some good, and as of recently, picking his poison was starting to become as easy as picking his pie.
****
Jake could feel the bass in his chest before even stepping out of his car. The line was longer tonight then he had usually seen it, wrapping around the dilapidated brick building and down the next two blocks. Not that it mattered per say, when you were someone who never had to wait in lines. Tossing his keys to the valet and rounding the car in two swift movements, Jake made eye contact with a bouncer who produced a smile and a pat on the back as he greeted Jake, unclipping the rope to let him in the small entrance. The air of the club was thick with sweat and arousal. Neon lights bounced off of bodies packed too tightly together on the dance floor. A song Jake doesn’t recognize beckons him to go play, a siren call only worth ignoring for one thing. He beelines it for the bar.
“What’ll it be, handsome?” a bartender Jake doesn’t recognize asks him from behind the bar top. She’s wearing a black spaghetti strap tank top and matching spandex shorts, tattoos swirling up either side of her petite frame. She cracks three beers in a row, handing them to customers on either side of him before starting a vodka soda for another woman further down the way, leaning in closer to him to take note of his order.
“Jack and Coke” …the bartender nods politely, already handing off the vodka soda and reaching for the highball glasses. The coke fizzes at the top of the glass and sloshes a little off the sides as she sets down his drink and moves on to the next customer. The bar is crowded, and Jake moves a little further down the side in an attempt to be courteous to the onslaught of drunk crowd goers coming back for refills.
Jake lifts the glass to his lips, cold liquid filling his mouth before he feels the familiar burn start to warm him from the inside out. He swears the first sip feels like nirvana as his anxieties begin to slide like water through his fingers. Jake wouldn’t consider himself much of a drinker, not typically anyway, outside of the last couple weeks. Having such a strict regimen all your life will do that to a guy – between his studies, family obligations, and training, there is little room left for much of a social life. However recently, the cracks have been deepening – pushing and prodding against his carefully strung together façade and demanding some sort of action be taken to quiet the noise threatening to push him over the edge. He’s been frequenting this particular club in downtown Austin more and more as of late because of it…starting to rely increasingly on the heavy pour of the barhands and the pounding bassline of the music to drown out his racing mind.
Before he realizes, Jake’s finished his third Jack and Coke of the night and has steadily moved onto shots of Whiskey – the bartenders obliging him, lining them out neatly on the bar top. His body hums along to the beat of the music as he grips the sides of the sticky black wood, cheers‘ing the air slightly before tossing another one back. He moves backwards then, pushing through the throng of people behind him waiting, single-mindedly moving himself towards the dancefloor, unable to ignore his body’s need to sway along to the music any longer. Stumbling a little as he does so, Jake continues to push himself towards the middle of the crowd, sliding up next to nameless others gyrating to the beat coming from the speakers…souls all seemingly as helpless to its growing power as he is.
He’s aware of the attention he draws as he goes, moving his hips in time to the music as he makes eye contact with a few of the dancing patrons across from him. A drunken smile tugs at his lips as one set of eyes in particular locks onto his.
Even shrouded in the shadow of the dimly lit room, he can sense the want thrumming off the body this set of eyes belong to – a man not much taller than Jake but with a bulk to him that just screams much bigger…dark hair falling over his face as he inches his way closer, maintaining eye contact while doing so. A silent invitation lingering in his eyes, for Jake to decline the advance if he so chooses. As the man comes face to face with Jake, dancing near enough to him to be told off, Jake presses into his space…wrapping long arms around his neck as he continues to dance – clear in stating that the ensuing contact is wanted. They move like that for a while. Jake’s arms wrapped steadfastly around his dance partner’s neck, large hands holding him on either side, tightly digging into the fabric clinging to his hips.
It could be five hours or five minutes, Jake isn’t sure, before he’s being spun around to grind on the nameless guy’s front…thick fingers pressing them together at first and then moving to lift up the bottom of Jake’s shirt to trail touches against the smooth skin of his abdomen. Jake closes his eyes and lets his mind go blank as they continue swaying to the music…everything hot to the touch as the air in the club thickens. Beads of sweat start to gather at his back, his neck, at the top of his hairline – his previously styled fringe wilting in the humidity of the damp dancefloor. Mystery guy begins to trail his face down towards Jake’s collarbones, breath hot on his neck as he presses light, feathery kisses into his skin. At one point, after licking a stipe up his neckline to nibble at his ear lobe, Jake hears a husky voice reverberate through him.
“Can I buy you a drink, princess?” he inquires hotly. Jake is in no position to deny him.
