2020-06-11 - The Red Bull Gathered Them One By One
After his terrible night, Ruiz comes home to Itzhak.
IC Date: 2020-06-11
OOC Date: 2019-12-30
Location: Outskirts/A-Frame Cabin - North
Related Scenes: 2020-06-08 - Those Who Stay Bought
Plot: None
Scene Number: 4787
The news has been the talk of the town, and pretty much impossible to ignore; Gray Harbour's Chief of police was apparently assassinated late last night, and Javier never came home. Wasn't at Cavanaugh's, wasn't at any of his usual haunts. Cell phone turned off, Charger conspicuously missing.
Until now. It's roughly eight in the morning when his car rolls up to the drive, and idles a few moments before the engine's killed. Tick, tock, tick, tock of the thing cooling as he rummages for his weapon and gear, and swings out with a crunch of boots in gravel. A quick glance goes to the window as he trudges up to the house and fumbles for his keys. His gun's in easy reach, but not touched. Not yet. He unlocks the door and shoves it open a few inches, dark eyes scanning the interior before he shoulders in sideways.
Itzhak may be freaking the fuck out juuuuust a little. Just. A. Little.
His sparkly orange Tacoma is in the drive, cold. The house proper has that too-still feeling of being empty, as if it holds its breath. Out back, however, is where the action is.
Eight AM, and Itzhak is working on the handsome little building that was his condition for moving in. From the looks of him, he's been working all damn night, out here laboring with a panicked fury. He hasn't really. He'd spent a while trying to straddle the line between 'Ruiz isn't exactly out of the closet' and 'Ruiz never came home' and 'whatever's going on Ruiz might not want Itzhak telling everybody he never came home, if, yannow, he's even still alive'. Not his favorite place to be, that line, at any time, never mind when the Chief is shot dead. When he couldn't bear it any longer, he came home and stalked out back and got to work.
In the gray morning, he's soaked through with both sweat and the misty drizzle that's been coming down since about three. His white tank-top is plastered to him, completely transparent. Jeans too, though not transparent. All that black curly hair that he's been letting grow because Ruiz likes it has a bandanna tied over it, mercifully, God knows what shape it's in. The guy is filthy, smudged everywhere with dirt. The workshop itself is looking finished, at this point, or pretty damn near. Itzhak has worked on it, with help, but over the course of early-early this morning, apparently, he's slammed through dozens of things that needed to be done.
At the moment he's hanging the door, tapping in a hinge, his tall long body quivering with exhausted energy. His back is turned to the house, and he's focusing so hard, he doesn't look around.
His boyfriend's lean, rangy frame topped with that mane of dark hair is not exactly easy to miss. And de la Vega is many things, but unable to make a few inferences about where he might find him at this hour, is not one of them. He watches him for a few moments through the window, then unburdens himself of his gear in precise, methodical fashion. Radio, rig, cuffs and taser are all shoved out of sight into a safe under the stairs. His gun's tugged out of the waistband of his jeans and the clip unloaded with hands that could do the work blind; weapon and ammunition are put away as well, and he runs his fingers through his hair before easing toward the back door.
It's nudged open, and the cop appears a moment later, hands pushed into the pockets of his hoodie. Dark smudges under his eyes like he hasn't slept, gaze filtered over the nearly-finished workshop before it's dragged back to the line of Itzhak's back. The way his tank top clings to his body, and the way his big hands finagle the delicate work. He takes an unsteady breath, swallows, then murmurs, "It's coming along really well."
Normally, Itzhak would hear the rumble of the Charger. His hearing, despite years of abuse, is fantastic. He claims he can recognize every car in town by the sound of its engine and its tires on asphalt. This morning, surely he's heard the vehicle, he has to have heard it, but... no response out of him. Nothing. Not even when the back door opens.
As a result, when Ruiz speaks, it startles the bejesus out of him. Itzhak twitches hard and whips around, leaving the door propped up against the frame, rubber-headed mallet in hand like he's about to shank somebody with it. His eyes are sore, and pretty clearly he hasn't slept either--his expression is deranged at first, fear-charged adrenaline triggering all those old instincts that say to strike first and ask questions later, if ever.
Doesn't get much softer when he sees Ruiz, either. He stares at him, lip curled, pale as the bark of the quaking aspens along the edge of the property. His breath comes huffing through clenched, bared teeth. After that awful half-second, sanity resurfaces in his eyes. Looking Ruiz down, then back up, he swallows dryly, and asks, "...you a ghost?"
He's still as a hunting cat in the long grass that's spotted its quarry, injured but not downed. Plenty of fight left in it, and he'd be a fool to rush in with teeth and claws and try to go for the kill shot out of the gate.
