Chapter Text
The conversation begins with well-intentioned ignorance: Raven does not know that Jordan cannot drink. (Well, he can, he just shouldn’t. Shouldn’t indulge, shouldn’t escape, shouldn’t risk it ). Raven assumes, as the average 19 year-old junkie does, that the sad man in her passenger seat wouldn’t mind a sip of her terrible, off-brand beer that she holds against the light of the setting Nevada sun, light tinted by the truck’s smudged windshield. And Jordan doesn’t say no. He- he doesn’t have a good track record of saying no.
It affects him more than he should, it’s really embarrassing but they’ve been on the road long enough that he couldn’t care less. After Rex’s gunshot had Jordan promptly evicted on no notice, he’d half-heartedly turned down Kate Marksen’s offers on a crash site until Raven asked him to do a job for her. Safety disguised as labor; she knew what she was doing. Raven proposed a simple and inelegant escape: Jordan could accompany her on her cross-country delivery haul in the truck, as long as he did any heavy lifting necessary. Jordan hadn’t possessed the energy nor the logic to deny.
And now he was here, at a random truckstop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a punk practically-still-a-teenager asking him questions, endless fucking questions, like he isn’t older, like he can’t handle himself. Perhaps he can’t. This certainly proves that.
The yellow sun wears down the sky until it’s almost night and Raven puts her feet up on the dash, a nonverbal indicator that she’s sleepy and ready to yap. Jordan feels the ache in his bones, the ever-present reminder of his own mortality, and by extension, his weaknesses. Raven is unaware of the sort of effect that age brings to one’s body, the way it claims and ruins so easily.
“Ach, I’m certainly glad to be out of the city,” she laughs easily. Jordan can’t help but nod. He didn’t want to be evicted but in a way that apartment had already been compromised the moment Rex Evans came in there with his gun and terrible smile. He should’ve left the moment that shot rang out into the stuffy air.
“Mhm,” Jordan agrees with a drawn-out sigh. Raven watches his adam’s apple bob as he coughs on stale air. Maybe my sister was a terrible boss, she thinks to herself, without really believing it. Maybe Jordan just hated the job.
“I wish- ah fuck, never mind. You wouldn’t benefit from any drugs, old man. Lemme change my wish; I wish that… that Nevada wasn’t so damn hot.” Raven looks over the man in her usually-unoccupied passenger seat, watches his slight movements with subtle intrigue. She wants to know more; she’s unsure why, maybe it’s morbid curiosity, maybe she pities him. Well, if you pity him, you should look at yourself, a voice whispers to her inside the confines of her mind. She winces.
“I fucking hate my life right now,” Jordan says bluntly, the words slipping like molasses from his mouth. Raven blinks in acknowledgment. “I feel stupid when I’m in that lab, when I have to deal with people like your sister who are special, who’re geniuses. And God forbid I have to talk with the- with the assistant lead. …The whole place makes me want to kill myself, you know? This fucking twenty year-old dipshit telling me what to do, walking around with his head held high like he isn’t-” Jordan shakily runs a hand through his thin black hair. The memories of Rex Evans are almost as suffocating as his actual presence.
“You mean the one in the suit?” Raven frowns, thinking. She recalls a somewhat twinkish young man who looked almost militaristic in his posture standing next to Kate in a photoshoot, his brown hair slicked back. Jordan nods. “Man, I could never work with science guys, too uptight.”
“He walks around like he has a stick up his ass,” Jordan hisses. “Then again, he’d probably be okay with that. ” Jordan quickly looks around, like a reflex, scanning for two big soulless grey eyes to seize him and hand him his punishment. Raven blinks, confused.
“Jordan, you-” she sighs, half-amused. “You can’t say shit like that.”
“No, I…” something horrible stirs within Jordan’s chest. He feels his lungs constrict and he almost wants to gag, similar to how he did when- no. “Oh, what the fuck, ” he whispers through gritted teeth. “Raven, I think I’m a fucking faggot too.”
Raven is genuinely stunned into silence for a brief and awkward moment.
“Dude, dude you can’t come out like that,” she finally says, with a strangled sort of laugh.