****
Typically, Jake’s not been one to discriminate when it comes to his romantic partners, much appreciating if anything the soft curves of the women he’s been with just as well as the hard lines of having a man stretched out above him. Gender preference was never a hoop he had cared much to jump through. Here and now though, in the alley outside the club, music still pumping through the walls hitting him right where it hurts…he fears he may have to reconsider. Mystery guy towers just a few inches out of reach, crowding into Jake’s space as he pushes him further into the brick behind them, slotting their mouths together in a bruising kiss. If he had any thoughts at all, Jake might consider this the perfect recipe for release…his heart beating rapidly in his chest, blood singing in his veins as he’s manhandled about, mouth heavy with a tongue that’s not his – sharp bites of whiskey on his breath. The man’s hands pull and scrape at Jake’s clothes, disheveling him as he goes, both their fingers now rushing to undo the other’s belt first.
It's so intoxicating and all consuming, everything steamy and searing to the touch, the most perfect high he’s caught in a while…dragging him further under its current the longer it continues. Maybe that’s why Jake doesn’t register it at first…a growing presence at the other end of the alley…the fact that they had an audience unknowingly. The other man clocked it first…veering just a tad closer to the right side of sober in comparison to Jake – his only indication anything could possibly be wrong right now is found in mystery man straightening up and pulling his body off of Jake’s and away from his tousled figure almost too quickly, leaving Jake’s world spinning slightly.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Jake asked, hands drunkenly reaching out to pull the other man back into his orbit…missing embarrassingly as he does so. He barely was able to hear the snickers approaching on the right side of him as he brought his head up to look at the man in front of him, now looking sheepish as opposed to the picture of strength he exuded only moments ago, in the filtered light of the alley.
“What’s wrong, baby…” came a mocking voice in another direction Jake couldn’t quite get a handle on. He looked up again and was able to make out three blurry figures, before looking towards his feet…shaking his head as he did so in hopes of getting his bearings back a bit, willing his vision to right itself and quickly. Looking back towards the voices, he was able to put together a shaky picture of the three men that now joined them in the alleyway – each one clad in what he imagined to be steel toed boots and knock off biker jackets. The one in the middle spoke up, a giddy expression pasted across his face.
“Sorry to break up the party, boys” … “Y’all did look like you were just having too. much. fun”. The men on either side of him busted up laughing again. Jake struggled to gather what was so goddamn funny, as the hair on the back of his neck began to stand on end. The man in the middle turned to his buddy on the left before asking “Say…this look like a gay club to you?”. The man to his left shook his head, chuckling as he went before the middle man continued. “It’s funny, actually…because I was almost positive that this bar had a zero-tolerance policy on faggots”. The man on the right side brought his hands out from behind his back, suddenly producing metal piping the trio must’ve stumbled upon at the entrance of the alleyway.
The nondescript biker in the middle let out a long, low whistle. “The management must be getting soft” he continued. “Guess we’ll just have to fill in for enforcement purposes tonight, aye boys?” he said, gesturing to his friend handling the pipe. The men began to hoot and holler as Jake glanced between the obvious threat and the man standing next to him, who had managed to step a couple paces further away from Jake during their conversation.
“Listen…we don’t want any trouble, man” …Mystery guy spoke up from beside Jake. “We were just leaving”. The bikers looked between one another before returning their gaze back onto the both of them.
“Did…it look to you…like they were leaving anytime soon boys?”. “Looked to me like they were about to give each other handys” one of the men threw out roughly.
“Now, we can’t have that now, can we?” the ring leader concluded before nodding in the direction of his friend carrying the pipe. The biker stepped closer into their shared space and suddenly it all started moving too fast. Mystery man started to back away slowly, getting just close enough to Jake to shake his shoulders in an escape, shouting for Jake to bolt alongside him down the backside of the alley.
“Get out of here, man!”. The echo of his partner’s previously friendly and enticing voice now shriveled up and run cold by the time it reached Jake’s ears. Despite being jostled back somewhat into the brick behind him as the other man was fleeing, Jake remained frozen in place – his vision beginning to spin again as he fought to register the three men, and one metal pipe, still left standing in front of him.
“And then there was one…” came the leader’s gravelly voice. The men seemed to howl with another round of laughter before descending like vultures, circling a fresh kill yet to be devoured. Jake managed to move his body from the spot he was previously rooted in as fight or flight finally kicked in, exactly as the first right hook of a fist caught him square in the jaw, throwing him back into place. He cursed his rapidly returning sobriety…faintly remarking at the universe’s cruelty, now that the moment had passed, and he was helpless to evade capture.
Spitting up blood on the dirt encrusted floor of the alleyway, Jake thinks that, in all his years here, there haven’t been very many times…if any…where he could remember disliking where he lived. All he knows for sure, as the blows keep coming – to his ribs, his stomach, to his face and legs – is that he can confidently confirm the boots were, in fact, steel toed.
And that, in this moment, he fucking hates Texas.