deliriously, intolerably tender

Jon follows behind Luke and Ryan as the rest of the crew — minus Juliette; she came in with both Vanoss and Tyler but has since then disappeared to somewhere or another, and Jon almost feels as if he’s lost a security blanket — file toward the heist room, and he isn’t exactly sure what it is that he was expecting to be seated in when he heard the order to head toward the place, but it definitely isn’t this. 

The room is big, round; there are windows in the front, floor-to-ceiling like the ones in the bedroom Jon slept in, and they’re overlooking the deep blue ocean. The waves are intense this morning, and they’re breaking over the sharp rocks below, foamy and heady and distantly loud. There’s a large circular table in the middle as well as a detailed map of the city on either side of the walls; it’s large, and there are certain places marked here and there that Jon can’t make out very well where he’s sat, squished between Luke and Ryan as they sit facing the windows. 

He makes a mental note to perhaps sneak around the abbey and do a little snooping; he wants to know what’s old, what’s new, and what makes this gang tick before he gives them his all. 

Vanoss moves to the head of the table — if you can call it that: it’s really just the center of the table, facing away from the windows — and stands, with his thick arms crossed across his chest while he waits patiently for everybody to have a seat and become the orderly criminals they’re supposed to be. 

Jon stays silent and drinks everything in, mind running a mile a minute as he drops from this and that and back to this again and again in an attempt to simply understand the complexities of this ragtag group of friends with happy trigger fingers. 

One everyone’s sat and respectively quiet, Vanoss looks toward Wildcat. “Good news or bad news first?” he asks, with a kind of crooked smile that Jon would love to see again. And again and again and again. 

Wildcat shrugs. “They’re big boys, they can handle the bad news first, I think,” he replies, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He’s handsome in a kind of geeky way; his glasses are more wire than plastic, like the usual fashion, and his cheeks are a bit chubby and he’s tall, taller than even Jon himself, and he’s always been a sucker for a man that he has to look up to. “And if they whine about it like pussies, make ‘em stay behind and clean the abbey. It’s looking a little dusty, anyway.” 

“Fuck off, Tyler!” 

“Watch your mouth, Mini, before I put it to good use.” 

“Is that a promise?” 

“Only if you want it to be, baby.” 

Vanoss snorts and rolls his eyes; Jon is only a little bit ashamed to admit that his eyes haven’t left the leader’s figure since this entire debacle began. “If you two are finished eye fucking each other, I think it’s time we explain the next mission to everyone.” 

Things get serious after Vanoss stops speaking; Jon can feel the difference, the shift in Luke and Ryan’s demeanors beside him, and he risks looking at the both of them from the corner of his eye to see if they’re as affected by the sudden tension in the room as he is. 

Vanoss clears his throat. “As we can see, we’ve got ourselves a new face in the room,” he begins, and faces Jon, motions to Jon. His smile is soft, gentle, sweet — Jon is dark and bitter and dumb. 

“Yeah, I know! He’s in my seat!” 

Luke snorts. “Fuck off, Brian,” he calls, and it’s mean but it’s nice at the same time and Jon just doesn’t understand how that’s possible — just doesn’t understand how it’s possible to be an asshole to people you’re in a gang with and then not have to worry about getting your throat slit when you lay your head down to rest. “This ain’t kindergarten and we don’t have assigned seatings.” 

Brian giggles. “Evan does.” 

“And so do I,” Tyler says, raising a brow. “Got a problem with that?” 

Brian shakes his head and laughs again, crossing his arms over his chest. “Nah,” he answers. “You and Evan have the worst view in the room.” 

Tyler balks, a bit red-faced from the exasperation, and he’s handsome, adorably, at this moment, and Jon feels a stirring in his stomach because he is just now realizing the amount of attractive men he is surrounded by. It’s a strange sort of heaven, full of testosterone and attitudes. And gunpowder; the stench of it is heavy in the air on this level, nearly overtaking the ancient scent of time and dust and history.  

“Brian, I swear to God if that’s some kind of pickup line for your husband —“ 

“You’re just mad you don’t have the balls to ask Mini out!” 

Beside Brian, his husband Brock sighs and shakes his head, kind of like an exasperated parent, reaching beneath the table with his hand and apparently grabbing Brian’s; Jon watches the way the humor leaves Brian, as if evaporating water on a hot blacktop, and is replaced with pure and raw affection, adoration as he turns to look at the man he loves. 