“Letting him stick that gun in my mouth was the gayest thing I could’ve done,” Jordan spits out tiredly, letting the words rest outside his own chapped lips for the first time. Raven cannot, for the life of her, process what this man just said. Nevertheless, she tries.
“Hold on, go back. Who are we talking about? What are we talking about??”
“My coworker, who’s an actual psychopath,” Jordan mumbles angrily.
“And he stuck a gun in your mouth ?” Raven swears she heard that wrong, she must’ve. But Jordan does not deny it, does not try to save himself any dignity. Okay, so your evil coworker stuck a gun in your mouth and now you’re gay. Is that… is that a euphemism for something? God, I’m never hanging out with Kate’s science people again.
“It was my fault,” Jordan says quietly. Raven contemplates what her response should be, and ultimately decides to wing it.
“That’s bullshit,” she says plainly. “Explain what happened, because I doubt it’s your fault.”
Jordan debates answering at all; he weighs his options, the horrible reality of having to confront anything Rex had done, anything he’d done, anything that had happened, period. But Raven is concerned, and in his mind she is simply a scared kid, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her to fuck off and mind her damn business. He bites his lip, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough that the pain wakes him up a little.
“It was,” he forces out, wishing to have a better way of articulating the absolute mess that was the whole situation. He briefly wonders if Raven would even believe him. “I egged him on, challenged him and yelled at him, all because I was jealous. Jealous that he had that fancy ass job, jealous that he had the privilege of being such an uptight asshole, jealous that he was young and successful like I’ve never been. Nothing would’ve happened if I just swallowed my fucking words and did his stupid ass job.” Raven coughs, blinking rapidly.
“Okay, okay-” Raven starts, trying to get a hold on the spiraling conversation. “So this- this coworker threatened you, hurt you, put a fucking gun in your mouth… and… you think it’s your fault?” She tries to keep her tone neutral, but the alcohol makes the natural flow of words a little bit fuzzier.
“Yeah…” Jordan says under his breath, the air coming out disgustingly warm. “Yeah, he was… acting strangely, even for him. So was I. The worst part was- it- it wasn’t bad,” Jordan wants to slam his hand through that hazy windshield. He doesn’t. “It was- he-”
“Jordan-”
“It really is my fault. I’m weak, I’m weak and fucking gay, and I… fuck, man.”
“Yeah, this is uh- this is pretty crazy,” Raven says slowly, because what else can she say? “Do you want to keep talking?” Jordan is a tad bit stunned at that, at her asking if he wants the conversation to keep going at all. And he doesn’t, not really. Every word that tumbles out of his mouth seems to make the ache in the back of his head worse, scrambling around something crucial in his brain.
“No, this is embarrassing enough already,” Jordan sighs. “I just…”
“Listen, maybe we should contact Kate. Is he even allowed to have a gun in the lab?” Jordan’s eyes go wide, a dull and hardly noticeable sort of panic behind them. “Regardless, this sounds like uh… what do they call it… an HR violation?”
“We don’t have HR,” Jordan mumbles, dazed and confused from the mere suggestion of getting back at Rex, at seeking some sort of justice he believed he didn’t deserve.
“You should,” Raven shoots back, rubbing her temple. The sun is more than halfway below the horizon now. They could sleep at the truck stop, but Raven doesn’t really trust the remote-ness of their location. It’s places like these where people snap, where some fellow long-haul trucker whips out a pistol on the young punk girl and the tired middle-aged man. Revenge for circumstance, they call it.
“I hate this job. I hate my apartment. I hate- I hate feeling like I’m worthless. He’s gonna fucking kill me, and I’ll have nothing on my gravestone but useless words: Jordan Pierre, died as a nobody. I can’t tell Kate.”
“Because he’ll hurt you?” Raven says slowly, without mentioning Rex Evans by name. She knows better than to put pressure on a bruise; the worst wounds are often internal, and require no tourniquet.
“Because she likes me, at least a little. And if I tell her, I lose even more. I already feel disgusting, do I have to go around parading that fact?”
“You’re not disgusting, Jordan.” And the sun slips behind a small foothill, the sky painted some extravagant rural colors, beauty that does not match the conversation. Raven thinks about the scraped-nail politics of disgust, and how much it can hurt to hate yourself indefinitely. Raven thinks about her art, her dreams, and how nothing ever makes sense until you stare at it through a warped, psychedelic screen. Raven thinks about disgust, and about shame, and about acceptance.
