jaylen, crime AU, flights?
jaylen has accidentally kidnapped shaq by virtue of them pretending to be quill for a grift and is now going to dallas to hostage exchange them. i think that’s all the necessary context. takes place concurrently with this
“Hey, if you’re not gonna eat your pretzels, can I have ‘em?”
“Torres,” Jaylen says, grinding her teeth around the syllables. She should have taken a painkiller before they got on the plane - she had the stirrings of a headache when Mike dropped them off at the airport, and it hasn’t gotten any better since then. “I told you not to fucking speak to me.”
“If you’d let me get food before we got on the plane, this wouldn’t’ve been a problem,” Shaq says, leaning back in their seat next to her. Their window seat, which definitely isn’t a concession on Jaylen’s part, and is just a way to pen them in. To keep them from cutting and running the minute the plane lands. Definitely not because they muscled ahead of her and got there first.
“I’m not buying you dinner, Torres, you’re a hostage,” Jaylen says. She’s been reading the same sentence of the book in her hands over and over for the past five minutes, and she’s tempted to just snap it shut, but that would also be too much like a concession.
Shaq whistles through his teeth. “Didn’t know you were a cheap date.”
“Watch a fucking movie or something,” she snaps back at him.
“Yeah, let me get on that. With the headphones I don’t have.”
“I have some,” Jaylen mutters, and reaches down to dig into her bag. She can’t put headphones on, because she needs to actually hear what Shaq’s saying, regardless of how little she wants to. The minute she stops paying attention will be the minute he starts telling people that he’s being held hostage by a mob boss, even if he’s doing it just to be funny. But Shaq with headphones, distracted by a movie? That would solve some of her problems. Or at least her headache.
“Aw, you do care.” Shaq grins broadly at her as she hands over the headphones. “And here I thought you were just using me for my good looks.”
“Torres, pick a movie or I’m going to give you a tracheotomy with a pen to make you stop talking.”
“Je-sus, point taken,” they say, but they’re laughing behind the words, and Jaylen just hates that.