"Lil bit." Cib mumbled, coughing again as he lowered his vape hand and looked up into Steve's eyes. It wasn't really the time for it, but he couldn't help but think about how cute Steve looked - silhouetted in the dim light from the doorway, his eyebrows furrowed, the little gap in his teeth showing. Even though he looked really worried right now... Okay, maybe he always thought Steve was cute, and maybe he'd spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if they were more than just best friends... But, well. That was stupid. People didn't fall in love with their best fucking friends - that was Disney shit. Besides, he'd be lying to himself if he even entertained the idea that Steve would want to be in a relationship with him -- he'd annoy him to death before they even went on a date.
That was why he distracted himself with pretty girls. Didn’t really mean as much if they got tired of him - wasn't anything that would hurt forever. There would always be more pretty girls, right?
As soon as the ringing stops, he doesn’t even wait for Jeremy to say hello, just says in a rush, “Did you know Cib would be here?” (Parker/Cib post-breakup AU, 2.6k)
AUcember || title lyric || read on ao3
#
The weird thing about small-town grocery stores is they all have maze-like layouts. The logic is there, but it’s not designed to make sense to anyone who doesn’t live in town, or anyone who doesn’t come to this store twice a week to pick up essentials.
Parker knows a thing or two about small town grocery stores, but he’s never been to this one before. He’d hoped to avoid this, but there’s only so much small-town takeout that he can survive on before he needs some other kind of food. Even if that food is canned green beans, which seems to be the only thing he can find in the aisle.
He’s so busy scouring the shelves looking for… something, he doesn’t know what, but it has to be better than canned green beans, that he’s totally not prepared when he walks face-first into another person.
“Oh, sorry,” Parker says on autopilot, before his brain catches up. He knows this cologne. He knows the T-shirt he’s staring at. Standing this close is like muscle memory, like something he didn’t realize he could never forget.
“Parker?” Cib whispers.
Slowly, Parker lifts his head to meet Cib’s eyes. Cib is staring at him like he’s seeing a ghost, like Parker is going to disappear. Parker wishes he could disappear.
Parker swallows. His throat is dry. He has to reach to the shelf next to him and grab on to steady himself. He doesn’t remember what he was looking for anymore. “Hi,” he says, and he’s proud of how level it is, how unaffected he sounds.
“You’re here,” Cib says in disbelief. “You- we’re in Illinois, what are you doing here?”
“Jeremy booked me tickets. Something about small-town inns being good for writers, but I think he just wanted me out of the house for a week.”
“A week.” Cib’s eyes skate down Parker’s face, up his body. “You’re here for a week?”
“Three more days.” Parker glances down. They’re still standing close. Not touching, but he wouldn’t exactly say there’s room between them. His hand drifts up the shelf until he’s gripping a can of… something. “What about you?”
“I-” Cib clears his throat. “Sami Jo’s visiting family. She asked me to come.”
“Oh,” Parker says. There’s a roaring in his ears. Of course he’s here for Sami Jo. Of course she’s here too. “That’s… that’s good.”
“It’s good,” Cib agrees. Something in his face twists. “It’s good to see-”
Parker lifts the can of whatever he’s holding and takes the smoothest step backwards that he can. He stumbles, a little, but the important part is that there’s room between him and Cib. It makes it a little easier to breathe.
He holds up the can like it’s going to shield him from the actual hurt in Cib’s eyes. “Gotta go,” he says. “The, uh, the books, they don’t write themselves, I’ve gotta-”
“Parker,” Cib says, looking desperate. “Wait. I haven’t seen you since-”
“Not now,” he says. He’s white-knuckling his can of- he glances at it- of crushed tomatoes. The aisles in the grocery store are too narrow. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have let Jeremy kick him out of the house, or decided to eat anything other than takeout, or dated Cib for three years, or broken up with him seven months ago. He shouldn’t be here, and the aisles are closing in. “I have to go.”
It’s stupid, but he walks past Cib on the way out. Maybe it’s masochism, maybe it’s just the fastest way to the door of the grocery store. Either way, there’s a moment of electricity as he moves past Cib. Like his body is calling out to Cib’s even as he walks away.