Neither of them see it, as they are both too preoccupied with their thoughts, but a sleek black car pulls into the truck stop several meters away, wholly out of place and ominous. The windows are tinted, just barely to legal standard, and the driver is stick-still at the wheel as the engine turns off, almost silently.
“Hm, I had a girlfriend once, who actually said that to me. ” Jordan keeps his gaze on his worn-out shoes, not bothering to look up at Raven. She continues talking. “I was young, maybe sixteen, and I had known I was trans for a while, but I hadn’t told anyone but my sister. I told her, and I expected she’d hate me, but she didn’t.”
“Um, sorry to sound like a douche, but what’s ‘trans?’” Jordan asks. Raven laughs a little.
“Like when a girl is born as a boy, and she knows she’s a girl and wants to be one to society. Or the other way around.” Jordan tries to understand, and though he’s a bit lost, he thinks he remembers learning of this some time ago.
“So you were a boy?” Jordan looks at Raven, not seeing it. She looks like a girl. Jordan feels weirdly perverted thinking about things like this. Raven still feels like a child to him, he doesn’t want to think about… assigned sex or whatever that shit is called.
“I was assigned male at birth, yeah. But I’m a girl. Ach, this is awkward, huh? Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”
“No, it’s fine,” Jordan stumbles, not wanting to make her more uncomfortable. “I believe you.”
Raven quirks an eyebrow. “What do you mean, you ‘believe me?’”
“I believe that you’re a girl.” Raven giggles a bit, adjusting her feet on the dash. Unbeknownst to the two, a car door has just been opened.
“If someone says they’re a girl then they’re a girl. It’s weirdly simple.” Jordan squints.
“I’m not a girl,” Jordan states, still confused.
“Relax, I’m not trying to, like, convert you to be transgender or something. I just thought you’d… I don’t know. I get the feeling you don’t know many queer people.” Jordan nods reluctantly. “And you need to know that not every queer person is like your coworker.”
“Oh my God, Raven, I don’t want to be gay,” Jordan hisses, his throat weirdly congested. God, if I cry now I’ll never live this down, he thinks to himself.
“Uh-” Raven starts, unsure of where to go from there. She decides to continue with her own coming-out story, just because what else can she do? “I felt similar when I was little. I thought my family would hate me, but it turns out most people are chill. I’m a lot happier—well, not really, but that has nothing to do with the queer thing. Whatever. What I’m trying to say is-”
Raven is cut off by a strange noise: a knock against the metal of the truckbed. At first it’s almost dismissed; it would be a stray flurry of rocks or maybe something in the cargo clanking around, until it sounds again, louder this time. Very distinctly human, very distinctly real. Something terrible lingers in the air, like the strong scent of the booze they’ve been sipping. She looks to Jordan, who meets her eyes with an intense paranoia present in his gaze.
Raven, attempting to be practical and logical, leans over Jordan to peek out the passenger seat window. Her eyes easily catch on the elephant in the room, (or, in reality, the parking lot), which is the man leaning against the cargo box of the truck, staring right at her. Before she can process, she ducks her head back in with a squeak, eyes flickering between Jordan and the window.
Hestinantly, she pokes Jordan. Tells him to look, asks him not to freak out. He turns his head, then whips it back, and Raven sees true, genuine fear on his face. She inhales, takes one more look at the suited man outside, and locks the car. Her heart is pounding in her chest.
“What,” Jordan hisses through bated breath, “the fuck,” he inhales further, eyes wide, “ is he doing here? ” And in both of their minds it is almost like Rex-fucking-Evans has become similar to a monster with a taboo name: if you say it he’ll appear, eyes glowing in the dark Nevada night like a cryptid.
“That’s- that’s your coworker,” Raven stutters. Jordan dumbly nods, eyes wide with horror. “How is he-”
“We need to go. Drive!” Jordan shouts with a distinct shaky quality to his voice. There’s another knock, even louder. Raven lets her hand settle on the ignition, preparing to turn the key. The other hand is on the gearshift. Her heartbeat feels almost audible, especially when she hears a loud and dramatic exhale from the man leaning against the cargo. He’s mocking them. The key is milliseconds away from being turned when there’s a loud bang, causing Jordan’s hands to fly over his head as he instinctively ducks. Raven does similar, recognizing the tell-tale sound of a gunshot. She can guess that it’s a handgun, something new and fancy. It sounds like the police and their stupid warning shots. Raven wants to throw up.
