outnumbered & outplanned

You said you were gonna grow up Then you were gonna come find me Words from the mouths of babes Promises, oceans deep But never to keep

Jacques couldn't ever make promises then, just as he can't make them now. He watches every fight, tracks every breath. Under his roof, his crooked universe takes shape — and he's to make sure it all aligns.

The true sentiment under her request, however, is known and understood. "I won't avenge you — but I will have to watch."

Neither are particularly smart, but both are experienced. They are also bruised, and calloused, and entirely too proud. They are ambitious yet cautious. And they've always known—

—Kissing is a death sentence.

Past the gates of loyalties, they had made their bed and spent a decade lying in its bricks. Maybe in this split second Jacques happens to forget it as he leans forward and signs it in deliberate cursive, quill-like letters. Death tastes like the tequila she'd swallowed and the blood from an open wound. How could a beginning feel this final?

"Allez."

A beaten up songbird and a passionate rattlesnake.

She doesn't see him smile and that's tragic in and of itself. It's a sight she only ever witnesses in dreams and visions these days, a toothy, cocky grin in the face of his she'd known all those years ago.

A kiss that seals her fate, both of theirs, and it tastes exactly as it should. Alcohol and blood and sweat, all signs of intoxication. That's all they could ever be. She can only close her eyes and breathe him in for a second.

In this lifetime, that's all they get.

Andrea looks up at him. She's not crying anymore, but her eyes are swollen and red. She's hurt, and not only by another man's fist. Andrea shakes her head. It's too late now.

A kiss that sums them up in three words: tragic and bittersweet and over.

Andrea stops fighting him, she lets his stronger grip take over. She's pinned down, trapped, with nowhere to go and everyone's already seen it, she's sure of it. She doesn't even wince when he puts more of his weight down on her, like she's stopped trying altogether.

That hand at the back of Andrea's neck shifts, lowering to her shoulder, arm wrapping fully around it. She cries and he stays as he is, not doing anything because everything he's ever done was catastrophic somehow.

In the small space between them, Jacques can feel all the expecations of what he should say and do. All the disappointments of what he hasn't said and hasn't done.

In their perfect ending, as ideals written by French poets or movies where an undeserving man somehow gets the girl, Jacques would tilt her chin up so she can look at him, as—

—He says the right thing, the expected thing, and she buys it. As he kisses her in the way she'd always dreamed of, and she kisses him back. As he recounts every wrong thing he'd ever done, and lists all the ways in which it could be worked into something right. I'm sorry for this, I feel that, I promise that other thing.

She forgives him. They say that word which should never be said by people like them. Roll the credits.

But Jean-Jacques Baptiste doesn't live in a John Hughes or Crowe world, nor has he ever heard of them. Andrea doesn't live in a suburban house and he has no clue where to purchase a boombox from.

So instead, all he says is—

"Oui." He gets it. Going back, being present, showing goddamn face. "Fais—" English. "Be safe."

Out of nowhere yet everywhere, comes the urge to draw her closer. "D'accord?" Like he has to remind her of it. Like if he doesn't, she will forget to— "Be safe."

Instead, it makes her feel at home. A home that neither the Cartel nor the Brotherhood could ever provide, not even her childhood or her blood family. A home that's crafted only for broken people, those who fit nowhere else. A home for people who can never get a happy ending.

Be safe. Be safe. No one's said this to her in months, in years. She hasn't studied his mother tongue but she still attempts to mimick his cadence when she agrees. "D'accord." Andrea can't promise him that just like he could never promise her anything back then.

She finally raises her arms as if she's only now remembered they exist -- they sneak around JJ's waist, they secure her spot against him. "Don't watch," she requests. If she loses again, she can't stand the thought of him avenging her once more.

The spit comes as a surprise - one that doesn't do much good for the woman beneath him. It startles him back just slightly, dripping down his nose as eyes briefly devoid of any reflection, darker than night, stare at her in surprise with an incredulous laugh.

Confusion is replaced by a scoff, then, ill-timed but between the two of them what the fuck isn't. "I own the place."

He's not going anywhere.

Jacques looks away, at the same time a hand comes up behind Andrea's neck, long fingers entangling into dark strands as he brings her tear-stained face into his chest. No permission asked, or needed. There's sweat, and goosebumps, and streaks of Asa's blood. Imperfect comfort.

Andrea doesn't want to, but she still melts against him. He takes over, even if he doesn't mean to, and she can't hold back her tears any longer. What had been a few rebellious drops is now a neverending waterfall.

And even through her breakdown, she needs to say this. "I have to go back in there."

He has no idea what to do when she starts crying.

What's the right thing to say, when there's no such thing as the right thing to say? (When, nine times out of ten, he isn't bothered enough to try?)

A slight nod. "Évidemment." Obviously. He knows.