Cib doesn’t move. He doesn’t even bother saying anything. That, more than anything, is how Parker knows he’s upset. But Parker doesn’t care about that. Parker doesn’t get to care about that, because Cib is his ex-boyfriend, and Cib is here with Sami Jo, and he’s not the person who cares for Cib when he gets like this anymore. He’s not the one who’s going to pull Cib down on the couch and wrap his arms around him and wait for him to be able to talk again. He’s not going to kiss Cib’s temple and hum useless melodies until Cib tries to sing along, like he knows what Parker’s thinking before Parker thinks it.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s outside the grocery store and the wind hits his face. He doesn’t even remember buying the can of tomatoes. He’s going to have to order takeout again. Somehow, he thinks that’s going to be worth it.
#
Missed Call
Sami Jo Siedband (4)
#
He calls Jeremy, because there’s nothing else for him to do, nobody here who he can turn to. As soon as the ringing stops, he doesn’t even wait for Jeremy to say hello, just says in a rush, “Did you know Cib would be here?”
Jeremy doesn’t answer at first. Parker waits it out, because he knows Jeremy is doing some kind of internal math to figure out the answer. God, he might’ve known that Cib would be there. It’s not the kind of thing he’d put past Jeremy.
“No,” Jeremy says at last, and Parker’s breath catches. Jeremy sounds… well, Parker can’t identify most of Jeremy’s emotions, but he knows that this is one of them. “Here as in the hotel?”
“I don’t know.” Parker swallows and digs his spoon a little deeper into the can of crushed tomatoes. He’s not even eating it, just… re-crushing them. “He said he’s here visiting Sami Jo’s family with her.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t see her.”
“No, I didn’t see her.” He smashes down some of the tomatoes. Some of the liquid from the can sloshes up onto the desk. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
There’s another long pause, which Parker takes to eat a spoonful of the tomatoes. It’s disgusting. He hates tomatoes. He eats another spoonful.
After another minute, Jeremy says, “If you want to come back, I’m not doing anything that I can’t delay. The house is still in livable condition.”
“I don’t think I can leave,” Parker says miserably. He keeps thinking about the look on Cib’s face and the way his voice sounded when he said Parker’s name, for the first time in months. “I’m depressed, and I don’t want him to be the reason I don’t do things.”
“Okay,” Jeremy says, more kindly than Parker expected. “If you need anything, just call me. Plane tickets home or an assassination or most things in between.”
“Neither of those.” Parker pauses. “Yet.”
Jeremy makes a little noise that Parker has come to know as his version of laughing. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and hangs up.
Forty minutes later, two pizzas appear at Parker’s hotel room. It is, Parker supposes, Jeremy’s midway point between plane tickets and an assassination. Whatever it is, it’s better than the can of crushed tomatoes.
#
The thing is, then he makes a stupid mistake, which is: he leaves the hotel again the next day. He doesn’t go to the grocery store, even though he still needs fresh food and also knows Cib will probably be avoiding it. No, instead he goes to the coffee shop, with a notebook and noise cancelling headphones.
It seems, for about an hour, like nothing bad is going to happen. He sits in the corner and works on outlines for a while. His books aren’t bestsellers, but they’re popular with twelve-year-old boys, so he’s going to keep writing, because God knows that twelve-year-old boys could use all the good books that they can get.
And it’s good. He gets into a groove, he outlines a couple chapters, he’s working his way through a problem section and listening to pop music and everything is fine. Everything is fine until Sami Jo sits down across from him and pops one of his headphones off.
Parker flinches back, his body reacting before his brain has even caught up with the situation. It takes him a minute to process that it’s Sami Jo, actually here in front of him. He hasn’t seen her in a few months either, and she’s glaring at Parker like he kicked her puppy.
Well, he sort of did, he figures. He upset Cib, it’s the same thing.
“Sam- uh, S-” he swallows, pulls his headphones off the rest of the way, drops his pen to the table with a clatter. “Hey?”
“You need to stop avoiding him,” Sami Jo says, matter of factly.
Parker flinches. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I don’t think what you’re doing is a good idea!”
“We broke up,” he says, and it still feels like glass in his mouth. “We should- I don’t- I can’t just be friends with him, not after something like that.”
“He still won’t tell me why you broke up,” Sami Jo says exasperatedly. “And it’s really sweet of him to, I don’t know, spare my feelings or whatever he thinks he’s doing, but I’m tired of him moping about you.”