Not a word as Itzhak turns on him like that, all wild-eyed with what amounts to a weapon in his hand. A weapon that, while it's unlikely to cause catastrophic damage, would still fucking hurt if he got a few hits in. The Mexican holds his ground; hands stay jammed in his pockets, jaw hard. Dark eyes red-rimmed and fixed on his lover's intently as he huffs and puffs and bares his teeth at the cop. "Not a ghost," he murmurs, soft and scratchy. A step closer, finally, slouch-shouldered. Posture about as non-threatening as he can make it. "I had some.." His lips remain parted; his gaze flicks away, then back again. "..trouble. Some things to deal with."
A hand's dug out of his pocket and extended palm up. Ink scrawled up the muscled forearm and disappearing under the sleeve of his hoodie; bruises and cuts visible along the backs of the knuckles briefly, before they're turned out of sight. "I'm here now."
Trouble. Itzhak's eyes flick down to Ruiz's hand, presented to him palm-up as if he's a spooked horse his lover wants to befriend. Not all that far from the truth. He fits his own hand underneath Javier's, his broad calloused palm nestling against the battered knuckles. Carefully he does this, more than half expecting that touch never to land. And yet, it does, and he lets out a shuddering breath he's been holding. Lifting their paired hands, he presses his mouth into Ruiz's palm, holding him there and feeling him, lips a little parted. His eyes close. Then he tosses the mallet aside and grabs his boyfriend and pushes his face into his neck, long wiry bare arms wrapped hard around him.
He's tense, and practically shaking under that fierce embrace, once it lands. Arms wound around him, and he's all coiled muscle and hard action potential when pulled in against Itzhak's leaner body. The Mexican puts out heat like a furnace, and smells like cigarettes and the soap they provide in the precinct locker room. He must've showered there before coming home.
"Baby, things are really fucked," he whispers into that curly mop of hair. There's a tentative brush of his hands at the fiddler's hips, but it's like he thinks the man is breakable, like he'll shatter if he handles him too roughly right now.
"I'm so fuckin' mad at you," Itzhak breathes against Ruiz's skin. His skin is chilly, mist beading on his arms, each tiny perfect droplet pulling his scars and ink into refraction. "So fucking mad--hold me," when the other man's hands brush over his hips. Clad in wet, cold, clammy jeans, those hips. "Hard, do it hard as you can, I ain't gonna break, I need it, baby, please." He's dirty and he's already smudging dirt on Ruiz and usually, he hates that. He gets weird about contact when he's been working sometimes. Not now. That's as clear a demand as Ruiz has ever heard from him.
He's taller, Itzhak, and has the advantage of youth, but Javier's stronger by a hair. If push came to shove, like it has countless times before. There's the shudder of power meeting power, the sloughing of one off the other like a car's tires hydroplaning on a wet, dark street. The heat of one and the chill of the other, and hold me, and it rankles him. Of course it rankles him. To be told what to do. To be commanded. He calls the shots. But I need it, baby, please, and Javier makes a sound in his throat before slowly. Slowly wrapping his lover up in those big arms. One and then the other wound hard and tight around his midsection, handfuls of his wet shirt gathered up against his palms.
And then he rocks him gently, side to side, shhh baby, I know, I know you're mad at me, you've got every right to be. And his breathing's still sifting out of him unsteadily, his face buried into his boyfriend's neck so hard he can taste the sound his pulse makes in his throat.
Oh yes, Itzhak knows it rankles his ornery, adored boyfriend. Rankles him right to the core, doesn't it, to be ordered around. They clash and they always clashed and chances of them continuing to clash in the future look pretty solid. Power on power, shine on shine, a pair of brawlers both hungry for the fight they are, and their love has as much fury in it as sweetness, as much violence as tenderness. More, maybe. Depending on the day.
Right now he really does need to be held, and that it might piss Ruiz off is disregarded. He needs to be held and he needs to be rocked--like that, like that--and he demands it and he gets it. Itzhak wheezes out a breath, ending on a hiccupy little croak. His fingers find their way into Ruiz's hair, grip tight. Against Javier, his pulse gallops, driven by rage and by relief. He smells like rain, sawdust, wet cotton, and wet earth.
His lover is shaking, and he is shaking too. Itzhak holds him just as hard, needing to know in every cell and nerve that he's alive and he's here with him.
"...so...fucking...mad, Javier." Itzhak's big bony ribcage jolts with a locked-in sob.