Another strange noise; she realizes it’s Jordan this time, bent forward with some treacherous emotion stuck in his throat, manifesting as a choked half-sob. Because, fuck. Jordan is so fucking scared and there’s nothing he can do about it, because Rex is outside with a gun.
And like the useless bitchy man he is, Jordan sobs, clutching his sides as his body tenses and untenses in a painful and terribly vulnerable display of fear. His shoulders shake with the exertion, and tears are pricking at his eyes. In Jordan’s mind, Rex’s soulless grey eyes watch him like a predator would stalk its prey—cold, calculating and excited to strike. He can’t fucking breathe.
Raven, in a sudden and tilting moment of realization, understands Jordan’s plight; understands his fear and his reactions. Because when she looks out the tall window of the driver’s seat window, she is half-certain she is staring into the big, bug-like eyes of something truly inhuman. He must be on his tippy-toes to even have his eyes reach mine—this truck is tall as hell, Raven thinks deliriously. The view she has is of Rex’s eyes, brow, and slicked-back hairline. They don’t blink. And Raven, in a moment she’s sure she’ll regret, rolls down the window.
She’s met with the sight of two cold, dead eyes; metallic spheres that shine dully in the murky Nevada dark. The height of the truck makes it hard for her to really see the man, but she gets enough of him from the view she has. Slicked and groomed mouse-brown hair, tanned skin, a white and harsh scar cutting through their eyebrow and another v-shaped scar under his eye. She can make out a straight, thin nose and a slightly furrowed brow.
“Get your dog to calm down, trucker girl,” is what the scientist says, before Raven can spit out an interrogation. She blinks in confusion, and turns her head. Jordan had pressed himself against the passenger door, as far away as he could get from the window. “Look, he’s shaking.” Raven stares down, (yes, down—the view is like a cashier at a lifted foodtruck taking the order of some urban teenagers, and Raven does think, privately, that she would be taller than this man even without the truck).
“I- what ?? Listen man, I don’t want any bad business. So just tell me: who are you, and did you shoot my cargo bed ?”
And he laughs, that stupid bastard, he laughs at her and her sister’s middle aged apprentice that looks seconds away from having a reasonably intense panic attack, he laughs. “It was a blank,” he laughs again, “and you know who I am. You wouldn't have made that weird expression when you saw me if you didn’t. You’re Kate Marksen’s little sister, right? I don’t see the resemblance.”
She’s adopted, asshole, Raven half-wants to say. The larger, more influential part of her brain—which is still fuzzy from alcohol, fuck her luck—tells her to step on the gas and go flying through the guardrails and into the shrubby desert, away from Rex and his gun. But similar to Jordan, she’s uncharacteristically frozen.
“How- no, why did you follow us?” is all that Raven can say through the muddled chaos of her mind. In her peripheral vision, she can see Jordan’s dark eyes blown wide with fear. Rex just shrugs, his shoulders rising into the frame of the window. Raven feels angry, mostly because it’s an easier emotion to utilize in a situation like this, much better than fear or pity (for Jordan, of course). “You’re a fucking weirdo, dude,” Raven spits, tensing her jaw. The pair of grey eyes narrow, crinkling like the ghost of a smile—or a grimace.
And in one movement, something Raven can see is practiced, Rex raises his hand up so that the black Glock is pointed at the window, muzzle almost at level with Raven’s chest. She can’t see Rex’s arm, can barely see his hand; but the gun takes up enough room. Behind the hulking beast of a weapon, (it’s not large, per say, but Raven knows what guns in the hands of men like Rex will do. It’s much scarier than seeing one on the shelf in a collector’s house. This thing has killed before, and it would do it again), is Rex’s eyes. They bore holes into Raven’s, concentrated and expressionless. The gun is right there, no glass to separate it, to make it look like a hallucination or a late-night mirage.