Parker chews on his lip for a second. He wants to ask if Cib is doing okay, but that’s not his business anymore. Instead, he says, “Why are you visiting family?”
Sami Jo shrugs. “I just haven’t been in a while. And my girlfriend couldn’t come because of work things, but I didn’t want to go alone, so Cib offered to come with me.”
“Girlfriend,” Parker repeats. That doesn’t make sense. She’s here with Cib. “Girlfriend?”
Sami Jo blinks at him. “Oh,” she says, with too much understanding in her voice. “Oh, Parker, honey, he’s my best friend, but I don’t think he would love me, even if he wanted to try. He’s never gonna have eyes for anyone but you.”
Parker blinks a couple times. “I don’t even really remember what we were fighting about,” he says. His voice sounds far away. He’s too busy thinking about their apartment- Cib’s apartment. He’d been so worked up that he hadn’t been thinking about what he was saying, not really. Cib probably remembers every word that they said, he’s uncanny like that, but Parker just remembers the yelling. The weird knot in the pit of his stomach. The voice in his head that whispered that this was it, this was going to be it, and Parker had tried to ignore it until he realized it was right.
Sami Jo is looking at him. He thinks she might’ve said something. He’s not sure. He thinks his hands are shaking.
She reaches across the table and gently flips his notebook shut. “You two are both idiots,” she says, but he can hear the real affection in her voice. “And you’re going to thank me for this later.”
Parker looks up. He’s not even surprised when he sees Cib standing a few yards away, hovering, looking uncertain.
“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Sami Jo says firmly. “And if it looks like everything is going up in flames, I’ll take him away. But you two should talk. Just for a little bit.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Parker says. Or, he thinks he says it. It’s barely a whisper. He thinks he might be having trouble breathing, but it’s hard to tell.
“Hey.” Sami Jo grabs his hand and squeezes, not an affectionate squeeze but a death grip. It pulls him back into his own body. “Ten minutes. And if I’m wrong I will never bother you about this again, either of you. Okay?”
“No,” Parker says, but she’s already getting up. “Sami Jo-”
“I’m doing this because I miss being your friend,” she says, and that one… she probably means for it to guilt him, and it works. He’s definitely been avoiding Sami Jo along with Cib, and that’s not fair to her. “Ten minutes. Please.”
Parker glances back at Cib, who’s still watching them. If he didn’t know Cib so well, he’d think that Cib wasn’t nervous at all. But he knows all of Cib’s tells. “Okay,” he breathes.
Sami Jo pats his shoulder as she goes over to talk to Cib. Parker takes the opportunity to straighten up his things, as methodical as he can manage. Coffee cup on the side of table against the wall. Notebook in bag, headphones in pocket. Cell phone on table, ready to call Jeremy if he needs an escape before Sami Jo comes back. He straightens the collar of his T-shirt, like that’s going to help him breathe easier.
He can hear Cib coming, almost like Cib is making his footfalls as loud as possible. He probably is, actually. Parker’s not surprised when Cib slides into the chair across from him, sprawled out bonelessly. “So,” he drawls, “hear you wanna talk shop.”
Parker has a lot of things he wants to say, but he can’t remember any of them right now. He needs a minute to just be… overwhelmed. And he is overwhelmed, by everything Cib is doing, by the sheer proximity of him.
Cib must pick up on his hesitation, because he keeps going. “Or maybe you wanna talk chop, you know, no matter how you slice it, no matter how you dice it. Samuel Josephine thinks it’s a good idea but I think it’s a roll of the dice, you know, sugar and spice-”
“I miss you,” he says, not quite of his own accord, and Cib stops. Every bone in his body tightens, like he’s frozen in this relaxed sprawl, like he can’t move. Parker wants to reach out to him, but he’s pretty sure he still can’t move either. “Kind of a lot.”
Slowly, Cib straightens his posture, until he’s sitting a little more like himself, like he’s paying attention. “You haven’t talked to me in months,” he says, somewhere between cautious and heartbroken, and Parker’s chest aches. “I haven’t seen you since you moved out. I thought we would at least be friends afterwards, but you were just… gone.”
