y'know what I'm just gonna dump my subway surfers fanfic here (still waiting for ao3 to let me make an account). you're not gonna believe the pairing it's for (it's spike/jake. my followers would know that by now.)
I base a lot of the characterization of Jake from the web series along with headcanon-y stuff. and because sybo hates letting Spike do ANYTHING, I especially based him off of personal headcanons and stuff.
(also I don't feel like I should have to clarify this, but there was no AI involved in writing this thing. I would rather eat the hair off of my own skin then use it to make fucking subway surfers fanfic of all things. I'd like my cringe to be man-made thank you very much)
anyway, I hope you enjoy this... thing.
It was hard to process the events from days prior.
Since the exploration of what the group has called the “undertracks” a few days ago, the group hasn’t been to the train yard. Yutani, reportedly, has been investigating and experimenting with the turbine recovered from then, supposedly upgrading the prototype of the hoverboard she has made, considering her message in the group chat was followed up with a spam of emojis that ranged from a skateboard to a rocketship to a gear and a single lightning bolt.
Tricky and Fresh? No dice. Not a single message from either of them since the incident. And Jake was sure they all made it out alive? Then Yutani messages the group chat promising an upgrade on their boards, and there’s still nothing from either of them. Literal crickets.
Regardless, Jake was sneaking out the following night to do his usual routine of tagging trains and skating, even if he was going at it alone. What choice did he have, really? Tricky and Fresh haven’t spoken, and Yutani was too busy inventing literal hoverboards!
However, instead of aiming for the usual train yard, the one they had to sneak in through by a hole in the fence right outside their favorite skate ramp, Jake wanted to do something even more crazy. A change of scenery, one that would really get the creative juices flowing.
The Subway City train station.
Him and the group had only been there once, and that was months ago, just to skate around when it was the dead of night, and they were really getting tired of the guard on their tail for just breathing in his direction.
Once over there, the sweet, intoxicating fumes infect the walls and empty trains of the station with paint, spraying it all around in the hopes that even with his friends not around, Jake could manifest something, a masterpiece that wasn’t just his tag name a million times across all the trains in the yard. For once, the train guard wasn’t automatically on his tail, and for what felt like hours he was focused on that one section of the train, just below a cracked window.
The moon was high across the station, and by the time Jake finally stepped away to look at his work, it… just ended up looking like his signature again. Not that he was inherently complaining like he always seemed to, but without his friends, an audience really, there was no point.
“Ugh,” he spits, tossing a spray paint can of neon, electric pink to the side, letting it roll down the brittle railroad tracks. “No use being frickin’ creative when I can’t bounce ideas off of anybody!” He half-hazzardly shouts, but not enough to startle any crickets or bugs that buzzed at night in Subway City.
In groaning frustration, Jake ends up slowly sliding down the cart of the train, ending up sitting down on the cold curb of the station and starts staring at his phone. Still, no messages. Nothing from Tricky, or Fresh, heck, nothing from Yutani since that initial text of her announcing her project on the hoverboards. That, he too, tosses aside in the same direction of the spray can from earlier.
Jake was no crier, but in the dead of night in the train yard his friends all loved meeting up at, it was now a mental playground of him trying to figure out what happened that day to cause such a stark shift in his own friends. Were they really just inactive, or are they busy in some way? Maybe, in some kind of sick twist, they’re talking about Jake in a separate chat. Maybe they had a hunch he’d want to come back to the yard, but didn’t know how to tell him “no” otherwise.
That thought made him want to cry.
Before a real tear could form, something breaks out in the typical nighttime city silence– Well, typical for Subway City’s standards.
Jake could’ve sworn he heard a guitar somewhere. Not like an acoustic or anything, but an unplugged electric guitar still trying to make itself heard like a dying cry of some animal.
Ever the curious guy, Jake follows, and in the process, swiftly picks up his tossed phone and kicks aside the spray paint can before breaking into a sprint to follow the faint noise.
And he didn’t have to run very far before his eyes met on someone… interesting.
Strumming to the dulled strings of a funky looking red guitar was another person, a boy, Jake assumed. One with dyed red hair spiked up and lined up and down his head like quills. The chain that hung on the belt loop of his haphazardly sewn split colored pants softly jingled to the barely existent harmony he was trying to play.
And those eyes, stuck on Jake’s like a hawk. A rich blue, like the sea at the docks he and the group would visit sometimes. The kind that could easily read into another person’s soul, and that made Jake’s stomach drop to the rails below.
“‘You trying to blow steam off too?” He asks, a youthful voice, despite that almost casual confidence. A little too casual if Jake thought so himself.
He nods curtly. “Yeah... I haven’t heard from my friends for a while and...” he loses his train of thought, growing flustered and anxious out of nowhere, like a sudden crash into an oncoming train– but not before the guard would eventually catch up and get him before taking him back to his mom’s.
And man, did looking at this guy, this actual punk, the rebel seemingly making music in the dead of night at a train yard get Jake to think about his mom. She already isn’t a fan of him hanging out with “bad influences” that only enable him to do the things he does. If she found out she was hanging around this guy, let alone ran into him, she’d have him never leave the house again.
Not that it ever did anything.
Jake was a rebellious kid. Always has, always will. But looking at the spiky-haired boy made him feel like he might have some competition… and something else, something Jake couldn’t label at the moment.
