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Jin character piece #18
Apr. 28th, 2024 03:10 amThe suit may be water-wicking, but it’s not waterproof, and Jin is really starting to feel the difference at hour five or six of this miserable stakeout. They’re shivering helplessly, crouched in the space between two rain-drenched chimney pots on a rooftop in the Bronx, holding one hand up to their eyes like a visor to keep the water off their face, watching the fire escape outside a top-floor apartment across the street. It’s colder here than in Porto Ouro, and the suit doesn’t trap heat nearly as well when it’s soaked through.
Nothing is happening on the fire escape across the street, just as nothing has been happening on the fire escape across the street since Jin set up here. Jin is starting to think nothing is going to happen on the fire escape across the street and this is all going to be a wretched waste of their time.
“Sound off,” says Marian quietly in Jin’s earpiece, making them jump out of their fucking skin. It’s been an hour already since the last one? Fuck. “L’Antenne?”
“Still in position, Shepherd,” says Ben’s voice. He’s on the other side of the building, watching the front door. “No change. Nothing to report.”
“Convex?”
“No change,” says Jin through their chattering teeth. “Freezing my ass off, same as before.”
There’s no shiver evident in Ben’s voice, only mild reproach. Bastard. “Didn’t I mention you might want to grab a poncho on the way out the door?”
“It wasn’t raining when we left, asshole.”
“Well, the forecast -”
“Dude, do I sound like I’m in the mood for your shit?”
It’s just Jin and Ben on this mission; Bernard and Cassidy are off chasing the other half of this lead, probably somewhere a lot warmer and drier than this, the fuckers. Marian is running back end for both duos, also warm and dry back at the base, which Cassidy has repeatedly reminded them is no longer Silencers HQ, though that’s still how Jin thinks of it. What they wouldn’t give to be back there now, taking a hot shower or some shit.
“Wait.” Ben’s voice is suddenly sharp and intent. “Got something.”
“Yeah, I see it,” says Marian, and Jin’s phone vibrates once in their pocket as Marian starts screen-sharing their heat-sig readings. “Is that a motorcycle?”
“Yeah. One rider. They’re parking by the gate. They’ve let themself in. They’re heading up the stairs. I’m gonna lose them as soon as they get inside.”
“Hold your position, L’Antenne.” Jin jumps again, having stupidly forgotten that Cassidy is also on this channel. “If that’s who we think it is, you don’t want to take her in a close-quarters fight.”
“Trust me, I’ve no interest in engaging, I’m just going to get a little closer.”
“I said, hold position.” Cassidy’s tone leaves very little room for argument.
Ben says nothing. Jin can picture the face he’s making, the muscle tightening along his lower jaw.
“Lost the heat signature,” Marian says, breaking the silent standoff.
There’s another long moment of tense silence on the line, and then a light flicks on in the dark window Jin’s been staring blankly at for the past several hours. “Hey, uh,” they start, and that’s exactly when a lithe and flexible arm wraps around their neck from behind, choking off the rest of whatever they were gonna say.
“Better not move,” a sibilant voice says against their ear. Jin lets themself be dragged to their feet, out from between the chimney pots, tucking their chin, trying not to strangle. The thing they thought was an arm turns out to be a - tail, or something, furless and a little scaly like a rat’s, apparently prehensile. The Bluetooth is plucked away, the tip of something like a claw pricking the shell of their ear, cutting off the several voices demanding a status report, and the metahuman says, probably into a communicator of their own, “Got one.”
Great. Stellar end to this fantastic evening.
The… rat person drags Jin to the center of the roof, walking them along backwards. Stumbling through the inch of standing water on the gravel-coated rooftop, fighting to breathe around the tail pressing against their windpipe, Jin thinks again, damn, could really go for that hot shower right about now.
"Yep," says the rat person, in response to something Jin can't hear. "Transporting in three, two -"
Jin chooses that moment to slam their elbow back into the rat person, hoping to catch them in the sternum or the tit or somewhere painful, but from the immediate loosening of the tail around their throat and the gargled grunt from behind them, it sounds like they must have got them in the neck instead. Jin whirls around, ready to throw hands; sure enough, the hunched-over figure only comes up to, like, their armpit, which doesn't make a lick of difference when they lunge at Jin and clamp a mouthful of needle-like little teeth into the meat of Jin's forearm.