Jon’s hit in the chest, hard. He had that — he had that, and then his father fucked it up, and he wants it again. Yeah, he wants it again. Because it’s hard not having something that you relied on so heavily; losing Lauren, losing his son was worse than any kind of withdrawal he ever had to go through. 

“If we’re finished with that, I’ll just get started,” Vanoss begins, but there’s no malice in his tone either and Jon tries to remember what it feels like to not be living in a constant cloud of confusion. “As most of us know, Tyler and Craig have been undercover for a few weeks, trying to infiltrate the gang that’s been distributing drugs all over Los Santos. Not much leeway has been made, as we all know, too, because of how tight-knit and isolated and cautious with their dealings, but I think we just got a big break.” Vanoss looks at Jon, then. “How much are you comfortable with them knowing, Delirious?”

Jon balks, tries not to show just how shocked and unsettled he is at the question Vanoss tossed at him; in all his years, he has never been in the same proximity of a gang leader who asked and considered what his crew thought before continuing. It makes Jon feel as if… as if he has been missing out on something that he’s never had before. Or, at least, hasn’t had in a very, very long time. 

“Everything,” he replies, meeting Vanoss’s eyes. Even from their distance, just shy of ten feet, Jon can see the darkness in them — and he likes that. It kind of matches the darkness in his own, and it makes him feel a bit more human, too, to see another person cultivate such blackness. He doesn’t feel alone. 

Vanoss nods in his direction once, before spreading his hands on the countertop of the table, leaning over it and grabbing everyone’s attention with his commanding aura. He clears his throat, and Jon watches, struck dumb with admiration. And a bit of attraction. 

A bit?

A lot. 

“All of us know Delirious, know of his reputation and how he has pledged himself to no gang and no leader. He’s a wild card, a man who will not wear any kind of leash that is put on him. But something has happened, and he has come to us about it.” Vanoss stops, then, and meets Jon’s eyes. “Do you want to explain what’s happened?” 

Jon swallows, and wishes to shake his head, to decline that offer, because he’s never been the best with words and especially when he’s pushed in front of an audience he isn’t comfortable with just yet, but he finds that he is nodding his head before his mind can catch up to his mouth. 

“I was attacked, and that’s not weird. That’s actually pretty normal, even considering I didn’t have my mask with me.” He’s worked so hard to keep his face hidden; here, now, he feels naked in a way that he hasn’t in a decade. They can see his face — they can see the scars, and the startling contrast of his eyes: one as blue as a cloudless sky, the other the color of the horizon right before you descend into hell. “They ambushed me, dragged me into an alley, and tried to beat me up. I got loose from them before much harm could be done but it’s still… weird.” 

From there, Vanoss takes over. 

“I think this new gang distributing drugs around the city are the same gang who approached Delirious last night and asked him to join. They’re new — they don’t know Delirious, and they don’t know of Delirious, either, so this rookie mistake may have just costed them their hard-earned anonymity.” He looks around the table, his eyes raking over every one of the members; in them, a question is being asked that Jon can’t understand. “And I also think Jon is the key to stopping this piece of shit gang that’s ruining our city.” 

And, as soon as those words are spoken, all hell kind of breaks loose, and Jon wants to evaporate like rain water in the summer when the sum comes out and intensifies the heat of the afternoon, leaving the world a sweltering mess of sweaty humidity. 

“Evan —“ 

Jon’s chest stings. He didn’t expect — 

“I know that Delirious isn’t exactly somebody we would have considered before, but —“ 

“No fucking shit.” It’s Tyler; Jon flicks his gaze upward, was not aware that it fell onto the glossy surface of the table while Vanoss was speaking and the others began to interrupt and display their disgust and distrust. Tyler’s looking at him with hatred, with malice in his eyes; Jon doesn’t flinch because he isn’t scared and this is not the first time that somebody has expressed their hatred so vividly. “You’re not exactly rainbows and sunshine, dude. You’re a fuckin’ killer. I remember what you did to that family, with those kids — you’re fucked in the head, and I’m not happy to have you in my home right now around the people I love.” 

Jon looks away from Tyler, keeps his head down. He knows what everyone in this room thinks of him — of course he does. He would be an idiot to not. Even Vanoss himself, no matter how gentle and kind he was last night, considers Jon a threat. And they have every right to: he isn’t a good guy, he isn’t somebody that one would sleep with their back turned to. He is tainted — he is the closest thing to a demon that this world has ever seen. 

