Free Hugs || Accepting: Mildly Selective
The floor of the subway car thrums with vibrations from its path through the tunnel, occasional bumps jolting the cars, no more than usual but jarring on old, aching injuries. One arm stretches above his head and loops over a safety bar, the other hanging beside him, restless, useless. Jace holds back the urge to make a fist with it, yet again.
Behind them, speeding away as the train moved, their youngest is left in the care of a friend as he recovers from injuries of getting in a fistfight with bigger, stronger people. Ahead of them, a safehouse filled with weapons and gear they’d hoped they wouldn’t have to use again, but. Someone is always getting hurt, aren’t they? Victimized, by street thugs or worse, like the woman their son bloodied himself trying to save earlier tonight.
This time Jamie, next time someone else who didn’t give a shit and let it happen. The city is a breeding ground of cruelty and crimes no one bothers cleaning up after once it got dark enough. They know it, know how to deal with it, but. It’d been nice, for a little while, to pretend otherwise. To be something normal, a family tied by something other than shared bloodshed.
They aren’t. Predators first, no matter how they try to escape it.
Beside him, Jason is too quiet and Jace sighs, knowing there’s nothing better running through his lover’s head than his own. The arm he deemed useless earlier reaches out, slips beneath leather to hold on; when there’s no rejection of the touch, it curves around a the tense line of Jason’s back and pulls him up close against Jace, tight and snug.
“Hey. He’ll be alright.” Words they both know, but said aloud for comfort anyways. The few inches between them is scant enough to lean his brow on Jason’s, sharing the warmth of breath and closeness. Neither of them know what they’re doing here, trying to be parents, trying to be better, but they have to try. What else is there, really, aside from this? A tired one-armed hug on a dingy subway car, a night of violence ahead of them where the usual thrill is tainted by guilt, and a vague wisp of hope that maybe tomorrow will still be a good day, a day where they can make Jamie smile. Bring him a basket of food and books and a puppy, maybe, while he nurses that fracture.
For now, though, there’s just a quiet sigh, a muttered, “I know,” from Jason as the subway car clicks and bucks under their feet, and the unspoken anger both of them are keeping subdued but feel all too clearly. A glint in their eyes, heavy and sharp, even as Jason leans into him for comfort, leaner but just as dangerous.
Jamie will be alright, but the fuckers who touched him won’t be.