Parker opens his mouth, closes it. Cib waits him out, because he was always good at that. At handling Parker’s silences, and Parker’s nerves, and Parker’s… everything.
“I don’t know how to love you halfway,” Parker says at last, and he can feel his voice cracking. His throat is raw, but he can’t cry, not yet, not now. “I thought… I thought it was always going to be all or nothing with you and me. And so I ended up doing nothing. But it was horrible. It was always horrible without you.”
Cib reaches to take Parker’s hand, but Parker can see the exact second that he thinks better of it and freezes, hand hovering centimeters above Parker’s. “I’m tired of being without you,” he says, in this horrible, candid way that makes Parker want to collapse into his arms. “I don’t know how we can fix this but I want to. If you want to.”
Parker sucks in the deepest breath he can manage and grabs Cib’s hand. “I want to,” he says, and presses his thumb into the back of Cib’s hand, the way he always used to.
Cib lets out a sigh, tension bleeding out of every molecule of him. He opens his mouth, like he’s about to say something, but he looks at Parker and shakes his head. “I want to,” he echoes, reverently, like this is something magical and incredible. Parker thinks that maybe it is.
james was a los santos baby, a kid who may not have been born here but could kill before becoming a teenager, a kid with permanently blood-stained hands, a kid with no family or home who was taught to leave any family or home he might gain in ashes.
cib was canadian.
they meet as hired guns working the same job and meet again and again and again. whether this is some sort of destiny or them specifically seeking to work with each other, no one knows. they have such strong pulls and orbit each other in a dangerous dance. what happens when the planets fall in love? when they inevitably collide, the whole city feels it.
steve wants to start a crew. him, cib, maybe parker and his friends, maybe that tech girl from steve’s last crew. cib says let’s have my boyfriend join and steve laughs yeah, sure, why not because the idea of cib maintaining any kind of romantic relationship is ridiculous. so when cib does show up with a beautiful boy, he’s shocked to say the least, but welcomes him with open arms. it’s rude to turn away a person carrying that many guns.
people know not to mess with the sugar pine 7 boys, a dangerous and chaotic crew with seemingly no limits, but they know especially not to mess with the two boys who, combined, are destruction incarnate.
aka the sugar pine 7 gta au i wrote at like four in the morning and haven’t edited
pairing: can be taken as steven/james/cib
rating: m for semi-graphic violence
content: darker timeline, cib conducts interrogation torture on a random dude, cib is a Scarily Competent Buffoon, you better believe i abuse the hell out of the are you a good listener line, canon-typical amounts of vaping, cib alludes to recreational drug use
on ao3
excerpt:
Cib tilts his head in some pastiche of curiosity. “Are you a good listener?” he murmurs, smiling faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
Steven watches the guy sneer, watches him open his mouth and have to spit blood before he can respond. “What, motherfucker?”
The leather of Cib’s glove creaks as he tightens his one-handed grip on the bat, lets the nail-riddled head swing gently just inches from the floor. To the untrained eye, his body language almost looks relaxed, and he takes a couple of lazy steps forward.
Then his voice goes hard. “Are you a good listener,” he says again, and then, mockingly, “motherfucker.”
There are certain things, as a crew boss, that Steven simply finds himself above having to do. That’s a perk of being in charge. You get to designate shit.
He usually designates interrogation to James or Jeremy. They’re practiced. Good at what they do.
Sometimes, he has to send in Cib.
The guy tied to the chair in the warehouse, the one who’s already suffered a couple rounds at the hands of Jeremy but still won’t give anything up—the one Cib is approaching right now as Steven watches from the side—Steven had hired him to be an informant a few months ago.
Turned out the dude was really good at his job.
So good he started selling off SP7 information to the highest bidder. When Steven sent James off to confront him, James returned nursing a gunshot wound and a concussion. It’d taken a small team to subdue the informant and drag him to the warehouse.
Steven’s not mad, alright. He’s just disappointed.
Then again, he’s siccing Cib on the poor idiot. Maybe he’s a little mad. Mostly he just needs to know exactly what this guy has told to exactly who. Hell, if it all turns up roses, maybe they can still get some use out of him.
After Jeremy doesn’t manage to get the dude to talk, Steven calls for Cib, who, ever-dramatic, enters the warehouse with a cloud of smoke spilling from his mouth, a baseball bat trailing from one hand.