"Aagh - fuck!"
Jin has about two seconds to whack at the creature worrying their arm like a dog toy before a swirl of deep shadow blossoms around them and swallows them both into a screaming void, black static blasting at them from all sides.
The sudden onslaught leaves Jin's ears ringing and vision swimming even after the portal or whatever dumps them in a heap with rat guy onto a shitty thin carpet, crispy with cigarette burns. Rat guy's teeth are still lodged in Jin's forearm. It fucking hurts.
"Wow," says a low voice, rough with years of smoke. "Biting, Sorga? Really?"
Sorga spits out Jin's arm. Blood beads on the reflective strip. "They went for my fucking neck, what the fuck was I supposed to do?"
"Hey, buddy, you went for my neck first," Jin points out, rising to their elbows and trying to surreptitiously hold the side button on their phone through their pocket, which would ping Marian their location and send up a distress flare.
Sorga snatches their wrist before they can get the button held down for the required three seconds. Up close in the light of a cheap fluorescent bulb, Jin can see their glittering black eyes and the long snout, patchy-furred, tipped with a quivery wet nose and a spray of coarse whiskers. "Want me to search 'em?"
"Suppose you'd better," says the smoker's voice, even as a pad-fingered claw-tipped hand is already patting down Jin's front and working open the hidden zipper at the edge of one of the reflective panels. Kari installed this zipper pocket because Jin was always losing their phone out of their basketball shorts; she'd be pissed that this rat guy found it so quick. Then again, Jin did kind of point it out to them.
The smoker has circled around in front of Jin now and crouched to examine them - a heavyset woman in a long, shiny pvc coat and spike stilettos, face mostly hidden by a fetish mask in the same material as the coat. Only her mouth is visible, an unlit cigarette dangling from lips coated with thick foundation. "So what are your powers, little hero? Besides annoying Sorga enough to get them to bite."
Sorga grumbles, fiddling with Jin's phone. Jin, wet and shivering, says nothing. The smoker's eyes are covered by the mask, which means there will be no use in trying to distract or startle her by reflecting light into her eyes. They'll just have to think of something else.
Sighing like her life is so difficult, the smoker reaches out a gloved hand, catches Jin by the jaw, and wrenches their head up. Jin doesn't fight. After a quiet moment of inspecting the fading bruises up the side of their neck (Ben's work, from two days ago), she says, with a lilt of humor, "You got a sweetheart, little hero? Girlfriend, boyfriend? Someone you care about? Lemme tell you right now, we'll find them. We'll make them sorry they were born, if you don't open your mouth and make some facts come out."
Jin keeps their mouth tight shut, breathes through their nose, and hopes Ben has disobeyed Cassidy by now and is about to bust the door down. The smoker's coat is beaded with rain. This must be the motorcycle rider they weren't supposed to fight at close quarters. Great.
"You're one of Bandit's new litter, aren't you? Thought they were operating out of Brooklyn still. What're you doing all the way uptown on a poor-weather night like this?"
Jin says nothing.
The smoker brings her other hand to Jin's face, lifts a sodden strand of hair off their forehead, trails her fingertips down their cheek to the corner of their mouth, where she proceeds to force their lips apart. Jin finally allows themself to struggle, jerking and twisting, biting when they can't yank away, but then she gets her second and third fingers pressed to the roof of their mouth and a black burst of noise fills the inside of their skull and knocks them out cold.
***
Jin wakes up on a whole different floor. Linoleum this time. Still cold and wet, still bleeding sluggishly from the tooth puncture wounds in their arm. Head fucking slamming with headache. They drag a hand over their eyes, squint, try to determine anything useful about their location.
Looks like a kitchen. A cramped, dirty one. Their ankles have been zip-tied together, and Jin winces as they curl their cold, numb toes in their wet suit.
They do seem to be alone. So there's that.
Well - hold on. Shouting from somewhere nearby. Sounds of a scuffle. A yell, maybe an exclamation of surprise or discomfort, maybe Jin's name, it's hard to tell.
They get themself up on one elbow, gritting their teeth at the lancing pain between their eyes (it really does feel like somebody drove a metal spike right through the center of their skull) and then they fall back with a wince as a door bangs open, loudly, and Sorga comes hurrying into the shitty little kitchen, cradling one claw-hand to their chest. Looks broken. Good.