He's alive. He tastes like death, he tastes like another man's blood that he had to scrub off his hands but he can't scrub off his soul, and he tastes like desperation. And he tastes like fear. Fear that cuts to the bone. The kind of fear that makes a man do terrible things. Wicked things to escape it.
But Itzhak's lover's arms remain around him, and his heat envelops him, and his voice keeps up that low, rumbly murmur against wet skin. I'm here. I'm here. Breathe, baby, we'll get through this. And maybe he believes that himself, or maybe he doesn't. But he says it, nonetheless. We'll get through this. He rocks Itzhak like they're doing some sort of fucked up slow dance in the fucking mist they call rain here in the PNW, and he tells them they'll get through this. All the while, his keen eyes are trained on the treeline, looking for a sniper perched up there that might be watching them. Hunting for a guy in the bushes, or one about to emerge from his house and hold them at gunpoint. The fear's in every muscle and every tendon and every frazzled nerve, and he can't relax.
"I know," he murmurs back, voice rough. His hand, fisted in Itzhak's tank, extracts itself to grasp the taller man's jaw instead, and direct his face toward the cop's for a trembling kiss as the fiddler's fingers work into his own warm hair. Brief, wet, concluded with a hitch of breath. "You want to head back inside? Get you warmed up?"
It tastes like rusty razor wire, that fear, the kind that tops prison yard walls. And the desperation, like living behind those walls, knowing there was no escaping, knowing that whatever happened next had to be lived through, had to because there was no choice, there was only day rolling on after day. Itzhak knows those tastes like he knows his own scarred soul.
He leans into the kiss, his face wet. "Yeah," he murmurs hoarsely. "Yeah... yeah." A thousand questions leap just below the surface of his mind, surging under the oceanic fractal tiles. It's all stirred the hell up down there, muddying the turbulent waters. Before he lets Ruiz go, he whispers, throat tight, "I didn't know if you were dead or not too."
Because of course he knows the Chief is dead. The entire town knows.
Questions that are none of them answered here, and now. De la Vega's own mind is maddeningly opaque this morning; turbulent and dark and dense, like diving through layers of cumulus and finding only more and more. No land in sight, no sign of the guardian with teeth and claws and a body of living flame; though the scent of char and the crackle of fuel being consumed can be felt through the kythe, if Itzhak is listening.
"Deberías saber que soy más difícil de matar que eso," he murmurs, eyes creasing at the corners in an amusement that doesn't linger. Then, with an uneven exhale, and one last glance to the treeline, he turns and leads the way back inside. "You want a drink?" He, apparently, hasn't quite adjusted to the fact that it's their house, yet. Rosencrantz is still treated a little like a guest here, with the offer of a drink and the nod toward the couch while he goes to light the wood stove.
Itzhak laughs soundlessly, bumps his forehead against Ruiz's. "Yeah. I should know." He can hear the flames, all right, which doesn't surprise him. The lack of the wolf that Ruiz is at the very center of his self, though? That's worrying. There is only this endless seething storm, growing ever heavier. He doesn't reach out to initiate an active exchange, not yet.
Funny, he sometimes feels a little like a guest, still; he's adjusting too, and such adjustments come slow for him, courtesy of his differently-wired brain. Not today. Today he follows Ruiz inside and, without exactly knowing why, stops between him and the big windows. He lifts his beaky face to the morning gloom, his posture tense, alert. Nobody and nothing is getting past him.
Something he'd done was chop firewood and stack it fresh by the stove. If Ruiz reads the wood a little, he can feel the driving need to do something that drove Itzhak to go outside in the rain in the dead of night and swing an axe: muscles hot from work, a tangled briar of emotions whipping him on like scourges, cold rain patting his curls flat.
He has a question in reply to Ruiz's question, Jewish-style. "You want I should make coffee?" He asks it almost idly, while he's looking past the glass, trying without knowing he's trying to find what Ruiz has been looking for out there.
The back door's tugged shut and the deadbolt dropped, his hand lingered there a moment more than it need be, before the cop prowls his way into the kitchen. There's the weight of those smoke-dark eyes on Itzhak a moment, as he lifts a couple of logs into the stove. Something almost apologetic there; he knows where his lover was, and what he was doing, and why. He should have sent word, Javier. A quick text, anything to let him know he was all right. With a furrow of his brows, he finishes loading up the stove, lights it up and clangs the door shut.
"Sí, gracias, me gustaría eso," he murmurs to the offer of coffee. It takes him a moment, control freak that he is. But he knows his boyfriend needs to keep his hands busy. Needs to make himself useful. It's for the best, considering that, "We need to talk." He hasn't missed how the lanky mechanic's been trying to get in between him and the window. Let me be your shield. And he doesn't stop him, but what he does do is strategically manage sight lines such that there isn't a clear one on either of them, the way they're positioned. Itzhak fussing with the coffee machine, Javier taking a lean against the island counter, hands pushed into the pockets of his hoodie as he watches the other man work.