The guy and Cib regard each other in silence for a few moments. Steven almost feels bad for him. Cib can be sadistic on his best days, but the stupid bastard had gone and hurt James, and Cib doesn’t tend to take too kindly to James getting hurt.
It makes him upset, James being injured. A guy’s gotta find a way to work through those emotions. It’s not healthy to bottle them up. Steven highly advocates taking therapeutic actions.
Just turns out Cib prefers his therapy to end in blood.
Cib tilts his head in some pastiche of curiosity. “Are you a good listener?” he murmurs, smiling faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
Steven watches the guy sneer, watches him open his mouth and have to spit blood before he can respond. “What, motherfucker?”
The leather of Cib’s glove creaks as he tightens his one-handed grip on the bat, lets the nail-riddled head swing gently just inches from the floor. To the untrained eye, his body language almost looks relaxed, and he takes a couple of lazy steps forward.
Then his voice goes hard. “Are you a good listener,” he says again, and then, mockingly, “motherfucker.”
The guy doesn’t even get the chance to fire back a reply before Cib moves, raw and sadistic and ruthless—the poor bastard shrieks when the bat smashes against his knees, the scream petering to a hitched and shaky whimper when Cib lets the bat drop to the concrete.
Steven wrinkles his nose at the fleshy sound of forcible dislocation, the crack of bone, and sighs. The guy’s useless to them if he can’t fucking walk; they’re gonna have to put the asshole down like an injured racehorse when this is all over, when they’ve got the information they need. Then again, he’s probably not going to survive his encounter with Cib, anyway.
Would it kill Cib to be a little more careful with his abuse? Steven’s trying to run a fucking business here, that’s all he’s saying.
Cib examines his nails and picks at the chipping black paint for a moment, then glances back over at the guy, who can’t seem to look at Cib for the pain or the fear or both.
“So that’s a no,” Cib says conversationally. “That’s okay.” He steps forward again, ignores the way the guy flinches to grab him by the jaw and lift his head, force their eyes to meet.
He smiles again. It still doesn’t reach his eyes.
“That’s okay,” he repeats, like a kindness. “I’ll teach you.”
Steven leaves him to it, closes the door to the warehouse as the screams start again.
He doesn’t know exactly when Cib first showed up in Los Santos, but the guy fits in like he was raised here, a creature born of asphalt and smoke and neon. Half the time the words coming out of his mouth make no sense at all, but he shows moments of intense lucidity that make Steven wonder if the inane personality is just an act.
For all that Cib seems to be an open book, Steven’s not convinced some of his antics aren’t just a show—make everybody look at the shiny distraction over there and then nobody’s got their eyes on his cards or the way he’s tucking aces into his sleeves.
He’s fiercely loyal, though, and that at least seems genuine. Either way, Steven’s pretty content to leave Cib to his zero brain-to-mouth filter and his vaping and his occasional bloodlust.
James is a little off his face on painkillers when Steven shows up at his apartment later. Never let it be said he’s not a good friend; he makes sure James has water and gets Netflix going for him and only films a little bit of his opiate-induced mumbling.
His phone buzzes in his pocket halfway through their third episode of The Office. James is dozing where he’s stretched out on the couch, and Steven’s struggling to keep his eyes open slumped in the armchair next to it. Yawning, he retrieves his phone and pulls up a text from Cib. It’s a list of names and information, and, to Cib’s credit, it comes a lot faster than Steven thought it would.
The front door crashes open a few minutes later. “I am unbelievably hard right now!” comes Cib’s cheerful voice.
Steven jumps. “Jesus,” he says, sitting up and watching Cib waltz into the living room. “Take it easy, man, the baby is sleeping.”
“The baby is not sleeping,” James mumbles from underneath two blankets, stirring. “The baby is just super, mega high.”
“Oh, sweet,” says Cib. He vaults himself over the back of the couch and lands in a heap inches from James’s head. “Are they good drugs. Will you share. I’ll trade you all the lint in my pockets and the gum currently in my mouth.”
“Can you not— The man has a concussion and you almost dropped 170 pounds of Canadian Fuckboy on his head,” Steven says, exasperated.