"Get up," they say, reaching for Jin with their other hand. "We're going."
Jin tilts their shoulder like they're offering it to be grabbed, bouncing the kitchen's weak ceiling light directly into Sorga's beady eyes for an instant, not enough to stop them, not even really enough to sting. But they do flinch and hesitate just a hair, and Jin can work with that.
They kick with their hobbled feet and catch Sorga right in the snout. Shouting, Sorga reels backwards, and Jin throws themself into a dive, knocking an already unbalanced Sorga to the floor.
That, of course, is when the black bloom engulfs them both, gulping them out of existence.
"Bro, that sucks," Jin yells, hands clamped to head, the minute the black-static void deposits them at the feet of the motorcycle rider again.
She toes at them with less force than Jin would have expected, and they twist around on top of a struggling Sorga to see what has her so distracted.
It's Ben, silhouetted in the open - no, doorless - ah, he's ripped out the hinges, they're still circling his fist, the hinges and bolts, like a cloud of metal hornets, awaiting a target. His eyes flick to Jin for a half-second, and for only that half-second, there's fear in them, and Jin is transported to the floor of a Nutritech testing bay, teeth aching and muscles spasming from repeated electric shocks, locking eyes with a frightened Ben through the viewing window.
I'm fine, don't freak out, they try to say with their eyes, but then the woman is hauling them bodily to their still-hobbled feet and pressing something cold into the hollow beneath their jaw - the muzzle of a handgun, if they had to guess, and Ben does look scared, visibly, unmistakably, though right away he tries to hide it.
"Aww, is it him?" Jin can feel her grinning against the side of their face. "He your sweetheart?"
Ben lowers the fist orbited by the hinges and bolts (it's shaking). "Why don't we talk about this, instead of pulling guns and doing things we'll regret." He's trying to sound cavalier; it's not going great for him.
Cool, thanks for the backup, asshole, thinks Jin, trying to come up with anything better. Not a lot of wiggle room, with the gun jammed up hard into that soft spot under their jaw, hard enough to hurt. God dammit. "L'Antenne. Just - just do what she wants, man, fuck."
Ben's face doesn't twist - much - but Jin can read the tension in him anyway.
"Want you to put down those metals, first thing first. Sorga, go get 'em. We'll take you both."
She keeps the gun tight to Jin's head while Ben lets the hinges clatter to the floor and holds out his wrists to be zip-tied. Sorga takes his earpiece too, shooting Jin dirty looks over their shoulder all the while.
Cassidy's gonna be pissed.
Jin tries to think while the woman uses her awful shadow power to swallow them out of the apartment complex and into what looks like the blacked-out back of a delivery van, but the blasting void-noise isn't very conducive to thinking.
"Oh, that's bad," Ben gasps, lying on his side, his shoulder digging into the small of Jin's back. "I get why she's called Black Static now."
Jin almost laughs. "Oh my god, Black Static?"
"That's what Cas- what Bandit said."
When Jin doesn't reply, Ben adds, sounding mulish, "Bandit also told us not to engage her in close combat. In case you'd forgotten."
"Wh-! She's the one who 'ported me inside, I didn't engage shit! You weren't supposed to engage her either, asshole!"
"I thought I was about to watch her shoot you dead," Ben says, in such a venomous tone that Jin stops squirming to try to reach their tied ankles and lies still against his back for a moment because it's not like him to lose his cool this way.
"Dude. You pissed or something?"
"You're shivering."
"Yeah, I'm fucking cold. Don't avoid the question."
"You really -" They feel him take a breath, a long slow one, and then he's shuffling around behind them until he's lined up against Jin back to front, his face in the crook of their shoulder. When he speaks again, it's flat and sardonic and that’s how Jin knows he’s really fucking mad, because he doesn’t usually pull that shit with them these days. "You get a kick out of putting your own life in danger? Is that it? You get off on making me watch you almost die over and over?"
"What? Come on, man, don't be like that."
"Like what? Worried about you?"
Almost funny, how unimaginable that would have been, coming from him, even like a year ago. "In case you forgot," says Jin, knowing it's a shitty thing to say before it even leaves their mouth, "only one of us has actually watched the other one die, and it wasn't you."