“Oh, what the actual fuck,” Raven exhales, like the breath was punched out of her lungs.
“Get out of the car.” When neither of them move, Rex repeats himself, visibly frustrated. “I said get out of the car.”
“What do you want,” Raven asks with her chest shuttering from rapid and panicked breaths.
“Not sure yet. I think what I really want,” Rex scowls, pausing enough to leave Raven holding her breath, “is for you to get out of the fucking car. ” And when both Raven and Jordan remain still, Rex snaps in Raven’s face with his free hand, raising his eyebrows as if to ask ‘ what’s taking so long ?’ Raven looks to Jordan, who has practically caved in on himself. In the back of her mind, she remembers resistance as a motto and not as an anti-survival tactic or a political identity, but in this moment she looks at Rex and sees yet another evil man with a loaded gun. So she opens the door, and silently steps out into the warm desert night, because Raven Marksen does not want to die here.
Standing face-to-face with Rex Evans, Raven can admit she was right about the height thing—she has like, at least three inches on him. They’re wearing a three-piece suit, and they have stick-straight posture. She thinks back to that dumb quip Jordan made at the start of this mess, and almost laughs. Rex Evans does stand like he has a stick up his ass.
Inside the car, still unmoving, Jordan Pierre tries to savour his last moments alive. Wait- no, there’s… oh shit, he thinks to himself in despair, I’m not the one dying. The kid is. Raven Marksen, barely even old enough to vote, is right in the shot-path of the man Jordan knows is a merciless killer who has probably shot someone for way less. The panic is this terrible, ringing sensation throughout his whole body, perhaps throughout his soul too, (though Jordan has never really believed in that nonsense). Jordan doesn’t want to die—though he isn’t too big on living either—but he’s not a bad person… probably. Some awful, drunken wave of nausea rolls through him and he has to fight his own throat so as not to gag. Raven’s laugh, scratchy and high like a record, is looped in his left ear.
And Jordan isn’t much of a caring person these days; hell, sometimes he wonders if he ever was, but he does care about Raven, for some reason that always evades his reach. It hurts especially now, as this realization hits him like a brick from a fifth-story window. Oh my God, Raven’s going to be fucking shot. Out of everyone in the whole shitshow that I’m in, why her? She’s going to die, and I’d just be here in her car, drunk on her booze, like some sort of freeloading coward of a man. She’s gonna die, Raven is going to fucking die-
As Raven lazily puts her hands up, something truly odd happens. There is no noise, no warning, and yet Raven is somehow certain she is not hallucinating when she sees the fast-moving figure of Jordan-whatever-his-last-name-was running around the front face of the car, a blur in an otherwise empty and stagnant scene. It is the strangest thing: Raven watches as this bizarre and intoxicated middle-aged man runs like his life depends on it towards the devil himself, almost tripping as he practically lunges forward. It is almost baroque, and Raven has enough of an art school background to know she’s using that incorrectly.
Jordan flies forward, and it is not enough. It is, in a way, never enough. Well-trained instincts, quick trigger-grip, safety already off and nothing to lose, (other than, quite literally, everything). Rex whips around, suit jacket making an audible swoosh noise, and he fires. The sound is grotesquely loud in Raven’s ears, bad enough that she would’ve fallen over had she not been stronger, not known this sound and what it really means. Somehow, she had already stepped back, enough that she can see with a half-glazed, stunned sort of temporary detachment, as Jordan is knocked backwards to the hard ground of the parking lot. Raven’s eyes are stuck on Rex’s back, the steady rise and fall of his shoulders, the longer portion of his dull brown hair catching the moonlight. Maybe it’s anger: at the familiarity of the sound, at the way her friend, (yes, he could be considered a friend. Acquaintances don’t often take bullets for each other), fell to the ground. Sure, it can be anger. A more useful emotion than fear.