“Sorry,” Cib offers. He gives James’s head a mostly gentle pat. Apparently he’s back to his Lovable Oaf setting, all of the hardness and sadism melted away.
“Thanks for the info,” Steven says, lifting his phone a little.
“No problemo,” Cib replies. “Uh, cleanup on aisle five, by the way.”
“You mean the warehouse?”
“Obvs.”
“Is he dead?” Steven asks, more curious than anything.
Cib shrugs and fumbles in his pockets for his vape. “Dunno. He fell asleep, wouldn’t wake up no matter how hard I hit him. Got bored ‘n left.”
“Fell asleep,” James snorts. He shifts enough to raise an eyebrow at Steven, and, yeah, the dude’s long dead, possibly in pieces. James grabs the vape from Cib’s hands and sucks down a lungful of smoke, blows it out in Cib’s face.
Steven thinks about the broken body on the warehouse floor and watches Cib, face soft with childlike amusement, gently wrestle James for the vape. There’s blood on the collar of his shirt.
Whatever the hell Cib is, Steven’s just glad he’s on their side.
Things you said while I cried in your arms, Steven/Cib? (You don't have to if you don't want to! Love your writing!)
Hey, this is a LOT longer than I intended it to be, but I hope the 2,350-ish word build up for a 22 word sentence works for you. Also hope you’re ok with GTA au, cause that’s what you’re getting! My first time writing it, so hope there isn’t anything too awful. I feel kinda bad cause everyone else doing this is popping out 2-3 paragraphs worth for each prompt, but apparently I can’t do things in moderation/without some sort of context, but I should know that already because of who I am as a person. Anyways, thank you so much for the prompt!
Warning for blood and language I guess.
On Ao3
~~~
Steven had already had a horrible feeling about this recon mission before James and Cib had even headed out and now an hour after they should’ve been back he felt like he was on the verge of an anxiety attack, waiting for any word. He paced back and forth behind Autumn as she flipped through the different traffic cams she had access to. Unfortunately there were some dead spots in the map of the city that they hadn’t yet been able to hack into and they had lost Cib’s car somewhere in there. Their setup was new and Autumn claimed she couldn’t get into everything all at the same time or she would be easier to detect, and so they’d sent Cib and James to check out a couple of the so called ‘dead zones’, two of which they were currently uncertain of which gang was in control of. He had already put Jeremy and Parker on high alert when the guys were twenty minutes late getting back.
Stevens shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor as he spun on his heel and took three large steps across the room and repeated. Autumn glanced up at him in annoyance and put her half off headphones back into their proper position.
He checked his phone for the millionth time, waiting for any sort of notification. He hadn’t set it down in over an hour, the case well and truly warmed by his hand at that point. Same as before, nothing.
Autumn huffed as his shoes squeaked again. “Will you stop-”
Stevens text notification went off and both of them jumped at the sound. Autumn pulled off her headphones and craned her neck to see the phone as Steven unlocked it. It was a single word text message from James with his GPS marker attached.
Help.
~~~~~
Ten minutes later Steven was racing through the streets heading for the outskirts of the city, a pile of weapons on the back seat next to Jeremy and Parker navigating from the passenger seat. The GPS marker was out in the mountains, along the road running through Raton Canyon. How they had wound up that far out of town Steven had no idea. The atmosphere in the truck was tense, everyone silent asides from Parker directing him when to turn.
He’d tried calling James several times, but it rang through to the answering machine every time. Cib’s phone didn’t even ring, going straight to his voice recording.
“Slow down, it says he’s just around the corner.” Parker said.
Steven did as he was told and eased the truck around the corner, coming to a stop when Cib’s destroyed car came into view. It lay on its roof in the middle of the narrow road, it’s nose pointed uphill and the drivers side door hanging open towards them.
Steven and Parker both swore under their breath, all three men vacating the truck with their guns drawn. Steven went straight for the open car door as Parker and Jeremy fanned out, Jeremy going to the edge of the road where it dropped away into a steep slope towards the river and Parker going around the front of the car to the other side.
Stevens could feel his heart pounding as he scrambled into the car, broken glass pricking at his fingers. It was empty, no bodies, which could’ve been a relief asides from the fact he still had no clue where they were. There was blood though, and not just a little. The passenger seat was stained with it and the steering wheel smeared red. Just as he was about to crawl backwards out of the car he spotted Cib’s phone in the pile of blood splattered glass, the screen smashed to bits. Well that explains the lack of ringing.