Underhanded, maybe, but it does shut him up, which gives Jin time to think. Head still fucking hurts. Never been the same since all those concussions.
Ben lies stiff and angry against them while they bunch their legs up and try to get at their zip-tied ankles again. "Would you stop that," he says finally, a little sullen.
"And what, lie here for the next hour and a half waiting for Bandit and Outflow to hop the A and come rescue us? Nah. Got a better idea."
"Oh, and I suppose I'm going to like this idea?"
"Nope," Jin says grimly, and tells him.
***
Small mercy that Ben's wrists were tied in front instead of behind, but it wouldn't have particularly mattered, since what he ends up doing is feeling around with his powers, finding a pair of wire cutters in the van's glovebox, and floating them over to cut the ties without ever touching them.
"You've had better plans," he grumbles, rubbing circulation back into his wrists while Jin cracks the van door and checks for cameras in the parking garage outside.
"Yeah, and I've had worse ones. Plus, I don't hear you having any. Looks like one camera on this side, four o'clock, up by that pillar. Angled on the loading doors so we're probably good. You wanna drive, or?"
"I don't want either of us driving, Jin, considering neither of us are licensed, and we are in the Bronx."
Jin shuts the van door and fixes him with a withering look. "Ears wide open for a better plan."
None seems forthcoming, so they climb over him and settle into the driver's seat, fiddling with the floor pedals. Is it one for each foot, or are you supposed to somehow push both with the same foot? "Look, it's not Manhattan or anything. Now get up here and put your seatbelt on. Safety first."
Ben attempts a scoff, but Jin can see his fingers trembling on the seatbelt buckle. To his credit, he still uses his powers to turn the empty ignition, which, Jin supposes, is all they can really ask.
Not many other cars on the road at fuck a.m. on a rainy night in the Bronx, which is probably the only reason they make it two entire blocks before Jin hops a curb and plows to an abrupt halt against a stoplight pole.
"I am never getting into a car with you again," says Ben, without releasing his death grip on the door handle. His face, under the red cast of the stoplight, is blanched completely white.
Jin unwraps their fingers cautiously from the steering wheel and puts the van in what they think must be park. "I dunno, I see how it could be kinda fun. Driving. If, like, you knew how, and it wasn't raining, and you weren't tryna fucking, escape from a known supervillain…"
The rain is, in fact, drumming very pleasantly on the roof and windshield of the van. Jin has never been much of a white noise person, but leaning back in the driver's seat and closing their eyes and letting the tension of the crash ride out on a long breath, they can kinda see how the sound could be… soothing or whatever. Or maybe Black Static’s miserable power is still cobwebbing up the inside of their skull.
It’s quiet in the van for a minute, other than the rain, and another faint sound that Jin finally identifies as Ben’s rapid breathing.
They crack an eye.
He’s still rigid in the passenger seat. He hasn’t let go of the door handle. His eyes are closed, tight shut, and he’s clearly losing the fight to regulate his breathing.
“Hey, man.”
Nothing, except maybe he squeezes his eyes shut a little tighter.
“Ben.” Jin reaches out, slow, so they won’t startle him. “Hey.” Hand on his arm. Slow. “You’re okay, man. We’re all good. Car didn’t even blow up or anything. Didn’t even set off the air bags.”
He swallows, throat jumping, and the next breath he takes seems slightly deeper and slower than the one before.
"Okay, good, that's good. You're doing good, keep that up."
"I'm fine," he mumbles, a hoarse burr to his voice.
"Okay, buddy, whatever you want. Keep breathing."
Keeping a hand on Ben's arm while he collects himself, Jin peers out the rain-filmed windshield and tries to get a bead on their location. They don't recognize the street; it's totally out of sight of the apartment complex where they tried to corner Black Static. Looks like there's a subway entrance another half-block down. Could make a break for that, try to lose her and Sorga on the trains - god dammit, they wish they knew more about her power, does it let her appear anywhere or just somewhere she's seen, somewhere she's been? Fuck. Maybe they oughta find a payphone first, let Cassidy and Marian know -
"Oh, shit," says Ben suddenly, and then in a rush of deafening silence the van drops out from underneath them.
Well, drops with them, more accurately. Drops with them still in it. Whatever. Ben has yanked Jin tight against him and suspended them both, keeping them from smashing against the walls of the wildly tumbling vehicle. He's yelling, wordless and terrified, and it's all Jin can do to keep ahold of him and tuck their head and hope he doesn't fuck up.
