Chapter Text
The late August sun made everything loose and pliant. Shoes scuffed against blistering hot asphalt. Birds swooped low overhead, their cries almost lost to the constant background noise of the freeway. Gabriel Reyes dragged his feet to bring his bike to a shuddering stop, looking down the sloped street. He caught the edge of the Pacific ocean through the gap in the buildings, white caps shining silver under the sun.
Miguel's hand on his beanie nearly upset his balance.
"C'mon, Gabi, I need something to remember you by!" Miguel laughed from behind the stub of a cigarette. Miguel's problem was that he couldn't take a damn thing seriously, but Gabriel liked him for the most part, even when he was acting like an asshole. Which was all the time.
"Memories aren't enough, huh?"
His friend had a laugh like a dog puking up its lunch. He gave up on trying to steal Gabriel's beanie and settled for scruffing it over his head. "I'll never forget that trip we took down to Redondo Beach."
Gabriel snorted. "I wish I could forget."
Silence restored, they glided down the streets of Los Angeles, just two kids with nowhere to go. The long days of summer were almost over. It was unbearably hot, with tall, puffy clouds over the horizon. The kind of day that stretched on forever.
Miguel's hand smacked against his arm. "Hey, check that out."
He gestured with a thumb to their right and brought his bike to a stop. A coach bus coughed out fumes as it pulled away from a stop. A mass of people spilled out across the sidewalk. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
"She's gorgeous." Miguel sucked a breath in between his teeth. Gabriel followed his eyes, but only saw a streak of white and yellow. Gabriel let his eyes follow the stranger, deaf to Miguel's lewd comments.
A kid—no, teenager—with scruffy blond hair and skin so pale he was almost white under the strength of the California sun. He squinted down the street, shoes dragging against the sidewalk. He was a tall wisp of a guy, poorly dressed for the heat in faded blue jeans and a yellow t-shirt.
Miguel elbowed him in the ribs. "What do you want to bet I could get her number?"
"Huh?"
"Forget it," Miguel sighed. He settled back on his bike, hands in the pockets of his vest. "You know him?"
"Nah." Gabriel inhaled the sharp scents of the city. There was a bit of wind picking up, offering cool relief from the unrelenting sun.
Still, he allowed his eyes to track the guy's movements. He walked with straight shoulders, eyes focused straight ahead. He didn't look local, but Gabriel knew better than to assume he knew shit about strangers.
"Alright. I gotta do it." Miguel wiped at his mouth. God, he was practically salivating over the poor woman.
"Be nice this time, or I'll tell Roberta to kick your ass," Gabriel growled.
Miguel's shoes scuffed against the sidewalk. He was gone with a grind of gears, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake. Gabriel sat back on his bike, with its chipped paint and broken gears, trying to ignore the pulse of curiosity.
Gabriel pushed his bike out from a standstill and glided down the sloped street. The breeze was wonderful over his skin, but he wasn't going to pretend that he wasn't riding the wrong way down the street by accident. Hard to miss someone wearing highlighter yellow, anyway.
A man cut across his path. Gabriel narrowly missed hitting him, and let out a string of curses, but the guy didn't stop to bother him.
He was tracking the same target, wearing a sly little grin that told Gabriel all he needed to know. His beady little eyes were glued on the guy's ass like it was made of gold.
Before he could think better of it, he jerked his bike across the street and cut the pickpocket off again.
"Hey, dickhead." Gabriel brought his bike to a stop and leveled his best glare at the man. He was big enough to look intimidating, and pickpockets weren't known for being brave, anyway. "Don't you have some gutter to be getting back to?"
It was enough to convince the thief to give up and move on, with only a mutter of foul words. Gabriel sat on his bike, attention dragged back down the street. He was rolling before he could stop himself.
"Hey," he called out, "You lost or something?"
He brought his bike up beside the guy, but he kept walking, eyes glued on the horizon. He was heading right into the reconstruction zone, which wasn't known for being hospitable to strangers. He certainly looked like an outsider, but he wasn't some slick rich kid on the wrong side of town. His shoes were beat up and worn out, and the duffel bag across his shoulder had been patched back together. Now that he was looking, the knees of his jeans were threadbare, though that could just be fashion.
"Gotta be careful around this part of town," he mumbled, "It gets a little rough."
The stranger's chin jerked his way. He had a strange, classic face, the kind he saw in movies but never in real life, even in Los Angeles. His eyes were as blue as the sky but not friendly in the least. "I can take care of myself."
A fresh sweat broke out across Gabriel's brow. The emotionless delivery made shame curl in his gut. Without thinking, he snapped, "You worried I'm gonna rob you?"
"No," the stranger said, "Not worried at all."
Gabriel tore his eyes away from the stranger's face and focused on the road ahead, circling the block and sweeping back around. The guy was walking in a perfectly straight line, like he knew exactly where he was going, or he was damned good at pretending.
"Where're you going?"
"What's it to you?"
"You look lost," Gabriel lied. "I could show you around. Lived here all my life."
"Nothing better to do?" The stranger ground to a halt, one hand clenched around the strap of his duffel bag. The thing looked heavy, but he didn't look like he was tired of carrying it around despite the heat.
"Nah," Gabriel said, "Where'd you get off?"
"Excuse me?"
"I mean—" Gabriel gestured at the bag. At him. His outfit. "You're going somewhere. How'd you end up here?"
"I took a bus," he mumbled. The guy stared straight down the gullet of the street. It was a gross part of town, and stunk like garbage, on account of the garbage that littered the road, left behind when reconstruction was abandoned. Picturesque. Charming. Quaint. Maybe one day it could be a strip of condos he could never dream of being able to afford.
"From?"
"Kansas City."
"Shit, really?"