"Fuck yes we do," Itzhak mutters, while scrubbing off his hands. Then he goes about measuring grounds and water, those nimble hands fast and sure, the roused strength of his shine making every little motion a swift slice through air. He really is very, very pissed off. Flipping the lid of the coffee maker shut, he hits the switch, and shifts around to face Ruiz. He hasn't quite figured out Ruiz is managing his sight line, either. Long arms fold across his chest and he jerks his chin at the other man. "Nu. Talk."
De la Vega's an ex-sniper, so he thinks like a man with a scoped rifle. Where he might hide, what opportunities he might be waiting for. What times of day and light levels and cover are optimal, what are the patterns and habits of his target. And what paths through the house provide the least impedance for his bullets to reach their intended victim.
His mind is churning on this, even as he watches Itzhak's clever hands go about their tasks. Hands that have been on his own body more times than he can count. Around his dick, playing him like his fiddle. But it's a disjointed thing, this knowledge, because he's also thinking about how someone might be trying to kill him. Kill them. Then talk, and he takes an unsteady breath, scrubs an inked thumb through his beard. "Well, uh. I'm trying to think where to start.." Silence, a flick of his eyes to the window. To the other window. To the hall. The same circuit he's been doing for the past five minutes.
"I don't.. I can't pull favours for Monaghan anymore. I've got to take my orders from some other pile of human refuse, or my own men will hunt me down and fucking end me. That's the short version, I guess." He looks a little ill in the wake of that, and dodges eye contact as he waits for a reaction from his lover.
The name Monaghan stiffens Itzhak like rigor mortis. It's something they don't talk about--except that one time. Except that other time, too. And Ruiz has never exactly flat out told him...but Itzhak knows, anyway. Javier de la Vega is a puzzle he's been fascinated by for months, and he's pieced together enough. Not all of it. Not nearly all. But enough. Some through what Ruiz himself has said, some through Cristobal Cruz and Joey Kelly. He's been working on it in the secret darkness of his mind, a mind that runs hotter and faster than it'd be easy to give him credit for.
My own men will hunt me down. Itzhak's lip curls in a sneer. "Son of a bitch," he hisses, teeth clamped together. More pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Of course Ruiz isn't the only dirty cop under Monaghan's thumb, he always figured that, but this? The towering audacity, the sheer blazing chutzpah!
That Ruiz looks ill sinks in after that flourishing bloom of rage. My own men. Itzhak's eyes snap to Ruiz's face. Then he's reaching for him to cup that weathered and beloved face in his big rough hands. "What is it ya need from me?" he murmurs, complicated gray hazel eyes making contact, holding the storm-dark eyes of his lover. "Tell me. I'll do it."
No, he's never said so, in so many words. I work for Monaghan, same as you do. We're chained to the same thing, rotting from the inside, doing the work of the Dark Men with mundane hands. But it's been there to piece together, all right. None of it hidden, none of it secreted away.
"Lopez something or other," he continues, voice scratchy-soft and worn to the bone. "Not his real name, I'd wager." If Itzhak is furious, his lover is simply.. heartbroken. Whatever happened last night, it's torn something in him that can't be repaired. His head's bowed, but comes up easily enough when those hands slide over and around his face. Callused palms against scruffy beard, his lashes are slow to lift, like he can't quite bear to look his lover in the eye after all that's happened. The storm hath no fury tonight; it's strangely still, like a thing gathering in force, rage buried deep, deep at its heart.
"I need you to stay alive, love," he murmurs finally.
Not after everything Itzhak has watched him go through has Ruiz ever looked like this. Never, not even in Peregrine's castle, has Itzhak seen him so brokenhearted. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he coolly assigns Lopez, whoever that is, the rank of 'mortal enemy'. Once, he'd told August that he couldn't let him conveniently give Monaghan an embolism from across town. His reasoning: Monaghan kept the trains running on time. God only knows who would step into the power vacuum he'd leave. Someone worse is likely. That's the law of criminal entropy. Men like Monaghan don't groom a replacement. Only someone meaner can take them down.
Lopez is meaner. Whoever Lopez is, he's muscling in on Monaghan's territory. That can mean nothing but bad things.
All of which goes flickering through Itzhak's mind, fractal thought constructs erupting, turning, fitting together like monstrous four-dimensional puzzle pieces. His face has gone hard, his eyes harder, gray flint flecked with oxidized copper. He refocuses to the sound of Ruiz's voice, that gorgeous smoke-rough voice telling him he needs him to stay alive, love.