Jacques uses the back of a bloodied hand to wipe sweat from under his nose. A quick glance around, only to find no one rushing to her aid. Beaten, in tears— "Where's your—?"

He hadn't played her shoulder to cry on in years. Ten of them, to be precise.

"No," she breathes out, in Spanish, though it's the one universal word. At least, it is for the two of them. There's no her anything around. Andrea checks the room herself.

Her head falls and she's forced to see the terrible job she's done on her dress; where she thought she'd nursed it back to life, she now finds a corpse of a costume. Smudged with dirt and red paint and dry blood, ripped at the seam on her right leg. "Leave." A plea and a test.

"Beginner's luck," Jacques then spits, off the man who had drawn red out of her. He eyes the dress from a distance, as though his gaze alone could stain it further. "Second round proved it, eh."

Second round proved it. She looks elsewhere, but her eyes drown in tears regardless. Andrea breathes heavily, trying to push the tears back where they came from. "I could have killed him," she says and she doesn't mean she held back. She means out there, in the real world, with her preferred weapon in hand. She could have and she would have.

Perhaps a few months ago this would've felt like a need to prove himself. But in the humming of his brain on an adrenaline overdrive, it's the need for the scratching of skin and the struggle. Whether he wins or not. But when he's not masking himself back into the box of normality... well. It can come off a bit scary, and if he focuses too long on her expression, he'd see that reflected right back at him. Fear.

Andrea manages to knock him off her briefly, and she takes the opportunity to get back on her feet. Her dress has gone from white to grey in a matter of seconds, but at least the rip she forced down its side allows her to move more freeling. It doesn't take long before she's back on the ground, though now she aims a fist at his face, dodging his own attempt by the skin of her teeth.

And pure focus on Asa is a bit scary. Her nails hadn't been his first thought so they catch him by surprise, ripping across a cheek and leaving cuts that burn, already dripping blood. But his reaction is hardly anything, beyond his head forced to swing in the direction the nails brought him. But the brief time a reaction would take place is instead taken up by two surprisingly strong arms grabbing her by the waist and toppling her down to the ground, only unwrapping an arm to swing his fist at her face.

Confident enough to not double-down on being confident. Jacques is aware of his body, the broadness of his shoulders, the size of his hands. Minimal effort, physically speaking. It would have been simple, to end this cycle years ago — yet, here they stand. It had always been obvious, that he would never lay a hand on her.

"'Any of them'?" Words echoed with an accent. "That is what they mean to you — nothing?" Not one more important than the other. None who had been toeing the line of disapproval. No indispensable players in her game. "Aight. Any."

He eyes Andrea, then. "I do." Jacques smiles with that same quiet confidence from before. "Who else gon' cheer for me?"

"They're my family," she says, although the words taste more like a rehearsed dialogue than a truth. That's what they mean to you? No. It's much worse.

He smiles and Andrea is transported back to twenty years ago, when he'd look down and she'd wear white and they'd chat and have blood on their hands. Just not each other's. "You gonna chear for me, too?" Leading by example.

It might be a bad idea, but so is murder. And probably, so was joining a gang in the first place. He's not so much thinking of logistics - it's the adrenaline. The itchy feeling in his fingers to do something.

White noise is in his ears as the Cartel leader stands across from him in the ring. Well, shit. Alright.

Jacket and sash are gone - so is the vest that had been underneath, and regrettably, his knife. But his hands form hard fists. The crowd is so loud. His eyes are just slightly too wide, lips twitching at the corners as he finally focuses back on her. "Let's go then, love."

He looks insane like this -- wide eyes, fists at the ready, and once more Andrea wonders if she's made a grave mistake. But she doesn't stand back and she doesn't back down. Instead, she charges towards him. Weapons might not be allowed but her long nails could claw right through skin, even better than a simple knife might. That's her attack plan, her hands aimed at his face.

Jacques shakes his head, "Ain't no one here able to take me." His stature alone is enough to hold his ground, handle the heaviest of hits. The Syndicate has some as tall as he, but none as big. So it begs the question of what ultimately wins. Body or mind. Fair or dirty play.

(For a detestable second, Jacques does consider it. He's always wanted revenge. Yet, he's never known what revenge could look like.)

(If there was an answer, he would have already done it.)

"...But I'll give ya the choice— of which one of your members you want dead." Beat. "That is the one, I will fight tonight."

And still she presses his buttons further, as if she needs to hear him say it again. "You're just too much of a coward to fight me, eh?" Gun in hand, Andrea could easily take anyone, the fastest of women and the strongest of men would fall to that extension of her hand. With no weapon, however, she'd be crying out for help. A disgrace to the Cartel.

"Take any of them." Offering him a name would be like signing that person's unavoidable death. "You expect to see me in there too?"