Jordan had screamed, had cut open the brief silence with some genuine and human shock, the type that only exists in moments like these. He had screamed, and now he was quiet, at least from what Raven could hear. The blood pumping through her veins is so viscous, so bloated and overturned with emotion and adrenaline and even alcohol—it is just enough of a push for Raven to find the scraps of control necessary to face her situation. Rex had shot him—in the shoulder if Raven’s already-fuzzy recollection meant anything. Rex had fucking shot him, and now he was just standing there, almost moving but no, I’m going to do something, I’m-
It’s a memory of Wren, who knew a guy that knew a guy, as these stories often go. Yeah, they pressed on that spot on the back of his neck, just pressed, and he was out cold for like thirty minutes. Wren, smiling. What a weird fact to receive right now, from the unpredictable mess of her brain’s inventory. Divine intervention, or just the indomitable human desire for justice and revenge. Two seconds have gone by, and it’s already almost too late. She has to act now.
So she does. Scrawny, punk, just-barely-not-a-kid Raven lunges forward like Jordan had, only faster, and with less distance to cover. She simply throws herself, and feels through the maddeningly intense obstruction of adrenaline, the connection of her body hitting Rex’s, slamming the two of them downwards. Before those machine-quick instincts Raven knows Rex possesses kick in, she manages to elbow him right in the back of the neck, millimeters away from that weak point that all humans have—assuming Rex still is one. Adjustment, and then pressure; as the shorter man writhes, her own body suffers kicks and already-bleeding knees from the impact of the pavement. She keeps the hold, keeps pressing. Somehow, Raven knows that it works. And she knows before Rex stops struggling, like a magical aid; maybe it’s instinctual, maybe it’s just intuition.
Rex is completely limp, and yet Raven still struggles to get off of them, mostly because of her now-bleeding knees, scraped raw by the gravelly concrete. Her mind is slowly coming back; bits and pieces of logic and lucidity returning one after another. Maybe the violence knocked me sober, she almost laughs. She doesn’t feel fully ‘clear’ yet, but that’s to be expected. At least there’s some semblance of sanity rushing back to her. At least there’s something.
This is not the case for Jordan, who is on the ground, knee-deep in the sort of pain that feels almost incomprehensible; it’s worse than anything he’s felt before, actually, and that scares him. And as one part of him is stuck clutching the wound like he could somehow close it, the other half is begging him to move, to get up and do something. Because Jordan knows pain—he knows the various ways the body can be crushed, beaten and ultimately left unusable—but he does not know the specific and frightening pain of the bullet lodged tight within the flesh of his collarbone, does not know of how his nerves will almost constrict around the thing, does not know of the shattered feeling of bone giving way, of the strongest material in his body being pushed to pieces because of some tiny piece of metal. (Even if it isn’t tiny —Rex uses bigger bullets. Maximize the pain while he can. Make a bad thing worse).
He wants privacy, he wants a way to somehow be suspended in a place between places where he can freely cry out and scream along with the rhythm of the unbearable pain that lights up every atom of his shoulder. But they’re in the middle of Nevada, in a parking lot, and Jordan will never have his privacy. On display, ripped open and bleeding, Jordan tries to suck it up and deal with the pain. Vulnerability is an exploitable weakness—he’s learned that lesson over and over again. But it’s so much ; the pain coursing through, seeping out of the wound like the thick-red blood that has surely spilled onto the pavement. Jordan shuts his eyes, and it does nothing.
Raven has never considered herself smart—she’s a drop-out artist who never really ‘got’ school, she’s a punk trucker girl taking orders from one state to another, she’s a getaway driver for the geniuses and the criminals. But she has to be smart , because Jordan is bleeding, and Rex is knocked out and she really should tie him up; it’s the smart thing to do. Tie him up, leave him here, let him figure his shit out while she drags Jordan to safety. And they won’t get justice, but is justice worth their safety? If she leaves Rex out here, there’s no way in hell he’ll be held accountable. But what can she do? What’s the right thing, the smart thing, to do?
Maybe it’s for the best that there’s another truck, and that it’s not another evil man with a gun. Maybe it’s for the best, because when Raven finally moves towards her injured friend it is revealed that a bullet wound is a lot grislier than the movies lead you to believe. (And in one last moment of recklessness, Raven grabs Rex’s gun and throws it as hard as she can into the endless Nevada desert. Punishment for the devil, if she can warp her own thoughts to fit some arbitrary morals). The stranger stands and watches, and days later Raven considers his perspective: a gunshot, a scream, and once he’d gotten out of his car then he’d have seen an older man bleeding out on the concrete, a college-age girl, and a businessman that was sleeping on the ground. What a strange sight; no context would save it either.