Parker joined him by the door as he stood up. “Have you tried James phone again?”
“No, but the GPS says he’s right here,” he pointed to where Jeremy stood on the edge of the road, looking down at the few trees between them and the river. His stomach twisted as the thought of either of them winding up in the river crossed his mind. He fought the thought back and hit redial, listening for the first couple rings.
“I hear something!” Jeremy hollered at them, starting to slide down the hill, catching himself on one of the sparse pine trees ten feet below them. The next one over had branches low to the ground, completely hiding anything within four feet of its base, which Jeremy was now peering at.
“He’s here!” Jeremy called out, disappearing under the branches. Steven didn’t even hesitate, tucking his gun into his waistband and skidding down the slope on his heels before catching himself on the trunk and pushing the branches out of the way from where he saw Jeremy disappear. His heart stopped as he found Jeremy crouched over an unconscious James, already trying to apply pressure to his bleeding shoulder. Jeremy turned to Steven. “We need to get him out of here. Help me get him on my shoulder.”
Working together they managed to fight through the tree and get James onto Jeremy’s shoulder and Jeremy started climbing the hill again, Parker ready to grab onto him when he got into range and Steven supporting him from behind. Halfway up James came back to consciousness and immediately started fighting.
“Put me down, you fucker!” He yelled, reaching up with one arm to wrap his hand around Jeremy’s face and pummeling his lower back with the other. Jeremy grunted, nearly slipping but stubbornly keeping an iron grip on James’ flailing legs.
“James! James, stop!” Steven grabbed for his arms, but Jeremy slipped, sending them both toppling forward. James landed hard on his back, the impact and Jeremy’s shoulder landing on his torso knocking the breath out of him. Parker managed to grab him under his arms and drag him the rest of the way up and onto the road.
James finally drew in a breath and immediately started coughing, his face screwed up in pain. Steven clambered up the last bit of the hill and to James’ side, taking the rag Jeremy handed to him and pressed it into the apparent bullet wound through his shoulder. The pain was enough to make James take another hacking breath and his eyes flew open. “Steven!”
“Yeah, James, it’s me, you’re ok, we’re going to get you out of here.” James lifted his head and saw Parker helping Jeremy back to his feet and kept searching around the area.
He looked back at Steven and asked, “Where’s Cib? Is he ok?”
Steven’s heart sank. If James didn’t know where Cib was, they were screwed. “We haven’t found him yet, what the hell happened?”
James clenched his eyes shut and groaned. “It was the Fakes, man, we were in the FAHC’s area and they saw us. One of them got a hit on me before Cib could get us out of there and the Vagabond chased us all the way out here. We almost lost him, but one of their helicopters caught up. We flipped and I think Cib hit his head and wouldn’t wake up, but I could hear the helicopter coming back and the Vagabond was coming, so I crawled down the hill. They mustn’t have seen me move.”
“Shit.” Steven looked up at Jeremy, who already had his phone out, his thumbs flying across the keyboard as he alerted his network of contacts to keep their eyes open for any of the Fakes with a hostage. “We need to get out of here, get back to the Office.”
Parker nodded enthusiastically as he moved to help him lift James to his feet. James groaned and leaned heavily on Parker, putting his hand up to hold the rag on the wound himself as they walked past the destroyed car to Steven’s truck.
The drive back was just as quiet and tense as the trip out, except for Jeremy’s nearly continuous conversations on the phone. Steven kept looking in his rear view mirror, checking on James. He had passed out leaning against Parker’s chest, who had taken over applying pressure and had found a wad of gauze to hold to the wound on the back of James’ shoulder.
An hour later James was sleeping on the couch against the window with Mimi tending to his wounds while Steven returned to his pacing behind Autumn’s chair, much to her annoyance, and occasionally going to the back room to check in with Parker and Jeremy, who was equally annoyed by his hovering. Parker was more understanding and tried to at least be gentle while informing him they had nothing for him yet.