There's a loud, awful crunch of metal as the van lands back on the ground, on its side this time. The air bags finally do go off, one of them punching Jin in the shoulder, and a few of the windows shatter in on them in a cascade of rainwater and broken glass. There's a strident noise echoing in Jin's ears that takes them a moment to identify as the van's panic alarm.
Ben is still keeping the two of them suspended, arms wrapped around Jin like he's trying to hold them together. Jin suspects he's holding himself together more than anything.
"Alright, kids," says Black Static's smoker voice, pitched a little louder to cut through the sound of the rain. "Come on out, if you're done playing."
"Yeah Jin, are we done playing?" Ben hisses between his teeth. Jin can feel his whole body screaming with tension against them.
"Maybe not yet. I got an idea. It's totally dependent on your power, and if you fuck it up we could both die, wanna hear it?"
***
Ben hates this idea just about as much as the last one, but he flips the car in the direction of Black Static's voice and maneuvers them out the side door that he rips off of its sliding track while the whole vehicle is still in midair without getting them both tangled in seatbelt straps or gouged by flying glass, so all in all Jin's pretty impressed. He even gets them down the block to the metro station using the dislocated door as a screeching, juddering sled, the two of them crouching and clinging to the inside of it for dear life.
The van door clangs down the rain-slick metro steps with Jin and Ben still aboard, bashes into the wall at the bottom of the staircase, and throws them both into a stagnant puddle. Jin groans, spits out puddle water, and shoves Ben off of them so that he splashes down on one elbow at their side. "Dude, this mission blows."
He's soggy and shaking as he hauls himself to his feet. His hair sticks to his forehead. "I don't appreciate your accusatory tone, Jin -"
"Convex."
"Oh, whatever! Our earpieces are gone, our phones are gone, Cassidy's not listening, no one is listening, I really don't see why it matters!"
"It's the, the principle or whatever the fuck, and besides, the station could be bugged and anyone could be listening."
"You're really getting on my last nerve today," says Ben, but he reaches for Jin's hand and hauls them up and out of the puddle anyway and they're off and running again, down the dirty white-tiled corridors, following signs for downtown.
***
It’s not until both of them are slumped, soggy and aching and miserable, side by side in the dirty plastic seats of an empty A-train car that Jin thinks to say, “You know, you can get like. Pills and stuff. For the motion sickness.”
Ben’s eyes are closed again. “I’m managing it.”
“Look, man, I’m not trying to like, tell you what to do or whatever, just -”
“It’s under control.”
"Okay - yeah. Okay."
***
They must fall asleep on the A, because next thing they know, the subway car's not moving anymore and Ben's voice is right in their ear.
“...Jin? Hello? Did you hit your head when I wasn’t looking? Don’t fucking pass out on me.”
Jin lets him shake them back to awareness, head lolling a little. “Dude, knock it off, that bitch set off her powers on the inside of my mouth, can you blame me for being a little wobbly.”
“She - she what? God, never mind. Come on. Up.”
He's on his feet now, pulling them up with him. Ooh, fuck, their head hurts, which it didn't while they were unconscious, so they're very much looking forward to getting back to that.
“You’re mad at me again, aren’t you,” says Jin, letting themself be dragged back out of the metro station, up the stairs (fuck, stairs) and into the fucking rain again. Damn. Just when they were starting to get less wet and cold. At least it's less than a block to their building from here.
Ben hasn't let go of their arm. He's towing them along the sidewalk with single-minded momentum. "Is it so hard to believe I might be concerned? About your - your behavior, your flagrant disregard for your own safety -"
"Alright, alright, I get the picture, can we do this, like, not right now?"
He stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, spins around mid-step so suddenly that Jin full body slams into him. He catches them by the upper arms and bears down - ouch, right, their forearm is still bleeding. There's hair in his eyes, dark and heavy with rainwater, droplets collecting in his eyelashes and the stupid little hairs in his goatee, and Jin is still muzzling over the way rain has pooled in the divot above his upper lip when he kisses them, hard, bruisingly hard.