“Art block?” That voice returns Jake back to reality. He must’ve noticed the spray paint can that rolled around the station. “I get it. That’s why I come here. I do my best musical thinking at night.”
Jake crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow with a sly smile. “Music, huh?”
The other nods. “Yep. In a band and everything.” He sets the guitar down on the ground, resting it against a nearby train car. “I just play though. My sibling sings, and two of their friends play drums and bass respectively.” He scoffs, but something in his face contorts, like someone brought up a bad memory.
“Let me guess,” Jake narrows his eyes on the guy in front of him as he leaned against the car near the guitar. “Wanna go solo?”
The other responds after a pause to think. “Kinda, yeah.” He sits down on the ground next to his guitar, taking it and setting it down on the ground. “I write my own stuff, and I’ve always loved singing and performing… but I let my sibling do it. They seem to have the most fun with it.” Even in that small smile on his face, there was hurt in his tone. Jake could tell this has been biting at him. For how long, he could only guess, and even then, he’d most likely be wrong.
Jake was an only child as far as he was aware. With his dad having been long gone for years, the thought often crosses his mind if he simply moved on and had children with someone else, and there was a complicated family tree of distant stepsiblings he might never get to know about.
This thinking drowns out the punk’s lamenting of his personal issues regarding his band. The way he gets so choked up about it… it pulls Jake out his head and towards the punk.
“It’s hard, you know?” He shrugs his shoulders, the leather of his vest rustling with even the slightest of movement. “Since the band was my idea in the beginning. I thought maybe they would help with more of the song writing or editing aspects, but…”
Jake would nod the more the punk would go on. Admittedly, Jake found himself soothed by the slight gruff of his voice, even if it was due to clearly pent up emotions. He had a hunch he needed this space to just get this off his chest. Jake was like that for his other friends, usually Tricky or Fresh ranting about their home lives and parents on their backs like falcons.
This… seemed different, somehow. Jake, typically, would interject and try to provide comedic relief from his antics from skating and out-of-pocket jokes, but for this complete stranger, he let him take the floor. Getting lost in his words… and those darn eyes…
Then, the punk would stop, taking a breath before slouching and resting his arms on his legs. The air weighed heavy in the station for what felt like forever, but it was an oddly comfortable silence. Nothing that either of the two weren’t used to, and they could both tell. The whirring of bug’s wings and the distant wails of police sirens filled the silence from the two boys.
After a while, when the crickets stopped chirping and the sounds of cars died down, they finally spoke again.
An eyebrow raised, then a nod and smile combo.
“Spike.”
Jake looks up at the other’s head, smirking, like he was holding back a huge laugh. “Fitting. Real fitting.” There it is. The urge to joke in such a vulnerable moment.
Spike shakes his head, returning the smile. “Better than my real name, at least. No one but my family calls me it.” Figures. Most of his friends call him Jake. Heck, even his mom does from time to time (that is if she isn’t yelling at him with his full name of “Jacob Bressler” again.). But this gets Jake curious.
“What is your real name, then?” Jake asks, a slight laugh leaving his mouth as he asks.
There was a beat, a pause, noticing Spike staring at the sky beyond the station. There was a speck of pink breaking into the horizon, just beyond the buildings in the distance. The sun was going to rise any moment, and soon all of Subway Surfers will be glowing in many shades of yellow, orange, and gold.
Suddenly, Spike raises up from the curb of the station, grabbing a hold of his guitar by the arm as he stands. “That’s not something I just give out to everybody.” He scoffs.
Jake stands alongside him, thinking to himself, “Yeah, sure. Go the mysterious route. Okay, cool.” His inner voice was a sarcastic critic, something that was picked up whenever Tricky wasn’t around to be that in person. Of course, he shuts it down with a laugh. “Not even gonna throw me some kind of hint?” He teases, but it gives Spike an idea.
He holds out his right hand, gloved and calloused, most likely from all the playing he’s done on the guitar. “Hand me your phone?” It was phrased more like a question than a harsh demand, like someone of Spike’s caliber would do.
Still, Jake handed him his phone. In a few taps, blips and beeps and boops and there it was saved– Spike’s own phone number.
“You’re lucky you’re cute. Oh, and cool to talk to, I guess.” Then there was a smile across Spike’s face, like he wasn’t as standoffish or nonchalant as he first seemed. This was also the moment the sun finally decided to rise over Subway City, making him almost glow… just before he walked away from Jake.
And Jake stood there, watching this guy walk away, as if he hadn’t poured out his heart to him, like he wasn’t open about his musical dreams in the middle of this train station in the dead of night.
Oh, and didn’t he also just call him cute?
That was a new one for Jake. It was always his attributes people liked. His carefree attitude, his rebellious nature, his creativity and artistic eye, not his looks. Never his looks. Then again, it’s not like he didn’t think similarly about Spike. Was it the spiked-up hair? The eyes that were holding so much emotion and passion? His voice??
Jake couldn’t even place it, but all he knew was that his heart wanted to beat out through his shirt, through his hoodie, and out his denim vest and shoot itself all around the station like a cartoonishly wild basketball while his whole body turned pink.
When the punk was finally out of view, Jake put his phone back in his inside vest pocket and walked over to his green and gray skateboard he had docked up against the train cart he was painting earlier that night.
One more glance back at the direction Spike walked out from, Jake mumbles to himself,
“I wonder if he can sing for me one day.”
And just that thought alone got his knees weak, weak enough to nearly fall off his board on the way out of the station.