It continued like that for the next few hours, until James awoke late in the evening and finally managed to get Steven to stop moving for a moment and sit down on the couch. He somehow managed to keep him there long enough for Steven to fall into a fitful sleep, leaving the rest of the office to do their jobs without a living, breathing ball of anxiety sitting on their shoulders.
Autumn stretched in her seat, yawning loudly, as she looked over her shoulder at James, Steven asleep with his head on James’ lap. The shoulder of his t-shirt had been cut open and he looked exhausted, but he still broke out into a smile when he saw her looking at him.
“You look like shit, bro.”
“Thanks!”
She smiled at the goofy grin he was giving her. “I’m glad you’re okay.”“Me too.” His face turned serious as he looked down at Steven. “But I don’t think any of us are going to be okay if we don’t find Cib.”
~~~~~
It was nearly twenty four hours after they’d retrieved James that Parker and Jeremy were able to charge into the main office and present the group with some good news.
“We got him, one of our contacts just spotted a Fake Crew vehicle leaving the docks. Apparently they left a note with our name on it on a sea can.” Parker looked like he was nearly vibrating with excitement, grinning from ear to ear.
“And what’s the likelihood that’s a trap?” James asked the room in general.
“Definitely.” Steven muttered, rubbing his hands across his knees. He was shaking so bad, finally getting a lead was such a relief, but god, they couldn’t just walk down there and open the container up. What if it was booby trapped, set to blow when they opened the door? “You happen to have a bomb team in that network of contacts?”
“Sorta. He can meet us there though.” Jeremy said.
“He? Singular?”
“He’s good enough he doesn’t need a team.”
~~~~~
And so Steven, Parker, Jeremy, and James, despite Mimi’s protests about his arm, arrived at the docks, almost immediately finding the sea can meant for them thanks to the comically large green and black gift wrapping bow slapped on the front of it. A guy Steven and James didn’t recognize was slowly circling it, waving a small box in his hand along every seam he could find.
“Andrew! What’s the word, buddy?” Parker called as they all exited the truck.
The guy, Andrew, turned to them, squinting in the sunlight despite the ball cap turned backwards on his head. The brim is literally designed to protect your eyes, who the hell thinks they look so cool with their hat backwards that they squint at the sun, Steven thought to himself, his tiredness and missing his friend turning to irritation. He kept his mouth shut though, they needed this guy.
“I can’t find anything, seems to be clean. Pulled this off for you though,” he held out a folded piece of paper with a strip of tape on it out and Steven immediately snatched it out of his hand. His hands shook as he opened it.
We know you’ve been looking for him, and he’s useless to us, so you can have him back. Of course we didn’t kill him, we’re not barbarians. Who are we, Fake Chop?
<3 FAHC
“Can you open it?” Steve hated the way his voice broke over those four words.
“Yeah, of course.” Andrew pulled off the huge bow and unlatched the two handles on the first door, not noticing as the other four men took three steps back before he pulled it open. They all breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened and then Steven was running for the door.
The afternoon sun lit the interior, one beam in particular highlighting the tall skinny form of Cib slumped on his side against the wall, hands bound by rope in front of him. Any risk of further trip wires and traps were immediately forgotten by Steven and he skidded to his knees next to Cib. He had blood dried to the side of his head, the dark circles around his eyes were even darker than usual and the exposed parts of his arms were mottled with bruises. And that was only what Steven could see, who knew how bad he was under his clothes? Steven felt sick just thinking about it.
He desperately clutched at Cib, pulling him partially upright and hugging him to his chest. The movement startled Cib awake, his eyes going wide and body tensing, bring his bound hands up near his bruised throat as though he were protecting himself.
“Hey hey hey, it’s me, it’s Steven, I got you.”
Relief blossomed across Cibs face and tears immediately flowed as he pressed his face into Stevens shirt. “I didn’t think you were coming for me.”
“What- why wouldn’t I?” Steven was baffled. They’d never really officially defined their relationship before and he did love the dumb bugger, but Cib was always so affectionate to him he had assumed it was a mutual attraction. Obviously now Steven remembered he had the emotional capacity of a teaspoon and was even worse at showing it, mentally kicking himself for not having said anything before.
He put his hand under Cibs chin and angled his head up so he could look into Cibs tear filled eyes. “Of course I’d come for you, Cib. As long as I have life in my body, I will always come for you.”