The stranger leveled his strange, cool eyes on him. They bit into him like pieces of ice, but only made him feel hotter.
"Thought you talked funny," Gabriel said, "That's not where you're from, though, is it?"
"I don't see why you care."
Gabriel didn't have a real answer to give the guy, because there was no reason for him even to be talking to him.
After a minute of silence, though, the stranger spoke again in his strange, flat voice. "Indiana."
It could have been a lie as easily as it could have been the goddamn truth. Gabriel couldn't guess at why the guy was entertaining him, either, but he smiled a little.
"Farm boy. What brings you to the big city?"
"You keep asking," the stranger huffed.
"And you aren't answering."
The stranger set his jaw and walked along, doing a good job of ignoring Gabriel on his shitty bike for so many long minutes that Gabriel had half a mind to turn around and pedal back home. Something held him there, settled deep in his stomach. An unhealthy dose of curiosity and stubborn determination. Damn it.
Maybe he was just worried about the asshole getting mugged. He didn't look street-smart, and maybe his long legs were good for running, but it took more than a little speed to outrun someone on a motorbike or in a car. In truth, the streets had been pretty quiet. It was too hot even for the gangs, who were probably drinking lemonade on their grandmother's porches. Rationing kept the good stuff in the government's hands, anyway, so there wasn't much to steal even if you wanted to.
Scuffed white tennis shoes paused at the corner where a little man and his little wife sat on a bench, throwing scraps into the street. There weren't any birds.
Farm Boy glanced down the street one way, with the kind of absent look that makes you wonder what a guy's thinking.
Gabriel stuffed his hands into the pockets of his shorts, feeling awfully proud of himself—like a fat, puffed-up pigeon—when the stranger said, in his straight-laced monotone, "I don't know where I am."
"Today's your lucky day," Gabriel said, "Tell me where you're headed, Farm Boy. I'll take you there."
He flashed one of his grins that always got smiles in return, but the stranger just looked at him with his lips pressed into a frown. His mirror-like eyes regarded him like he was an insect, barely interesting enough to warrant attention.
Anger flared under his skin, despite the burn of the sun. He let his foolish smile fade away, and scuffed his feet against the sidewalk, ready to pedal away from the rejection.
"The temp army base. Down by the ocean."
A thrill of adrenalin ran up his spine. The fire under his skin cooled, until he was neutral, with a warm sensation in his stomach like he'd just gone to eat somewhere nice and had a good cigarette after. Gabriel grinned through a response. "I know the way. Hop on."
"What?"
"Hop on." He thumbed over his back at the pegs on his bike. "You look tired. It's a few clicks from here."
More lies. The guy didn't look bothered at all by the weight of the bag or by the heat that had Gabriel sweating.
"On the pegs." He drew out the words. "You stand on them, I pedal, yeah?"
One of Farm Boy's eyebrows quirked, breaking his perfectly neutral mask. The guy stood back, staring hard at his beat-up bicycle like it was a wild animal he'd never seen before. "I'll fall off."
"I've got shoulders. I won't let you fall on your ass. Don't worry about it." He smiled, and for a split second he thought he saw the guy's mouth turn up at the corner.
He moved slowly, one hand on Gabriel's shoulder. He felt the movement of the bike as he hopped onto the pegs.
God, he was heavy. What the hell was in that bag? Everything he owned?
"You some kind of runaway?" He pushed his bike into action. The easy downward slope had leveled out, and he had to work to get his broken bike moving.
"Eighteen. Legal adult. No such thing as running away."
Gabriel couldn't think of anything to say. He swept down the street, picking up speed despite their combined weight.
"Lots of temp bases out in the Midwest," he grunted, "Why here?"
"I wanted to be closer to the fight," he said.
A noble wanna-be war hero. He shifted under the pressure of the guy's hands. "You came to the right place."
"Yeah," he said.
"You gonna be an officer?"
Farm Boy was quiet for a long time after he asked. Gabriel's legs ached with exertion, but there was no chance he'd pull to a stop. They passed through the reconstruction zone, and into a strip that looked a little less worse-for-wear. There hadn't been an air strike in months, but most of the construction was still halted. No money to pour into fixing buildings that might get toppled again.
The last quake had woken him and his little sisters in the middle of the night. Quakes didn't scare him. He'd thought it was a bomb. Or a few hundred bombs.
"Should have seen it a year ago," he said, "Used to be something."
He was drenched in sweat by the time the temp base appeared through a crack in the buildings. Farm Boy bailed, leaving his shoulders strangely light.
He pulled the duffel bag from his shoulder and let it swing down to the ground. He stared hard at the gate, gaze empty, like it was just another building. Just another place.
"Hey. Thanks," he muttered. "Appreciate it."
There wasn't a note of appreciation in his voice, at least not like Gabriel was used to, but he accepted it with a shrug. "No problem. Hey—you got a name?"
The question made Farm Boy turn around, eyes locked on his, unblinking and uncomfortable. Like he was trying to stare into Gabriel's skull and pick apart his brain.
"Jack," he said.
"Just Jack?"
"That's it," he said, a little softer. A faint smile edged at the corner of his mouth. He held out a hand.
Gabriel was mindful of his sweaty palms and swept them against his shorts. "Reyes. Gabriel Reyes." It wasn't often that he shook hands. That was a little too formal for him. Jack's grip was practiced and precise.
"See you around, Reyes."
"Yeah, you might."
He waited there on his bike while the stranger was admitted at the gate. He hoped the guy would glance back, but he didn’t get so lucky.
Curiosity sated, he swung his bike around and glided down to the beach front. Not much to see anymore. No one went to the beach.
He sat in the sand, lit a cigarette, and breathed smoke into the perfect August day.