It brings Jin back into their body somehow, like they were walking half a step behind themself until he jerked them both to a stop, and now they've kind of slammed into themself, it jolts them awake and shakes loose the last effects of Black Static's power. He tastes like cigarette smoke, familiar, and also like dirty New York rain, which reminds Jin that they're still fucking freezing their ass off.
Ben is pressing his forehead to theirs now. His hands are warm on Jin's biceps. "God dammit, Jin, if she had decided to pull that trigger, there's nothing I could have -"
"I know. Look, I'm sorry." Can we go inside now, they refrain from adding.
That seems to satisfy him, at least for the moment. He kisses them again, briefly this time, as if just to punctuate his point, and then he's back to towing them down the shiny-wet sidewalk.
***
The lights in the living room and kitchen are off when Jin and Ben stagger back into the Silencers base. Only the glow of the several computer screens in the far corner, where Marian swivels in their chair as the two of them shuck off their wet shoes in the entryway.
"Holy shit, what happened? I already called you both in MIA."
"Black Static," says Ben shortly, catching Jin by the shoulder as they overbalance again. "Get the first aid kit, will you?"
Marian bites their lip. "I - I'm still on the horn with Cassidy -"
Their headset lights up - it's a castoff of Bernard's, Jin thinks, with the stupid gamer LEDs on it - and Marian listens intently before rushing out, "No - no, they're here, back at base, no visible major injuries, no, they weren't tailed -" lifting the headset off one ear: "Were you tailed?"
Ben huffs and rolls his eyes and manhandles Jin to the kitchen, which they allow only because they've had a fucking day and standing upright is getting a little tough. He gets them into a chair and stomps off to the bathroom for the first aid kit, at which point Marian turns their chair a little farther and says to Jin, one hand covering their headset microphone, "Is he - oh, my god, you’re bleeding - is he mad about something?"
Jin is peeling the clinging wet sleeve of their suit back to get a better look at the tooth marks. They're having some trouble closing their hand, but that might just be the cold. "Bro. When is he not."
"Eugh," says Ben, returning with the medkit and seeing the way Jin is trying to pull the inside of their sleeve free of the congealing blood on their forearm. "Stop - stop, stop that. Arm on the table."
He's brought a dry towel as well - surprisingly considerate of him - and Jin falls into a sort of stupor with its warmth around their shoulders as Ben loosens the clotted blood with a damp cloth, disinfects the two semicircles of puncture wounds (it stings, but not enough for Jin to flinch, they've had worse) and tapes it over with gauze, all with a clench-jawed expression of discomfort. A laugh makes its way out of Jin, just a huff of humor, really, and he flicks them an irritated glance.
"Care to share the joke?"
"I just - weren't you gonna be a doctor, wasn't that the, the original plan?" Jin remembers his disgust at the desiccated mouse in the tray. "And you're squeamish?"
"You may recall the discussion where I mentioned that was what my parents wanted for me, not what I wanted for myself, yes?" They're both speaking quietly, trying not to interrupt Marian, who is still glued to the monitors and occasionally answering questions from Cassidy over the headset.
"I was just thinking, maybe it all kinda worked out, like, you don't have to be a whole ass real doctor, and it sure doesn't hurt to have a couple of former pre-meds on a hero team."
For the first time today, a little wry twist of a grin appears at one corner of Ben's mouth. "True enough. Though somehow the rest of us seem to be far less injury-prone than you."
"Weird," says Jin, watching him roll the excess gauze into a precise cylinder and tuck it back into the med kit. "Must be all those superpowers I don't have."
That earns them a severe look. "That's what worries me, Jin."
“Hey, you do have superpowers, okay, and I have you to back me up, because we're a team, right, isn't that, like, the whole point? So quit freaking out.”
He huffs. “I am not freaking out.”
“Kay.” Jin leans back in the kitchen chair and closes their eyes, but only gets about halfway to unconscious before Ben's hands are on their towel-swaddled upper arms again, lifting them to their feet.
“Jin, for the love of - Go dry off. Clean clothes. Then bed. I'll bring you an Ibuprofen.”
“Aw, thanks, Nurse,” mumbles Jin, and they can feel Ben rolling his eyes, but he supports them to the door of the bedroom and a couple minutes later he really does bring them a bottle of pills and a glass of water, and he even helps them sit up to drink it.
And he settles into the room's only chair with a textbook after, without them even having to ask.
And that's on character development, thinks Jin, letting their eyes close.