But it’s different, in a sense, when you hear it laid out so bluntly, so brashly, in front of you. 

But he isn’t scared. He hasn’t been scared in a long, long time. Because they don’t know him — they now of him, know of the things that he has done and of the things that he has had to do to survive, but they don’t know him. None of them do. 

And one man having a fit over the inconvenience of two unlikely parties coming together for allied assistance in a mutual fight does not terrorize Jon’s dreams like watching the blood squirt from his child’s throat did. There is nothing in the world that can scare him anymore, least of all a big kid throwing a hissy fit as if they were a group of friends on the playground at school discussing the politics of the school and who gets to sit next to who. 

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know more than half of you in this room are shittin’ your britches because I’m here and would probably cream your pants at the thought of being able to tell the whole city that you’re the one who killed Delirious?” Jon smirks crookedly as he meets Tyler’s eyes; he’s not stupid. He knows exactly what’s going through Tyler’s head. “I know you’re scared of me. I know everybody in this room is scared of me. Even Vanoss, and he tries so goddamn hard not to show it.” Jon catches a gleam of Vanoss’s grin from the corner of his vision, and he isn’t sure what to think about that. “But I’m here, and I’m the best lead you have on something you’ve apparently been working on for a while, and I’m not going anywhere until we figure out just who in the fuck thinks they have a right to hurt our city.” 

“This isn’t your city.” 

Jon turns his head and looks at Brian. “This is my city.” He blinks. “And this is your city, too. We’re not fuckin’ six anymore. Learn to share.” 

Beside Brian, his husband Brock fights to hide his grin after allowing Jon to see it. It makes Jon feel a little bit better for cursing the crew.  

Tyler crosses his arms and clears his throat, gathering Jon’s attention once again. “Why should we trust you?” 

Jon licks his lips and stands; he lifts his leg, sets his foot on the table, and pulls his pant leg up over his boot. Inside the worn out boot is an untraceable phone he’s had for years, created specifically for him by the same woman who manufactured his father’s years ago, and on it is every single number, every single name, every single bank transaction, every single request he has had in the decade of this hard life he’s been living. 

He slides the phone across the table. “In all the years I’ve been killing the people that nobody else wants to, I have declined every single offer placed on any one of your heads.” No matter the price, no matter the promise, no matter how fucking glorious hundreds of thousands of dollars are — these are good people, and Jon doesn’t hurt good people. “It’s all on that phone. You’re welcome to do with it whatever you wish. I don’t need it right now.” 

The room is silent after that; Jon can faintly hear the uneven breathing of the crew as well as the waves as they crash against the rocks below the large windows. He keeps his eyes on Tyler — Tyler, who slowly uncrosses his arms and reaches for the phone, picks it up and holds it in his hand and stares at it as if Jon has just given him the key to every secret in the universe. 

On a whim, Jon moves his eyes toward Vanoss; he sees that Vanoss has his gaze trained on Jon with a gentle, soft smile. His face is smooth, undisturbed — he doesn’t look like the leader of a deadly gang, doesn’t look like a person who can slit your mouth from ear to ear in order to give you a permanent smile because you’re the “funny man” before he runs the blade across your jugular. 

He just looks like a dude. Like a guy. Like somebody Jon would love to take out, would love to talk to, would love to get to know; like somebody that the other Jon, the Jon that lives in his head and not his life, would have. 

And it makes him sick. That he doesn’t have what the Jon in his head does, that he will never have what the Jon in his head does. And he tears his eyes from Vanoss and settles them back on Tyler because at least when he’s staring into the icy glare of Tyler he isn’t reminded of everything that he used to have, of everything that he’ll never have again. 

“I’m not here to fight. I’m not here to kill you. I’m not here on some sort of mission from another gang, and I’m not here to join, either.” Jon feels Luke and Ryan move on both of his sides, just a little; a bristle, if one would even call it that. “I’m just here for help in catching the dumbasses that are fuckin’ up our city and asking for my help in doing that.” 

It’s silent for a moment, till Vanoss clears his throat. “Any more objections in Delirious helping us for a while?” 

Glances are shared, glares are thrown, whispers are passed from ear to ear, but nobody says anything and for that Jon feels some type of relief that he wasn’t sure he was capable of experiencing.