“Uh-” the stranger starts, once he’s collected his thoughts. “Ma’am? Do you need help?”
The paranoid, reasonable part of Raven’s mind whispers endlessly to her: he’s a stranger, you’re basically alone, you’re not safe, and bad things often happen in sequences.
“I didn’t shoot him!” Raven coughs out, gesturing wildly at Jordan. “I knocked out the shooter. He’s gonna fucking die, so if you don’t want to see a dead man then get back in the semi.” The man, younger than she had previously thought, blinks.
“I was in the army for ten years, I’ve dealt with gunshot wounds before. It’s his shoulder, so he’ll be okay if we can just get the bullet out.” He looks her over, and cracks his knuckles. “I won’t ask questions. So unless you want to see a dead man, you should probably let me help.”
“Why?” Raven asks suspiciously.
“I don’t like watching people die,” the man says with a shrug, and then he kneels down beside Jordan. “Do you have a first-aid kit?”
Raven shakes her head. “I’m long-haul transit,” she says as if that explains her lack of preparation.
“I have one, just pay me back for the rope.”
“The rope?” Raven narrows her eyes. The stranger continues trying to work the bullet out.
“To tie up the shooter, so you can take him to a police station or some biker gang’s headquarters. Listen, just go in the passenger seat and grab the red bag in the overhead glove-box. Quick.”
And even though Raven cannot, in her right-and-cautious mind, trust in the altruism of strange men, she does have no other choice, so she retrieves the bag, and gingerly helps the man bandage Jordan up. Jordan is dead silent, save for pained whimpers that occasionally escape his tightly-pressed lips. Shame, perhaps. Raven wishes she had the strength and certainty to tell Jordan that pain isn’t always weakness, but if her previous attempts at helping him didn’t work, this wouldn’t. The guilt is fresh and red, and it buries itself under her scraped-black fingernails.
In the end, Raven’s the one to tie Rex’s restraints. She gets to accidentally feel the smooth skin of his wrists, to see his disheveled and unconscious state that, if she knows anything about that man, is something he prefers to keep non-existent. His hair is ruffled and no longer carefully styled, his tie is loosened and practically falling off. And he is still in her clinically-detached hold, only breathing in slow and sleeping breaths. It feels wrong to see them as human. As something that can sleep. Rex is propped against the front tire when Raven’s job is done. And Jordan, fully awake, is still on the ground.
Spaced-out dark brown eyes stare at her, blinking slowly and hazily. The man stands a few feet behind her, watching the scene. Raven looks over Jordan, and briefly turns back to the stranger. She gives him his cash, and meets his American-blue eyes with caution. He does not smile, and Raven thinks she is grateful for that.
“Thanks,” she finally says, and he nods.
“It’s nothing. Make sure to change the bandages.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Raven scoffs.
“Yah, guess not. Good luck, tankie.” He gestures at the large cargo container of her truck, but the double meaning isn’t lost on her, and she laughs a little. She forgot about the pins on her jacket. “Hope your friend doesn’t die.”
“Me too,” Raven says while she turns her head towards Jordan, who’s hesitantly sitting up, still holding his shoulder with his dominant hand. As the man walks away, Raven plops down on the concrete by Jordan, both facing Rex in case he wakes up.
“You were really badass,” Raven smiles at Jordan. He exhales in a weak sort of laugh. “But don’t do shit like that. No one wants you to die.”
“God, I’m a mess, huh?”
“A little. But everyone is.” Raven looks at her own hands, at Jordan, at the devil known as Rex. She wonders what happens when you take away an evil man’s gun. She’s never gotten that far before. “We’ll fix this, alright?”
And Jordan thinks of Rex, how control looks on his face, how the air bends around him like the edges of a mirage, how terrifying he is—but also how much Jordan wants to see him as human; both as in he wants to see Rex break down crying and as he wants to see them smile without violence caught in his teeth. What a mess. What a god-damn mess. He’s here in Nevada, away from logic and life and deniability. His thoughts are louder here, somehow. Things make sense, and it sucks. And fuck, his shoulder really hurts.
“I need another beer,” Jordan finally exhales with a choked noise. "At this point, I don't care if it kills me."