He softens, breathing out, eyebrows tilting up. "Baby. C'mere." His hands slide down Ruiz's neck to his shoulders around to his back and Itzhak steps close, his lanky form coming to offer comfort and succor.
Whoever Lopez is, he's demoralised him to a terrifying degree. The wolf who normally fights to the death is cowed and uncertain; the Red Bull gathered them for me one by one, and I bade him drive each one into the sea.
And he doesn't move in, but nor does he pull away when Itzhak asks him to c'mere. He can hear the coffee machine grinding away behind them, and outside the sun is shining and the honeybees are wafting amongst the fireweeds and columbines, innocent of the turmoil roiling through his mind. "They're going to come after you," he murmurs, soft. The weight and solidity of him against Itzhak's leaner frame, the guileless sound he makes when his head tucks in against the other man's shoulder. "My own men might come after you. I can't do anything.. I can't do anything about it." There'll be rage, later. There'll be plenty of rage. Right now, impotence. Hurt.
Itzhak tucks Ruiz against him, tips his head to rest in the hair as dark as his own. His wet clothes are clingy and cold, warming up swiftly where the cloth is trapped between their bodies. His boyfriend's head on his shoulder, he takes his turn to sway him ever so gently, in time to the innate rhythm Itzhak keeps tended in his soul like a hearthfire.
This impotent hurt in his lover makes him want to burn the entire fucking town to the ground. How do you like that, Monaghan, Lopez, huh? Fight over a heap of ruins, see who's the gantzeh makher after that, why don't you.
He draws in a breath, holds it a moment, lets it out slow. So he doesn't let any of those particular words out.
"Nobody gets to take you from me," he murmurs, and while a murmur it is, beneath is iron. "Not Them. Not some cheap fuckin' thug. Nobody. Ever."
He's never like this. Never so docile in Itzhak's arms; never so willing to be held, and rocked, and protected like this. He makes a noise in his throat like throttled fury, and it peters out into a shuddering whimper that he daren't let anyone else hear. Anyone but this man, who is the only one to see him at his weakest. His whole body curls into his taller lover's, rough and warm and big arms wound about his waist and he shakes as he's held.
"I said that I can't fucking do anything about it," he hisses under his breath. "You need to fucking listen to me. You're not safe. Your garage. Your family. Can you get them out of town for a while? Do you need me to help?"
In response, Itzhak's arms--strong, wiry, long as the summer daylight--tighten around Ruiz. That sound his lover makes, strangled fury trailing to a whimper, brings a sound out of Itzhak, a low rumble, in reply; a comforting noise and a threat at the same time.
This man is his man. Fuck with at your peril.
"I heard ya." His voice is also a rumble. "And I'm tellin' you the bastards can meet me in the pit. I'm not goin' anywhere." Rocking slow and gentle, Ruiz shaking in his arms, he nuzzles into the other man, inhales his scent. "They don't get to do this. This's our town. You're my man."
It's clear he doesn't have the energy to argue this tonight. And it's equally clear there are things Itzhak doesn't know here, that are liable to hurt him. And that Javier isn't entirely sure how much to say, and how much to keep to himself for his boyfriend's safety. And it's got him tangled up in fucking knots. He huffs noisily; rough, raspy snorts like a bull waiting to bust out of the pen and throw its rider. And there's a sliver of tension through him, just for a moment, like he might come to his senses and fist a hand in his lover's hair, and shove him up against something and bellow at him until he puts the fear of God in the man.
But he doesn't. He stands down. He lets Itzhak hold him, still, and he lets him comfort him.
Would it work, if Ruiz did? Would Itzhak finally get what he's laying down, take him seriously, and clear the hell out of town, taking with him the friends wise enough to go?
Far more likely he'd bellow back, this absurd stretch of Jewish ex-con. A brawl wouldn't be much further off after that. Itzhak's been ready for a brawl for several hours. It wouldn't take much to set him off.
For all that, he isn't fearless. No, he's a man who has learned just how much he has to fear, who has, in fact, let fear drive him into a corner that he couldn't charm, brawl, or fuck his way out of. That's the worst of it, maybe. He knows. He's in fact taking Javier very seriously indeed. And he still won't leave him, still won't abandon him to his fate. This man who has a lighthouse for a soul refuses to do the wise thing, the rational thing. He has never been wise or rational, and he's not starting now.
As Ruiz lets him hold him, lets him comfort him, something in Itzhak shifts as surely as a complicated lock tumbled by a key.
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